FDR invested in the middle class through a wide assortment of cost controls, tax policies, labor support & protections, public works, public transportation, as well as medical, retirement, education, & housing programs.
Spoken like a true economics ignorant euro-socialist.
The progressives made sure that America's immense postwar wealth was shared with the workers off whose backs it was made. The progressives made sure that America's immense postwar wealth was re-invested in America's infrastructure, not, say, Iraq's.
Bullshit. Progressives made sure that people became enslaved to government handouts and red tape that prevented them from being paid fair wages for honest work with wage controls started by FDR. There was a post WW2 slump because of all the returning boys needed work. Women got fired, production jobs went away for a while because the demand was lower and shifting back to peacetime goods. What post Iraq War wealth are you thinking progressives are reinvesting here in America? The only thing they are growing is government jobs which actually SHRINK the economy because of their costs are pushed onto the private sector.
FDR's investment in the middle class was better for families because the mother could stay home and raise the kids. And it was better for upward mobility because more working families could afford to send their children to college.
Really? What program of FDRs made the government the surrogate daddy? That was LBJ who did that in the Great Society, and let's look at the good it's brought to society. Single crackwhore mothers getting checks from the gubmint while punching out kids every 9-10 months so she gets more money. Increased gang violence thanks to poor parenting brought about by not forcing women to experience hardship for being sluts and letting any punk get them pregnant with no consequences socially or economically. Rampant poverty in bad neighborhoods because too many are living off the government checks with no hope or drive to do better for themselves, but accepting their lot in life. Yeah, real good job. Working class doesn't exist when you are addicted to gubmint welfare. Slave class does. Take away their check and give them the 'jobs americans won't do'. Guaranteed they find a new found pride in themselves taking away jobs from the koreans if they were allowed to. But too much is to be lost to the unions, so that won't ever happen.
It's all about protecting your racket.
The point of Reagan was to relieve capital from the expensive burden of the middle class. The point of Reagan was to give capital cheap labor.
The point was to retrieve capital FROM GOVERNMENT who was wasting it and being inefficient and unaccountable for it. Business and the rich can re-invest it and grow the economy. Gubmint doesn't know what to do with it except buy votes.
Reagan did nothing to wages or labor except correctly busting the Air Traffic Controller's Union which had the proper effect of getting those gangsters to back the **** off. Just like TR busted the coal miner's strike in 1903. You are in a critical industry, you don't get the right to threaten the lives and function of a nation at large for your own personal gain. Blackmail is not an acceptable negotiating tactic.
The point of Reagan was to enrich corporations by getting rid of their social & financial obligations to the middle class and the country in which they operated.
Social and financial obligations of business. What, perchance are those? A living wage? Health Care? Lifetime employment?
No. That's socialist fantasy land. That's idealism run stupid. These are not obligations, they are benefits given to good employees from a good company.
in reality, this is the obligation to business: To provide a product or service the pubic needs, at a price it can afford, in a safe and legal manner. This is accomplished by entering into agreement with individuals to do the work of providing the product or service. A contact is formed between the employer and the employee at an agreed upon amount. If the employer does not approve of this agreement, they do not have to hire an employee. If an employee does not approve of this agreement, they do not have to work for the company.
You are not owed a job, a specific wage or even a benefit from any industry.
Many Americans don't like the human rights abuses common in the 3rd world. They view these places as pre-modern anachronisms. Look at how they view the middle east. Problem is: the American Economy it utterly dependent on these places. Consider the essence of America's postwar obsession: suburban expansion, which expansion pumped more money into terrorist nations than any other source (see oil).
Utter irrelevancy to this discussion. Nothing but hackneyed demagoguery of capitalism, individual freedom and wealth. No wonder all eurosocialist economies are failing fast. They hate all the benefits of freedom and wealth.
If you understand Reagan's neoliberalism; and if you understand capital's dependency on ever cheaper labor and ever cheap raw material (and zero environmental obligations), you will understand exactly what happened to the American middle class.
Trying to coin a new term huh? Fail. You don't have the slightest idea what it is to be American Middle Class and who cause it the most harm: Government. To your paltry little middle class lifestyle, most true American Middle Classers live an opulant lifestyle. How do I know this? Visitors from europe amazed at what can be afforded and what kind of wealth even the poor here have. Why can they have so much? Far less restrictive government taxation and regulation. We can have air conditioners, and multiple cars, and two story homes with backyard pools and 3 acre lots. We can drive to get fast food if we choose. We don't have to walk everywhere in high density, crime ridden urban areas elbow to elbow on public transit. Our nation is 3 times the size of europe, and we have room to grow.
But what is dragging down the middle class? Punitive taxation for wealth redistribution. The wealthy, who already HAVE their wealth dont have to worry about making more money in the traditional sense, and can avoid most taxes that are the bane of the middle class like Income tax. They also get hit by consumer and luxury taxes when they are able to afford a little something better. They push hard to crack the barrier into being wealthy, but the wealthy for some sick reason don't want more and advocate those who make it harder and harder for them to cross the line. This is also done to the lower classes as well. They are hooked on government dole and welfare checks. They may work, but it's not much. And if they do manage to break that barrier from poor to just middle class, the taxes that pay their welfare checks come to bear on them and crush them right back into addiction again.
That is your real enemy. A job, freely offered and taken is never worse than a welfare check unless you stupidly negotiated your pay. Then you are the one to blame for being a sucker.
It was destroyed to make a small group of people wealthy.
The elitists in government. Right. Using laws and special interest to protect their power and try to crystallize the social strata so they can never be poor, and no one else can ever be rich. That is not American thinking. We are a mobile social strata, not a caste system like you progressofascists in Europe or Asia.
America has spent the past 30 years not investing infrastructure. America has spent the past 30 years not investing for a petro-scarce future. America has spent the past 30 years not investing in the middle class. Why? Because Reagan believed the country should be run by corporations -- and those corporations chose not to re-invest, and they are laughing all the way to the bank. (You people swallowed poison in 1980)
And what stopped us? Hmm? Any clue? I sure know. Why 30 years of no serious infrastructure investment? Simple, Econazis and short sited socialists in local and state governments. The Leftist rainbow of Progrssofascism has ruled local, county and state governments the last 30 years. Commie Community Activists have agitated that highway money was not needed as much as inner city midnight basketball programs. Econazis have stopped us from building new refineries, power plants, nuclear facilities and major transportation upgrades to protect WORTHLESS "endangered" species. You want to save a species? Put it on the friggen menu and make it profitable to farm.
Petro-scarce future... what a load of bullshit. The only reason that petroleum finds are harder in 'easy' areas are because of government and econazi lawsuits barring them from REASONABLE exploitation of energy resources. Peak Oil is a chip trying to shove another pile of guacamole green fascism down everyone's throat, just like that farce called Global Climate Change. Puhlease! Bullshit and the world now is waking up to the smell of it on their head.
Corporations could run 90% of this nation's activities better than any government agency more efficiently. And to put paid to this, reporter John Stossel just mentioned on his show today, he has an award of $1000 to anyone who can find one US government agency that can do similar work MORE EFFICIENTLY than a private sector company. So far, after years of having this award out... no one has won it. So what's wrong about hiring a contractor to build a highway for the state? If they do a shitty job, fire them and hire a new one. Incompetence is weeded out, not protected, like government does.
Reagan wanted smaller government for it is the worst option to get something done. Government didn't build the transcontinental railroad. They hired companies to do it. Government doesn't build bridges, they hire contractors. Contractors build nearly everything in this nation. What's wrong with that? If they are corrupt, you can sue. If the screw up, you can fire them.
Your problem is you are blindingly ignorant, or hatefully stupid about capitalism, and are in no position to even pretend to be anything more than an eurosocialist agitprop spouting the line from the World Worker's Party, or some radical left wing moonbat factory.
