RIP, the Middle Class: 1946-2013

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/rip-middle-class-1946-2013



I know I’m dating myself by writing this, but I remember the middle class.

I grew up in an automaking town in the 1970s, when it was still possible for a high school graduate — or even a high school dropout — to get a job on an assembly line and earn more money than a high school teacher.

“I had this student,” my history teacher once told me, “a real chucklehead. Just refused to study. Dropped out of school, a year or so later, he came back to see me. He pointed out the window at a brand-new Camaro and said, ‘That’s my car.’ Meanwhile, I was driving a beat-up station wagon. I think he was an electrician’s assistant or something. He handed light bulbs to an electrician.”

In our neighbors’ driveways, in their living rooms, in their backyards, I saw the evidence of prosperity distributed equally among the social classes: speedboats, Corvette Stingrays, waterbeds, snowmobiles, motorcycles, hunting rifles, RVs, CB radios. I’ve always believed that the ’70s are remembered as the Decade That Taste Forgot because they were a time when people without culture or education had the money to not only indulge their passions, but flaunt them in front of the entire nation. It was an era, to use the title of a 1975 sociological study of a Wisconsin tavern, of blue-collar aristocrats.

That all began to change in the 1980s. The recession at the beginning of that decade – America’s first Great Recession – was the beginning of the end for the bourgeois proletariat. Steelworkers showed up for first shift to find padlocks on mill gates. Autoworkers were laid off for years. The lucky ones were transferred to plants far from home. The unlucky never built another car.

[Cryptoad]

1. The Beginning of the End Started around 1980

The GOP started lowering the tax on the Super Rich and making the Middle Class bear the burden. In effect, a government redistribution of wealth from the Middle Class to the Super Rich.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Median individual nonsupervisory income peaked in the mid 1970s

Almost 40 years ago!

[Cryptoad]

4. Median Icome of Wage earners'

Wage Earners' Yearly Median Income levels (adjusted for inflation -2009 dollars),,,,,,,



Reagan took office = $38,549.63,,,,



Bush1 took office = $32,225.01,,,,



Clinton Took Office = $ 29,467.12,,,,



Bush2 Took Office = $ 33,810.81,,,,



Obama Took Office = $27,359.12,,,



Median Wages have gone up over $400 since Obama has been in office,,,,



Does anybody else see a pattern here,,,,,, ?

[brush]

8. Yeah, it dropped over $5500 under bush and only $400 under Obama

According to you, and that's with all the repug obstructionism trying to block every attempt to help the economy.

That's that pattern I see. Is that what you were after?

[Cryptoad]

18. If has gone down

under ever Republican Asmin and it has gone up under every Democratic admin

that's the pattern!

[brush]

23. You're right about that

Also, recessions follow repug administrations like night follows day — also a pattern.

[davekriss]

13. Yet so many median wage earners vote Republican

I once pointed out these and similar facts to a right-wing coworker. A smart guy, grad from a good school, former Accenture consultant. His response? There is a lag effect. The fall in median income during the Republican administrations were due to the bad policies of the previous Democratic administrations, and the rise during Democratic admins were due to the good policies of the previous Republican admins.

Facts don't matter, they will hear what they want to hear to preserve the frames of their deluded beliefs. Makes me want to beat my head against a wall at times...

Every Democratic administration this century (with one exception) has left the economy better off than what they started with, and every Republican administration without exception has left it worse off. Yet too many of the 99% continue to press Republican in the voting booth. We live in a Greek tragedy, we do!

[Cryptoad]

17. Well said! nt

[KG]

2. piss on the 'middle class', they've selfishly been voting GOP for decades.

they're now getting their ROI.

[Le Taz Hot]

14. Wow!

Did someone add a dollup of hatred to the water this morning? This is the second really ugly post I've seen this morning.

In response, as if it wasn't already obvious: Not all of the middle class "voted GOP for decades." Let's try a Level Two thought process here: A shrinking middle class decimates the economy and is a grave danger to Democracy itself.

Honest to goddess, people, could you think before you post?

[MisterP]

16. yeah, they should've voted for the other neolibs!

[SomethingFishy]

24. ROFLMAO...

Go. Fuck. Yourself.

Clueless asshole.

[marmar]

5. k/r

[JaneyVee]

6. RIP The Middle Class 1946 - 1980 *fixed

[Brigid]

11. I don't think that the middle class died in 1980.

It did, however, become terminally ill at that time. It is now on its deathbed.

[Cryptoad]

25. Hell , it is in the Dying Quivers!!!!!!!!

[fasttense]

7. That is exactly how capitalism is suppose to work

Because of the inability to sell products from outside the country inside the US due to high tariffs, buy America nationalism, mildly strong unions and a mild shortage of workers inside the US, capitalism worked for the US. In the 1930s when capitalism crashed, FDR rescued the country and the capitalist economic system. It required concessions from organized wealth. They had 90% plus tax burdens. Employers had strict labor laws and vocal unions so they had to treat their workers half decently or their workers would go somewhere else. Corporations had large tax burdens and were regularly killed off if they didn't follow the law. This created the vast US middle class.

Corporations and organized wealth had to go along because at that point they didn't own the politicians and they couldn't undermine workers by shipping jobs to a communist or 3rd world country. But those 3rd world countries were used and abused. Their raw materials were harvested and practically stolen. Their people got paid pennies for months of labor. The 3rd world was exploited and their wealth was shipped to the US.

Thanks to computers, air travel and lower fuel costs, organized wealth discovered they could exploit the labor of those ravished communist and 3rd world countries while still selling their products inside the US. Slowly corporations funneled off the wealth of the US middle class by charging higher and higher prices while offering nothing in return - NO good paying jobs, and paying no taxes. The destruction of communism in the Soviet Union also emboldened capitalist because organized wealth has come to believe the mass of citizenry has no other option but capitalism.

Capitalism always puts downward pressure on wages. Capitalism always concentrates wealth in a few hands at the expense of everyone else. Starvation wages and abusive working conditions is the standard for capitalism. Unions helped for awhile but once organized wealth was able to buy and sell politicians, the middle class in the US was doomed. The Supreme court and their Citizen United ruling put the nails in the coffin of the middle class. It's just how a capitalist economic system works. The US and a few other industrialized nations are just now getting the downside of capitalism.

The only remaining option for the mass of citizen in the US is to protest and bring down capitalism.

[brush]

9. Spot on, fastense

That about explains it. Capitalism always seeks out the lowest point to pay workers.

It's like water. It will seek the lowest wage point, American workers be damned.

[Cryptoad]

26. Is it happenstance

Is it happenstance that the most robust economy that we have ever incurred (1954 -1962) is the same period that had the highest prolonged Federal marginal tax rated on the Super Rich (above 80%) [note:the effective rate was above 60%].

I think not.

WE have got to get back to taxing the Rich !

[deutsey]

10. Excellent summary n/t

[Brigid]

12. Absolutely fascinating, especially the part about Flint.

Even in "Roger and Me," Michael Moore did not make clear the height from which his hometown has fallen. And soon, this whole country will become on big Flint, MI, and all of us will become like the "rabbit lady."

[WorseBeforeBetter]

21. Yikes. Rabbit Lady.

That was tough to watch, on many different levels! Not to mention Pat Boone and Anita Bryant.

[Le Taz Hot]

15. Hey! It was fun while it lasted, though, wasn't it?

[FarCenter]

19. The 1970s was the time when the auto industry made particularly poor cars.

Huge unreliable gas guzzlers with poor handling and braking.

