Bill Maher: There is no shame in the Republican game as they talk middle-class economics
President Obama has changed the fashionable lexicon from trickle-down economics to middle-class economics. He made a splash at the House Democrats retreat in Philadelphia. It is the term of the month. Hopefully it will be the narrative throughout the 2016 presidential election cycle.
Bill Maher joined the fray. He took it head on. He called out Democrats timidity as they simply ‘nibble along the edges’ of our middle-class problem.
Maher held his real fire for the Republicans. He noted their recent venture into concern for the middle-class.
“And up until like Thursday,” Bill Maher said. “the Republican answer to that was always just to say ‘Well, that’s the new normal.’” After playing a clip of Sarah Palin expressing some sort of concern for the middle class and quoting Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney middle-class centric statements, Bill got perturbed. “Wow, there is no shame in the Republican game. This is the party that used to like to say a rising tide lifts all boats. Which is easy to say when you are on the yacht. … the Republicans are pretending to care while they go back to servicing eight rich dickheads who own coal mines.”
Bill Maher made two factual statements that Republicans will find objectionable. America used a tool of socialism, redistribution to create its vibrant middle-class in the fifties and sixties. And a middle-class is not a natural by-product of capitalism. In fact government is necessary to mitigate the biggest aberration of capitalism’s, the unabated extraction of wealth from the masses.
Following is an abbreviated transcript of his New Rule.
For the next two years anytime a politician says middle-class economics we all get to take a drink. … Even the Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon of middle-class economics. It’s the new bullshit. And it’s what for dinner.
And I say bullshit because the middle income in America is fifty one thousand dollars and the average family that makes that even with no car payments, no cable TV, no vacation, and no money even for a pet … are still fifty dollars in the red at the end of every month. …
And up until like Thursday the Republican answer to that was always just to say ‘Well, that’s the new normal.’
I know what you are thinking. ‘But Bill isn’t it a good thing the Republicans are finally paying attention to our vanishing middle-class.’ Like this lady.
Sarah Palin: With the same people and same policies that got the status quo, — another of Latin word status quo – And it stands for man the middle-class everyday Americans are really getting taken for a ride. …
I don’t know from that if Sarah Palin is for or against helping the middle-class. And there is no way to know. But there is a lot of that kind of talk going around.
Jeb Bush recently said, “… While the last eight years have been pretty good ones for top earners, they’ve been a lost decade for the rest of America.” And Mitt Romney, the man with four mansions and a car elevator said, “… Under President Obama the rich have gotten richer (and) income inequality has gotten worse.”
Yeah, those damn Democrats always fighting the Republican efforts to stick up for the little guy. Wow, there is no shame in the Republican game. This is the party that use to like to say a rising tide lifts all boats. Which is easy to say when you are on the yacht. …
So what’s happening is the Democrats are proposing to nibble around the edges of our middle-class problem. And the Republicans are pretending to care while they go back to servicing eight rich dickheads who own coal mines. And no one is telling the truth. Which is that the large thriving middle-class that America use to have didn’t just appear out of the blue. It was created using an economic tool called Socialism.
Oh, I know. We never use that term here in buzzword nation. But that is exactly what our government did after World War II. It taxed the rich up to ninety percent and massively redistributed that money through the GI Bill so that more than half the population benefited from free college, free job training, cheap mortgages, and much much more. Yes for a brief shining moment we were Finland. …
We can debate whether that is a good thing or bad thing to go back to, but what is beyond debate is that that is what happened. The fifties and sixties are the era of Socialism in America. And that is when a family only needed one bread winner and a house only cost two years’ salary. It is when a man could afford college for his kids and dinner at a chop house for the misses. …
Because here is the reality a middle class is actually not the normal by-product of capitalism. Ask any historian. Middle-class is actually a fluke in history. Like in the fourteenth century. A middle-class was created in Europe when during the black plague a third of the population died resulting in a labor shortage and increase bargaining power for workers. So that is one way to create a middle-class. But it is kind of hard to see it on a campaign poster.