More and more people worry about paying for college, paying the mortgage, buying a car and retiring after working a life time. But the cards have been stacked for a long time for the middle class, in fact it’s been about 40 years. In the 50’s and the 60’s a family could make a decent living with one parent working but things changed in the 70’s. Now both parents go off to work while the kids go off to daycare.
Even two incomes families, are still having a hard time making ends meet. Prices of everything climb but the buying power of the average American are stagnant. While the American worker seems to be working harder and harder there is a small percentage of people who are getting richer and richer which is causing an income equality explosion; in 1968 the average CEO pay was 45 to one, now it’s 829 to one. It was like an illness that grew into a disease that changed the fiber of America.
Les Leopold’s Runaway Inequality An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice breaks down the causes and discusses some of the solutions. The corporate elite and the free market fundamentalist swore up and down that the upward redistribution of wealth was good for us and fine for the country. But they were wrong.
Trickle down never trickled down because the super rich don’t use the same services, common folks use. We go to the airport and stand in line while they go straight to their private jet. Their kids go to exclusive private schools and you never hear about school shootings in those places. They live in gated communities and are isolated from society in their multi-million dollar mansions.
Here are some of the things, we do know. US companies started shifting production overseas to meet world wide competition and avoid the high cost of labor. They knew that those workers would work for much less, and risk more to work in hazardous conditions. Those run across the border, and over the pond actions caused US factories to close which led to the lay-off of thousands of American workers. Good paying factory jobs were replaced by low wage paying service jobs in retail and fast food. Now, even large brick and mortar retail stores, are laying off thousands of employees because of the rising increase of on-line retail businesses.
In 1982 President Reagan fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers which gave corporations everywhere the green light to resist union demands and to begin an all-out-intent to crush them all together. When foreign auto makers came to America they went to non-union states.
In the back drop of the 1970’s were major events which effected the American economy. The Vietnam War and the Cold War was costing the government billions. And the Arab oil boycotts caused more than long line at the gas pump. It pumped up the price of petroleum based products and the cost of shipping goods and services all over the country. By the 70’s Europe and Japan had fully recovered from WWII and were now competing with the US globally. And the political and social turmoil of the 1960’s spurred the government to increase domestic spending to improve the lives of low-income Americans.
The Better Business Climate model was adopted in 1980 with three major parts.
- Cut taxes especially on the wealthy and large corporations.
- Cut government regulations, especially on high finance.
- Reduce government social spending.
It is now 2018. Does any of this sound familiar? What are you going to do if you are not in the top 1%. Start saving some of your paper currency in an appreciating asset by looking at the following link http://therealmoney.online/earlhackett323.
H.G.M.
Hackett Global Marketing 