The Slow Death of the Middle Class - Thom Hartmann

[MB_722]

In his new book, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class, Air America host Thom Hartmann provides an exhaustive argument that America's backbone and lifeblood -- its middle class -- is vanishing. (Or being cast out, set aside, and methodically destroyed, depending on your perspective.)

Hartmann blends current affairs with a vital crash course in history to demonstrate the ways in which -- under 25 years of right-wing wonkery -- working people, once treasured as the foundation of our economy, are now neglected to the point of extinction. Through concrete examples of laws passed, unions busted and programs dismantled, Hartmann reminds us how, since Reagan's 1980 ascension to the throne, conservative policiticans have done little except "conserve" their own wealth- and power-grubbing interests.

But it wasn't always like this, as Hartmann makes sure we remember. With the creation of post-Depression initiatives which benefited everyone, such as Social Security, antitrust laws and the minimum wage, America's most forward-thinking politicians helped revitalize the economy and make the country a more unified whole.

Why can't it be like that again? In an AlterNet telephone interview, Hartmann explains that it can -- but that it will only happen when more Americans get out and elect the few politicians who actually give a damn about the rest of us.

Laura Barcella: What are the three biggest hurdles currently affecting the middle class?

Thom Hartmann: Free market ideology; a variety of practices to drive down the cost of labor -- from destruction of the union movement to encouragement of immigration, both legal and illegal; and the promotion of the idea that democratic institutions are an aberration, that vast wealth is the natural order of things in the human and animal kingdoms.

LB: In Screwed, you write about the "Golden Age" of the middle class. Can you remind us of what a healthy middle class looks like?

TH: Teddy Roosevelt was the first in the modern era to identify what it would mean to [have a] middle class in a society that wasn't propped up by slavery and land taken from the Native Americans (which was largely responsible for the first middle class, in the 1700s).

The Republican Roosevelt realized that without government intervention clearly defining the rules of [business] to serve society as well as capitalism, there couldn't be a middle class.

[Roosevelt] suggested that the hallmarks of a "living wage" (he was the first person to use that phrase), were that with an honest week's work, a single family's wage-earner would be able to support their family, raise their children, provide education for those children -- including college, care for all their health needs -- even in times of sickness (quoting Roosevelt), take an annual vacation, and set enough aside that retirement and old age would be comfortable and secure.

Franklin Roosevelt set about putting that vision into place 30 years later with the Wagner Act in 1935, which established the right to unionization, and the Social Security Act providing a safety net for old age (and for people incapable of working due to 'circumstances of birth'). ... All of this led to the strongest middle class this nation has ever seen, in the '50s, '60s, '70s and the beginning of the '80s.

LB: And then what happened?

TH: Then in the 1960s and '70s, a group of worried ideologues saw the social upheavals of that era -- women demanding equal pay and reproductive rights, African-Americans demanding voting rights, working people demanding [fair wages], activists demanding a clean environment -- and the ideologues thought what they were seeing were symptoms of society melting down.

It confirmed their fear, which echoed a fear of the early founders (John Adams and Alexander Hamilton), that too much democracy would lead to social anarchy. A ruling elite operating under the guise of democracy was the most stable form of government, and if we had a strong middle class like we had in the '60s and '70s, people had too much time on their hands and too little fear. ...

These folks (who comprised Ayn Rand's objectivists, libertarianists, and old-line segregationist conservatives who agreed with Edmund Burke that in order to be stable, society must have "classes and orders") set out to restore a more hierarchical, more "stable" America. They didn't believe in democracy; they thought they were doing the right thing. ...

Special interest groups, like the NRA, joined forces to roll back the healthy middle class and the dissent associated with it, and replaced it with a Dickensian reproduction of Victorian-era society, where there's a small powerful ruling class, a small mercantilist middle class, and a large class of working poor who are sufficiently afraid of losing what little they have that they aren't going to engage in social or workplace protest.

