Will the American middle class revolt? If we keep on the path we are on, I fear we will. When one has nothing else to lose revolt ultimately occurs.
The middle class knows there is a problem. They rightfully feel insecure about the future. Yet the only solution being offered is austerity or austerity plus. Neither will give the middle class comfort or security.
The middle class has been in decline for the past 30 years because of tax and economic policies that provably favor the wealthy. Every president beginning with Ronald Reagan has adopted all the tenets of supply side economics. They were swayed by faux economists that stated if taxes are reduced investments would be increased creating more goods and services. They claimed that increased economic activity would cause the recovery of the lost tax revenues.
One only needs common sense and a course in economics 101 to dispel that nonsense. They want you to believe that somehow the tax dollars collected isn’t spent and placed back into circulation generating further economic activity (demand and supply). Let me be clear. Supply side economics is a redistribution of wealth upward. We do not need economists to tell us this because it has already happened.
President Obama is offering shared sacrifice (austerity via the Simpson Bowles’ National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) while Mitt Romney is offering the final destruction of the middle class (austerity plus via Paul Ryan’s A roadman For America’s Future). While the former may seem like hyperbolic usage of language, it is not. The wealth disparity is at levels not seen since the 1929 Great Depression. This is a direct result of current policies.
Most of the wealthy’s income (capital gains) is taxed at 15%. Most of middle class income is taxed at up to 35%. As such the wealthy’s income multiplies much faster than middle class income. They monopolize most of the country’s finite resources by design. We do not have to wonder if this is true. The numbers are absolute and results are in. 20% of Americans own almost 85% of all the net worth in the country. Worst, almost 10% of Americans own 90% of all financial wealth.
The middle class must reject the austerity being offered by President Obama and the austerity plus being offered by Mitt Romney. After all, while the wealthy was legally pilfering the middle class by extracting wealth via budget busting preferential tax treatment, they were also being paid by the middle class for the bonds to fund their created budget deficits. In other words, as they received tax breaks they also got paid interest on the created deficits.
The middle class must be assertive now. It must reelect President Obama because only the Democratic platform addresses middle class centric issues. However that is not enough. We must treat every politician including our President as an empty vessel to be filled with progressive values to ensure the survival of the middle class. Most importantly we must work incessantly to ensure they all fulfill the promises we elected them to effect.
The middle class provided the intellect, the goods, the services, the know-how, and the purchasing power that made the wealthy rich. It is time to recover in a peaceful manner what was stolen through bad policy. It is time to support a middle class centric budget. It is time to support The People’s Budget and avoid a middle class revolt.
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Your observations are of course correct, in 2008 we elected a president who campaigned on hope and change and then we the left sat down and went back to watching TV and reading books while the right got mad and held rallies, screamed and shouted and put the fear of the electorate into politicians with the support of the Koch Bros. and their ilk. We must win in 2012 and as you pointed out we must not sit down and expect the President to act like a Democrat we must make him act like one. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about FDR and a progressive lobbying for something he wanted the president to do, FDR is reputed to have replied “You’re right, I want to do it, now go out and make me do it.” Whether the story is actually what happened or just a parable it does illustrate the point that to pass good legislation and enact good policy the people must drive their politicians to do it or the other side will drive them not to.