Not one of mine, but one by Sara Robinson (Dave Neiwert’s co-blogger at Orcinus) posted over at the Big Con, entitled Stealing Our Future II: Democracy, Fear, and the War on the Middle Class. It’s not your basic short polemic, but a thoughtful essay on how wealthy conservatives and the conservative movement have actively worked to destroy the American middle class, and with it our faith in democracy, for their personal benefit. Here’s a brief excerpt to spark your interest:
It’s not an accident that the rise of America’s culture of foresight and planning went hand-in-hand with the rise of the greatest middle class the world has ever seen. In fact, it was a necessary precondition for that class’s emergence. Furthermore, political philosophers since Plato have understood that democracy, in turn, depends on a healthy middle class. As long as we kept investing in the common good, the American middle class returned the investment over and over by looking ahead, pushing toward the future — and also providing the economic, cultural, and political ballast for the entire country. […]
[S]omewhere back in the 1970s, a few rich conservatives decided that, even though they’d built their own vast fortunes on the sturdy ground of this same solid commons, they had no further obligation to pay for it. In fact, they realized that sustaining it was no longer in their own best interest, for a number of what looked like sound (if short-sighted) “business reasons:”
1. They didn’t need the infrastructure. If you’re one of that privileged 0.5 percent, you don’t need the government to ensure a stable business or social environment any more. You can afford to send your kids to private schools; live in a gated community with its own private roads, utilities, and police; get the strategic information you need from expensive private sources; and hire your very own army, if it comes to that. If things turn unpleasant where you are, you hop in a private jet and go somewhere else. Whatever you or your business needs, you’ve got the cash to buy it outright — without having to inveigle the government to cough it up. There came a point where they were simply so rich that paying for the government to perform most of these services for them no longer made sense.
2. They didn’t need the middle class. Industrial barons back to Henry Ford extolled the virtues of a strong consumerist middle class as the foundation of the American economy. They viewed it as a rich resource that could funnel staggering wealth into the pockets of anyone willing to feed its voracious appetite. For a century, the American upper classes were well aware that the great middle was their main money tree; and for a few generations in there, they took pains to ensure its continued prosperity.
But those days are long gone now. About the only use the upper classes have for the shrinking middle now is as debt-laden borrowers and consumers — and now that the housing bubble is popping, there’s no more money to be made there, either. Since the struggling middle has been bled dry, and is of no further value to them, it makes no sense at all to invest a single dime in its future. […]
Please go read Sara’s entire essay. It’s time well spent. And I think you will come away with a greater appreciation for how, and why, the conservative movement has succeeded in its efforts to reduce the power and size of America’s middle class by attacking our faith in government and the things that only government can provide: mass education, mass transit and transportation systems, safe neighborhoods, safe water, safe food, safe workplaces, and a future that is better than the past. As Sara notes, these wealthy conservatives who bankrolled the conservative movement are people dedicated to the revival of an aristocracy, or plutocracy if you wish, in which there are effectively only two classes: the wealthy and the poor.