LB: So when, in your opinion, did the middle class officially begin to start falling apart?

TH: Nixon's Southern Strategy brought the racists into the fold in 1972, and George Bush's courting of the Christian right brought the fundamentalists into the fold.

But Ronald Reagan officially launched the [war on working people]. He kicked it off with busting PATCO. We are now 26 years into that war, and papers no longer have labor sections -- they only have business sections, and most workers no longer have pensions.

We've gone from 25 percent of the work force being unionized -- when Reagan came into office -- to about eight percent of the private work force being unionized. The small sliver that's still unionized is under aggressive attack, and they represent the last bastion of the classic middle class.

The conservatives can't allow them to survive; [unions] bring democracy into the workplace, so they represent a threat to conservative wealth and power. ... The only thing that will allow unionization to happen is force of law; to elect public officials who are willing to enforce the Wagner Act and repeal the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. This requires [politicians] who represent the will and needs of the middle class, instead of the wealthy, powerful gentry.

LB: Who are a few of the politicians you feel are up to this task?

TH: Bernie Sanders. Byron Dorgan. Peter DeFazio. There's not a shortage of good people in politics; they are just not a majority.These aren't radical positions, they are ones that Eisenhower held. And there are good, honest Republicans like Kevin Phillips and Paul Craig Roberts out there, pointing out [the ways the GOP has been corrupted], but their voices are a distinct minority.

LB: Talk a little about George W. Bush, and how his politics and presidency have affected the plight of the middle class.

TH: G.W. Bush is the most toxic president we've had against working people in the U.S. since [William] McKinley. Bush absolutely believes in a ruling elite -- into which he was born, by the way -- and serfdom. It wasn't a slip at that Town Hall meeting a few months ago, when he asked a woman what she did and she said she worked three jobs, and he patted her on the head and said, "Isn't that great? That's an all-American story."

Her working three jobs means she won't be out in the street demanding economic, reproductive or social rights -- which is exactly the way he would like it.

LB: And what about the war's effect on working people?

TH: The war in Iraq's impact on the middle class has been extremely corrosive. I wouldn't [even] call it a "war;" I'd call it a successful invasion that took only a few months, and the subsequent occupation. All illegal, by the way.

The occupation of Iraq has been financed by borrowing money in our names -- and in the names of our children and grandchildren -- from China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and a few very wealthy families, like the Bushes. Those creditors will be beneficiaries of the war, and the middle class will pay the bill eventually, just like the economic difficulties Jimmy Carter suffered after the bill was due for Vietnam. The next generation will have to confront some very difficult times as a result of Bush's $9 trillion debt.

This year, over $300 billion of the federal budget is interest on a debt that Reagan ran up in order to make the economy look good, on borrowed money, to get himself reelected. That's enough money to provide full scholarships to public universities for over 15 million students.

LB: Talk a bit about the impact of the minimum wage.

TH: The minimum wage can be thought of in two ways. One, it provides a floor for workers, and should be set at a level matching Teddy Roosevelt's' criteria which we discussed earlier. We are a wealthy-enough country that if you play by the rules and work hard, you should be able to have a decent life.

The other thing the minimum wage does is provides a warning flag [about] the fiscal health of working Americans. In that regard, the fact that the minimum wage is the lowest it's been since the1940s, when the middle class was just emerging, tells us that conservatives have been successful in producing a large, terrified class of working poor, who can be easily manipulated and who don't have enough time to be politically active.

LB: What can people do to help stop the death of the middle class?

TH: The thing so few people get about why the middle class is vanishing is that it's not just [driven by] greedy industrialists. It's not just about money. In fact, it's not even half about money. It's about power. It's about reestablishing the world Dickens described in "A Christmas Carol," where Bob Cratchit had to beg for a lump of coal and health care for his child. Conservatives look at that time in that world and they see a time that was comfortable, stable and predictable. Those are higher values, to them, than freedom and egalitarianism and social justice.

