eagleye13 wrote:
Sooo nicki; How did the working middle class become the "underclass"?
That's a loooong story and it begins following WW-ll It will take me a while "The great Purge part #1
This has to do with the interaction between politics and economics. Its well known that the economic situation shapes our politics. Sometimes it’s not as well understood how, and how deeply politics shapes our economic realities. I want to begin as good stories of our situation always do going back setting the historical context and I want to ask a question--at the end of WW-ll in the late 1940's into the 50's something remarkable happened politically in the United States. And it was in many ways surprising, lets review. Suddenly a group of people in the US who had been celebrated wide spread as hero's became instead almost over night demons, from being leaders they became traitors--it was really remarkable. Who are we talking about, members of the communist party members of the two socialist parties at that time and active leaders of the American labor movement.
The big organizing drive's of the CIO in the 1930's and 40's had brought millions of people who had never been in unions before into the unions. They joined the unions because they thought it would be a safe way to make it through the Great Depression of the 1930's than not being in a union, and together, the communist's , socialist's, and the unions, struggled to produce a good situation for the mass of American workers. the lower two thirds of our population at least. During the depression when those people were really suffering a kind of a coalition emerged and that was what was being destroyed in the years following WW-ll. The coalition was strong enough during the 1930's to basically pressure FDR to institute four basic programs to help average Americans in a way no previous administration had dared to do.
First was the creation of the Social Security System but also their children who therefore didn't have to help their mother and father as they would otherwise have had to--the government was lending a hand.
Then the government did another thing it created the Unemployment Compensation System. We had never had that before either, and this was done in the depths of the depression when millions and millions of people had no visible means of support and who suddenly got a life line. Third they passed the first minimum wage we had ever had in American history and finally the FDR government said-- because the private system would not --or could not provide the jobs people needed, FDR said, we will, and they hired 15 million people. They built some of the big national parks out west they did some of the first conservation work, to give artists of all kinds to bring art to the masses in a way it had never been done before and by the way has never been done since. Unemployed people got a good job doing something useful and they got paid properly so they could make their mortgage payment.
The mass of people were helped because had joined unions, and had become interested in, and listened to socialist's, communist's, who said people deserved that-- and an economic system that didn't provide that was maybe wasn't justified. And where did the money come from ? --in the depths of the depression when the government didn’t have any money ? The answer was Roosevelt taxed the corporations and the rich. That’s right He taxed the corporations and the rich, that’s how he paid for it. And the result for him was, he was re-elected three times. He was the most popular President in the history of the United States. Because he was the one that went after the corporations and the rich to help average people. But he didn't do it for him--- He was no radical left winger he was a conventional rich kid, went to all the good schools Harvard, Yale, ect, ect.
After the war The rich and Corporations, resentful that they had been taxed to help the working class, decided to change the world to their liking and to attack the weakest link of the enemy, the Communist party, and it was soon demonized out of existence. Then they went after the Socialist party and demonized it out of existence. Then they went after the labor movement, and they have done a good job. It started with the passage of the Taft Hartly act of 1947. In 1945 unions represented a third of American workers, today they represent 6 % of private sector workers. Communist party destroyed, Socialist party destroyed, labor unions reduced to a pale shadow of what it once was. This chaotic destruction of the left in America traumatized the American people. At least that half of the population that is open to critical thinking about capitalism. The kinds of people who face an uncertain job a job with no benefits, and in sufficient wage to lead a decent life and say that has to change a change those people had gotten that change in the 1930's and they watched as all the leaders that had gotten that change were demonized, jailed, blacklisted, deported as though they were the sum total of all evil. A lesson was drummed into the American people. Don’t have anything to do with people who are critical of capitalism. Don’t have anything to do with people who are socialist in one way or another, it was shut down time and it lasted half a century or more.