American Middle Class No Longer #1: The Slide Begins

[Indy]

[The dane]

The slide began a long time ago, 38 years ago to be exact.

What you are seeing now is the inevitable results of what was done back then, which also tells you have to undo it.

[Indy]

Would you care to elaborate briefly, for those who won't know what you're talking about?

[The dane]

[Indy]

And if I'm not mistaken, the unions were one of the key factors to creating our huge middle class, were they not?

[Stratego]

Americans focus too much on the distribution of wealth and not enough on the distribution of power. There are also a lot of welfare cliffs that exist which trap the poor in a perpetual poor state, because they'll receive less if they earn marginally more. As a result, power is stripped from the poor via welfare and affirmative action.

[Indy]

That's bullshit.

That's a ruse used to justify slashing social programs because allegedly people won't go out and lift themselves up when they can live high on that horse--that welfare horse. Yeah, I'm sure that people depending on that life of luxury that welfare provides wouldn't jump at a chance to earn for themselves and lift themselves up the ladder.



The people who get royally screwed are the working poor, the ones out there working three jobs who make just enough to not qualify for things like medicaid or housing assistance and all of their income goes to necessities--they are the ones who are trapped in the vicious circle.

But that's not how the poor are presented to us, is it? By those who want to roll back the programs for people even below them? No, the poor are simply parasites living off your paycheck, aided by the evil liberal federal gov't, who wants to provide them with lobsters and cigs paid for with their SNAP card.

It also gets really funny when you look at all the people stuck in this trap who are white--oops there goes that stereotype! But hey if you have to break a few eggs to make a dog whistle omelet, so be it!

[The Comrade]

indy if i made more money and had to pay for insurance i wouldn't be able to afford anything. so right now my decision are work for less and get medicaid until i go back to school or earn more and then get raped by nys premiums.

guess which one i chose to do. now imagine i'm a single mom with two kids. which do you think i'm going to do for the rest of my life?

social programs don't uplift, they subsist.

[Indy]

Why do you think they were created in the first place?

You know what's funny? Social programs are used a code word for black people now, but after the bomb of the Great Depression hit there wasn't a lot of time to propagandize the New Deal as a handout program for minorities when everybody was in the same boat save for a lucky few.

Oh how memory fails, so now the whole idea is that we need to strip away the social safety net because it's just a mechanism to drain away white wealth to lazy black people.

Despite the fact that for decades now the wealth has been drained from the lower and middle classes to the top 1%. That's a neat trick, making it black/white--and false. When it's really super rich vs. the other 80%.

Just ignore reality, and target the programs that may be the last thing standing between poor people and complete destitution by arguing that these people will never "uplift" unless we cut them loose, so they can become Rugged Individuals.

[The Comrade]

yeah that's what i said. we need to strip away the social safety net. not that there are problems with them.

responding to your posts is like lancing a cyst.