Saturday, August 26, 2006

Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- And What We Can Do About It


The amazingly busy Thom Hartmann has a new book on one of the most important topics - the shrinking American middle-class.
Air America Radio host Thom Hartmann shows that our Founding Fathers worked hard to ensure that a small group of wealthy people would never dominate this country — they'd had enough of aristocracy. They put policies in place to ensure a thriving middle class. When the middle class took a hit, beginning in the post-Civil War Gilded Age and culminating in the Great Depression, democracy-loving leaders like Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower revitalized it through initiatives like antitrust regulations, fair labor laws, the minimum wage, Social Security, and Medicare.

So what happened? In the last twenty-five years, we've witnessed an undeclared war against the middle class. The so-called conservatives waging this war are only interested in conserving — and steadily increasing — their own wealth and power. Hartmann shows how, under the guise of "freeing" the market, they've systematically dismantled the programs set up by Republicans and Democrats to protect the middle class and have installed policies that favor the superrich and corporations.

1 comment:

Mycos said...

I think it's time that the question of why the the Founding Fathers felt it important to have a well disciplined militia? Was it to protect against the rise..or facilitate the overthrow, of tyranny? And if so, how much evidence do we need before activation of said clause becomes our Constitutional mandate?

As a previous gun-control advocate, I happen to believe that the recapture of the peoples government using arms if needed (and they will....) is already a Constitutionally protected activity.