What did we do right to create a great middle class and what did we do wrong to destroy it?

[trenchfoot]

welders, machinist, mechanic, ect ect

I'm about ready to retire from my machinist/mechanic job even though I've enjoyed doing it for decades now. My boss is very hard pressed to find a qualified replacement for my position even though I gave them a year's advance notice.

Looking for plug-n-play replacements in most skilled trade positions is getting harder and harder to find.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

As you can see there was many thing that all came together to create a golden age for America. But that is now past, doing what we did then won't work again, because that was a tsunami of circumstances that all came together in the right place and time to build a middle class. We need to look to the new challenges that we face and solve them.
Those are going to mostly be finding an answer to the questions of what do you base an economy on when work no longer holds much value, and how do we balance consumerism with a growing need for conservationism. One of the things that helped us grow in the past was a complete disregard for the damage we were doing to anything and anyone that got in the way of profit. We can no longer afford that, so we need some type of new economy that can balance production with the environment and does not rely on labor to produce wealth.

We're not quite there yet. There will be a need for production jobs versus meta jobs for quite a while. If only because the demand is too small or because, there is an overly complicated process to automate.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

For the second part: reduced corporate and top marginal tax rates. Upper class no longer had to pay workers well or give out large bonuses to reduce their tax burden. Boom, flat wage growth.

What we did to create the middle class? The opposite of that.

Nope.

Literally every country has reduced corporate tax rates. Try again - next time with facts instead of "THEY should pay more.... but not me!"

 

[cirrrocco]

-A family can be responsible for 20 years, one bad health complication and their economic security can be destroyed
-College used to be cheap and mostly free. Now textbooks are 300 books each. Administrators make almost a million is some community schools.
-Trillions and trillions spent on wars around the world. All that money invested in the US would have built great infrastructure, happier healthier population, R&D [ Maybe the war economy does lead to better breakthroughs]
-Downfall of unions and job security, BS managers got too much control
- Moving manufacturing to China [The biggest fuck up , I cant imagine but i feel like US corps have cut off their own feet. Huawei has a revenue of 80 billion a year, from nothing a few years ago. This is money that democratic countries should be making]

I sound like conjur or dmcowen now.

 

[sportage]

To destroy it?

Simple. Greed.

And remember, even though today they sing a different tune, democrats controlled most everything back then. For some 40 years when the fiber of the middle class was being shredded away thread by thread.
Now, they want healthcare for all, a living wage, more unions, banking regulations, race equality. But back then it was all about the money and the greed, so democrats started pillaging the middle class.

A lot of what democrats now want they could have easily done and had accomplished back then when they controlled everything.
Hell.... it took a president like Richard Nixon to change healthcare by introducing the HMO. Democrats never did that.
And back then, democrats could have put in place more and stronger protections for unions, protections that would have lasted to this very day, but they didn't.

Sometimes, when you stand back and look at the big picture, it looks like this was all planned. For congress after congress to say one thing while continually doing another.
A united systematic screwing of the middle class.
NAFTA for one is a good example.
Ross Perot warned us about NAFTA and that sucking sound.

These people were suppose to be the smart people, but they either failed miserably or.... what we have today is exactly the way they planned it all along. And from both sides of the isle. As if they "pretend" to be in opposition, yet actuality work together. Protecting only their butts and their jobs in congress, while never the middle class interest.
Thus, where we find ourselves today.

I think the middle class is being played.
They always have been, from both sides, and elections no longer matter. The middle class gets only lip service and empty promises.
Republican, democrat, it doesn't matter.
It hasn't mattered for a long long time.

 

[soulcougher73]

I think its pretty easy to see when the decline started. So looking at the point in time leads to....Reagan. And what big thing did Reagan do? Hmmm

im sure their are more things, but that has to be the biggest of them all.

 

[SMOGZINN]

We're not quite there yet. There will be a need for production jobs versus meta jobs for quite a while. If only because the demand is too small or because, there is an overly complicated process to automate.