When America gets it that these are ideological issues -- not just economic -- then it will translate into the political realm, and something might be done about it.

LB: But how can more Americans "get it"?

TH: In my book, I reproduce a 1936 speech by Franklin Roosevelt about this issue -- how royalists were trying to seize control, how allegiance to democracy requires the overthrow of such corporate power.

Ever since the '80s, since Reagan conservatives started [insisting] that communism was being taught in school civics classes, we have had a generation of people who came of age in the '90s who have no recollection of what was conventional wisdom in 1936: that there is an economic and class war going on. As Warren Buffet said, "Of course there's a class war, and my class is winning."

We need to reawaken people under 30 and 40, to remember what the ideals of this country traditionally have been, and how healthy that is for the world -- not just the U.S. [We need to] keep telling stories of how it was in the old days. The conservatives are doing everything they can to strip American history.

http://www.alternet.org/story/41305/?page=entire

[Decker]

This is a great interview.

I wish rightwing conservatives would read it and think about it for a moment.

The idea that the poor and middle class are waging (and winning) a class war against the upper crust is exactly the type of misinformation that thrives amongst them.

It's not democracy or quality of life that drives these people....it's jealousy....and they are just too lazy to grab their own piece of the pie....they look for handouts.

Jealousy rules their world.

Irony over.

[MRDUMPLING]

Good read but biased as hell.

Decker, it's ALL politicians, Democrats are some of the richest people in the House and Senate, if you are going to say right wing conservatives, make sure you include left wing Democrats.  Both have done much to destroy what was once known as the middle class.  Let's not turn this into a party issue...it's everybodies issue that needs to be dealt with.

[Decker]

Good read but biased as hell.

Decker, it's ALL politicians, Democrats are some of the richest people in the House and Senate, if you are going to say right wing conservatives, make sure you include left wing Democrats.  Both have done much to destroy what was once known as the middle class.  Let's not turn this into a party issue...it's everybodies issue that needs to be dealt with.

I don't have to do that.  Personal wealth does not mean a wish to kill the middle class.  That nexus does not exist.  It's the democrats that throw an occasional bone to the middle and lower classes.  The republicans have been trying to kill the middle class since Reagan co-opted the party.

Have there been turncoat democrats?  Yeah.  But I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bath water.

The american right, as embodied in the republican party, has been on a mission to kill the middle class of this country so that Gilded Age working conditions reassert themselves....low wages, no benefits, and no power to change those things.

[MRDUMPLING]

Ok ok, Democrats aren't at fault...it's all Republicans.   

[Soul Crusher]

Oh please what garbage.

The wealthiest elitete in this country are socialist liberals who favor unfettered mass migration of third world people into America, unfettered free trade, high taxation, etc.

Just to name a few of your heros who you think are acting in the self interest of the middle class:


George Soros - billionaire

Pelosi - multi millionaire who hires mexicans on her vineyard instead of americans

Feinstein - multi millioniare whose husband is in bed with china and screws americans

Bernard Madoff - huge democrat fundraiser wall street scammer

Hank Paulson - liberal democrat

Rubin - looted citigroup.

John Corzine - GS solciaist who wants to tax and toll everything that moves.


Do you want me to continue???

[MRDUMPLING]

Yes, please do...don't forget the Democrats that were on top of the list of donors from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  LOL

[Soul Crusher]

Yes, please do...don't forget the Democrats that were on top of the list of donors from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  LOL

The wealthiest people in this country seeking mass migration of poor people into this country to undermine wages  are overwhelmingly liberal democrats.

I also do not understand how people can think that higher taxes leads to more middle class people since taxing higher wage earners even  more means that they will stop spending on many things and businesses owned and employed by middle class people.



   

[Hereford]

Yea.

F*ing neocons.

Republicans are ruining the world... Good thing we have the liberals around to save America.

[Decker]

Oh please what garbage.

The wealthiest elitete in this country are socialist liberals...

