The U.S. middle class is slowly dying. Our freedoms are being legislated away for the sake of ‘protecting us from terror’. Our prosperity is being ripped out of our grasp with each corporation that moves overseas to ‘save on overhead costs’.
America and Rome share a remarkably common history. Both rose and prospered, then overextended. Arrogance and greed prevented both from acknowledging the writing on the wall. America is on the edge of the abyss. Its belligerence exceeds Rome’s. Its excesses are unsustainable. Its middle class, no longer able to support the insatiable greed of the power elite is losing grasp of what was once the very bedrock of the American dream, home ownership and an affordable retirement. Democracy has become nothing more than a memory, a figure of speech.
The latest gang of perpetrators of the ongoing slaughter of our middle class, the 112th Congress, is scheduled to accelerate our demise. In 2011, our guardian and representative government plans to cut social services to the poor and middle class in order to address deficit and budget problems. Never once considering tapping the super-rich to help carry some of the burden it has been instrumental in creating.
Cutting social spending and moving manufacturing operations overseas, these are the only ‘solutions’ our short sighted, single-minded and flourishing aristocracy understand. The exploited working class, already over-burdened with debt due to having their jobs ripped away from them, are expected to ‘tighten their belts’ and accept the only jobs remaining, that of becoming servants to the super-rich.
Incoming House Republicans promise budget cuts of $100 billion, largely on the backs of working Americans who can least afford it. Given Obama’s austerity pledge, bipartisan agreement may target entitlements, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as education, transportation, and other discretionary areas to match 2008 levels. However, achieving it requires 20% cuts across the board from the $477 billion Congress allocated in FY 2010, ending September 30.
As each state defaults they do so without any hope of a bailout. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan already stated “We are not interested in a bailout.”
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) measurements shows over 21% of Americans in poverty — based on after-tax market wages and salaries, excluding entitlements, welfare, and other government programs that lower the figure considerably but not for millions not helped. Then add higher cost of living expenses, especially for health, food, gasoline, heating oil, and rent at a time home prices are declining. With planned FY 2011 budget cuts, greater poverty ahead looms.
We are currently witnessing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression at a time when bipartisan consensus plans social spending cuts.
Strangely, public outrage is absent. Why is this?
Lawmakers in Indiana, Maine, Missouri and at least seven other states plan legislation to bar private sector unions from requiring rank and file members to pay dues or fees, reducing union treasury funds. Ohio’s new Republican governor, like others, wants public school teacher strikes prohibited, and in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker is targeting the right of state employees to form unions and bargain collectively. What do you think they are preparing for?
States are crippling the American labor movement by removing unions bargaining power. They are crushing organized labor entirely, public and private, driving it back to 19th century impotence and paving the way for unfettered, unrestricted corporate power. The only thing standing in the way of absolute corporate domination of our society and what’s left of our democracy is the American labor movement.
During any other time in our nations history, this country would be ripe for boiling over. Why is apathy so rampant today? Why can’t we find people who give a damn?
The people most in a position to go up against corporate power, union bosses, are on the take, siding with business, getting big salaries and fancy perks, and being more concerned about their own welfare than rank and file members. On January 6 on the Progressive Radio News Hour, James Petras explained. In 2008, Big Labor contributed over $400 million to Democrat candidates and tens of millions more in 2010. In return, Obama and congressional Democrats waged war on working Americans, endorsing layoffs, wage and benefit cuts, gutted work rules, lost pensions, and promised hope from the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The Democrat-controlled Congress rejected it.
It would have been the first pro-labor reform since the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, letting workers for the first time bargain collectively with management on even terms. Though modest by comparison, it promised progress at a time organized labor is virtually impotent, because union bosses, like Democrats, side more with business than their own rank and file.
We Americans shame ourselves by the way in which we simply walk away when our futures are cut down just so we can save our own individual necks. This country used to stand up for each other. Those days are sadly forgotten. As long as we can go home and watch ‘reality TV’, as long as there is a cell phone handy where we can reach out and text everyone about the latest viral YouTube video, we think we are doing okay. The most major issues are being ignored in favor of who is banging who in the celebrity parade. Our very freedom to roam around this country without being a suspected terrorist and being forced through invasive pat downs and screenings are a reality.
Your fellow Americans are losing their homes. Families who have never before been faced with poverty are now experiencing it and things are only going to get worse. Where is the outrage? People are being shot and killed by police for showing lack of respect and the police are routinely exonerated of all wrong doing. How can you not be alarmed by this?
The super rich funded stock market schemes that sent this nation’s economy into a crash dive and they are the people who were bailed out, with our tax dollars. Not the average American taxpayer who lost so much more than these crooks and liars. Where was the outrage of the American taxpayer?
We are being downsized to the point of extinction through loss of high pay, loss of benefits, loss of labor rights, loss of political empowerment, loss of our standard of living, loss of our personal freedoms, and loss of our retirement future. Where are the protesters who once marched on the nation’s capitol to demand equality and a secure future?
The middle class has become the serf class to the super-rich. And we gladly accept it. Our politicians endorse it, and the remaining few ‘American patriots’ are getting hammered in front of their big screen televisions watching ‘Dancing With the Stars’. Pitiful.
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