Tag: middle class

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Unions Are About Fairness

unionNicholas Kristof recently wrote an editorial, The Cost of a Decline in Unions

On the whole I believe unions to be a necessary component of our capitalistic system. The individual worker has very little power in dealing with large businesses or large government entities. When they do have power it is when there is a tight labor market, but those seldom seem to last very long.

It is always dangerous to generalize from one’s personal experience to make points about larger issues, but here I go. I have seen union membership be required when the union did little for the worker. They were in place, gathered their dues, and that was about it. At the other end I have seen unions so intent on justifying their existence that they frequently went to the extremes. They did not realize that sometimes good is good enough. There is, of course, a MLK holiday. The union for the outfit I worked for in Memphis managed to wrangle another holiday, the day of MLK’s assassination. It always struck me that they filed all too many grievances, and generally tried to maintain an attitude of the union versus management. Frequently what seems to happen with unions in place is an overly structured workplace.   The company and the worker lose some ability to do the work creatively. In the past the union managed to create jobs that were perhaps unnecessary. I had a roommate in Rhode Island who was a union fireman. His workday consisted of going in at 11 p.m., Continue reading “Unions Are About Fairness”

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A Scary Polls on Yahoo


I don’t know a lot about James Buchanan, but for my money George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan vie for the worst president of all times.

Reagan was a disaster for the common man, promoting the greed of the already rich and powerful.   By ignoring the energy crisis, he has left us decades behind where we need to be in a world where fossils fuels are ruining the environment and oil dependency hampers the economy.  His zest for deregulation has been disastrous Continue reading “A Scary Polls on Yahoo”

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Class Warfare

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

– Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

“The American Dream has been under assault for 30 years,” says former President Bill Clinton.

Dateline 13-Sep-2011 (AP):

The Census Bureau reports the number of Americans in poverty jumped to 15.1 percent in 2010, a 27-year high.

About 46.2 million people, or nearly 1 in 6, were in poverty. That’s up from 43.6 million, or 14.3 percent, in 2009. It was the highest level since 1983.

The number of people lacking health insurance increased to 49.9 million, a new high after revisions were made to 2009 figures. Losses were due mostly to working-age Americans who lost employer-provided insurance in the weak economy.

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

From Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income

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The Dying Middle Class

I do not know a lot about BusinessInsider.com, but it does not strike as a progressive or liberal leaning web site.  Their stated view is that of business, and business in this country is definitely not in the liberal camp. All that makes it even more interesting that they would run the following article: 30 Statistics That Show The Middle Class Is Dying Right In Front Of Our Eyes

A couple quotes from the article to titillate your curiosity.

“Every single day, more Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty  In fact, more Americans fell into poverty last year than has ever been recorded before. The number of middle class jobs and middle class neighborhoods continues to decline at a staggering pace.””

“Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs.”

IMHO, the Occupy Wall Street movement has it right.  As long as the wealth gap grows the problem will continue. As long as corporations control our government and politicians it is not going to get any better.  The sad part is that so many Americans have bought in to the rhetoric of Libertarians, the Tea Party, etc.   As long as we continue to buy the proposition that any tax is bad, the rich will continue to be under taxed and the diminishing middle class will carry the burden.  As long as we continue with the myth of rugged individualism in this country will we not do the things we need to do to have a sane society.   As long as we continue to support businesses that have marched our jobs overseas, the headlong rush to all of us fighting over jobs flipping burgers will go on.  At some point we need to dig our collective heads out of our asses and fight back.  I wish I was hopefully that we will.

Sigh…

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Ali Goes Home Early

Picture Tehran, Iran in the early 1970s.  The Shah was still in power.  The students had not yet taken 52 American citizens hostage at their own Embassy.  While there was tension between Iranians and foreigners, it had not yet gotten to the point where it was unsafe for them to be there.

My father worked for an aerospace company who had sold helicopters to the Shah’s Air Force.  He was assigned to set up a repair and maintenance program for those helicopters with the Iranian Air Force.   Since it was to be a long assignment, my mother and the 3 boys still at home went with my father to Iran.  In fact my middle brother, Mike, graduated high school there.  The graduation ceremony for his class was held at the American Embassy that was later to become the site of the prolonged diplomatic crisis.  Richard Helms, the former CIA Director, was Ambassador to Iran at that point and gave a speech to Mike’s graduating class.

