The Slow Death of the Middle Class

By Laura Barcella, AlterNet. Posted September 6, 2006.

In his new book, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class, Air America host Thom Hartmann provides an exhaustive argument that America's backbone and lifeblood -- its middle class -- is vanishing. (Or being cast out, set aside, and methodically destroyed, depending on your perspective.)

Hartmann blends current affairs with a vital crash course in history to demonstrate the ways in which -- under 25 years of right-wing wonkery -- working people, once treasured as the foundation of our economy, are now neglected to the point of extinction. Through concrete examples of laws passed, unions busted and programs dismantled, Hartmann reminds us how, since Reagan's 1980 ascension to the throne, conservative policiticans have done little except "conserve" their own wealth- and power-grubbing interests.

But it wasn't always like this, as Hartmann makes sure we remember. With the creation of post-Depression initiatives which benefited everyone, such as Social Security, antitrust laws and the minimum wage, America's most forward-thinking politicians helped revitalize the economy and make the country a more unified whole.

Why can't it be like that again? In an AlterNet telephone interview, Hartmann explains that it can -- but that it will only happen when more Americans get out and elect the few politicians who actually give a damn about the rest of us.

Laura Barcella: What are the three biggest hurdles currently affecting the middle class?

Thom Hartmann: Free market ideology; a variety of practices to drive down the cost of labor -- from destruction of the union movement to encouragement of immigration, both legal and illegal; and the promotion of the idea that democratic institutions are an aberration, that vast wealth is the natural order of things in the human and animal kingdoms.

LB: In Screwed, you write about the "Golden Age" of the middle class. Can you remind us of what a healthy middle class looks like?

TH: Teddy Roosevelt was the first in the modern era to identify what it would mean to [have a] middle class in a society that wasn't propped up by slavery and land taken from the Native Americans (which was largely responsible for the first middle class, in the 1700s).

The Republican Roosevelt realized that without government intervention clearly defining the rules of [business] to serve society as well as capitalism, there couldn't be a middle class.

[Roosevelt] suggested that the hallmarks of a "living wage" (he was the first person to use that phrase), were that with an honest week's work, a single family's wage-earner would be able to support their family, raise their children, provide education for those children -- including college, care for all their health needs -- even in times of sickness (quoting Roosevelt), take an annual vacation, and set enough aside that retirement and old age would be comfortable and secure.

Franklin Roosevelt set about putting that vision into place 30 years later with the Wagner Act in 1935, which established the right to unionization, and the Social Security Act providing a safety net for old age (and for people incapable of working due to 'circumstances of birth'). ... All of this led to the strongest middle class this nation has ever seen, in the '50s, '60s, '70s and the beginning of the '80s.

LB: And then what happened?

TH: Then in the 1960s and '70s, a group of worried ideologues saw the social upheavals of that era -- women demanding equal pay and reproductive rights, African-Americans demanding voting rights, working people demanding [fair wages], activists demanding a clean environment -- and the ideologues thought what they were seeing were symptoms of society melting down.

It confirmed their fear, which echoed a fear of the early founders (John Adams and Alexander Hamilton), that too much democracy would lead to social anarchy. A ruling elite operating under the guise of democracy was the most stable form of government, and if we had a strong middle class like we had in the '60s and '70s, people had too much time on their hands and too little fear. ...

Laura Barcella is an associate editor at AlterNet.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »