Tag: Working Class

Financial Insecurity

If one actually shops then they will have noticed that everything is going up from eggs to autos…..and most Americans see their paycheck worth less and less with each passing check…..

The Century Foundation commissioned a survey last month with polling firm Morning Consult and found that roughly 6 in 10 Americans say that Trump’s policies are to blame for their current financial struggles. However, the report also emphasized that Americans’ “financial insecurity is widespread and runs deep,” and that their concerns stretch back well before Trump’s second term.

“More than 4 in 5 Americans (83%) are concerned about the price of groceries, with nearly half (46%) saying they are very concerned,” writes the Century Foundation. “Nearly half (47%) of Americans are worried about their current ability to pay their rent or mortgage. And nearly two-thirds (64%) worry about their ability to pay an unexpected medical expense if one should arise. Nearly half of all Americans (48%) believe they would have difficulty paying an unexpected $500 bill without borrowing.”

These anxieties were particularly strong among younger Generation Z voters, as well as among Black and Latino voters across all age demographics.

Even more troubling, the survey found that Americans are increasingly using financially risky strategies to keep up with paying their bills.

“More than a third of Americans are turning to high-cost debt to cover their bills,” writes the Century Foundation. “Significant shares have also had to turn to credit cards (37%) or take on debt (29%) to afford the bills. This is consistent with the larger trends in use of credit products, like the notable shift in use of ‘buy now, pay later’ products for groceries. The rates of families using credit card debt to cover expenses is all the more concerning as credit card delinquencies continue to rise.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-economy-poll

+++This next report should send those creepy GOPers into a panic attack for after decades of attempting to make actual financial security through politics as something evil the feelings are changing+++

If there is one thing that Republicans and Democratic consultants can agree on, it is that the working class of America loves racism and sexism and hates socialism. Alas, not only does this ignore the rather glaring fact that people of color make up 45 percent of the working class (many of whom even live right here in the Midwest) and that women make up 47 percent, but it turns out that large swaths of this group are quite fond of the kind of left-wing economic policies we have long been told would “scare them off.”

In fact, a recent study from Center for Working‑Class Politics and Jacobin has found that they are even more fond of some of them than non-working class people who consider themselves to be “egalitarians.”

ia Jacobin:

To answer these questions, we analyzed 128 public-opinion questions from three of the most trusted and comprehensive surveys in US political science: the American National Election Studies (ANES), the General Social Survey (GSS), and the Cooperative Election Study (CES). Our data spans from 1960 to 2022, allowing us to track long-term shifts in working-class attitudes across six issue domains: immigration, civil rights, social norms, environmental policy, and two categories of economic policy — predistribution (like wages and job protections) and redistribution (like taxes and social programs).

The results found that there is majority support among the working class for import limits to protect jobs, new limits on imports, increasing the federal minimum wage, belief that the government should do more, labor unions, a jobs guarantee, lower drug prices, increasing state transportation spending, and workers on boards of directors.

As far as redistributive policies go, majorities support increasing spending on Social Security, the poor, health care, social services and public education, as well as expanding Medicare, higher taxes for the rich, a millionaire tax, and paid parental leave.

https://www.wonkette.com/p/shocking-working-class-actually-quite

There is only so much screwing the working class can take before their suppressed attitudes come to the forefront.

We will see if this translates into policy and changes in the next couple of elections.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Democrats Are In Trouble

Dems are facing a quandary….low voter confidence and now the new spending bill….

The government will shut down at midnight Friday unless Congress passes a spending measure before then, and the deadline is putting Senate Democrats in a bind: They don’t want to vote for the GOP-authored resolution before them, but they fear the alternative of triggering a shutdown is worse. Coverage:

