A Middle Class Which Aligns with the Rich Cuts Its Own Throat
11 juni 2017 | Ingen har kommenterat än
”The middle class, can, broadly speaking, align with the rich or with the poor.
If it aligns with the rich, the policies it favors benefit the rich exponentially more than they do the middle class. Tax cuts went primarily to the rich, by magnitudes, for example. Real estate prices rising faster than wages made some middle class families rich, but benefited the rich magnitudes more than the middle class. (…)
The rich become powerful faster than the middle class and ultimately the policies they favor do not include keeping the middle class healthy: The rich want low wages, ’flexible’ labour laws, bankruptcy laws that favor their interests but not that of the middle class, plenty of financialized rent streams, and so on.
The first generation to make the devil’s bargain with the rich can benefit, maybe even some of the second, mind you. (…) But their kids are saddled with huge debt, make less money than their parents at every stage of their lives, and can’t afford to buy houses or even pay rent anywhere decent.
If the middle class sides with the poor, on the other hand, almost everything they do also helps the middle class. Poor people with money spend that money, and wage increases are much more useful to the middle class than capital gains because they are durable. And policies which reduce the size of the working class and poor, make the middle class bigger and stronger.”
Ian Welsh: A Middle Class Which Aligns with the Rich Cuts Its Own Throat
Kommentarer
Kommentera