Or small pieces of crap like the Ford Pinto and the Chevrolet Vega and Chevette.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

20. I grew up in the DC suburbs at the same time...

and remember it, too. Mostly government workers -- cops, firefighters, teachers, federal workers, etc. Even the doctor Dad worked at NIH. Moms worked if they chose to. No one made exorbitant amounts of money, but benefits were killer and there was job security. Our new home with huge yard was UNDER $30,000. Yearly membership to tennis/swimming club. Two American cars in the driveway. NEVER hearing about issues with health care or insurance. Affordable (no student loan) college educations. Annual vacation with lots of weekend getaways. And on and on.

It's funny, the friends whose parents owned gas stations, tire shops, and restaurants were the ones who were considered *loaded.*

Never thought I'd look back so fondly on the '70s, but here I am.

[pa28]

22. Excellent read. I remember this too.

Unfortunately millenials have no memory of the kind of shared prosperity and sense of a social contract people enjoyed at that time.

It seems they don't really realize what's been taken from them.

[SMC22307]

33. Good post. Sadly, many of them support the...

privatization of Social Security. Hope I'm still alive as they're reaching retirement age; either way, I'm pretty sure I'll be feeling schadenfreude.

[eridani]

35. All generations start out favoring cutting Social Security, a feeling that reverses the closer they

--get to retirement. The Millenials, however, start out with a higher percentage favoring Social Security compared to previous generations. Don't have access to saved articles on my laptop away from home, but that was in The New New Left article by Peter Beinart. If they manage the revision of current political reality that Beinart thinks will happen, they'll find that a lot of old fart hippies and New Deal supporters will have their backs.

[SMC22307]

36. Ah, I found it...

The Rise of the New New Left

The only economic issue on which Millennials show much libertarian instinct is the privatization of Social Security, which they disproportionately favor. But this may be less significant than it first appears. Historically, younger voters have long been more pro–Social Security privatization than older ones, with support dropping as they near retirement age. In fact, when asked if the government should spend more money on Social Security, Millennials are significantly more likely than past cohorts of young people to say yes(http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/pdf/progressive_generation.pdf) .

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/12/the-rise-of-the-new-new-left.html

The .PDF provides much more detail.

[eridani]

37. Thanks! n/t

[gopiscrap]

27. No kidding

the country made it's biggest mistake when it voted for that fucking diaper wearing ronald raygun

[AnotherMcIntosh]

28. The rise of the middle-class coincided with the continuous control of Congress from 1954

through 1994.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774721.html

At some time before the 1994 Congressional elections, those opposed to Democratic policies and a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party found a wedge issue.

A perfect wedge issue. It's an emotional issue. One that is not to be resolved with rational discussions. The wedge issue is perfect for the Republicans because it not only turned some Democrats against other Democrats, but it turned some Independents against Democrats as well.

The wedge issue is also a perfect one because it is a continuing one and the emotionally offered solution(s) by some are are impractical and will not be supported by a majority of the voting public because the solution(s) is/are only tangentially related to the problem. The vocal proponents of the solution(s) don't even want a rational discussion but commonly want to display virulent hatred and disrespect towards other Democrats who do not share their someone-attacked-the-twin-towers-so-let's-attack-Iraq type thinking.

The country benefited as a whole when the Democratic Party controlled Congress with Democratic policies. The Republicans do not share the policies and values.

After 40 years of continuous Democratic control, there was a loss of 54 seats in 1994 to the Republicans. A major loss. Bill Clinton attributed the issue in his autobiography as being a major factor.

In his book "My Life," in which he analyzed the loss of Congress to the Republicans in 1994, he wrote:

"Just before the House vote (on the crime bill), Speaker Tom Foley and majority leader Dick Gephardt had made a last-ditch appeal to me to remove the assault weapons ban from the bill. They argued that many Democrats who represented closely divided districts had already...defied the NRA once on the Brady bill vote. They said that if we made them walk the plank again on the assault weapons ban, the overall bill might not pass, and that if it did, many Democrats who voted for it would not survive the election in November. Jack Brooks, the House Judiciary Committee chairman from Texas, told me the same thing...Jack was convinced that if we didn't drop the ban, the NRA would beat a lot of Democrats by terrifying gun owners....Foley, Gephardt, and Brooks were right and I was wrong. The price...would be heavy casualties among its defenders." (Pages 611-612)

"On November 8, we got the living daylights beat out of us, losing eight Senate races and fifty-four House seats, the largest defeat for our party since 1946....The NRA had a great night. They beat both Speaker Tom Foley and Jack Brooks, two of the ablest members of Congress, who had warned me this would happen. Foley was the first Speaker to be defeated in more than a century. Jack Brooks had supported the NRA for years and had led the fight against the assault weapons ban in the House, but as chairman of the Judiciary Committee he had voted for the overall crime bill even after the ban was put into it. The NRA was an unforgiving master: one strike and you're out. The gun lobby claimed to have defeated nineteen of the twenty-four members on its hit list. They did at least that much damage...." (Pages 629-630)

http://www.gunshopfinder.com/legislativenews/clinton8_1_04.html

For those who crusade for a revival of the 1993 issue which was a major factor in the loss of the Democratic Party's loss of the control of Congress in 1994, it may be worthwhile to ask: Why are they doing so? Do they really want Democratic policies?

Why do they never act in a manner consistent with a goal of reducing gun violence and offer practical solutions such as (1) universal mental health care (and not the buy-health-insurance solution under the ACA), (2) economic reform, and (3) increased mandatory minimum prison sentences for those who use firearms in their chosen criminal activities?

[xchrom]

29. Many More Americans Are Killed by Other Americans With Guns Than by Terrorists

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18199-many-more-americans-are-killed-by-other-americans-with-guns-than-by-terrorists

But even though, thanks to the NRA, we don't have access to the exact statistics on deaths by gunshot, there's still a really good chance that you and me could also be killed by a gun - one in 24,974 (and that doesn't even include death by accidental gunshot injuries or gunshot suicides).

There are definitely a lot better odds in favor of us getting killed by our fellow Americans than by terrorists (one in 20 million are the odds of us getting killed by a terrorist). Look what happened at the Navy Yard for instance. Apparently Aaron Alexis was NOT a terrorist, just another fellow-American with guns having a bad day.

Based on even the vague statistics now available, the chances of something like the Navy Yard massacre happening in America again are really really really good. And the chances of something like this happening to you and me are really good too.

it's not a wedge issue any more.

Americans Back Obama's Proposals to Address Gun Violence

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160085/americans-back-obama-proposals-address-gun-violence.aspx

PRINCETON, NJ -- Given the chance to vote "for" or "against" each of nine key proposals included in President Barack Obama's plan to reduce gun violence, Americans back all nine. Americans are most likely to be in favor of requiring background checks for all gun sales (91%), increasing funding for mental health programs aimed at youth (82%), increasing funding for programs to train law enforcement and schools in responding to active armed attacks (79%), and increasing criminal penalties for people who buy guns for others -- so-called straw purchasers (75%).

[AnotherMcIntosh]

32. Would you agree

a goal of reducing gun violence should include offering practical solutions such as

(1) universal mental health care (and not the buy-health-insurance solution under the ACA),
(2) economic reform, and
(3) increased mandatory minimum prison sentences for those who use firearms in their chosen criminal activities?

If you don't, that's ok.

What I do think that you should agree upon is that it is better for average Americans to have more Democrats in Congress than Republicans.

[liberal_at_heart]

30. the biggest issue is not whether democrats or republicans are in control. It is the fact that

corporations are in control of both parties. Until we address that, it won't matter which party is in power.

[Mosaic]

31. It was ruthlesslessly massacred by the republicans

Little by little, year by year by an anarchist ideology and incredible narcissism. May they rot in hell for their carnage.

[SMC22307]

34. And Democrats who embraced Reaganism. (n/t)