  • Punchbowl News reports that the most likely scenario, for now, is that Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer will settle for a face-saving measure to avert a shutdown. He’ll demand votes on amendments, including a separate vote on the Democrats’ own continuing resolution. “It’s theater,” the outlet notes, given that the Democratic plan has no chance of passing. But it would allow Schumer to say Democrats were trying to fight back.
  • The Hill similarly reports that Senate Democrats were saying privately they will not allow a shutdown to happen, meaning they would ultimately have to vote in favor of the six-month Republican plan—despite pressure from the party’s progressive wing. As Axios puts it, “Schumer is balancing his deep distaste for a shutdown against pressure from the grassroots to do more to stand up to Trump.”
  • One fear among Democrats is that a shutdown would leave federal employees even more vulnerable to Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, per CNN. “If it shuts down, what is Elon Musk going to allow to open back up?” asked Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. “That’s a big concern of mine. How many more veterans is Elon, and this administration, going to fire? So, there’s not a good option here.” Independent Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, called it a “choice between two terrible alternatives.”
  • Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is already on board publicly with voting for the GOP plan, reports the Washington Post. A shutdown would “absolutely punish millions, millions of Americans,” Fetterman said this week. Senate Majority Leader John Thune says the GOP measure, which already has passed the House, is the only route to keeping the government open. “The question of whether or not it stays funded now is up to the Democrats,” said the Republican leader.

This is a problem….do they show backbone and fight the new spending bill which they will be accused of causing a government shutdown or do they support and betray a lot of what they say the are for?

The Dems are in trouble.

For decades now the Dems have been losing support among the working class….the slide started, in my opinion, with Bubba Clinton and his embrace of big business and then it became more about the cash than the policies that would benefit the American people.

And now the studies show that it is getting to its lowest levels of support….for me I lost all confidence, what little I had back then, with the 1980 election….

Voters still have a sour view of Democrats six weeks after President Donald Trump and Republicans swept into Washington with control of all branches of the federal government, according to a new poll.

A plurality of voters — 40 percent — said the Democratic Party doesn’t have any strategy whatsoever for responding to Trump, according to the survey by the liberal firm Blueprint that was shared first with POLITICO. Another 24 percent said Democrats have a game plan, but it’s a bad one.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/06/poll-democrats-trump-disarray-00215291

The most recent study shows a serious lack of support…..

Out of power in Washington, Democrats are looking for ways to win voters back. A new poll suggests they have their work cut out for them. The Quinnipiac University survey found that 31% of registered voters have a favorable opinion of their party, while 43% have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party. That amounts to the largest advantage in favorability the GOP has enjoyed since 2008, Axios reports. A CNN poll released last week had similar results.

The flip side in Quinnipiac’s poll was no more encouraging for Democrats, with 57% of registered voters reporting an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party and 45% feeling the same way about the GOP. The findings, for which the pollsters report a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, alone aren’t evidence that Democrats need despair, Aaron Blake writes in a Washington Post analysis. The same polls showed Republicans were less popular in the first year of President Trump’s first term than Democrats are now, he points out. A Quinnipiac poll had Republicans with a 67% unfavorable rating in August 2017.

In addition, another poll released this week found that some of Trump’s early actions aren’t popular, per Reuters. Most respondents of both parties oppose his moves to end the practice of granting citizenship to children born in the US regardless of the parents’ immigration status, for instance. Overall, the share of respondents who disapproved of Trump’s performance rose from 39% to 46% since the first two days of his second term. The Reuters/Ipsos poll reported a margin of error of about 4 percentage points. “While it does seem Trump is getting a honeymoon to some extent, his numbers are still not impressive by historical standards,” said Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

I will admit that the Progressive Caucus does have a bit of concern for the working person and they are showing their disdain for the more conservative colleagues……

The head of a leading U.S. progressive group on Thursday accused the Democratic National Committee—which will choose new leadership this weekend—of trying to silence rank-and-file activists and voters, showing that the Democratic Party’s governing body is failing to connect with the working-class Americans who helped deliver the White House and Congress to Republicans.

“This moment demands a Democratic Party that provides more than just reactive opposition to an administration bent on rigging our economic and political systems in favor of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals on Earth,” Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution, an offshoot of Sen. Bernie Sanders‘ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign, said in a statement ahead of Thursday evening’s final DNC candidate forum. “It demands leaders who put the party’s grassroots base ahead of the donor class and articulate a real vision that rejects [Republican President] Donald Trump’s corporate rule—starting with renouncing corporate money themselves.”