That's interesting.

....who favor unfettered mass migration of third world people into America, unfettered free trade, high taxation, etc.

How do you know this?

According the democratic platform, you are dead wrong...again:

The American people are a welcoming and generous people, but those who enter our country's borders illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of the law. We need to secure our borders, and support additional personnel, infrastructure, and technology on the border and at our ports of entry. We need additional Customs and Border Protection agents equipped with better technology and real-time intelligence. We need to dismantle human smuggling organizations, combating the crime associated with this trade. We also need to do more to promote economic development in migrant-sending nations, to reduce incentives to come to the United States illegally. And we need to crack down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. It's a problem when we only enforce our laws against the immigrants themselves, with raids that are ineffective, tear apart families, and leave people detained without adequate access to counsel. We realize that employers need a method to verify whether their employees are legally eligible to work in the United States, and we will ensure that our system is accurate, fair to legal workers, safeguards people's privacy, and cannot be used to discriminate against workers.

http://www.democrats.org/a/national/american_community/immigration/

Why do you constantly say things like the above when you clearly don't check into the validity and correctness of your statements?

Who does favor amnesty for illegals?

Bush Amnesty Plan Raises Immigration Concerns
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,107692,00.html

Just to name a few of your heros who you think are acting in the self interest of the middle class:


George Soros - billionaire

Pelosi - multi millionaire who hires mexicans on her vineyard instead of americans

Feinstein - multi millioniare whose husband is in bed with china and screws americans

Bernard Madoff - huge democrat fundraiser wall street scammer

Hank Paulson - liberal democrat

Rubin - looted citigroup.

John Corzine - GS solciaist who wants to tax and toll everything that moves.


Do you want me to continue???

No, I don't.  You're making a spectacle of yourself.  You mention a few rich democrats....great, that proves NOTHING!

Does George W. Bush embody the conservative republican party?

Do you deny that republicans have been working to get the government off of the back of corporate america?

What exactly does that mean to you?

The middle class in this country did not happen by accident.  It takes careful tending.

You free market warriors apparently don't know this.  The  miracle of the market is just the law of the jungle.  Kill or be killed.  Winner take all.  And something tells me that you didn't get the memo informing you that you are not one of the big fish out there.

[Decker]

Yea.

F*ing neocons.

Republicans are ruining the world... Good thing we have the liberals around to save America.

This isn't Disney.  If you're looking for the Holy Paladin to save the troubled land, you'd best start approximating your perspective. 

[Soul Crusher]

I look at what people do, not what they say.  Democrats are falling all over themselves to grant amnesty to the illegal aliens in this country.

Liberals like yourself see no problem whatsoever with having millions of low wage third world people flooding our country competing with americans for jobs. 

You said I mentioned a few, those were just the ones off the top of my head.  This election cycle alone, Wall Street gave much more to dems than the GOP.Go ahead, keep believing your delusions that the democrats are not as corrupt, if not worse, than the GOP.  Both are traitorous.

GWB is a disgrace by the way.

I am more a Ron Paul republican than anything else.

[Decker]

I look at what people do, not what they say.  Democrats are falling all over themselves to grant amnesty to the illegal aliens in this country.

Liberals like yourself see no problem whatsoever with having millions of low wage third world people flooding our country competing with americans for jobs. 

You said I mentioned a few, those were just the ones off the top of my head.  This election cycle alone, Wall Street gave much more to dems than the GOP.Go ahead, keep believing your delusions that the democrats are not as corrupt, if not worse, than the GOP.  Both are traitorous.

GWB is a disgrace by the way.

I am more a Ron Paul republican than anything else.

It would help your cause if you showed us the amnesty legislation proposed by the democrats.  I mean we've seen the McCain/Bush amnesty proposal.  It only seems fair.

Now apparently I want to have illegals granted amnesty too.  Thanks for the info.  I'll consider it.

