The Vanishing Middle Class

Right after World War II, the American society had a huge growth of the middle class. This middle class growth benefitted all Americans (it gave the rich more customers with money to spend, and the tax revenues from this growth helped lift the poor up). Much of this growth was due to what right-wingers called socialist policies (strong unions, GI Bill to help with college and buying homes, etc.) But that has changed since the Republicans have managed to institute their "trickle-down" economic policy (which emphasizes giving more money to the rich in the hopes some of it would trickle down to the rest of America).

To say this Republican economic policy (started by Reagan and thrown into high-gear by Bush II) was a failure would be an understatement. It cost Americans millions of jobs and threw the country into a serious recession (which still continues for most people in this country). It has also had another devastating result -- it is destroying the middle class. As the chart above shows, the number of middle class households in the United States has been reduced significantly since 1970.

Every 10 years since 1970 the country has had roughly 2 million households disappear from the middle class -- and those households are not moving to the upper class, but down to the working class or even to poverty level. A recent census report showed that half of all Americans now live on an income less than 50% above the poverty level.

The Republican economic policy has been very successful in helping the rich to get richer, but it has hurt the rest of America badly. Alan Krueger, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors puts this shift in wealth and income in stark terms. He says it is the equivalent of moving $1.1 trillion from the 99% to the 1% every year for the last three decades.

That may sound great if you're in the 1%, but it can't be healthy for the country's economy. It is the reason we're in the current economic mess. And what is the Republican solution? To give the rich and the corporations larger tax cuts, and pay for that by taking more away from the other 99% of America. That simply makes no sense, and we can no longer afford these kinds of brain-dead policies.

It's going to be a long and hard fight to cure our economic ills. But if the Republicans are re-elected in large numbers this November, there may not be any recovery at all -- in the short or long term.