“Unfortunately,” Geevarghese lamented, “Democratic leadership is failing disastrously to meet this urgent mandate. Ahead of tonight’s forum, the DNC is actively working to silence rank-and-file Democratic activists and base voters calling for a ban on dark money in primaries and the rejection of corporate funding. In a last-minute move, they shut the event off from the public and even deliberately shared the wrong address for where grassroots supporters are allowed to gather.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/progressives-dnc

For me I would like to see the Dems grow a spine and get down to doing what needs to be done….but their actions in the first days of the new admin does not bode well for the country….they are too mamby pamby….

https://www.commondreams.org/news/democrats-prepared-to-oppose-trump-s-unqualified-cabinet-picks

I have bee a Progressive since the beginning of my political life but in those days we were insulted by morons that have the IQ of a garden slug. 

For me there are two major policies that the Dems should push and push hard….at least for now….

Implementing Universal Health Coverage (UHC). That is, a publicly administered system that guarantees that all people have access to the full range of quality health services when and where they need them. Financing of UHC could come entirely from broad-based tax revenues. Coverage would be universal and automatic. Covered services would include inpatient, outpatient, dental, mental health, and long-term health, as well as prescription drugs. All three levels of the U.S. government (federal, state, and local) would be involved in the health care system.

Cutting military spending. The United States spent $820 billion on national
defense during the fiscal year 2023. It spends nearly 8.4 times as much on its
military as Russia does and more than three times the amount of China. While the U.S. comprises just over 4 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for nearly 40 percent of global military spending. Between 2001 and 2022, the U.S. spent $8 trillion on war. The notion that such enormous defense spending is important for national security questions is utterly absurd. The U.S. homeland has never been invaded and no nation threatens U.S. national security. The obscene amount of money that the U.S. spends on defense, which different methodologies estimated to be above $1.5 trillion for the fiscal year 2022. Money saved from cuts in
the defense budget can go towards supporting social programs and/or for
reducing the national debt. Arguing for reforms in Social Security and Medicare when the country spends so much money on the military is morally indefensible and will become politically unacceptable if people realize how wasteful and harmful military sending is.There are other policies that need attention but these two, for now, would illustrate the the Dems are truly fighting for the working class.

The Dems are truly in trouble because very few people think the party will make a difference without some change in tactics.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

GOP And The Workers

It always amazes me just how strong Repubs can be with the workers….and yet the GOP goes out of its way to screw the worker as often as possible.

Since about 1960 the GOP has been on a vendetta against the working class….and it just keeps getting worse.

It is 2024 and yet the workers have to put up with policies from the 1920s…..

But not to worry the GOP has plans for the working class….

Recently, you may have noticed that the hot weather is getting ever hotter. Every year the United States swelters under warmer temperatures and longer periods of sustained heat. In fact, each of the last nine months — May 2023 through February 2024 — set a world record for heat. As I’m writing this, March still has a couple of days to go, but likely as not, it, too, will set a record.

Such heat poses increasing health hazards for many groups: the old, the very young, those of us who don’t have access to air conditioning. One group, however, is at particular risk: people whose jobs require lengthy exposure to heat. Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that about 40 workers died of heat exposure between 2011 and 2021, although, as CNN reports, that’s probably a significant undercount. In February 2024, responding to this growing threat, a coalition of 10 state attorneys general petitioned the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to implement “a nationwide extreme heat emergency standard” to protect workers from the kinds of dangers that last year killed, among others, construction workers, farm workers, factory workers, and at least one employee who was laboring in an unairconditioned area of a warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee.

Facing the threat of overweening government interference from OSHA or state regulators, two brave Republican-run state governments have stepped in to protect employers from just such dangerous oversight. Florida and Texas have both passed laws prohibiting localities from mandating protections like rest breaks for, or even having to provide drinking water to, workers in extreme heat situations. Seriously, Florida and Texas have made it illegal for local cities to protect their workers from the direct effects of climate change. Apparently, being “woke” includes an absurd desire not to see workers die of heat exhaustion.

And those state laws are very much in keeping with the plans that the national right-wing has for workers, should the wholly-owned Trump subsidiary that is today’s Republican Party take control of the federal government this November.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/11/republicans-have-plans-for-working-people/

This is only a couple of states but I look for it to appear in most Red States in the next 4 years or so.