Overall, bundlers in the finance, insurance and real estate sector have hauled in at least $30 million for the Republican candidate -- far more than any other sector.

Bundlers in the larger finance, insurance and real estate sector have collected at least $13.4 million for Obama, making it his most generous sector.

Overall, the securities and investment industry has contributed about $10 million to Obama and $7 million to McCain. To all federal candidates for president and Congress, and to political parties, the industry has contributed more than $101 million in the 2008 election cycle, 56 percent of it to Democrats. The Democrats' edge is a relatively recent development, however; Republicans had the advantage for most of the last 10 years.

Contributions from the commercial banking industry are roughly split between Obama and McCain -- $2 million for the Democrat, $1.9 million for the Republican. The banking industry has contributed about $25 million in this election cycle to federal candidates and parties, giving 52 percent to Republicans.
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/bundlers-for-mccain-obama-are.html

So Wall Street did not give much more to Obama over McCain.  In fact the trend of republican dominance in this area was bucked for this cycle b/c McCain really had no chance of winning.  These financial types are crooks but they are not stupid.  They hedge their bets but they picked the winner.

[240 is Back]

333386, I'm starting to like you.

That amnesty bill was backed by Bush, Obama, and Mccain. 

Ron paul would have kicked them (the illegals) the F out.

[Soul Crusher]

333386, I'm starting to like you.

That amnesty bill was backed by Bush, Obama, and Mccain. 

Ron paul would have kicked them (the illegals) the F out.

That's right.  Ron Paul is the only one telling it like it is.

McCain/Kennedy/Bush/Obama amnesty bill.

Remember Bush's "see you at the bill signing" remark??? 

[Decker]

But Ronald Reagan officially launched the [war on working people]. He kicked it off with busting PATCO. We are now 26 years into that war, and papers no longer have labor sections -- they only have business sections, and most workers no longer have pensions.

We've gone from 25 percent of the work force being unionized -- when Reagan came into office -- to about eight percent of the private work force being unionized. The small sliver that's still unionized is under aggressive attack, and they represent the last bastion of the classic middle class.

The conservatives can't allow them to survive; [unions] bring democracy into the workplace, so they represent a threat to conservative wealth and power. ... The only thing that will allow unionization to happen is force of law; to elect public officials who are willing to enforce the Wagner Act and repeal the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. This requires [politicians] who represent the will and needs of the middle class, instead of the wealthy, powerful gentry.

I don't think this quote can be repeated enough.

The middle class does not happen as a natural result of the free market.  It takes management and cultivation to maintain the livable wage for our people.

[Soul Crusher]

I don't think this quote can be repeated enough.

The middle class does not happen as a natural result of the free market.  It takes management and cultivation to maintain the livable wage for our people.

Oh geez.  Yeah, I rely on the benevolent dictators like Obama to make it that I can maintain my living.  I'm sorry, people are not farm animals like you want to believe.

Individuality trumps collectivism in our country.   

In your mind, it seems you think we need a Stalin or Mao to oversee everything "in the interests of the middle of class". 

How is that working out in Venezuela?   

Right.     

[Decker]

Oh geez.  Yeah, I rely on the benevolent dictators like Obama to make it that I can maintain my living.  I'm sorry, people are not farm animals like you want to believe.

Individuality trumps collectivism in our country.   

In your mind, it seems you think we need a Stalin or Mao to oversee everything "in the interests of the middle of class". 

How is that working out in Venezuela?   

Right.     

Interesting in how unresponsive you are to the matter at hand.  You sloganeer. 

No man is an island. 

Now a page from your book.  In your mind, it seems to think we need a Reagan or Bush to oversee everything "in the interests of the monied elites."

How's that type of capitalism working in America today?

Right.

You see, the free market exists for everybody but the monied elites.  They are the swine at the gov. trough.  Where do you think the hundreds of billions of dollars go for the Iraq debacle?  Why did the elites get a 700 billion with zero strings attached?

