Does the middle class have a future?

[Roadrunner]

I dont need anyones advice on how to make money.
And the funny thing is? The advice given by those entertaining radio host fits the path I took and I have no complaints.
Sounds to me like you're listening to the wrong advice.

80% of the population owns 5% of the wealth.

Who Rules America Wealth Income and Power

The middle class has been eviscerated


Neo-Liberalism/Conservatives is/has destroyed the American Economy in favor of the so called "Job Creator"... In reality are "Job Exporters"...


Republicans only seem to have one solution to any problem - make life harder for those on the bottom.

Maybe your whining doesnt resonate with me since I dont have money problems.

The key to a happy life is tuning your expectations to your income.

And the ability to realize that if your income doesnt meet your expectations,you need to work a little harder,not ask for a handout.

Oh right, sorry, it's the "work" that's missing NOT wages or income *shaking head*


Conservatives simplistic minds

If you are rich it is because of your merits. If you are poor its because of your faults.

I live on $30,000 a year and am happy as a tick on a boar hog's balls.

I raised 3 kids on a LA teacher's salary, and emerged debt free owning my home.

I think you have a management problem.

Must really suck to be you, all torn up by envy, and having to use comedians to back up your insanity.

 

[Dad2three]

80% of the population owns 5% of the wealth.

Who Rules America Wealth Income and Power

The middle class has been eviscerated


Neo-Liberalism/Conservatives is/has destroyed the American Economy in favor of the so called "Job Creator"... In reality are "Job Exporters"...


Republicans only seem to have one solution to any problem - make life harder for those on the bottom.

Maybe your whining doesnt resonate with me since I dont have money problems.

The key to a happy life is tuning your expectations to your income.

And the ability to realize that if your income doesnt meet your expectations,you need to work a little harder,not ask for a handout.

Oh right, sorry, it's the "work" that's missing NOT wages or income *shaking head*


Conservatives simplistic minds

If you are rich it is because of your merits. If you are poor its because of your faults.

Never had a problem finding a job in my entire life.
Of course I live in Texas so thats no surprise.
Maybe liberal states should take notes.

Texas? Oh the one red state, barely, that pays it's own way. How's that race to the bottom going in Texas again? They starting to look like the 3rd world nation conservative policies favor yet?

 

[Dad2three]

80% of the population owns 5% of the wealth.

Who Rules America Wealth Income and Power

The middle class has been eviscerated


Neo-Liberalism/Conservatives is/has destroyed the American Economy in favor of the so called "Job Creator"... In reality are "Job Exporters"...


Republicans only seem to have one solution to any problem - make life harder for those on the bottom.

Maybe your whining doesnt resonate with me since I dont have money problems.

The key to a happy life is tuning your expectations to your income.

And the ability to realize that if your income doesnt meet your expectations,you need to work a little harder,not ask for a handout.

Oh right, sorry, it's the "work" that's missing NOT wages or income *shaking head*


Conservatives simplistic minds

If you are rich it is because of your merits. If you are poor its because of your faults.

I live on $30,000 a year and am happy as a tick on a boar hog's balls.

I raised 3 kids on a LA teacher's salary, and emerged debt free owing my home.

I think you have a management problem.

Must really suck to be you, all torn up by envy, and having to use comedians to back up your insanity.

Yep, like most cons I know, they suck of the Gov't teet for 30 years, then "blame" the unions and Gov't for the stability they have.


I guess since conservative policy has worked so well, YOU could just give me ONE POLICY CONSERVATIVES HAVE EVER STOOD ON THE CORRECT SIDE OF HISTORY ON IN THE US? lol

 

[Dad2three]

80% of the population owns 5% of the wealth.

Who Rules America Wealth Income and Power

The middle class has been eviscerated


Neo-Liberalism/Conservatives is/has destroyed the American Economy in favor of the so called "Job Creator"... In reality are "Job Exporters"...


Republicans only seem to have one solution to any problem - make life harder for those on the bottom.

Maybe your whining doesnt resonate with me since I dont have money problems.

Sure Bubba, sure. Another internet millionaire right?

You go ahead and think what you want if it makes you feel better.

