Rasta, first off the American worker started loosing once he started buying foreign products, that he suddenly developed a taste for. The auto industry has only itself to blame for the years that they stopped making an affordable quality product. The consumers started putting their money into products that would save them money and also were worth the money they spent for them.

The banking industry did the same thing. People complain that nobody saves money anymore, well pay me a reasonable intrest rate and I will save with the bank.

The real problem is that with NAFTA, as you noted, has allowed for the companys to go where the labor is cheaper, which helps their bottom line. The education system in this country has failed to keep up and provide us with a educated skilled labor force ovefr all. Have you noticed how many foreign Docs are in America today? I could go on and on about this. The middle class is still here but we are seeing more people on hte poverty rolls and not producing anything.

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An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.

The Golden Age of Prosperity? You might want to take 1933-1939 out of those years as well as the mid to late 70's. Those were anything but prosperity, but I see why you added them, because they were during Democratic administrations - who had very little to do with the awful economy (just like Ike had very little to do with the good economy of the 50's). Just why did you add those years?

The inequality between the rich and poor was growing well before that. To blame it on Reagan is naive and ridiculous.

Do corporations have too much power, sure. If you want to say get rid of ALL lobbiest I am with you. But it has always been the case that those with money dominate the economy. You have yet to show where it has ever been different. Corporations have always wielded an enormous amount of power in the United States. The reason things have changed in recent years is that, after about the mid 70's, for the first time in a hundred years the US actually had competition from the rest fo the world and it does affect our corporations. They didn't face any competition before. Now they do. It has nothing to do with who is in office.

Want to end lobbiest and PACs from too much influence, push campaign finance reform. By the way, the 92nd Congress (which was overwhelmingly Democratic) paved the way for all this by passing legislation which expanded the power that PACs have. Well before Reagan ever went into office.

Rob you speak of a lack of savings among Americans, however, what you failed to realize during the 80's how billions of dollars were lost in the "Savings and Loan Scandal"!

Also, while Company's are leaving America to expoloit cheap labor and to increase their bottom lines to themselves and shareholders, a tarif tax needs to be applied to goods and commerce produced by those American Foreign Companies who now attempt resale their products back into this country after laying off millions of workers.

As for the quality of education today, starting in urban schools, I'd say they have deteriorated so much because of the rise in prominence of service-related industries, these jobs require little formal education. There's no incentive to correct the problem, and George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and stealth plan to privatize public education (along with everything else in the commons that never should be) will only make things worse.

The Bush agenda includes so-called school vouchers that mask an intent to end the separation of church and state by allowing vouchers to go mostly to schools where the central mission is (Christian) religious education or training.

The fake rationale for doing it is the same one the conservative neocons always fall back on - that marketplace competition improves performance. It's not so as in all other areas where private business replaced government-run programs the public ended up getting less and paying more for it.

The middle class is disappearing b/c we have become a nation that does not make anything anymore. There is no more money coming back into the country!

If America rebuilds its middle class, democracy will follow. But if middle-America withers, democracy will as well. "We've been conned for long enough. It's time to take back America."

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

I mentioned 1933 b/c it was at this point FDR begin to implement the New Deal! The New Deal was unlike anything that ever preceded or succeeded it. It was wonderfully radical in ways unimaginable today. He liberated labor with the Wagner Act guaranteeing workers the right to bargain collectively, regulated financial and other markets, and insured bank deposits with FDIC insurance.

He put people back to work with government funded programs spent on jobs to build vital infrastructure instead of on weaponry and a strong military like today. Most important was his broad array of social programs, the centerpiece of which was the Social Security Act that to this day is the single most important piece of social legislation in our history and the one most responsible for keeping a vast number of the elderly out of poverty plus providing other services and benefits for those in need. The Golden Age ran through the 1970s and included Lyndon Johnson's Great Society civil and voting rights legislation and, second to Social Security in importance, the Medicare and Medicaid programs begun in 1965.


The Conservative Reaganites and Neocons are winning the battle to weaken democracy "by screwing over the middle class," We The People need to fight back by reclaiming the government-run programs that created a strong middle class in the first place:

1) Let the public again have the right to own the military (without the high-priced private contractors), prisons, and the electoral system.

2) Keep private for-profit companies out of education and have government run it free without phony programs that don't work like No Child Left Behind.

3) Demand a national single-payer health care system for everyone based on how Medicare is run.