Oh that's right, you're a ron paul supporter so that excuses you from what's going on in reality.  B/c you mean so well and you can tell me how things ought to be instead of how they are.

Is the middle class a by-product of your laissez-faire dreams or is something worked for and maintained by the people and the people's government?

..how about the people's elbow?  The lamest finishing move in history.

[Soul Crusher]

What we have now is rampant unbridled captilism run by immoral people without a conscience.

I think even Adam Smith said that democracy and capitilism without any morality is doomed to failure.

[Decker]

What we have now is rampant unbridled captilism run by immoral people without a conscience.

I think even Adam Smith said that democracy and capitilism without any morality is doomed to failure.

I would agree with this.

[JBGRAY]

Interesting.  Back in the 60s, there were Unionized workers in our meat packaging facilities.  These workers were able to make a decent if not good living by participating in skilled labor.  Seperating cow stomachs is not easy.  Nowadays, these workers have been replaced by lower-waged and often illegal workers performing these same procedures.  And if ICE comes calling, these meat packing plants either lose a ton of money, or go out of business altogether. 

It boils down to economic protectionism.  Once the US opened its doors wide open to globalization, it does not just get the benefit of cheap goods rolling in by the cargoshipload......it also gets to get knocked down a couple of pegs to live like most other countries of the world.....like shit. 

[Soul Crusher]

Interesting.  Back in the 60s, there were Unionized workers in our meat packaging facilities.  These workers were able to make a decent if not good living by participating in skilled labor.  Seperating cow stomachs is not easy.  Nowadays, these workers have been replaced by lower-waged and often illegal workers performing these same procedures.  And if ICE comes calling, these meat packing plants either lose a ton of money, or go out of business altogether. 

It boils down to economic protectionism.  Once the US opened its doors wide open to globalization, it does not just get the benefit of cheap goods rolling in by the cargoshipload......it also gets to get knocked down a couple of pegs to live like most other countries of the world.....like shit. 

This is why I am dead set against illegal aliens.  They destroy the wage base and make it impossible for AMERICAN CITIZENS without a college education to get a job that can pay their bills and have any living at all.

Allowing illegal aliens in this country is immoral and 100% against the interests of American Citizens who would do these jobs if they paid more than 5.00 an hour.

 

[MRDUMPLING]

I agree with some of what you say 333, but that's the point they are trying to make.  If unions were still more popular/used in todays society the sheer amount of illegal labor replacing American jobs would be much less.  Not only that...but jobs that are considered to be "underneath" Americans wouldn't exist.  Even in my short lifetime I remember when people took pride in their work and at least went to work everyday no matter what job that person did.  People no longer are proud of their jobs, the media has conditioned us to think some jobs are below others just because people may not have an education.

I'm all for taking responsiblity for our actions...but at the same time everyman is not an island either.  There is a happy medium believe it or not. 

[Soul Crusher]

I agree with some of what you say 333, but that's the point they are trying to make.  If unions were still more popular/used in todays society the sheer amount of illegal labor replacing American jobs would be much less.  Not only that...but jobs that are considered to be "underneath" Americans wouldn't exist.  Even in my short lifetime I remember when people took pride in their work and at least went to work everyday no matter what job that person did.  People no longer are proud of their jobs, the media has conditioned us to think some jobs are below others just because people may not have an education.

I'm all for taking responsiblity for our actions...but at the same time everyman is not an island either.  There is a happy medium believe it or not. 

I agree 10000%.

That is why corporations love illegal aliens.  Its horrible and traitorous in my opinion that the govt does not seal the border shut and go after all the employers of illegal aliens.

The left in this country thinks they are being kind and gentle by granting amnesty to these people, but in reality they destroying the middle class by driving wages lower and lower and lower.

That is why I have ZERO sympathy for farmers complaining about deportations.  If they cant pay a fair wage, screw em. 

No company should be entitled to make its business model based upon illegal alien labor.