I ate lots of Tums for this one. As a lifelong member of the middle class and a victim of two layoffs , these books on the freefall of the middle class burned me up. Here, have your own Tums: In 1980, CEOs earned 42 times the average factory worker’s wage. Now it’s 325 times as much. Have another: In the mid-2000s, Pfizer, like many corporations, got a huge tax break from the US government. To show their thanks, Pfizer’s CEO got a 72 percent raise and later a $200 million severance package — as the company axed 11,700 jobs. And to top off your agita: Since 1985, corporations have killed off 84,350 pension plans.
But you think I’m angry? You should read Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele. They’re the only reporting team to have won two Pulitzers and two National Magazine Awards; they’re masterful investigators, and they’re unafraid to throw stones. The stats above, and plenty more like them, slash through their “The Betrayal of the American Dream” (PublicAffairs, 2012).
Comments
According to this review, these books describe economic attacks on the middle class from above. But the reality is that this is a two-front war, with the Obama administration attacking from below, looking to transfer life-sustaining assets from the working/retired middle class to the lower economic class. Example: funding Obamacare in part by removing $716 billion from planned Medicare payments to insurers and hospitals, over the next ten years alone. Helping those in the lower economic classes is a worthy goal but is better achieved by legislative incentives to keep manufacturing jobs in America and otherwise letting the middle class survive; however, President Obama will not buck his rich contributors who benefit from manufacturing operations in places like Sri Lanka. To our President, unity means keeping your mouth shut as he plays the role of a Bizarro Robin Hood who takes from the working/retired middle class and gives to his friends. So, sadly, the eco-political policy in this country is now: destroy the middle class and split middle class assets between the very rich and the very poor.