We have a political party and *news* channel that caters to people who live in Black-n-White World. Even though nearly all societies have some socialist aspects to them, Faux News and Republicans like to spotlight individual things and label them and anyone who supports them as "socialist."

Most of Faux News viewers are non-1%er retirees, which means they are lapping up most of the socialism the US offers its citizens: social security and Medicare.

So which news channel do crying liberals watch?

Missed the point, I'm not surprised Bubba

 

[mudwhistle]

The Middle-class will simply be overworked and overtaxed. They will sign up for entitlement programs out of frustration and become cynical Democrats.

 

[Roadrunner]

Maybe your whining doesnt resonate with me since I dont have money problems.

The key to a happy life is tuning your expectations to your income.

And the ability to realize that if your income doesnt meet your expectations,you need to work a little harder,not ask for a handout.

Oh right, sorry, it's the "work" that's missing NOT wages or income *shaking head*


Conservatives simplistic minds

If you are rich it is because of your merits. If you are poor its because of your faults.

I live on $30,000 a year and am happy as a tick on a boar hog's balls.

I raised 3 kids on a LA teacher's salary, and emerged debt free owing my home.

I think you have a management problem.

Must really suck to be you, all torn up by envy, and having to use comedians to back up your insanity.

Yep, like most cons I know, they suck of the Gov't teet for 30 years, then "blame" the unions and Gov't for the stability they have.


I guess since conservative policy has worked so well, YOU could just give me ONE POLICY CONSERVATIVES HAVE EVER STOOD ON THE CORRECT SIDE OF HISTORY ON IN THE US? lol

Working is sucking off the government teet?

You ever see an LA teacher's pay scale dude?

 

[Dad2three]

The key to a happy life is tuning your expectations to your income.

And the ability to realize that if your income doesnt meet your expectations,you need to work a little harder,not ask for a handout.

Oh right, sorry, it's the "work" that's missing NOT wages or income *shaking head*


Conservatives simplistic minds

If you are rich it is because of your merits. If you are poor its because of your faults.

I live on $30,000 a year and am happy as a tick on a boar hog's balls.

I raised 3 kids on a LA teacher's salary, and emerged debt free owing my home.

I think you have a management problem.

Must really suck to be you, all torn up by envy, and having to use comedians to back up your insanity.

Yep, like most cons I know, they suck of the Gov't teet for 30 years, then "blame" the unions and Gov't for the stability they have.


I guess since conservative policy has worked so well, YOU could just give me ONE POLICY CONSERVATIVES HAVE EVER STOOD ON THE CORRECT SIDE OF HISTORY ON IN THE US? lol

Working is sucking off the government teet?

You ever see an LA teacher's pay scale dude?

According to the conservative meme, YOU sucked off the Gov't teet. Still are. Weird you don't know that!

 

[kiwiman127]

Middle America is being squeezed out of existence. WE pay for the tax shelters for the wealthy. WE pay for corporate bailouts. WE pay for bailouts to save Wallstreet, who turns their back on middle America when their profits are huge.

All the while the GOP defends the wealthy in their shafting of the tax system and the GOP defends multinational corporations as they shirk paying their fair share of taxes. The Repub party is in business for the rich guys and the low information poor, many of whom are in the south.

Tell me again how many Wall streeters are in the current administration. You're a freaking idiot if you think your party is pure in the matter.

Who made out well under Obama?

The 1%, and the 47%.

In the middle is the fucked over class.

Ain't hope and change wonderful?

