There is nothing "normal" about a nation having a middle class, even though it is vital to the survival of democracy.
As twenty-three years of conservative economic policies have now shown millions of Americans, what's "normal" in a "free and unfettered" economy is the rapid evolution of a small but fabulously wealthy ownership class, and a large but poor working class. If a nation wants a middle class, it must define it, desire it, and work to both create and keep it.
This is because a middle class is the creation of government participation (conservatives call it "interference") in the marketplace, by determining the rules of the game.
"Those seeking profits," Jefferson wrote, "were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government.
As Jefferson realized, with no government "interference" by setting the rules of the game of business and fair taxation, there will be no middle class.
Conservatives believe what business does is business's business, and government should keep its nose out of it.
As the Wall Street Journal noted in 1997, Alan Greenspan sees one of his main jobs as being to maintain a high enough level of "worker insecurity" that employees won't demand pay raises and benefits increases, thus provoking "wage inflation." ("CEO inflation" is fine)
Thomas Jefferson -- if the government doesn't actively participate in regulating how the game of business is played, the middle class would vanish.
And to stimulate that domestic economy, we instituted progressive taxation, which gave workers more to spend, thus stimulating demand for more goods and services.
The elite cons who seem to truly believe that a CEO actually works 500 times harder than his employees (or is 500 times smarter).
But history shows that the third pillar of creating a middle class requires a modest control of how wealth is distributed. The richest, who benefit the most from our society, pay proportionately more, so the middle class can have home interest deductions, child tax credits, free public education, and health care. Progressive taxation has helped create every middle class in the First World, and without it the middle class will vanish (to Steve Forbes delight, apparently).
But as president Reagan cut the top tax rate for billionaires from 70 percent to 28 percent, while effectively raising taxes on working people via the payroll tax and using inflation against a non-indexed tax system. It was another hit to the already-beginning-to-shrink middle class, to be followed by more "tax cut" bludgeons during the first three years of the W. Bush administration.
Nonetheless, a never-ending parade of conservative economists and commentators march through our living rooms daily via radio and TV, assuring us that it is good for American workers to go along with the Wal-Martization of America, accept lower pay and few benefits, and fear for their health, so multinational corporations can "level the playing field" for labor.
Unless we repeal Taft-Hartley; start enforcing the Sherman act, provide free education for Americans (and not just Iraqis); abandon WTO/GATT and NAFTA; restore progressive taxation (including on dividend income); force corporations to pay their fair share; and go back to selective tariffs to protect domestic industries and stop offshoring to explicitly bring home the ability for us to make our own clothes, furniture, autos, and electronics, the conservatives will have won and the middle class -- and, thus, democracy -- will lose.
The middle class is not a "normal" thing: it's just the core that holds together democracy and an
ThomHartmann.com - Scrooge & Marley, Inc. - The True Conservative Agenda
As twenty-three years of conservative economic policies have now shown millions of Americans, what's "normal" in a "free and unfettered" economy is the rapid evolution of a small but fabulously wealthy ownership class, and a large but poor working class. If a nation wants a middle class, it must define it, desire it, and work to both create and keep it.
This is because a middle class is the creation of government participation (conservatives call it "interference") in the marketplace, by determining the rules of the game.
"Those seeking profits," Jefferson wrote, "were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government.
As Jefferson realized, with no government "interference" by setting the rules of the game of business and fair taxation, there will be no middle class.
Conservatives believe what business does is business's business, and government should keep its nose out of it.
As the Wall Street Journal noted in 1997, Alan Greenspan sees one of his main jobs as being to maintain a high enough level of "worker insecurity" that employees won't demand pay raises and benefits increases, thus provoking "wage inflation." ("CEO inflation" is fine)
Thomas Jefferson -- if the government doesn't actively participate in regulating how the game of business is played, the middle class would vanish.
And to stimulate that domestic economy, we instituted progressive taxation, which gave workers more to spend, thus stimulating demand for more goods and services.
The elite cons who seem to truly believe that a CEO actually works 500 times harder than his employees (or is 500 times smarter).
But history shows that the third pillar of creating a middle class requires a modest control of how wealth is distributed. The richest, who benefit the most from our society, pay proportionately more, so the middle class can have home interest deductions, child tax credits, free public education, and health care. Progressive taxation has helped create every middle class in the First World, and without it the middle class will vanish (to Steve Forbes delight, apparently).
But as president Reagan cut the top tax rate for billionaires from 70 percent to 28 percent, while effectively raising taxes on working people via the payroll tax and using inflation against a non-indexed tax system. It was another hit to the already-beginning-to-shrink middle class, to be followed by more "tax cut" bludgeons during the first three years of the W. Bush administration.
Nonetheless, a never-ending parade of conservative economists and commentators march through our living rooms daily via radio and TV, assuring us that it is good for American workers to go along with the Wal-Martization of America, accept lower pay and few benefits, and fear for their health, so multinational corporations can "level the playing field" for labor.
Unless we repeal Taft-Hartley; start enforcing the Sherman act, provide free education for Americans (and not just Iraqis); abandon WTO/GATT and NAFTA; restore progressive taxation (including on dividend income); force corporations to pay their fair share; and go back to selective tariffs to protect domestic industries and stop offshoring to explicitly bring home the ability for us to make our own clothes, furniture, autos, and electronics, the conservatives will have won and the middle class -- and, thus, democracy -- will lose.
The middle class is not a "normal" thing: it's just the core that holds together democracy and an
ThomHartmann.com - Scrooge & Marley, Inc. - The True Conservative Agenda