We are not there yet, but that is definitely in our future. If we wait until it becomes a crisis to work on a solution we are going to be too late. This is something we need to tackle now so that when it does become a problem we already have the solution ready, because when it happens it is likely to happen fast.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I think its pretty easy to see when the decline started. So looking at the point in time leads to....Reagan. And what big thing did Reagan do? Hmmm

im sure their are more things, but that has to be the biggest of them all.

Aaaaaaand also coincidentally during that time frame is when globalization really started to take hold....

But hey, it was all Reagan. He could have totally prevented it -and even if he DID prevent it, then subsequently the future administrations could have prevented it as well

 

[theeedude]

Elect Democrats, Elect Republicans

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

We are not there yet, but that is definitely in our future. If we wait until it becomes a crisis to work on a solution we are going to be too late. This is something we need to tackle now so that when it does become a problem we already have the solution ready, because when it happens it is likely to happen fast.

As long as economics are viewed as separate from societal issues no solution will ever be found.

 

[cytg111]

Aaaaaaand also coincidentally during that time frame is when globalization really started to take hold....

But hey, it was all Reagan. He could have totally prevented it -and even if he DID prevent it, then subsequently the future administrations could have prevented it as well

What is the alternative to globalization?

 

[1prophet]

Profit only matters and greed is good, along with cheapest is best (that includes workers) race to the bottom,

With the self first attitude instilled through our higher education system that values business majors over STEM degrees and considers the foundation of the country the middle class workers as nothing more than expenses to be minimized or cut and consumers as cash cows to be exploited.

Who taught them greed is good: are MBA course to blame

Peter Walker: to what extent are business schools' responsible for the global financial crash?

www.theguardian.com

One professor with a particular insight into the internal musings of MBA students is Srikumar Rao, who has taught an MBA elective at London Business School, as well as schools in the US, with the grand title of Creativity and Personal Mastery. It requires students to plow through a reading list ranging from PG Wodehouse to books on Zen and quantum physics before addressing whether they even want to spend their lives working 15-hour days in the pursuit of riches. Rao says he is now encountering people "more ready to speak their minds. They are much more reflective. In fact, many have turned down offers at high-prestige firms in favor of asking, 'What can I do that really brings meaning to my life?'."


Unusually for a business school professor, Rao expresses serious misgivings about the fundamental ethos of such institutions: "Our top business schools are really not education institutions, they are indoctrination institutions. There are certain things which are so much dogma that you don't even want to encourage any challenge to them - the primacy and efficiency of markets, maximizing shareholder value. These things are not in question."


He believes that notions developed in business schools such as agency theory, which argues that the managers' interests and those of their shareholders need to be aligned through devices such as stock options, have created a world of short-term profits in which executives gorge on bonuses.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

What is the alternative to globalization?

Managed sustainable production and services within the US. Force American corporations to buy American. Many will leave, this is a good thing. Take the opportunity to retrain workers for the new economy.

 

[Starbuck1975]

What did we do? We invested in America, infrastructure, housing, schools, and innovation and not just small projects but really big ones. When you think big and go big you get big results, when you think small and go small you get equally small results. Ever heard of the phrase; you get what you put in? That applies to government. You put smart people in charge of creating policy you get good policies. Its why Republicans only come up with stupid policies, they are thought up by stupid people.

So what did we do wrong? The same thing every fallen society does; over invest in the military and ensure the rich maintain or gain power and money. A budget with a significant focus on military spending sucks out not only money out of other better policies but it also drains talent and cheaper labor as well as hamper spending at the micro level. Policies that help ensure the wealth is kept in the hands of the few means those big projects we did that grew the middle class are no longer a focus let alone an option.


The point of the US government is to provide for the general welfare of its citizens. How does investing crazy amounts of money into our military to fight wars and conflicts that were never a threat to us helping with the general welfare of this country? How does creating policies that concentrate wealth and protect corporations help the citizens of this country? They don't.

Yet investment in the military is what created America’s prosperity.