If you work hard for a living why on earth would you vote for this band of thugs?

Just wondering.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That ‘White Privilege/Supremacy’ Thing

The debate over CRT has brought the whole idea of ‘white supremacy’ to the forefront of the national dialog….some of the findings may surprise my reader…..

America’s battle over “critical race theory” reminds us of an ugly truth about the enduring white supremacy that’s long defined this country. In a potent racist backlash moment against the rising Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, many states have moved in Orwellian “Big Brother” style to entirely ban discussions of structural and institutional racism from K through 12 and college classrooms. And much of the public is on board with this agenda, as July polling from Ipsos reveals that 36 percent of Americans support “a ban on CRT in public schools.” This includes 23 percent of Democrats, 34 percent of independents, and 54 percent of Republicans. The opposition is based on toxic ignorance. In the case of the one group in which a majority supports the CRT ban – Republicans – only an average of 30% of respondents can provide correct answers across 7 factual questions that Ipsos asked about CRT. This is hardly surprising – when has bigotry ever been about being factually informed about the people you dehumanize

America’s culture of white supremacy is longstanding, and not confined to the Republican-right. Recent polling reveals that large numbers of Americans can be classified as white nationalists, including members of both parties. An October 2019 Associated Press poll found that 22 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of Republicans agreed that “a culture established by the country’s early European immigrants” is “important” “to the United States identity as a nation.” Such sentiment draws on classic white nationalist sentiments that identify white “European immigrants” as central to the national “culture” and “identity” and what it means to be American.

Similar to AP’s 2019 poll, a University of Virginia poll from 2018 revealed that 35 percent of Americans, including 26 percent of Democrats, 29 percent of independents, and 51 percent of Republicans, agreed that “America must protect and preserve its White European heritage.” The poll revealed much about American denialism, as only 8 percent of respondents were willing to admit in the survey that they support “white nationalism,” despite the alternatively worded question above serving as a functional equivalent for white nationalism, and demonstrating that 35 percent of respondents agreed that “America” as a nation should define “its” identity via “White European heritage.” Put another way, the discrepancy here suggests that while only 8 percent of Americans admit they are white nationalists, another 27 percent “fit the bill,” but are unwilling to openly identify as so for fear of the stigma that comes along with it.

Rise of the Right: White Supremacy and the Myth of the “White Working-Class”

Republican politics has jumped on the victim hood of white people since Trump made it fashionable…..

Republican politics have become so animated by white victimhood in the Trump era that any honest accounting of racial injustice in U.S. history is almost certain to draw conservative ire. Indeed, I found that the share of Republicans who think there’s too much Black history taught in schools increased by 30 percentage points from 2000 to 2018. But when you combine the rise of white identity politics in the GOP with its mischaracterization of critical race theory as tantamount to anti-white indoctrination, it’s even easier to see how a relatively obscure framework emerged as a leading issue in Republican Party politics. Moreover, the war on critical race theory suggests that the white grievance politics Trump helped activate isn’t going anywhere; rather, it’s a key part of the GOP strategy moving forward.

How The Rise Of White Identity Politics Explains The Fight Over Critical Race Theory

Like the article stated it is not just the GOP that is concerned over the loss of any power by whites…..but it seems to be more rabid within those that identify themselves as Repubs….even to the point of armed resistance…..

Nearly half of Republican voters believe there will come a time when the so-called “American patriots” will “have take the law into their own hands,” the findings of a new survey reveal.

The survey highlighted the following:

“Support for fundamental principles such as free and fair elections, free speech, and peaceful protest are nearly unanimous among both Democrats and Republicans. Their views on other democratic values, however, differ dramatically. Over half of Republicans (55%) supported the possible use of force to preserve the “traditional American way of life,” compared to 15% of Democrats. When asked if a time will come when “patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands,” 47% of Republicans agreed, as opposed to just 9% of Democrats.”

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/gop-patriotism-survey/

That survey tells me that the GOP members are running scared for some reason….most of which is made up to energize an ignorant base.

This is disturbing….and I fear for this country as it has been in the past….the future without change of thought is heading for a fall…..and that fall has come from internal strife….we can blame NO ONE but ourselves.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Let The Peasants Starve!

