You can't tell me there is a middle if 4/5ths of us are almost poor.
If we are all poor or near poor than poor is the new middle.
There is a "working class" and the wealthy, that is it. The middle class is DEAD. And everyone, specifically Democrats, need to stop pretending otherwise.
In High School Econ 101 we were taught that there are poor people and working poor people. Working poor people have jobs but are still poor. If we are to cling to the notion of a mythical middle than we must admit that working poor IS the new middle class, and that means there IS no middle class because you are still fucking poor.
So we can lie to ourselves and pretend that there is a middle class in America, but there isn't. If you are working and still struggling you are not middle class, you are working poor, and by clinging to a dead phrase like "middle" we dismiss and excuse all of those poor people who used to be middle class but got left behind by decades of stagnant wages, rising costs of living and the vast disparity between the growth of the wealth of the super rich compared to everybody else. If you are in debt up to your eyeballs you are not middle class, some one owns you through your debt. If you work and still are constantly broke you are not middle class and you are being kept poor on purpose because how else can they get you to go into debt in the first place?
So STOP trying to explain what the middle class is. It doesn't exist anymore. We live in a three income society, the laughable
McDonald's/Visa budget even admits as much, you need TWO incomes just to be able to afford freezing to death during the winter because you have no money for heat or those sicknesses humans get from time to time, and even if you are married or share housing with someone neither of you can afford to lose work for a month or BAM back into poverty you go, so let's stop pretending there is a middle anymore.
If 80% of us are going to be in poverty or near it in our lifetimes than there is no middle class, there are poor people and rich people.
Whenever we talk about the middle class we are speaking of a thing that no longer exists. Not when 4/5ths of us are scrapping near poverty. Republicans only speak of the poor in disdain but Democrats treat the word "Poor' as if it were some four lettered swear not to be uttered in public, but the reality is simple, there is no middle class, it died a decade ago and was buried when Wall Street crashed the economy 4 years ago.
When we talk about raising the minimum wage we must remember that people who oppose raising the minimum wage are AGAINST trickle down, they are admitting it doesn't work because they will not allow it to do so. I say $10 an hour is NOT enough, how about double the current minimum wage for all workers including workers who earn tips and peg the growth of the minimum wage to the growth rate of Fortune 500 total executive compensation.
By pretending that poverty does not exist and lumping everyone in a mythical middle we are deluding ourselves from the real crisis facing America, because a nation where 80% of the people are at or near poverty is a nation that is one bad month away from total disaster.
And here are Republicans fighting to help starve Americans by denying them food assistance to supplement their suppressed wages. Let me ask those conservatives this, what happens when you drive people into poverty with low wages and starve them by rescinding food assistance? What alternative do you give those people? Tax cuts? More guns? But what about those Democrats who are afraid to seem too friendly to the poor by defending the working class instead of this mythical specter of the Ghost of Middle Class past?
Income inequality is not a problem, it is THE problem. We are all going broke and falling into poverty BECAUSE the wealthiest among us have decided that starving us and suppressing our wages is better for their profit line. At the beginning of the collapse Senator John McCain said "The fundamentals of our economy are strong."
If 4/5ths of us are going to be poor in our lifetime I would suggest that the fundamentals of our economy are fucked up and bullshit.
And someone should, you know, do something about that.
If 80% of us are poor than the middle is poor.
Taxes are not the problem. Government spending too much is NOT the problem. Are wages are too fucking low. That is the problem. Ignoring it won't make it go away. Part of the reason Bill DiBlasio won in NYC was due to the fact that he is telling the truth, the rich are richer than ever at a time when being poor is becoming the new middle BECAUSE the rich have invented a plutonomy for themselves at the expense of the rest of us. The sooner we deal with that the better, but first we must admit there is a problem. Coddling the rich is strangling the rest of us. Pretending otherwise is bullshit.
95% of the wealth is going to the wealthiest 1%. That isn't an economy, it's a casino with rigged slot machines. When the rich get 96% where will that other 1% of profit come from? When will the rich be happy? When it is 99%? 100%? Two years ago pundits bemoaned the fact that Occupy Wall Street had no official demands. I would like to ask the same of Wall Street and the super rich. What are your demands? How much profit does Wall Street need before they start paying decent wages again? How much profit does Wall Street need before we can raise the minimum wage?
And how bad does it have to get before the pitchforks and torches come out?
I say we are already there.
Rant off
ORIGINALLY POSTED TO MINISTRYOFTRUTH ON MON SEP 16, 2013 AT 10:04 AM PDT.
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