America is near the end of its thirty year slide into second-rate status.
it is all due to the Republican drive to give most of this country's wealth to the
richest one-percent.
It began with Republican deregulation of the financial industry that
gave Wall Street power to transfer
wealth from the middle class into the coffers of the wealthy. Then they hide their
money offshore to avoid paying taxes to support the country that made them wealthy.
The final blow was the 2008 crash caused by Wall Street's and Big Banks' derivative trading – gambling with mortgage securities. Derivative trading is what caused tens-of-millions of Americans to lose their jobs, bankrupted
retirement accounts, and millions of middle class Americans to lose
their greatest asset, their homes.
In many citizens’ minds, America is extraordinary, special,
and the best place on the planet to live. Among those in the GOP, this perception is based on absolutist
ideology and gross lack of knowledge
of circumstances in other countries. Yes, there was a time when America was
exceptional – over thirty years ago when people had the opportunity to attain
the American dream of a middle class income through hard work and perseverance. However, about thirty years ago a
b-movie actor ushered in the era of
America’s decline when his directors gave him a script to convince ignorant citizens
that handing over the nation’s wealth and assets to the rich and their
corporations was the key to middle class success.
Trickle down economics is not working. The only thing that has trickled down is
hardship. Middle class income has stagnated and even lost ground in many cases. The results have been that America is no longer exceptional and
is rapidly deteriorating into an inferior second-rate status compared to the
rest of the developed world.
Yes, America
is the richest nation
on Earth. It is home to the most millionaires and billionaires of any country
on the planet. But that is where the exceptionalism ends. In just about every
other category, America is very behind the rest of the world. Many Americans are led to believe the country’s “
great middle
class” is proof positive the nation is exceptional, but according to the
“Global Wealth Data Book 2012″
America’s
middle class ranks 27th in wealth – behind poorer nations
such as Spain, Ireland, France, and Cyprus.
And to top it off, due to thirty years of Republican policies, the
American middle class is watching what little they have left transferred to the
richest one-percent.
The U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the western world in standard of living. The problem is the weak labor laws that give corporations and big
business the ability to pay poverty wages with few benefits. In nearly every other industrialized country,
every country provides healthcare, every job provides at least a month of
guaranteed paid vacation, and as many paid sick days as one needs to recover
from illness or injury.
Republicans are
now busy passing laws making it illegal to provide paid sick leave.
The Republican House of Representative just passed legislation
eliminating overtime pay. They are also trying to
eliminate worker compensation rules for on-the-job injuries and have said that they would like to abolish the minimum wage. America’s inadequate minimum wage is
13th
among developed nations. Abolishing
the minimum wage would put American labor on par with peasants in third-world countries.
ALEC’s
Republican right-to-work
states have more
poverty-level residents than do other states while their corporations haul
in record profits. Yet, these states actually get more federal dollars given to them
than they pay into the national coffer.
America has the WORST healthcare
system among modern nations because few can afford it, and even
if they can, this country’s people have the worst health outcomes of
all other industrialized countries on
Earth. In the event of a serious health issue or injury, Americans are
guaranteed to join the poverty ranks making the Republican drive to destroy the
Affordable Care Act all the more Draconian. In many Republican states, at the
behest of the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity organization, the GOP is
desperate to make senior citizens’ Medicare and Social Security a thing of the past regardless of
the fact they paid into it their entire working lives.
In nearly every country on Earth a college education is virtually tuition-free
and yet in America, Republicans decry spending on any education and are driving
college students into life-long unsustainable debt to enrich the banking
industry. In most Republican states, ALEC templates are diverting public school
funds to private religious schools to enrich corporations and create the next
generation of ignorant Americans claiming the nation is exceptional.
America’s social programs and safety nets
are among the worst in the world.
Instead of bolstering them to help Americans climb out of poverty,
Republicans slash them to provide tax breaks for the rich and corporations. Because of this,
nearly a quarter of America’s children are living in poverty with millions
of Americans earning insufficient wages to put nutritious food on the table. The
idea of ever achieving anything more is being thwarted by Republicans in all
areas of government, but particularly in the states. Right to work laws,
banning minimum wage, eliminating Medicaid, eliminating Medicare and Social
Security, prohibiting paid sick leave, robbing food and housing assistance for
seniors and the poor to provide more of the nation’s wealth for the rich and
their corporations are all part of the Republicans’ three decade effort to destroy
the middle class.
America was once an exceptional nation due to the rise of the great middle
class.
This rise happened after WWII under Democratic policies. Since Reagan, Republicans’ thirty year
effort to destroy the middle class is reaching fruition as we slide into a
nation of peasants with a ruling wealthy class.
President Obama said, “…our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do
very well and a growing number barely make it. America’s prosperity must rest
upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives
when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages
of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to
our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has
the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is
free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”