Peasants?

Why peasants?

A member of the class constituted by small farmers and tenants, sharecroppers, and laborers on the land where they form the main labor force in agriculture.

These days it is referring to most of the working class according to Conservative thinking….

This became a way of thinking with 1980 and the election of Reagan and his liberal use of the term “welfare queen’….a stereotyping of anyone that gets assistance from the government…..a hated sector of American society…..

Now it is all those “lay abouts on unemployment”……and the Trump GOP has come up with a new assault on anyone that is poor or unemployed…..

GOP states have moved to end all support for those unemployed by the pandemic…..

Millions of jobless workers in Republican-led states across the U.S. are growing increasingly worried that they soon won’t be able to afford rent, medicine, and other basic necessities as GOP governors rush to cut off pandemic-related unemployment benefits, a widely condemned attack on struggling people that the Biden administration insists it is powerless to stop.

As of this writing, 22 Republican governors have moved to withdraw from a federal program that boosted regular unemployment checks by $300 per week to help jobless people weather the ongoing economic crisis.

Of those Republican-led states, 19 are also ending their participation in Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)—federal initiatives that provide an extension for people who have exhausted their state-level benefits and offer aid to gig workers and others who are typically ineligible.

To justify stripping a crucial lifeline from the jobless, the Republican leaders of Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, South Dakota, and other states have falsely claimed that the federal unemployment programs are so generous they are dissuading people from rejoining the workforce—a narrative that ignores a slew of other relevant factors, from the low wages on offer to lack of child care to health concerns.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/21/attempting-starve-people-back-work-anger-grows-gop-governors-cut-jobless-benefits

Then the corporations whine about the lack of interest in their slave wages….

Everyone knows American corporations from McDonalds to Walmart pay starvation wages. So now so-called leaders like Montana governor Greg “Punch a Journalist” Gianforte won’t distribute federal benefits, because people live better on those than on wages. Well, raise the wretched wages. They’re pitifully low. Or, as senator Bernie Sanders’ staff director Warren Gunnels put it: “Raise your wages and benefits or flip your own damn burgers and sweep your own damn floors.”

Just think, we live in a country where $300 per week is beyond the average American worker’s wildest dreams. What were they earning before? $200? $100? With pay like that, the U.S. really is what used to be called a Third World nation, and it’s organizations like the Chamber of Commerce that want to keep it that way. Back in early May, the Chamber, you may recall, blamed April’s lackluster employment expansion on the $300 weekly jobless benefit, “and began urging lawmakers to eliminate the federally enhanced unemployment payments,” as Truthout reported.

Companies Paying Starvation Wages Whine That Workers Aren’t Interested

Seriously?

The GOP and their masters thinking here reminds me of something from history attributed to Marie-Antoinette  “let them eat cake”!

Here is a goddamn idea…..why not up the minimum wage to $15 an hour and all those people would rush to fill vacancies in employment…..

It is not rocket science!

Well maybe it is….after all we are talking about Republicans here…..and most people know they are not the sharpest pencils in the box….just the most hateful.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Where’s That Middle Class?

I would post on that diabolical “caravan” but it seems to have vanished off the news…..go figure……

Now that the Midterms are over and we have a new Democratic House…..there is one question I want to ask them……”whatcha ya gonna do” for the Middle Class?

How many times have you heard a reference to the “Middle Class” by your politicians?

The Middle Class use to be the poster child for capitalism and for the US.  The Middle Class expands and the economic society is healthy and progressing….

Sad to say that the Middle Class nowadays is nothing but a slogan in the same vane as “patriotism, veterans, etc”….a campaign slogan that few believe any longer…..

Like or not the “bourgeois is getting recast as the proletariat”…..interesting concept right?

The American Conservative has a view on the Middle Class that every American should read……

Everyone loves the middle class. Everyone claims to be middle-class—some to put a gloss on their sketchy escutcheons, others to dodge chastisement for their awkward riches. But in fact both the socioeconomic reality and the concept of the middle class have been turned on their heads and, at the same time, trivialized into a mere lifestyle choice.

