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THE MIDDLE-CLASS IN ECONOMIC DECLINE

by S.R. Shearer

Many years ago, German political economist Werner Sombart - in comparing Germany's situation with America's - wrote that radical right-wing ideologies were doomed to founder in the United States upon the rocks of "roast beef and apple pie," a metaphor for America’s wealthy and ever-expanding middle class. But something happened in the interim to "Middle America" which has not only stopped its expansion, but sent millions of middle-class Americans into a steep economic decline. And it's no coincidence that the beginning of the economic decline of America's middle-class (1972-'74) coincides EXACTLY with the creation of the American elite's "free trade regime" upon which the present American New World Order System is based. [Please see our article, "The Crisis of the American Economy and the Rise of Christian Fundamentalism."]

At first, the economic decline of America's middle-class was barely noticed; it was hardly recognized by anyone until the mid-1980s. By the late '80s and early '90s, however, some commentators began to take note of what was happening. For instance, some twelve years ago, Jack Beatty, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, anxiously noted that between 1974 and 1989 workers with less than a high school education had seen their wages fall by 21.7 percent, and high school graduates had seen theirs fall by 14.7 percent.

Economist Lester Thurow reported the same thing five years later: he wrote that from 1973 to 1992 average wages for the bottom 60 percent of male workers fell 20 percent. Thurow went on to say that the phenomenon of falling wages was a particularly desperate problem for younger workers aged eighteen to twenty-four where the percentage of those working full time at a poverty level income increased FROM 29 PERCENT TO 48 PERCENT.

Very obviously, as Ralph Whitehead says, the notion of an "ever expanding middle class" was yielding to the "diverging middle class," with blue-collar, clerical and technical workers falling out of the middle class into the ranks of the working poor - i.e., THE APPROXIMATELY 56 MILLION AMERICANS WITH INCOMES INSUFFICIENT TO COVER BASIC NECESSITIES. Moreover, according to John Schwarz, increasing numbers of Americans were beginning to realize that they too were only a "firing" or "restructuring" away from joining these millions.

Jodie Allen, writing in U.S. News and World Report (March 8, 2004), says that there is now no end in sight with regard to this phenomenon, which is dumping millions and millions of former middle-class Americans into poverty. She says that this -

"... trend ... (is) replacing full-timers with piece workers - make that 'consultants' or 'independent contractors'. With no health care, pensions, or vacation pay, these 'on-callers' are great for a firm's productivity - though not so good for a family's pocketbook."

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in a recent speech that "better educated Americans" were the answer to the loss of good-paying jobs in the United States. But that's nonsense - or at least very, very disingenuous. Allen reports that -

"... the jobs being exported (today) are not just those out-of-fashion, widget-making jobs. Now, what's moving overseas, former Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling noted recently, are just the sorts of upscale tech jobs for which displaced factory workers were to be retrained under ... (the elite's) pro-free-trade policies."

Not only that, but if - as Greenspan suggests - "better educated Americans are really the answer," then American young people are really in trouble. Why? Because - as Mortimer Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. news and World Report, writes -

"Colleges are harder to get into, and only the well-off can afford a college education these days. The numbers could not be more clear. A mere 4.5 percent of young people from the lowest income quartile get a B.A. by the age of 24; 12 percent from the next quartile get one; 25 percent from the third quartile, and 51 percent of students from the top quartile. COULD IT BE THAT AMERICA IS NOW RE-SEGREGATING HIGHER EDUCATION, ONLY THIS TIME NOT BY COLOR BUT BY (ECONOMIC) CLASS?"

Zuckerman continues:

"In public four-year colleges and universities, average tuition is up 14 percent, to $4,694. That marks the second straight year of huge tuition increases, according to the College Board. The total cost for tuition, room, and board now averages $10,636, up $950 from about a year ago. This is roughly one sixth of the total pretax income for the average middle-class family and 70 percent (of the) yearly income for low-income families (which is up from 40 percent in 1976)."