4) Demand private companies keep their hand off Social Security and keep it as a government-run retirement program and safety net for the disabled.

5) Demand a progressive tax system reinstating a meaningful 35% rate on corporations and a 70% rate on the richest 5% of Americans. Use the extra revenue received to repay the Social Security system and fund an economic investment program.

6) Demand a living wage and the right of labor to organize again unhindered by laws or business-friendly government policies restricting its ability to be treated fairly.

7) Demand a national energy program that "puts people and the planet - not Big Oil - first."

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AMERICA LAND OF THE FREE HOME OF THE BRAVE--BECAUSE OF OUR CONSTITUTION.

Demand a progressive tax system reinstating a meaningful 35% rate on corporations and a 70% rate on the richest 5% of Americans. Use the extra revenue received to repay the Social Security system and fund an economic investment program.

Rasta, you really need some help on this one. According to Department of Treasury figures, the evil rich are already paying more in taxes than the rest of the middle class. Next the political elite is made up of the rich and do you really think that they will fund anything for the rest of us? They already own the industiries and banking which allows the middle class the necessary monies to create and invest.

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An informed voter scares the Goverment lackeys.

An American first and always a Conservative.

Rasta, a few things. One being that you don't understand school vouchers at all. Remember the principal from New Jersey (Lean on Me was the movie I think) who was the black principal who changed the school with his discipline and emphasis on academics? He has stood up and said that it is crazy for people who care about minorities and poor people not to want school vouchers. What vouchers do is allow a minority student who lives in a shitty school district to go to a school which does actually teach kids. It allows that student to go to a school where thugs aren't in every classroom. The vouchers help the poor and minority students and some people have been duped into thinking they are bad by various liberal groups (those lobbiest you hate so much) because of THEIR agenda, not the kids well being.

As to the New Deal, it was an extension of Hoover's policies (remember Hoover Dam), and it was Hoover who foolishly convinced businesses into keeping wages high during the depression (at least while he was in office), so much so that those who did have jobs made more in real wages than those who didn't. The problem being there were way too many who were unemployed. The New Deal did not bring us out of the depression, the war did.

As far as yoru various points, in the first on what are you actually talking about? Private contractors are needed to build weaponry with the latest technology. Individual citizens can't do that - they don't have the ability. The electoral system being owned by us is confusing - nobody owns it. Prisons being 'owned' by the public? Why?

American education began to suffer when the federal government started to take a more active role in education. You want to give them more control, I want to give them less.

3 - fine with me, tell me how it gets paid for without my taxes going through the roof.

4 - why not let people have the option? Many in the middle class would take the money now and put them in their own IRA accounts.

5 - 70% tax on the wealthiest 5%! There is not reason to take 70% of what people earn. Remember, the wealthiest of Americans are people like the Ted Kennedys who don't pay very much in taxes because they don't earn anything. They don't have jobs! Why fuck the people who actually are contributing to the economy by employing people?

6 - The unions have a right to mobilize now. If you want to be fair, lets allow all states to be right to work states so that people are not FORCED to join the union to get a job. How is it anything resembling a democracy (1st Amendment freedom of association) to force people to join an organization and pay dues before they are allowed to work? The unions should also be able to recognize that when the industry they are working in is failing that their wages will suffer. They can't seem to understand this.

7 - It is a national security issue to me, I agree that we should look for alternative energy sources. But I think people are being naive if they actually think the prices will go down. The prices will stay basically the same for fuel for a vehicle because, simply put, they know they can get it, so this does very little for the middle class.

And there still managing to pull away from us in the riches category.

I'm for a reasonable progressive income tax. SS taxes are regressive BTW.
Medicare tax is flat. I don't like this but it is better than SS taxes.

wouldn't a progressive tax system be........... biased..... and unfair.... all our laws are applied equally against all the citizens..... well all laws except the tax laws...

"Today giant corporations literally run everything. They control what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, how we get most of our essential services like health care, and the information fed us that influences how we think including our view of them, our government and the world."

>>>In the old days, they called it 'fascism'.

look....asking passive income to be taxed at the same rates as earned income might be fair....doing away with the concept of long-term when it comes to capital gains might be fair.....

so lets at least give the poor shmo's who only earn 50K a break. For God's sake, full coverage family health insurance premiums are $12K per year.

also...why don't you go back and answer your other thread _____.