GOP Plans to Destroy Our Safety Net Will Also Kill Democracy

Newt Gingrich openly bragged recently at the Heritage Foundation that the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress were going to "break out of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt model." That "model," of course, created what we today refer to as "the middle class."

Ever since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have been working overtime to kneecap institutions that support the American middle class. And, as any working-class family can tell you, the GOP has had some substantial successes, particularly in shifting both income and political power away from voters and towards billionaires and transnational corporations.

In July of last year, discussing SCOTUS's 5/4 conservative vote on Citizens United, President Jimmy Carter told me: "It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery..." He added: "[W]e've just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors..."

As Princeton researchers Gilens and Page demonstrated in an exhaustive analysis of the difference between what most Americans want their politicians to do legislatively, versus what American politicians actually do, it's pretty clear that President Carter was right.

They found that while the legislative priorities of the top 10% of Americans are consistently made into law, things the bottom 90% want are ignored. In other words, today in America, democracy only "works" for the top 10% of Americans.

For thousands of years, economists and economic observers from Aristotle to Adam Smith to Thomas Picketty have told us that a "middle class" is not a normal by-product of raw, unregulated capitalism - what right-wing ideologues call "the free market."

Instead, unregulated markets - particularly markets not regulated by significant taxation on predatory incomes - invariably lead to the opposite of a healthy middle class: they produce extremes of inequality, which are as dangerous to democracy as cancer is to a living being.

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Comments

stopgap's picture
stopgap 6 years 22 weeks ago
#1

Not forced, but compelled by a sense of decency and caring about the needs of our families, friends, and even people we don't even know. Caring about the welfare of the country and the planet and its future and the future of generations to come.

It's one thing to have "opposing views," quite another to champion the election and inauguration of a leader that has never ever served one second in any public office. Never been tested to oversee all that we rely on to make or lives livable. To cede full control to a person that is so transparently flawed to be that leader, without any reasonable method of controlling the outcome.

And were supposed to silently sit by and not challenge the wisdom of those "opposing views"?

But on the impulse of their own bigotry and the consul of hate-wing media, those with "opposing views" have decided to throw all caution to the wind and impose their pipe-dream idol, their white-sheet knight in shinning armor, on to the nation and world at large. No doubt he will come in and wave his magic wand and solve all the problems of the nation. Like Santa Claus, he will shower us with gifts. Like the tooth-fairy, he will place money under our pillows so that we never want from being poor. "It will be great" "It will be wonderful" "It will be huge" "You're gonna love it." Promises. Promises. Promises. But not one detail or any proof of how it will or can be done other than the same old tried and failed methods of Republican economics and diplomacy.

Faith brothers and sisters. Faith. Don't make waves and don't ask questions and don't even dare criticize the veracity and compentence of the fearless leader. Have faith. That is all you will need.

Ou812's picture
Ou812 6 years 22 weeks ago
#3

StopGap:

Ford cancels plan for $1.6 Billion plant in Mexico, after Trump Criticism. Will add 700 jobs in Michigan......and Trump won't be president for 17 more day....stay tuned.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ford-mexico-idUSKBN14N1EO

deepspace's picture
deepspace 6 years 22 weeks ago
#4

@Diane#50:

Being a public forum for all to peruse, is there any reason why anyone should not respond to opposing views?

Everybody has the right to say whatever they want, as forcefully as they like; everybody has the right to disagree, as strongly as they see fit.

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