Their suburban homes are being foreclosed upon and they’re occupying streets all over the country. Their children’s opportunity for a future of progress and success is looking bleak.
It dims as the cost of higher education, living and everything in between rises while wages remain stagnant.
Millions are being laid off, fired, let go, stripped of pension plans, furloughed, downsized, replaced or any other derivative of the phrase, “kicked to the curb.” They’re the American middle-class and they’re disappearing.
A chart published in The Washington Post breaks the figures down and illustrates clearly that the Bush administration tax cuts (which virtually Republicans all want to make permanent) would add $36 billion to the national deficit.
Those families making less than $250,000 per year — as we have determined, “the 99 percent” — would be most responsible for compensating while families, individuals and corporate empires with earnings in the hundreds of millions — as we have determined, “the 1 percent” — are given exemptions that in themselves are more than the gross income of the rest of us.
How is creating such a drastic inequity of wealth while simultaneously shifting the burden onto those on the short-end of that deal supposed to contribute to our collective prosperity as a people?
Let’s say for the sake of this argument (and because it actually happened) that this all began with Reagan.
In a segment that aired on the Rachel Maddow Show called, “Pin the Debt on the Donkey,” Maddow displays information from the Office of Management and Budget that essentially discredits the notion of Republican fiscal responsibility in the context of our current economic situation.
During Reagan’s administration, there was a national debt increase of 186.1 percent. George H.W. Busch followed him up with an impressive 53.8 percent, though, only to be outdone by his dimwitted son with a staggering 77.4 percent national increase in debt.
This is so much more than just a “liberal vs. conservative” argument.
Today, almost all the jobs being created require a college degree just for the entry-level. To that end, universities are now implementing government-mandated “cost calculators” on their websites.
Whether this is meant to prepare those looking to fund a college education for the coming costs or to serve as a “KEEP OUT” sign for the middle class, I have yet to determine. Regardless, college isn’t cheap and people don’t even have the means to save any money, let alone spend it.
The term “skilled laborer” transcends the archetypal hard-hat wearing, bright-future-building American in favor of a box that one might check when filling out an application for welfare.
Competitive wages, pensions, benefits and incentive packages are becoming notions of the past. Get in line. It’s a vicious cycle.
If your skill is no longer marketable or can be done by a computer or for cheaper by someone in a foreign country who isn’t receiving a 401k, or isn’t over the age of 55, well, it might be time to wake up from the "American Dream."
The old red, white and blue is showing her true colors and in tomorrow’s market with today’s problems: We’re all doomed.
Whether you’re camping out on Wall Street, researching alternative methods of energy or asking questions from behind a keyboard: It’s time to join the national discussion. It really is our only hope of making it out alive on the other side of these crazy times.
Catch Part II in a coming issue of The State Press and reach the columnist at Bkarris@asu.edu
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