As my brother Mike puts it living overseas was always a bit upside-down.  In America our family was middle class.  Go overseas with a good American salary, per diem and other perks for taking on such duties in countries such as Iran you are vaulted into a different social stratum.  While my parents and brothers were in Iran they lived  in North Tehran, the “rich” part of town.  The houses in this section of town were behind walls and gates. Continue reading “Ali Goes Home Early”

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Abe Lincoln and Eric Cantor

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There floats around a story of a trusted advisor of President Abraham Lincoln who recommended a candidate for Lincoln’s cabinet. Lincoln declined and when asked why, he said, “I don’t like the man’s face.”

“But the poor man is not responsible for his face,” his advisor insisted.

“Every man over forty is responsible for his face,” Lincoln replied, and the prospect was considered no more.

Personally, I think there is a lot of truth in the above story. Most folk can recognize a face that is habitually angry or happy or sad.  It does take living awhile for what has happened to you and what is inside of you to become stamped on your features.

I don’t like Eric Cantor’s face.  It strikes me as a combination of arrogant, angry and prudishness (picture someone sucking on green persimmons).   Every time I see a picture of this fellow it appalls me that he is a Congressman, let alone a leader in the not so august body.   I want to see someone with compassion and acceptance stamped on their face.

On the other hand John Boehner looks like he wants to fleece me.  Not so surprisingly that is exactly what he is doing to the middle class and poor in this country.

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Winner-Take-All Politics

Winner-Take-All Politics by Hacker & Pierson available at Amazon.com

The book is subtitled: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

This book needs another review like a hole in the head.  Typing the full title into Google resulted in close to 30,000 hits.  But hey, why not!

First and foremost, while I found the book deeply troubling and depressing, it is an important book to read if you want to really understand what is happening in Washington currently.   This book really did not tell me anything that I did not intuitively already know from decades of watching the American political scene.  It did reaffirm and document my intuition. Continue reading “Winner-Take-All Politics”

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B-A-N-A-N-A… R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C

I’m not much on conspiracy theories, but I am beginning to concoct one.  Our government is adrift.  We have not had any real leadership in the President’s office for 10 years.  What little “leadership” there has been has been counter to benefiting the vast majority of us.

The question then is who benefits from lack of leadership in this country.  My short answer would be cowboys on Wall Street and the wealthy 1 or 2 percent of Americans who seem to be setting the government’s agenda. Continue reading “B-A-N-A-N-A… R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C”

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Sacrifice is for the little people

Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece for Monday, September 20, 2010.  The Angry Rich

This is why I have become so discouraged in our political system.  It may have never been about the majority of the folks in this country, but I feel it is even more skewed towards the elite today.   A quote from the op-ed piece:

“And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes — but that was a long time ago.”

It is amazing how many middle class folks agree with this feeling of the very rich that the rich are entitled.  The wealth gap continues to grow in the United States, the people living in poverty is rising, unemployment remains high, our infrastructure continues to crumble, our children’s education is falling behind most of the rest of the industrialized world and deficits continue to grow. 

These folks have no real loyalty beyond their pocket books.  I would be angry, but the energy would be wasted. It saddens and discourages me beyond measure that an elite few control the political agenda of this country. 

What was it Spock said, “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one.”  Apparently not in America in 2010.

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The Middle Class Is Crumbling

Quote from video accessed by link below:

“Thirty years ago, the CEOs that are in ‘Undercover Boss’ were making 30 times as much as their working people. Now, they’re making 300 times as much! We’re about to become Venezuela, or Brazil, you know where the people at the top are basically behind they’re gates with guards to protect their kids from kidnapping. The middle class is crumbling and that’s the country we’re going to become… if we don’t fundamentally change where we’re going.”

Arianna On ‘Real Time’: The Middle Class Is Crumbling

A comment was made about CEOs not knowing what was going on below their levels in a company.  It is not that they do not know, it is that they do not care.  So many of those folks have a sense of entitlement to their obscene salaries.  Bill Maher is right.  We have it backwards.  The upper echelons get theirs before the folks that really produce get theirs.  I have no problems with those having more responsibilities, skills, etc getting more money for what  they do.  Heaven knows, I was a boss for 6 years and I hated every day of it.  But I am sorry, no one is worth 300 times the what the worker bees are making.