Middle Class Delusions

I think a lot of middle class Americans have been sold a bill of goods by the right and a bit by the left. I think that they believe that they are carrying the weight of “freeloaders” on their tax paying backs. They have come to believe that they are self made people who through their own hard work have attained a level of success that the government threatens to take away through taxes that go to entitlement programs. Thus, ideas like raising taxes for the rich, they see as a threat to themselves and they become antigovernment.

What they forget is how they have benefited from the government programs that have enabled them to get where they are. You have to begin with education, which has become the whipping boy for many politicos. Yet education is a government program that enables all of us to reach a level of competency that enables us to get jobs. That is from primary and secondary schools to higher education. That education exists because of taxes. In higher education the tax base has eroded over the years costing students more and more to attend colleges, but still they rely on government and endowment dollars. We need more tax dollars to maintain what we used to have in this country in order to remain competitive in the world economy.

There is also a belief among many of the middle class that profit based medical care is far superior to public based, taxed, medical care. However, there is no evidence of this, just compare our system to those who have gone to public health care systems, they are better for the majority of people and cost far far less. This has become one of the biggest drains on the economy and our future is very bleak if we continue to use a profit based system. Ron Paul has an insane argument that in the good old days doctors just took care of folk who couldn’t afford care. He believes Medicare is unconstitutional.  See http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/ron-pauls-health-solutions-fail  to see to fallacy of his argument.

Many still believe in the protestant ethic that if you work hard you will get rewarded and those who are laggards will be punished by poverty. I’ve talked before about how the wisdom writers of scripture rejected this in their day, and it makes just as little sense today. Sure, we should make use of our talents and use them for personal but also the public good. Hard workers don’t always succeed because of unforeseen problems, that is why we have government safety nets to protect these people. There will always be people who abuse that safety net system, but they are peanuts in comparison to the very rich who have abused the entire government system of tax breaks and incentives for their personal fortunes.

We in the middle class are shrinking as a group as the current supply side economic policies dominate the land. The poor are growing in numbers and the ultra rich own half the wealth of the country; acquired money they did not work for but have manipulated the government to get more than their share of the wealth of the country. We have a regressive tax system that favors the ultra rich. The enlightened middle class, those who realize how the redistribution of wealth has hurt the country, need to take back the government.

I believe it begins with campaign reform where the rich cannot buy governmental leaders. We also must bring back types of New Deal Policies that rescued the country when this same imbalance of wealth took place in the 30’s. The right complained about them then, but they worked. We need to implement them again but with a large enough stimulus plan that puts people back to work. And they need adequate regulations so that those who create the problems do not benefit from the rescue but are held accountable for their abuse.

We need leadership that will stand up for the middle class and for the common good of our society. Corporate America seems to own the Republican party, the major banks have a significant control of the Democratic  Party, and the Tea Party has just be sold a bill of nonsensical ideas. We need new leadership, or at least make the current leadership more progressive minded. I only wish I knew how to do it.