Verified User
This article sums it up...Originally Posted by Jack
It's just common sense!The Middle Class is not “Normal”
Apr. 16, 2014
There’s nothing “normal” about having a middle class. Having a middle class is a choice that a society has to make, and it’s a choice we need to make again in this generation, if we want to stop the destruction of the remnants of the last generation's middle class. Despite what you might read in the Wall Street Journal or see on Fox News, capitalism is not an economic system that produces a middle class. In fact, if left to its own devices, capitalism tends towards vast levels of inequality and monopoly. The natural and most stable state of capitalism actually looks a lot like the Victorian England depicted in Charles Dickens’ novels.
At the top there is a very small class of superrich. Below them, there is a slightly larger, but still very small, "middle" class of professionals and mercantilists - doctor, lawyers, shop-owners - who help keep things running for the superrich and supply the working poor with their needs. And at the very bottom there is the great mass of people - typically over 90 percent of the population - who make up the working poor. They have no wealth - in fact they're typically in debt most of their lives - and can barely survive on what little money they make.
So, for average working people, there is no such thing as a middle class in “normal” capitalism. Wealth accumulates at the very top among the elites, not among everyday working people. Inequality is the default option.
You can see this trend today in America. When we had heavily regulated and taxed capitalism in the post-war era, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and they paid working people what would be, in today's dollars, about $50 an hour with benefits. Reagan began deregulating and cutting taxes on capitalism in 1981, and today, with more classical "raw capitalism," what we call "Reaganomics," or "supply side economics," our nation's largest employer is WalMart and they pay around $10 an hour.
This is how quickly capitalism reorients itself when the brakes of regulation and taxes are removed - this huge change was done in less than 35 years. The only ways a working-class "middle class" can come about in a capitalist society are by massive social upheaval - a middle class emerged after the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century - or by heavily taxing the rich.
We now have a choice in this country. We can either continue going down the road to oligarchy, the road we’ve been on since the Reagan years, or we can choose to go on the road to a more pluralistic society with working class people able to make it into the middle class. We can't have both.
And if we want to go down the road to letting working people back into the middle class, it all starts with taxing the rich. The time is long past due for us to roll back the Reagan tax cuts.
The entire article at the link...
https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/20...s-not-“normal”
BLUEXITA Modest Proposal For Separating Blue States From Red
Dear Red-State Trump Voter,
Let’s face it, guys: We’re done.
It is a tragedy that so much of the work that so many men and women toiled at for so long to make this a better country, and a better world, has been thrown away, leaving us all in such needless peril.
This is why our separation in all but name is necessary.
https://newrepublic.com/article/1409...mp-red-america
Verified User
Nor does any other economic system. Certainly capitalism has done a much better job than China, Cuba, or North Korea. Those nations have greater equality, but it is at a very low level. It is easy to be equal when everyone is poor.
anatta (05-30-2020)
Verified User
Agreed.
Verified User
No, it is not. There are many nations with fabulous wealth and power at the top with the people dirt poor. Some of the richest people in the world are in Mexico.https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
Firebrand
Uh-uh. The democrat party has failed to provide justice and dignity for working-class and Black Americans, and the current instability is a result of that.
Free speech is cool as long as it jibes with our program.
-- The Left
It's OK to Be White
Is this another video that pretends the party switch didn't happen?
Firebrand
Oh, and this one:
Free speech is cool as long as it jibes with our program.
-- The Left
Firebrand
But let's not forget this one:
Free speech is cool as long as it jibes with our program.
-- The Left
Firebrand
No, it's a video that describes the mindset of the greatest perverts the world has ever known. Wanna guess who that might be?
Wrong. It's your side!
Free speech is cool as long as it jibes with our program.
-- The Left
Verified User
Very true, but that makes up a small percent of the population. That same thing is true in communist nations for the party elite. But most of the population is very poor (and therefore "equal"). Mexico had a growing middle class.
My main point is that capitalism provided just as much (or little) "justice and dignity for working-class and Black Americans" than any other economic system.
on indefiniate mod break
JPP Contributor
stop defending liars. if you believe in the value of your words you wouldn't have to omit trumps true statements or obfuscate the truth of what he's said.
---
Verified User
Capitalism provided an avenue for the wealthy to confiscate wealth and power like any other system. Our wealth gap is horrendous. It has accelerated the last couple of decades. We are no signpost for any other country to follow.
Last edited by Nordberg; 05-30-2020 at 02:41 PM.
Note my apathy
No. Trump said that there were fine people on both sides of the monuments issue.
Verified User
The organizers were nazis. My god, are you this uninformed?!
Banned
No. Everyone one of those people started investing at some point in their lives and took chances. There is nothing that stops anyone in this country from investing in stocks. Not one damn thing.
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