This downturn for the middle class has been going downwards for decades. It's not a brand new thing. Many decision made by presidents and congress have and are now contributing to the further weakening of the middle class.
Now I know that Salon is left leaning, but this discussion lead me to search for articles about the history of the decline of the American Middle Class. It leans slightly left in my opinion. A "hero" in his article is Richard Nixon's leadership. The "villains", is the leadership of all following presidents (Republican and Democrat). Here are excerpts:
RIP, the middle class: 1946-2013
<snip>
The shrinking of the middle class is not a failure of capitalism. It’s a failure of government. Capitalism has been doing exactly what it was designed to do: concentrating wealth in the ownership class, while providing the mass of workers with just enough wages to feed, house and clothe themselves. Young people who graduate from college to $9.80 an hour jobs as sales clerks or data processors are giving up on the concept of employment as a vehicle for improving their financial fortunes: In a recent survey, 24 percent defined the American dream as “not being in debt.” They’re not trying to get ahead. They’re just trying to get to zero.
<snip>
The last president who had a plan for protecting American workers from the vicissitudes of the global economy was Richard Nixon, who was in office when foreign steel and foreign cars began seriously competing with domestic products. The most farsighted politician of his generation, Nixon realized that America’s economic hegemony was coming to an end, and was determined to cushion the decline by a) preventing foreign manufacturers from overrunning our markets and b) teaching Americans to live within their new limits. When the United States began running a trade deficit, Nixon tried to reverse the trend with a 10 percent tariff on imported products. After the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo suddenly increased the price of gasoline from 36 cents to 53 cents a gallon (and just as suddenly increased the demand for fuel-efficient German and Japanese cars), Nixon lowered the speed limit to 55 miles an hour and introduced the Corporate Average Fuel Economy law, which gave automakers until 1985 to double their fleetwide fuel efficiency to 27.5 miles per gallon.
Had Nixon survived Watergate, he might have set the nation on a course that emphasized government regulation of the economy, and trade protection as a response to globalism. We might also have preserved more of the manufacturing base necessary for a strong middle class. But his successors dismantled that vision, beginning with Jimmy Carter, an economically conservative Southern planter. Nixon’s answer to inflation had been wage and price controls, an intrusion into the free market that would be unimaginable today. Carter deregulated the airline, rail and trucking industries, hoping that competition would result in lower prices. It didn’t, but it gave the newly liberated companies more leverage against their unions. When inflation nonetheless reached 14 percent, Carter’s hand-picked Federal Reserve Board chairman, Paul Volcker, responded by tightening the money supply, raising interest rates so high that Americans could not afford loans for cars or houses. Ronald Reagan also chose low prices over employment, refusing to free up money until inflation declined. Car sales hit a 20-year low. In the fall of 1982, the national unemployment rate was 10.8 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. Walter Mondale accused Reagan of turning the Midwest into “a rust bowl” – a term reformulated to Rust Belt. Buffalo, Cleveland, Flint and Detroit still haven’t recovered. Neither has the middle class.
“You can’t grow an economy, grow a middle class, without making things, producing stuff,” says Mike Stout, a steelworker who lost his job when Pennsylvania’s Homestead Works closed in 1986. “It’s just impossible. I haven’t seen it anywhere.”
RIP the middle class 1946-2013 - Salon.com

Clearly, taking ideological politics out of the equation is the right and objective way to intellectually approach this subject. Pointing fingers only tells half of the story.

Downturn for middle class started with LBJ's Great Society, decades ago, as you point out.

I am sure you know I didn't read that entire post though.

I am here for fun, not tedious mental labor.

You're "here for the fun"?
Why do you hate America?
I'm here to change the world and everybody's mind who reside on this planet!
Now go back and read the article!

 

[initforme]

Its all the fault of Unions. Once people began to believe that unions are the reason for this disastrous conundrum, unions started to decline. Now as the unions go away, so will wages, benefits, vacation time, etc. Watch the working man take it hard on the chin from here on out so corporations can have total control and power. And they will sit back and watch factions of middle class folk blame each other for it.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Texas? Oh the one red state, barely, that pays it's own way. How's that race to the bottom going in Texas again? They starting to look like the 3rd world nation conservative policies favor yet?

The thing is Dumb2three, you have no marketable talents, no education, you're stupid as a rock, and you have an entitlement mentality. You think you should be paid a 6 figure salary for sitting on a stool, pressing a button on a machine to make it open and close. But those days are gone, you are nothing but dead wood.

 

[SwimExpert]

The middle class fell for the lie that domestic tranquillity could be ensure by providing bread and circuses to the masses on borrowed money without being taxed sufficiently to pay for it.

The middle class killed itself; it is in its death throes now.

Ain't the Great Society wonderful?

You're close, but not quite there. The middle class fed and clothed itself with bread and circuses to the masses on borrowed money without being sufficiently taxed. They took their fatty share, bought a few houses, and have since been retiring and living off rents, telling the next generation that they're good for nothing lazy idiots who need to learn how to work harder if they can't afford to live 5 in a house. All while calling for the same programs that provided them bread and circuses to be cut, so that they can continue to be insufficiently taxed.

