Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Middle Class Is Obsolete


For the last century or so, it was widely acknowledged that the working Middle Class of America was what made this country great.

It was the Middle Class that worked in the factories making American products and it was those same Middle Class Americans that used the wages they earned in those factories to buy American products.

It was the acknowledgement of this Great Truth that coerced the business owners to enter into collective bargaining agreements with those workers because they knew how valuable those workers were to their bottom line. Without the hard working / hard spending American Middle Class, there was no American business. Period.

It seemed to be a reasonable bargain at the time. Business owners realized that a healthy work force was a productive work force so it was in the share holders best interest to provide health care for their employees so they could keep coming to work.

They also realized that all work and no play can lead to fatigue, carelessness and apathy so allowing their employees some annual paid time off seemed like a fair deal for everybody.

Well guess what? The American Middle Class has become obsolete. The fact of the matter is, the 1 Percent of the wealthiest Americans who control most of the American economy have done the calculations and concluded that they don't need you anymore.

They don't need American workers and they don't need American consumers. They can get all of the workforce and consumers they need in India and China.

So not only do the Economic Elitists no longer need a strong, American Middle Class, you have actually become a drain on their profits. What with your constant whining about rising jobless rates, expiring unemployment insurance, skyrocketing health care costs, Social Security solvency, Medicare, Medicaid, roads, sewers, blah, blah blah. Don't you people ever shut up?

Don't you see? This is why every Republican solution for fixing what ails this country revolves around keeping and expanding trillions of dollars in tax breaks for the billionaires while pulling every tax payer funded safety net out from under the poorest Americans and killing off the whole concept of collective bargaining. These poorest Americans used to be part of the Middle Class. It was their hard work that allowed these billionaires to amass such wealth.

But they don't give a flying fuck about you anymore. The sooner you go away and leave them alone, the happier they'll be. That is why they want to take away your health care, your unemployment insurance and your Social Security. If they leave you all with nothing, maybe you will all turn on each other and kill yourselves off in a fight for survival. Let the vermin exterminate themselves.

Not that the rich will notice. Behind their gated communities and private security. They don't even need tax payed funded police. That's why they don't give a fuck how many cops are on the street. The fewer cops there are, the sooner the mass extinction of the poor can commence.

The Middle Class is gone. All that's left is the extremely wealthy and the ragged remnants of the people who made them so very, very rich.

7 comments:

Radioman KC said...

Nice work, guy! That was a good read. Thnx

I Travel for JOOLS said...

Total bullshit. I don't have time to respond right now, but I will. Let me just say this for now. The public unions are the largest union sector. Just tell me why a person working for the government with a MD or VMD (veterinarian) behind their name needs a public union to represent them? When you can answer that, we might have something to talk about.

FletcherDodge said...

Uhm. Okay.

Xavier, you know we've had this discussion before. It's important that you take your medication regularly, at the same time each day. These paranoid delusions only seem reasonable to you because of the chemical imbalances in your brain.

So please, for your own sake don't skip your medication.

I Travel for JOOLS said...

I cannot believe I just spent 30 minutes answering and "my comment couldn't be completed" and it was gone. Sorry, no time or energy to do it again.

Hyperblogal said...

Dead on. The corporate oligarchy has no room or patience for a middle class.

Tacitus said...

I agree with most of what you've said (except the kill yourselves off part).

I would also note however, that much of the favorable economics our country saw between 1950 and 1975 was in part because of pent-up demand in asia and europe and here at home. Remember, they were still picking themselves up from having burned down each other's cities in WWII. Their factories were destroyed or dilapidated, while ours were new and untouched by bombs. As such, we were able to sell goods and services to them as the world's factory for a generation. All the while, here at home, consumer demand (for similar reasons) ramped up along with average wages.

Does the decline of labor play a role? Absolutely, yes. But there are other factors in play as well.

For the future? I'm not sure... Outside of high technology, I don't have a great deal of optimism. The US is competing with emerging countries that educate their children far better than we do, do not have huge legacy military budgets, have younger populations, and see value in surgically directing certain types of "national investments".

Nick said...

Totally off subject, but this is soooooooo you.

; ' )