That means when young people graduate today, many are graduating with a $40,000 debt against which they will be unable to bankrupt if they cannot land one of those high-paying jobs that people like Greenspan have assured them are out there.

Wow! $40,000 of debt before one has even landed his first job! That's enough to make anyone who gets a half-decent job a "kiss-ass" (to put it in the vernacular) to the "powers that be" for the rest of his life - which is EXACTLY what the elites want workers (especially higher-paid workers) in the "new economy" to be! [Please see our new "main article," "The Utility of Police Brutality in the Elite's War Against the Poor."]

Astonishingly, however, in all of this dismal news for average Americans, the American economy is actually growing - BUT THE REWARDS ARE FLOWING INTO FEWER AND FEWER HANDS. Beatty says:

"The pattern is becoming clear: the United States is reshaping itself in the image of Latin America." [And why not? - the American elites are PRECISELY the ones responsible for turning these countries into "banana republics!" Please see our articles, "Colombia: America's New Vietnam" and "The Spread of America's New World Order System Northward from Latin America to the United States."]

Clearly, as Allen reports, the biggest winners in the "new economy" are "owners of capital" - CEOs and shareholders of the IBMs and Wal-Marts of the world - who reap higher and higher profits from cheap overseas labor.

Obviously, the losers in all this are average workers in the United States - but that doesn't mean that new workers in the overseas sweat-shops that the elites are establishing in the Third World are gaining much from this phenomenon. For example, how many of you know that the Disney Corporation had their cute little Pocohantis dolls made in sweat shops in Haiti where 11 and 12 year-old girls labored for less than 30 cents an hour? The dolls sold for $20.00 in the U.S., an obscene markup of SIXTY-SEVEN times the cost of labor. When workers demand a bigger share of the pie, the "owners of capital" simply "decamp" and move on to another poor country.

Allen echoes Beatty: she too believes that the U.S. elites are purposefully transforming workers in the United States into "Third World peons" and restructuring the country into the image of a "South American banana republic." Allen writes:

"If this kind of trend continues for long, we could end up a two-tiered economy, with a small coterie of super-wealthy capital holders and a strapped and sprawling proletariat, sort of like South America." [Please see our article, "The Measure of a Man's Worth" for a "reality check" insofar as how divergent the incomes of the rich have become vis a vis "average Joe's" in the United States.]

Beatty goes on to say,

"The crisis of the middle class is of commanding gravity. Nothing else ... comes close." Why? "Because the crisis breaks what Herbert Croly called 'the promise of American life', and that is bound to be prolific of adverse consequences ... The America of the expanding middle class had a centrist ... (political system). The America of the diverging middle class is ... hostile to ... (moderation)."

And, indeed, that is what's happening. As the American middle-class continues to decline, it is turning to the same kind of radicalism that engulfed Germany in the 1930s with the Religious Right taking the place of the SS and the SA as the regimes "foot soldiers." You're astonished by this statement? - well, if you are, you simply don't understand how RADICALIZED many so-called Christians have become. [Please see our articles, "The Citizen's Militia Movement."]


More than forty years ago, Professor Seymour Martin Lipset of Stanford (now of George Mason) reasoned convincingly that middle class fury is the fuel which feeds the flames of fascism. If this is so then Americans are truly in danger of witnessing the development of a fascist phantasm in their midst - AND, AS WE JUST INDICATED, CHRISTIANS ARE LEADING THE WAY.

They've utterly focused on the wrong bugaboos - secularists, the Fremasons, the so-called Illuminati, etc. - and have instead taken as their allies the very financial elites responsible for their economic decline and the creation of an economy where mothers have to work just as hard as fathers to keep bread on the table. The forced entrance of millions and millions of mothers into the workplace (and the resultant creation of the "latch-key-kid" phenomenon) is what has led to societal decline in this country, not radical feminism, homosexuality, etc. - AND FOR THIS, THE ELITES - AND ONLY THE ELITES - ARE RESPONSIBLE. [Please see our articles "Political Christianity" and "Pat Robertson, Illuminism, and the New World Order."]

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