I did not ever imply the self-centered bastards learned their lessons; Obama did get re-elected, and they clamor for Hillary next despite all her crookedness and lies.

Not much changed.

I have a house I culd rent out, but, I refuse to because I consider it immoral.

I will sell it or leave it empty, but never rent it.

Hmmm, I guess that's your choice, though I don't understand it. Not sure what's immoral about it. But your house, your decision.

My point was simply to highlight the fact that much of what you describe takes place along generational divides, and tends to be based on world views developed in the vacuumous ego-centrism of disparate comparisons across the timeline.

Maybe just exploitive, not immoral.

I hate paying interest too, and when I loan money to friends or family, I never charge interest.

I think it's only exploitative if you charge exorbitant rent, are a slum lord, etc. In the past few years especially, as people have tried to cope with the collapse of the housing bubble and pass the buck on their own foolish house purchases for which they overpaid, there has been an influx of people who are viciously trying to make a quick buck off their house with any scheme they can. It's becoming very common for people to rent out houses piecemeal, renting (or trying to, at least) individual rooms in a three or four bedroom house for just barely less than an apartment. A few years back I was looking for a new place and came across a guy who was renting rooms out of a house for $600 a piece (in that area, a single bedroom would run for $600-$900) who wanted me to rent out the dining room of the house with a blanket pinned up as a door as if it were a bedroom. The place already had 5 bedrooms to it. I rejected it, but a few months later I found out someone who worked where I did ended up renting one of the rooms, and told me that even though the house was less than 10 years old, it was poorly maintained, and the owner was now was cramming a couple of the rooms with two people at $400 a head. The place was also infested with roaches and the landlord refused to exterminate because he said he couldn't afford it. It got me to doing some research and I found out that the owner had bought it in 2007 brand new, and could not have been realistically paying more than $1300 a month mortgage. Here he is pulling in $3k a month in rent off the place and can't be bothered to exterminate, and kept the thermostat padlocked and remote operated for 65* in the winter and 85* in the summer. My poor coworker had a hard time looking for other options because he just barely couldn't afford an apartment on his own and living in a small town made it hard to find someone who was looking for a roommate, in a place that was in his budget. That kind of shit is exploitative.

But if you're offering a fair product at a fair price and are reasonably living up to your landlord responsibilities, then there's nothing exploitative about that. There's someone out there who needs a fair rental home at a fair rental price. You could be the guy who ends up helping them out. If there were more people in the rental market offering fair homes at fair prices, it would suck the wind out of the price gougers who are flooding the place nowadays.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Since the middle class is being taken over by whiny little bitches I think they have no chance

 

[Dad2three]

Texas? Oh the one red state, barely, that pays it's own way. How's that race to the bottom going in Texas again? They starting to look like the 3rd world nation conservative policies favor yet?

The thing is Dumb2three, you have no marketable talents, no education, you're stupid as a rock, and you have an entitlement mentality. You think you should be paid a 6 figure salary for sitting on a stool, pressing a button on a machine to make it open and close. But those days are gone, you are nothing but dead wood.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

I dont need anyones advice on how to make money.
And the funny thing is? The advice given by those entertaining radio host fits the path I took and I have no complaints.
Sounds to me like you're listening to the wrong advice.

80% of the population owns 5% of the wealth.

Who Rules America Wealth Income and Power

The middle class has been eviscerated


Neo-Liberalism/Conservatives is/has destroyed the American Economy in favor of the so called "Job Creator"... In reality are "Job Exporters"...


Republicans only seem to have one solution to any problem - make life harder for those on the bottom.

Maybe your whining doesnt resonate with me since I dont have money problems.

Sure Bubba, sure. Another internet millionaire right?

You go ahead and think what you want if it makes you feel better.

We have a political party and *news* channel that caters to people who live in Black-n-White World. Even though nearly all societies have some socialist aspects to them, Faux News and Republicans like to spotlight individual things and label them and anyone who supports them as "socialist."

Most of Faux News viewers are non-1%er retirees, which means they are lapping up most of the socialism the US offers its citizens: social security and Medicare.

What a dumbfuck. Of course most aren't 1%ers considering 1% is a damn small number.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Middle America is being squeezed out of existence. WE pay for the tax shelters for the wealthy. WE pay for corporate bailouts. WE pay for bailouts to save Wallstreet, who turns their back on middle America when their profits are huge.

All the while the GOP defends the wealthy in their shafting of the tax system and the GOP defends multinational corporations as they shirk paying their fair share of taxes. The Repub party is in business for the rich guys and the low information poor, many of whom are in the south.

Tell me again how many Wall streeters are in the current administration. You're a freaking idiot if you think your party is pure in the matter.

Who made out well under Obama?

The 1%, and the 47%.

In the middle is the fucked over class.

Ain't hope and change wonderful?

This downturn for the middle class has been going downwards for decades. It's not a brand new thing. Many decision made by presidents and congress have and are now contributing to the further weakening of the middle class.
Now I know that Salon is left leaning, but this discussion lead me to search for articles about the history of the decline of the American Middle Class. It leans slightly left in my opinion. A "hero" in his article is Richard Nixon's leadership. The "villains", is the leadership of all following presidents (Republican and Democrat). Here are excerpts:
RIP, the middle class: 1946-2013
<snip>
The shrinking of the middle class is not a failure of capitalism. It’s a failure of government. Capitalism has been doing exactly what it was designed to do: concentrating wealth in the ownership class, while providing the mass of workers with just enough wages to feed, house and clothe themselves. Young people who graduate from college to $9.80 an hour jobs as sales clerks or data processors are giving up on the concept of employment as a vehicle for improving their financial fortunes: In a recent survey, 24 percent defined the American dream as “not being in debt.” They’re not trying to get ahead. They’re just trying to get to zero.
<snip>
The last president who had a plan for protecting American workers from the vicissitudes of the global economy was Richard Nixon, who was in office when foreign steel and foreign cars began seriously competing with domestic products. The most farsighted politician of his generation, Nixon realized that America’s economic hegemony was coming to an end, and was determined to cushion the decline by a) preventing foreign manufacturers from overrunning our markets and b) teaching Americans to live within their new limits. When the United States began running a trade deficit, Nixon tried to reverse the trend with a 10 percent tariff on imported products. After the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo suddenly increased the price of gasoline from 36 cents to 53 cents a gallon (and just as suddenly increased the demand for fuel-efficient German and Japanese cars), Nixon lowered the speed limit to 55 miles an hour and introduced the Corporate Average Fuel Economy law, which gave automakers until 1985 to double their fleetwide fuel efficiency to 27.5 miles per gallon.
Had Nixon survived Watergate, he might have set the nation on a course that emphasized government regulation of the economy, and trade protection as a response to globalism. We might also have preserved more of the manufacturing base necessary for a strong middle class. But his successors dismantled that vision, beginning with Jimmy Carter, an economically conservative Southern planter. Nixon’s answer to inflation had been wage and price controls, an intrusion into the free market that would be unimaginable today. Carter deregulated the airline, rail and trucking industries, hoping that competition would result in lower prices. It didn’t, but it gave the newly liberated companies more leverage against their unions. When inflation nonetheless reached 14 percent, Carter’s hand-picked Federal Reserve Board chairman, Paul Volcker, responded by tightening the money supply, raising interest rates so high that Americans could not afford loans for cars or houses. Ronald Reagan also chose low prices over employment, refusing to free up money until inflation declined. Car sales hit a 20-year low. In the fall of 1982, the national unemployment rate was 10.8 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. Walter Mondale accused Reagan of turning the Midwest into “a rust bowl” – a term reformulated to Rust Belt. Buffalo, Cleveland, Flint and Detroit still haven’t recovered. Neither has the middle class.
“You can’t grow an economy, grow a middle class, without making things, producing stuff,” says Mike Stout, a steelworker who lost his job when Pennsylvania’s Homestead Works closed in 1986. “It’s just impossible. I haven’t seen it anywhere.”
RIP the middle class 1946-2013 - Salon.com

Clearly, taking ideological politics out of the equation is the right and objective way to intellectually approach this subject. Pointing fingers only tells half of the story.

