From middle class to peasant class

a very interesting if totally partisan perspective on the erosion of the american middle class.

Regardless of the partisan ideology, the fact that what was once the strength of America - its middle class is rapidly evaporating. This should be an AMERICAN problem, but petty political partisanship and stupid obstructionist strategies prevent the most powerful nation on earth from healing itself.

Pathetic really, a bunch of fat dogs fighting over bones they will never eat.


http://www.politicususa.com/2013/06/20/middle-class-peasant-class-republicans-america-top-poverty-creator.html

 

Obstructionism is good right now. The fed stopped printing money recently, no more new obamacare type plans to scare business, no new stimulus to steal from all and give to some, aka "jobs bill".

When they compromise and get along you get trouble. Stalemate is best.

 

You can blame a combination of globalization, a lack of an affordable healthcare system, and a dysfunctional education system on our decline.

We have the means to preserve our standard of living, but we don't have the will to make the necessary reforms.

 

doing nothing is best?

"LET'S STAND STILL AND WATCH AS WE DECLINE AND THE WORLD PASSES US BY" - great GOP philosophy.

well at least you admit to the right's intransigence.

 

To be fair, the main reason the ACA sucks is because of Blue Dog Democrats, not the GOP.

It is true that the GOP was very resistant to it, but the Blue Dogs watered it down.

 

Anyone smart enough in the 80's knew it was comming, the end to the gravey train....I noticed it thats why I changed carrers from a manager to just a industrial maintenance man... we are always the last to turn the lights out in a closed factory and move to another job....

 

Better then the Obama jobs bill. Sequester helped too. Are you sure your leftists ideas which started the housing crisis in the first place , the failed stimulus , aren't the cause of our problems not the solution? What plan of Obama's do you like best?

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Better then the Obama jobs bill. Sequester helped too. Are you sure your leftists ideas which started the housing crisis in the first place , the failed stimulus , aren't the cause of our problems not the solution? What plan of Obama's do you like best?

 

Republicans and free-market fundamentalists have been tearing up and rewriting the social contract for the past thirty years. It's time to cut their hands off.

 

Just can't get away from partisanship.

It doesn't matter who the hell is to blame for the middle class crisis. All that matters is what are the people and their supposed representatives going to do about it?

Blame can be apportioned ot all and one this if absolutely for sure. the ONLY way its going to get fixed is if the politicians take their heads out of their asses and start making decisions based on what is best for the people, not the corporations and special interests.

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how prescient of you.

 

Well, the jobs bill and additional stimulus would be very helpful, since both were good. '
The bumpersticker meme of the stimulus failing is along the lines of repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it.
The sequester is helping who exactly?

I guess intransigent partisanship and the class based policies of the right where the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer is the right thing to do. Who needs the middle class. Peasants and Princes is enough.

History has shown that if you are going to be partisan, its always best to be on the side of the ordinary people.

 

You really expected the Republicans to fix the mess created by the Democrats between 1932 and 1994 in ten years without a super majority in the Senate?

 

I don't expect the republicans to fix squat.

1. Isn't it funny, but the decline in the middle class began during St.Ronnie's Reign.
2. Isn't it funny, but the GOP has done NOTHING in the past 9 years but exacerbate the situation. Brazen publicly declared ideological intransigence.
3. Isn't it funny, but the GOP has created the need for a "super" majority. They have filibustered and blocked proposed legislation at a record pace.
4. Isn't it funny, but the GOP economic policies they have been intransigent about sinceObama was elected turn out to be fundamentally flawed and the counter intuitive cut to grow has been thoroughly debunked.
5. Isn't it funny, but the GOP political leadership isn't. How many bills has Boehner submitted that have been defeated? Didn't McConnell filabuster his own bill?

Nope I really don't expect the GOP to fix anything but the bank accounts of their corporatist and special interests at the expense of the middle and working classes.

 

Isn't it funny that you don't realize that you don't know that:
that the decline began under Carter not Reagan and that the Dems controlled both houses of congress under reagan for all but two years?
The filibuster predates the Republican Party and theDems under Bush used the filibuster in ways it had never been used before"
The Democrats created the modern corporatist world you deplore out of whole cloth?
That the Democrats in the senate haven't even proposed a budget since Obama was elected? And none of Boenhers's bills have been brought up for a vote even in committee. And McConnell was forced to veto his own bill after the democrats added several poisoned pilled admendments to it which means, in essence, it was no longer his bill.

Oh and it's hard to debunk something that has worked every time it has been tried.

 

It is what can happen when we can't find enough politicians of morals who can faithfully execute our supreme law of the land.

There is no reason for (official) poverty to exist in modern times, especially in one of the largest economies in the world.

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I believe we should export States' rights and simply goad less developed States to improve their central banks and become more well developed through Socialism, so that they may pay their civil Persons to be couch potatoes instead of coming over here to make us look bad with a third world work ethic.

 

Actually no, the global inflationary recession started under Carter, but it was Reagan's policies that started the wealth shift.
And isn't it interesting that St.Ronnie did everything that he is so revered for (except iran contra and lying directly to the american people in a televised address) in two short years the republicans held both? Or maybe its an indication of what compromises and cooperation is all about.

The dems were amateurs in comparison to McConnels republicans. check the numbers. The super majority corruption is republican caused.

Yeah right. I guess all that deregulation were democratic initiatives. I guess all those tax loopholes were democratic intitiatives. I guess all those corporate tax breaks were democratic initiatives, all those subsidies to big oil, big pharma, big farm, big steel, were democratic initiatives. Okay, the wealth gap in america was all caused by democrats.... Your version of the noble republicans valiantely trying to save the republic from the evil democrats is like reading lousy ww2 propaganda.

Yep I am aware of that, and guess what? there obviously hasn't been a need for one. You are familiar with the various bugetary mechanisms in place should a budget not be passed aren't you? It sounds like a big deal, but scratch the surface and nobody notices any difference.

Off the top I can think of two bills he allowed to be voted on and lost. The last one being the farm bill today.

And caught with his pants around his ankles. Yep that is leadership.

what has worked every time its been tried?

 

It's not about party for me, since I'm an independent. I voted for Obama in 2008.

I'm just saying that the Democrats are half of the problem. Half of the party is very similar to the GOP.

You're right that we need to hold all politicians more accountable, but I get the impression that the only way out of this mess is to open up the political system to multiple parties via instant runoff voting or approval voting.

 

Not one word about excessive regulation, excessive taxation, or excessive litigation.

The link author is a moron.

 

Did you pause to think that maybe, just maybe those "memes" do not have nearly the effect you think they do? Sure, excessive litigation hammers the auto insurance and medical industries while simultaneously boosting the legal profession. Excessive regulation? But too much than too little when wall street asses can rape the country and get away with it. Excessive taxation? that's a laugh, look at what other countries pay - you think outspending the next top 15 military spenders on the planet combined doesn't have its price tag?

 

Oh please...fat cats are fatter than ever. The only thing that scares them is going outside without body guards.

 

So what is the plan, another jobs bill to invest in the economy? Big chunk off of the workers back to pay for some well connected guy's pet project?

 

"Did you pause to think that maybe, just maybe those "memes" do not have nearly the effect you think they do?"

Taxcutter says:
Those three excesses hit the business cycle at a critical point: The formation of new competitors. they don't much affect the old guard. Who do you suppose writes the regs? Existing competitors. who wrote the banking regs? Frank and Dodd - bought off by Wall Street. who write EPA regs? Enviro-extremists and big polluters. Government bureaucrats are not smart enough to write regs. So the two go into cahoots and come up with a compromise that looks tough but really acts to eliminate new competitors.

News flash! Starting a new business is tough. 80% of all new businesses fail within a year. Of the survivors, 80% fail within the next four years. Just surviving requires all the new guys' resources. Pouring time and money into non-productive stuff like regulatory compliance and avoiding /defending against lawsuits diverts precious resource that could be doing something really important - making the business survive.

Startups tend to be more labor-intensive as they don't have unlimited access to capital. So they hire more employees than the old consolidated businesses do. And when the new businesses fold they lay off all their employees. Big businesses usually lay off people by attrition unless they are in an episode of consolidation, but small businesses caving causes mass layoffs.

You want new jobs to appear in the economy? Then you want new businesses. Excessive taxation (the US has the highest corporate tax rates in the world), regulations (what do we need over 200 pages of new regulations A DAY in the Federal Register for?) and a litigation system that has no downside to bringing spurious lawsuits (everyone else uses "loser pays" to allocate legal fees) force new businesses (that could be hiring people) to squander limited time and capital dealing with things that do not add value.

Further those excesses do not affect the old guard. they just pass the additional costs and complexities on to the consumer. At least they do until foreign competitors (who don't have to bother with these excesses) come along and they do not have the imposed costs to pass on to the consumer. The foreign competitors get an immediate price advantage and hog market share from the old guard. The old guard has to lay off people and the result is more unemployment. The cycle repeats and pretty soon you have the Obama Depression.

That one could post: "...maybe those "memes" do not have nearly the effect you think they do..." bespeaks an ignorance of how the economy works.

 

I believe full employment of human capital resources should be considered a form of "holy grail" in public sector intervention in private sector markets, in the name of promoting the general welfare.

 

And on top of all that, the banks are in cahoots with the rating agencies to start 2008 all over again, seeing that nothing was done about them the first time. And it doesn't look like they're going to do anything about it this go round. http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...y-of-the-financial-crisis-20130619?print=true

 

First of all, not all of this is political. A good bit of why we can't create jobs in the numbers we could in the past is that so many things are done by machines. If you build a factory in the US, you don't hire thousands, you hire a couple hundred and buy robots. Any new retail startup that comes along is probably going to skip the cashier in favor of self scan, and within a few more years, you'll find them using robots to stock the shelves. we've replaced the 1970-1980 mailroom of 20 people with email, and secretaries with Microsoft Word. in other words, we have more people in 2013, but really we don't need human labor for huge swaths of industry and business. Gee, that's probably a good reason why the middle class is shrink -- we don't need them anymore.

Regulations do hurt, and taxes do as well. What it does is drive the parts of the business that are subject to regulation overseas. We don't have factories BECAUSE we have the EPA -- why do the red-tape and pollution controls when you can go to china? Why not offshore half of your profits when you can save a billion dollars by pretending that the profits happened in someplace where they cannot be taxed?

 

No, it is not all political. But there is a political party that is vested heavily in what you describe . Like you said, machines and high tech take the place of jobs, and the double whammy of having more people makes it much worse. Then, you have what used to be described as Capitalism turned Crony capitalism, as a result of these changes. Big business corporations are not stupid by any stretch. They have studied how to work the system and the government to its advantage. That article points that out perfectly. But I noticed you used the words regulation and taxes as if it expressed a connotation of responsibility for all this. I'm amazed every time I here this. I will never understand the philosophy that some how when you give a kid the key to the candy store to protect the store, that somehow he or she won't eat any of the candy. I mean, we have rating agencies that without batting an eye lash, go on the take with big banks to sign off on bogus loans the banks themselves know are no good, and the first thing you attack is the regulation. Really?

I noticed especially in your last paragraph how it explained your overall views on this subject. It's an interestingly twisted dynamic that can only be construed as contradictory. Example, " you fence in the horizons", "regulate the appetites", " a law for every moment", "deny the existence of chaos"," teach the children to breathe slowly", and "tame". Then I thought about the kid with the key at the candy store. So here's how I see it. If I fence in the horizon I probably would keep the key and lock the kid inside the store. If I regulate the appetite, I'm going to give the kid an apple so he won't eat all the candy. If I create a law for every moment, hopefully I'll scare the kid to death to keep him from eating the candy. But I won't deny the existence of chaos, because if he eats all my candy, there's definitely going to be chaos, so that sort of contradicts your message. And I better teach the children to breathe slowly while taming them from eating the candy. Because if I don't, come Monday morning when I open the store, I may not have any candy to sell. This is essentially what the article I posted is saying, except the article represents something even worse. In the case with the banks, now you have the regulator which is the rating agency in bed with the banks, who are both in the candy store together at the same time eating all the candy, with no regulations, laws, barriers, anything. And so, I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out how your post makes sense.