Inequality is Ruining America

In America today, we have the Haves and the Have Nots, which is the very rich and the poor. What is missing is the middle, which is the group that makes it all work. They are the spenders who pay taxes, raise families. They are the supporters of the very rich and the supporters of the poor. This support system has worked very well until the very rich gets greedier and begins hoarding all the cash and cutting out the middle class with inequality. Inequality is done in many ways. Some is through laws enacted that shut down unions. This defund unions, but also stops worker training apprenticeship programs the unions provide. Shutting down these programs helps to turn our country into a wasteland of poverty. With the power concentrated at the top, democracy cannot thrive. This happened in the Guilded Age at the end of the 19th century. Now it is happening today. America cannot ever be great again until there is a large middle class with good wages, healthcare, free education, and good pensions. If we keep the extreme inequality, it will be the breeding ground of demagogues. Our country, at this time, has become a billionaires republic. Just look at who our president is and most of his cabinet are, and if they are not billionaires, they are retired generals. This is a perfect storm for disaster. It didn’t just start with Trump, this has been a long time in the making and both political parties are responsible. We are at the cusp of the GOP finally destroying Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Social Security, and with the help of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which has cleared the path for long-term de-unionization. Then a new aggressive business lobby worked in the 1970s and ‘80s to break unions and drive down tax rates for themselves. Then the Democrats built alliances with Wall Street. Unequal economic is the enemy of political democracy so inequality must change or the class struggle can turn into a political or military conflict and law enforcement are and will be the same as the military. We’ve seen this before and they will have the reserve National Guard. Cops are already dressing like the military and have a lot of the same equipment. How will this end? At this time, I would say the very rich oligarchs are winning. We must understand where we have been, how we got here, the whos and the whys. There are good books to read that can educate you on these topics. One such book is, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century.