Andrew Mellon had a few distinctly progressive ideas. Of particular note, he suggested taxing "earned" income from wages and salaries more lightly that "unearned" income from investments. As he argued:


The fairness of taxing more lightly income from wages, salaries or from investments is beyond question. In the first case, the income is uncertain and limited in duration; sickness or death destroys it and old age diminishes it; in the other, the source of income continues; the income may be disposed of during a man's life and it descends to his heirs.

Surely we can afford to make a distinction between the people whose only capital is their mental and physical energy and the people whose income is derived from investments. Such a distinction would mean much to millions of American workers and would be an added inspiration to the man who must provide a competence during his few productive years to care for himself and his family when his earnings capacity is at an end.



Tax History Project -- The Republican Roots of New Deal Tax Policy

"How many times do you have to get hit over the head before you figure out who's hitting you?" - President Harry Truman

Just because you have no capital gains....

 

[JimH52]

Every time federal income taxes are taken out of your salary, or from an investment you have made, you can wager that they are helping to offset the taxes that some 1% is avoiding with his GOP endorsed and protected tax shelter or loophole. Take it to the bank....if you have anything left...

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Every time federal income taxes are taken out of your salary, or from an investment you have made, you can wager that they are helping to offset the taxes that some 1% is avoiding with his GOP endorsed and protected tax shelter or loophole. Take it to the bank....if you have anything left...

The 1% are the owners of big business,tax the shit out of them and they'll just pass the added expense onto the consumer.

 

[Dad2three]

80% of the population owns 5% of the wealth.

Who Rules America Wealth Income and Power

The middle class has been eviscerated


Neo-Liberalism/Conservatives is/has destroyed the American Economy in favor of the so called "Job Creator"... In reality are "Job Exporters"...


Republicans only seem to have one solution to any problem - make life harder for those on the bottom.

Maybe your whining doesnt resonate with me since I dont have money problems.

Sure Bubba, sure. Another internet millionaire right?

You go ahead and think what you want if it makes you feel better.

We have a political party and *news* channel that caters to people who live in Black-n-White World. Even though nearly all societies have some socialist aspects to them, Faux News and Republicans like to spotlight individual things and label them and anyone who supports them as "socialist."

Most of Faux News viewers are non-1%er retirees, which means they are lapping up most of the socialism the US offers its citizens: social security and Medicare.

What a dumbfuck. Of course most aren't 1%ers considering 1% is a damn small number.

Yet conservatives swallow the BS fed to them by faux, simply amazing. Conservatives policy for 30+ years is to reward the 1%es and see what trickles down, how has that worked out?

 

[Dad2three]

Middle America is being squeezed out of existence. WE pay for the tax shelters for the wealthy. WE pay for corporate bailouts. WE pay for bailouts to save Wallstreet, who turns their back on middle America when their profits are huge.

All the while the GOP defends the wealthy in their shafting of the tax system and the GOP defends multinational corporations as they shirk paying their fair share of taxes. The Repub party is in business for the rich guys and the low information poor, many of whom are in the south.

Tell me again how many Wall streeters are in the current administration. You're a freaking idiot if you think your party is pure in the matter.

Who made out well under Obama?

The 1%, and the 47%.

In the middle is the fucked over class.

Ain't hope and change wonderful?

