If Karl Marx was alive to see America, from the era of Ronald Reagan to the present, he would roll over in his grave. In his theory, the working class would revolt against the Bourgeoisie and ultimately when true equality was established the state would wither away. Only in America would Marx get thrown upside down with the elites revolting against the Middle Class utilizing Globalization as a source of revolutionary political change.
What is taking place is class warfare as huge amounts of wealth are transferred from Middle Class America to the wealthy. In the Democratic Party this divide is so complete that the party that was once the political party of working people has participated in its destruction.
For those of you old enough to remember the old original Star Trek with Leonard Nimoy and William Shattner, the creator Gene Roddenberry had an episode where a society was completely separated from the realities of each other. The intellectual elites lived in a city up in the air called Stratos. The rest of their fellow citizens lived down below on the planet and worked in the mines. The intellectual elites thought of their fellow citizens as inferior. In the end they found that it was a gas released in the mines not inferiority that made the Trogs different.
In the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton was President, we have had an intellectual elite that firmly believes they are smarter than the rest of us, that they have all the answers and the fact that we protest that their policies are destroying our livelihood is proof of how we just don't understand the bigger picture, as witnessed by their astonishment over the anger at AIG bonuses and that some corporations were considered too big to fail while Middle Class America apparently was not.
In light of all the bailouts let me reiterate that the problems with the economy are not that banks aren't lending. The fundamental problem as Main Street economics 101 could teach Bernanke and Geithner, is that our leaders have downsized Middle Class America's wages to the point that we are not able to buy anything and we have so much debt we can't afford to borrow. Too much wealth has been transferred already yet we just gave away 1 trillion more from Middle Class America to the rich. This economic bailout is robbing us blind and it is no more palatable being people who mouth that they support Middle Class Americans and are from the politcal party we continue to support.
For thirty years virtually everything our leaders have done have downsized working peoples lifestyles. We have to borrow huge amounts of money to buy houses, send our kids to college and buy cars from credit card companies and lenders that are little more than loan sharks. What they engage in should be illegal but through the miracle of the legalized bribery called campaign contributions when the lenders find the laws gets in their way of robbing us blind our obliging leaders just change the law. The idea that we are all Americans and that a" rising tide should raise all the boats" not just the yachts seems foreign to current conversations.
For thirty years we have paid for this denial of reality that believed that you could support a middle class lifestyle on $8 to $10 dollars an hour when the necessities of life like food, clothing and shelter rose to almost $21 dollars an hour in costs. When Corporate CEO's made arrogant stupid short sighted decisions, they walked away with millions while we lost our jobs, our pensions, our health care and our retirement just to maintain profitability for Wall Street investors and stock holders. I lose my house, you bail out the fraudulent lender and lecture me about responsibility.
You talk about family values but check out the rise in divorce rates, domestic violence and alcoholism rates after people lose their livelihood for some greed driven fiction called The Free Markets and globalization. The stress of it is extreme or would seem so based on all the medications we prescribe for pain of all kinds from physical to emotional. It is hard to teach children about responsibility and making and setting goals and playing by the rules when they aren't blind, they see what happened to us. Why shouldn't they be skeptical at best and cynical at worst ?
The current policies will fail because they are not directed at the correct part of the problem. We have a lack of the ability to buy or the demand side of the economy, but we just gave 1 trillion more to the supply side of the economy. That is not change we can believe in its the corporate robbery we've come to expect.
Comments