Economically, the middle classes were once proprietors, self-employed owners of property and their own labor. Morally, they were the equivalent of “solid citizens”: decent, hard-working, law-abiding, temperate, proper, staid, virtuous, and—well, moral. The qualifications for being middle class have gotten a whole lot looser, to say the least.

The European term “middle classes” originally served to describe merchants, tradesmen, investors, and skilled craftsmen. The habitat of these classes was the walled city—the burg, bourg, or borough—hence their appellation, les bourgeois. The bourgeoisie occupied a middle ground between the nobility and the lower classes of peasants and servants.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-middle-class/

Wages flat….not what Trump wants the “Middle Class” to believe…..we are now divided into two distinct classes…..wealthy and worker…..as long as the corruption continues the chances of a reset are looking better and better…..

Things are changing……

“Out of the frying pan, into the fire” is an apt description of our current place in history. No matter what you think of globalization, I believe we’ll soon discover that capitalism without it is much, much worse.

No one needs to convince establishment economists, politicians and pundits that the absence of globalization and growth spells trouble. They’ve pushed globalization as the Viagra of economic growth for years. But globalization has never been popular with everyone. Capitalism’s critics recognize that it generates tremendous wealth and power for a tiny fraction of the Earth’s seven billion people, makes room for some in the middle class, but keeps most of humanity destitute and desperate, while trashing the planet and jeopardizing human survival for generations to come.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/01/catabolism-capitalisms-frightening-future/

The Middle Class is disappearing……what will the new “House” do to change that?

Will Democrats Learn Anything About The Working Class?

This is the question that begs an answer.

Remember back to 2012 and the GOP was handed its ass by the Obama team and they set about having a party autopsy to see what went wrong….they identified all the areas that needed work and then ignored them all and kept doing the same silly shit they always do….and (poof) the Trump candidacy was born.

Fast forward to the 2016 election…the Dems had the perfect candidate, at least in their twisted little minds, and (poof) they had their asses handed to them…not even close to a good showing.

After their dismal showing in the election they set about trying to formulate a plan to win back the working class…but like the GOP it will be business as usual….money is in control and money will stay in control…..

This is a publicized look at what the Dems will probably not achieve…..

Appalachia and the industrial Midwest, like many places in the US, have their history of racism and sexism. But Donald Trump’s victory is not due solely to race and misogyny and, if the Democrats want to rebound, they must be careful not to draw the wrong conclusions.

Journalist Sarah Jones tells Jeff Schechtman that she is afraid that Democrats and others may be learning the wrong lessons. While people like J.D. Vance argue that the answer is to promote conservative culture and respond to the “crisis of masculinity” and Horatio Alger mythology, the problem is that taking the cultural perspective may be playing directly into the liberal elitist view of a region of “deplorables.”

Source: Will Democrats Learn All the Wrong Lessons about the Working Class? – WhoWhatWhy

I agree with the author…the Dems have lost their way and money is the only direction they will follow….just like the GOP.

What’s Killing the American Middle Class?

For decades I have been watching the middle class slowly disappear…..for me it was most pronounced with the election of Bill Clinton and the leadership of the DLC……I admit it has been in decline before he was elected but with that election the downward spiral became more pronounced…..NAFTA was a horrible idea for the working class of the US and yet we are doing similar agreements almost every administration……

So the question should be…..What is killing the American middle class?

Richard Eskow: Americans work more hours than citizens of any Western European country, a burden that keeps them away from their families, friends, and personal activities.

A new study by the Pew Research Center spurred a rash of headlines last week about “the dying middle class.” But the word “dying” might be more appropriate if we were watching the regrettable but inevitable effects of natural forces at work. We’re not. We’re seeing the fruits of deliberate action – and sometimes of deliberate inaction – at the highest levels of power.

The great American middle was never large enough, even at its height. It always excluded too many people – sometimes, shamefully, merely for their skin color. And now, instead of growing and becoming more inclusive, it’s fading away instead.

It’s true that the middle class is dying, but not from natural causes. It’s being killed. What – and, for that matter, who – is responsible for its slow death?

Source: What’s Killing the American Middle Class? – LA Progressive

Sadly I do not see the situation improving much no matter who is elected….but as usual we Americans will soldier on and make others rich…..it is the American way.