This downturn for the middle class has been going downwards for decades. It's not a brand new thing. Many decision made by presidents and congress have and are now contributing to the further weakening of the middle class.
Now I know that Salon is left leaning, but this discussion lead me to search for articles about the history of the decline of the American Middle Class. It leans slightly left in my opinion. A "hero" in his article is Richard Nixon's leadership. The "villains", is the leadership of all following presidents (Republican and Democrat). Here are excerpts:
RIP, the middle class: 1946-2013
<snip>
The shrinking of the middle class is not a failure of capitalism. It’s a failure of government. Capitalism has been doing exactly what it was designed to do: concentrating wealth in the ownership class, while providing the mass of workers with just enough wages to feed, house and clothe themselves. Young people who graduate from college to $9.80 an hour jobs as sales clerks or data processors are giving up on the concept of employment as a vehicle for improving their financial fortunes: In a recent survey, 24 percent defined the American dream as “not being in debt.” They’re not trying to get ahead. They’re just trying to get to zero.
<snip>
The last president who had a plan for protecting American workers from the vicissitudes of the global economy was Richard Nixon, who was in office when foreign steel and foreign cars began seriously competing with domestic products. The most farsighted politician of his generation, Nixon realized that America’s economic hegemony was coming to an end, and was determined to cushion the decline by a) preventing foreign manufacturers from overrunning our markets and b) teaching Americans to live within their new limits. When the United States began running a trade deficit, Nixon tried to reverse the trend with a 10 percent tariff on imported products. After the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo suddenly increased the price of gasoline from 36 cents to 53 cents a gallon (and just as suddenly increased the demand for fuel-efficient German and Japanese cars), Nixon lowered the speed limit to 55 miles an hour and introduced the Corporate Average Fuel Economy law, which gave automakers until 1985 to double their fleetwide fuel efficiency to 27.5 miles per gallon.
Had Nixon survived Watergate, he might have set the nation on a course that emphasized government regulation of the economy, and trade protection as a response to globalism. We might also have preserved more of the manufacturing base necessary for a strong middle class. But his successors dismantled that vision, beginning with Jimmy Carter, an economically conservative Southern planter. Nixon’s answer to inflation had been wage and price controls, an intrusion into the free market that would be unimaginable today. Carter deregulated the airline, rail and trucking industries, hoping that competition would result in lower prices. It didn’t, but it gave the newly liberated companies more leverage against their unions. When inflation nonetheless reached 14 percent, Carter’s hand-picked Federal Reserve Board chairman, Paul Volcker, responded by tightening the money supply, raising interest rates so high that Americans could not afford loans for cars or houses. Ronald Reagan also chose low prices over employment, refusing to free up money until inflation declined. Car sales hit a 20-year low. In the fall of 1982, the national unemployment rate was 10.8 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. Walter Mondale accused Reagan of turning the Midwest into “a rust bowl” – a term reformulated to Rust Belt. Buffalo, Cleveland, Flint and Detroit still haven’t recovered. Neither has the middle class.
“You can’t grow an economy, grow a middle class, without making things, producing stuff,” says Mike Stout, a steelworker who lost his job when Pennsylvania’s Homestead Works closed in 1986. “It’s just impossible. I haven’t seen it anywhere.”
RIP the middle class 1946-2013 - Salon.com

Clearly, taking ideological politics out of the equation is the right and objective way to intellectually approach this subject. Pointing fingers only tells half of the story.

Andrew Mellon had a few distinctly progressive ideas. Of particular note, he suggested taxing "earned" income from wages and salaries more lightly that "unearned" income from investments. As he argued:


The fairness of taxing more lightly income from wages, salaries or from investments is beyond question. In the first case, the income is uncertain and limited in duration; sickness or death destroys it and old age diminishes it; in the other, the source of income continues; the income may be disposed of during a man's life and it descends to his heirs.

Surely we can afford to make a distinction between the people whose only capital is their mental and physical energy and the people whose income is derived from investments. Such a distinction would mean much to millions of American workers and would be an added inspiration to the man who must provide a competence during his few productive years to care for himself and his family when his earnings capacity is at an end.



Tax History Project -- The Republican Roots of New Deal Tax Policy

"How many times do you have to get hit over the head before you figure out who's hitting you?" - President Harry Truman

Just because you have no capital gains....

Yeah, because Mellon had none right? lol

The Top 0.1% (1/10th of 1%) Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains (includes dividends)

The Top 0.1 Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains - Forbes

And the cons want to completely stop taxing it? lol

 

[Dad2three]

Every time federal income taxes are taken out of your salary, or from an investment you have made, you can wager that they are helping to offset the taxes that some 1% is avoiding with his GOP endorsed and protected tax shelter or loophole. Take it to the bank....if you have anything left...

The 1% are the owners of big business,tax the shit out of them and they'll just pass the added expense onto the consumer.

Sure, except THAT'S not historically happened, NOR what economists say. Weird conservatives don't get that?


20 percent of the corporate income tax burden as falling on labor, 20 percent on the normal return to all capital, and 60 percent on the supernormal returns to corporate
equity (shareholders)

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/412651-Tax-Model-Corporate-Tax-Incidence.pdf