Reason and Radical

Class Warfare

I laughed when Grampy McNasty started in on class warfare (code for "Obama is a socialist") because we've had class warfare for the last 30 years -- against the middle class!

As Kevin Drum puts it:

For three decades we've artificially kept middle class wage increases far below the growth rate of the economy, and this trend has been even more pronounced over the past eight years. This has created an enormous pool of extra money that's been — yes — strip mined and redirected to the rich, and fixing this is Barack Obama's biggest and longest-term challenge. If we restore the normal growth of middle class wages, it provides a sustainable consumer base for the entire economy; it reduces the demand for endless credit card debt; it brings down income inequality naturally; and it goes a long way toward keeping the financial sector under control and reining in Wall Street salaries without putting in place a bunch of artificial (and probably fruitless) regulations.

And Joe Klein is right (at least in this instance) when he writes:

We have had 30 years of class warfare, in which the wealthy strip-mined the middle class.

It is time for some fundamental re-structuring of the American economy.

posted by Leimodnu @ 2:55 PM