The election of Barack Obama to the White House sent a shivering jolt through the collective spine of not only the Republican Party, but any, it seemed, who leaned just a little to the political right. Almost immediately the election sent fear-mongering political "analysts," radio show hosts and commentators into a frenzy about the Administration's "socialist" agenda and how everything that America is and stands for will be brought to ruin under our first black president. It all rings of McCarthyism, this perceived ruination of the American way of life, and how Progressives are really just socialists aiming to distribute wealth equally among the citizens of the country. But for all their crying foul at the administration's supposed attempts to take money from the super rich and distribute to the poor, i.e. imposing higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, their criticism of wealth distribution never acknowledges the trend of wealth taken from the lower classes, and distributed more to the upper class over the past few decades. The widening gap between the poor and rich, the diminishing numbers of the middle class suggest this trend, yet why do none fight, let alone acknowledge, this extreme Anti-Socialist agenda, that bears little resemblance to true capitalism?
Just as the Great Depression hit, the wealthiest 1% of the population held nearly 50% of the total wealth of the country. Through the New Deal, Roosevelt looked to halt that imbalance by passing legislation which included such things as the Social Security Act, the FDIC, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938- the law which set maximum hours and minimum wages for most workers in the country to put an end to unfair, and unjust, workplace conditions. On the other side of the war, during the 50's and 60's, most middle class families were supported by one parent working a full-time job, while the other, most often the mother, stayed home with the children. Life was good; America prospered on the strength of the bourgeois. But steadily the gap has grown once again, starting in the 80's when Reagan drastically cut income taxes, a move which benefited the wealthiest Americans, purported by some as "trickle-down economics." And Reagan's term saw the only time where the federal minimum wage was not increased, inaction that hurt solely the middle and lower classes. Inflation remained low during the 1980s, but 8 years without a raise in the minimum wage left the lower class in the lurch. (To note: George W. Bush fails to make the list because a Democratic Congress managed to pass a minimum wage increase at the latter end of his second term.) Furthermore, the drastic cuts to income tax ballooned the national deficit during Reagan's two terms, and left unchecked until the fiscally conservative policies of President Clinton reigned it in- only to be undone yet again by upper class tax cuts and outlandish defense spending under the 2nd Bush. So today, the wealthiest 1% holds just under 40% of the nation's total wealth and that number is slowly creeping towards that magical 50% again. Could another full blow Depression await?
During the Great Recession following the economic collapse in 2008, millions of middle class families saw their savings and investments wiped out, and many had to postpone retirement to make up for those lost savings. Outraged, the population called for action, which very little has been done. The TARP bailout financed the TBTF banks, but did absolutely nothing to restore an individual's investments, or a small-business owner who was forced to shutter their doors as credit seized. Once again, the wealth was distributed into the upper echelons, and the middle and lower classes were left footing the bill. But where is the response from Congress, and especially from the Right, whose prime talking-points seem to stem from a supposed redistribution of wealth, the socialist agenda? It's currently underpinning the recently passed Health Care Reform because they fear that wealth will be redistributed unevenly, away from major corporations. And in this case with the Wall Street Bailout and Financial Reform, many will argue that these men and their companies deserved the record profits they garnered because they worked hard to get those positions. But it wasn't their own money invested that they hedged risky bets (and lost) without the capital to support those bets should they fail; it was investors' money, the ones who lost all due to carelessness and greed of the corporations, who got off scotfree with conservatives at their backs the entire time.
The middle class today is made up of families where both parents need to work full-time positions to be classified as such, and often that's still not enough. The US minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. A full-time worker in one year then makes only $15,080. Before this, the minimum wage was set at $5.15 per hour, comprising an average yearly income of $10,712. In 2008, before the rate increase, the US poverty level was $10,400. Based on our own standards, the minimum wage barely kept full-time workers out of poverty, and certainly did not classify them as middle class. Had the Democrats not passed the minimum wage increase (which Republicans fought tooth and nail), a full-time employee at minimum wage would today be below the US poverty level. A Republican controlled Congress did nothing for 8 years but cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, letting the middle class dissipate further into nonexistence.
And hope was supposed to come carried on the shoulders of our current President, who, backed by that Democratic Congress, would "change" the direction of the country and lead us down a brighter road and future. But Congress (with little or no support from the White House) has stalled and balked on all financial fixes that would stop the redistribution of wealth into the upper classes (Brown-Kaufman Amendment, the Merkley-Levin Amendment, the Volcker Rules) to create a more secure financial sector. And the President has managed to be simultaneously angry and offering encomium on these large institutions and the men who run them, which suggests to me that he's little worried of making any real change.
But, while Liberals have failed to act, this is mostly a consequence of Conservatives' unfailing support for large corporations and the upper class, and their obstruction of Congress, particularly in the Senate. Their deep-rooted philosophy of less government has been the primary reason why financial reform has been so watered-down, and even with our most recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, they side with the corporations (BP), not the individual fisherman, or other "small people" as BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, disingenuously referred to those affected by the oil spill. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas(R) even apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward at a Congressional hearing because he feels the company should not be liable to pay for the damage the spill has caused, that a private company should not be at the whim of government. As the President analogously pointed out in his address to the nation last week, this spill is an attack, not cold and calculated as the 9/11 terror, but a result of negligence, corner-cutting, lack of oversight and minimal accountability. Just as the previous president retaliated after 9/11, so too must the current administration. The government exists to protect the innocent, precisely what it is doing, Mr. Barton. As expected, Mr. Barton was forced to backpedal his statement, saying that he somehow misspoke and believes BP should be held accountable. But what his testimony in that hearing truly revealed was the underlying philosophy of the GOP's unwavering support for the upper class and big corporations, as Rahm Emanuel pointed out this morning on ABC's This Week. For so wholeheartedly believing in the Capitalist system, where a strong middle class is the sole backbone of a strong economy, the Right either willfully is in disregard of the middle class, or plainly blind to its slow, cancerous demise. Either outlook is truly scary.