Rapid industrialization - driven by WW2

Silicon Valley - military R&D

Internet - military R&D

Interstate System - Cold War

California - post war migration of Pacific veterans

Greatest Generation - defined by military service

Pork spending and the military industrial complex is a whole other issue, and not attributed to one party.

 

[Jhhnn]

Aaaaaaand also coincidentally during that time frame is when globalization really started to take hold....

But hey, it was all Reagan. He could have totally prevented it -and even if he DID prevent it, then subsequently the future administrations could have prevented it as well

Heh. Conservatives have been so busy fighting their culture war against the evil liberals that they let the financial elite win at economic class warfare against the rest of America. Vote Republican for more of the same.

 

[1prophet]

What is the alternative to globalization?

Globalization can work as long as those doing the globalizing don't have a plantation owners mentality that everyone else is there to serve them as cheap as possible as some new age serf/slave at the expense of everything else.

 

[cytg111]

Managed sustainable production and services within the US. Force American corporations to buy American. Many will leave, this is a good thing. Take the opportunity to retrain workers for the new economy.

So the alternative to globalization is isolation.
Let the rest of the world move on while you do you.
Like a bigger NK?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Globalization can work as long as those doing the globalizing don't have a plantation owners mentality that everyone else is there to serve them as cheap as possible as some new age serf/slave at the expense of everything else.

It's a societal issue. The idea that it's better for everyone to make a buck than for a few to make all the money is completely foreign to every corporation in the planet.

 

[cytg111]

Globalization can work as long as those doing the globalizing don't have a plantation owners mentality that everyone else is there to serve them as cheap as possible as some new age serf/slave at the expense of everything else.

Globalization definitely has growing pains and not without its downsides, its just, I dont see an alternative?
Unless you want to isolate and become this century's edition of the Taliban, fighting off change forever .. then the sun expands, over radiates the planet and everything dies. End of project Homo Sapiens.

(And to be fair, you had super greedy super wealthy elites snapping at your lunch way before globalization became a thing.
IMO you can grow with the times or get left behind.)

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

So the alternative to globalization is isolation.
Let the rest of the world move on while you do you.
Like a bigger NK?

The U.S. is big enough and diverse enough to be successful. Economic isolation would give us time to get our house in order. I think dealing with a relatively brief economic upheaval in this country is preferable to becoming vassals to some multinational corporation destroying America in the process.

 

[ivwshane]

Yet investment in the military is what created America’s prosperity.

Rapid industrialization - driven by WW2

Silicon Valley - military R&D

Internet - military R&D

Interstate System - Cold War

California - post war migration of Pacific veterans

Greatest Generation - defined by military service

Pork spending and the military industrial complex is a whole other issue, and not attributed to one party.

It is not what created America’s prosperity, it may have contributed to it but it wasn’t the creator.

And yes I’m referring to military pork spending and the MIC as a whole. And yes, “both sides”, are responsible.

 

[Jhhnn]

It's a societal issue. The idea that it's better for everyone to make a buck than for a few to make all the money is completely foreign to every corporation in the planet.

Which is why if we want a bigger piece of the pie we'll have to take it as taxes, regulations & redistribution. It's the only way at this point. There never was any other way. The broad middle class was the creation of New Deal policy.

 

[Exterous]

The idea that you are useless if you don't have a college degree, the denigration of unions, and the accompanying disrespect for people who work with their hands.

And raising the barrier of entry for new businesses. Lots of new requirements and complexities that favor larger companies that can afford legions of accounts and lawyers

 

[ivwshane]

And raising the barrier of entry for new businesses. Lots of new requirements and complexities that favor larger companies that can afford legions of accounts and lawyers

That’s not only an issue for new businesses but also for business professionals and licenses required to enter a field, everything from hair dressers to doctors.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Which is why if we want a bigger piece of the pie we'll have to take it as taxes, regulations & redistribution. It's the only way at this point. There never was any other way. The broad middle class was the creation of New Deal policy.

I believe it has to be more fundamental like the New Deal because increasing taxes and regulations (which I believe in) will simply cause companies to leave. As I said, this could be a good thing, if we also retrain the American workforce.