Democracy And The Middle Class
The image of a middle-class family in America, is a family that is living in comfortable, homes, with a two-door garage, televisions, and electronic gadgets. A family that would travel and dine out regularly, with the security of a good job. This is a description of the American dream. A strong middle-class is a key factor to the health of a democracy. Politicians seem to want to create a middle class through economic growth, however, the middle class is the cause of economic growth. A strong middle-class needs income in order to be good consumers, which helps increase productive investment.
A strong middle-class also encourges social conditions to help growth. When there is a large middle-class, people share common values and common goals, and are more likely to trust each other and work together toward that common goal. A strong middle-class helps the government run better, with citizens participation, and encouraging policies that benefit the society as a whole. Although there is very little information about the importance of the middle-class in our texbook, American Government, many scholars and great political writers of our time like Aristotle, Parenti, and authors like Gates, have expressed the importance of the middle-class. Cox, Alm, and Krugman are American economists, who believe that the middle-class is being eliminated due to our public schools.
Economin analyst, Alpervitz belieaves that worker co-ops will get rid of capitalist firms, and put power back into the hand of the poeple and the middle-class. Tomasello, an American psychologist, believes that the “evolutionay rood” of humans is to work together, and that workers of co-ops identify better with each other, and are more productive and can help our middle-class grow. Chomsky’s film “Requiem for the American Dream”, shows us how our middle class has deminished over the last 90 years, and how people have stopped caring for others for maximizing personal gain. We need to regain our democray by giving power and stability back to our middle class. The textbook American Government had little to say about the affects the middle class has on the health of democracy. What is mentioned is that the increase in government expenditures helps “heightened economic activity” and leads to prosperity and cultural changes. Government involvement in higher education led to more people being able to go to college, get a better education and a better job. This in turn increased the middle-class and helped the economy. Perhaps the reason little information is available about a strong middle-class in the textbook, is because the middle class is shrinking and unstable. The disposable income of the middle-class had not grown at the same rate as the rising costs of education, health care and housing. Homes are “much more expensive relative to incomes”, and college education has become so expensive that less people can afford to get a higher education.
The importance of the middle-class however, has been discussed by important scholars like Aristotle, Michael Parenti, and a widely acclaimed authors like Jeff Gates. Aristotle said that politeia, a government in which power rests in the hands of a strong middle-class is the most practical and most realistic form of government. Aristotle stated that “a life of virtue consists of finding the mean between two extremes”. In politics, the middle-class is the gap between the rich and the poor. If only the rich and poor exist, the rich will look at the poor as beneath them, worthless and less deserving. The poor will always be jealous of the rich and show hatred toward them. The middle-class acts as an arbitrator between the rich and the poor and mends the arguments and disagreement between the two groups. Michael Parenti states that our country is strictly structured by class, and that our economy is “run by wealthy and powerful figures comprising, along with other elites, the top 1% of the nation's affluent”. Parenti calls corporations 'organizational devices' that derive benefits and accumulate capital from the middle-class who are society's real producers. Gates states that we need to expand the middle-class in order to grow our economy. At one time “The net worth of the top one percent of households now, exceeds that of the bottom 90 percent. ” That one percent does not contribute enough to our economy for it to grow. Gate suggests “The ownership solution”.
For example, companies should offer their employees the employee stock ownership plan where employees acquire shares of the company they work for, on a self-financed basis, paying for shares with the future earnings of the company instead of money from their paycheck, because the middle-class cannot buy their way into significant ownership from already stretched paychecks. Today, many famous economists like W. Michael Cox, Richard Alm, and Krugman many see this middle class are in danger of being eliminated, and after reading their explanations, it’s not hard to see why. In recent years, the middle-class has gone through things like a recession, elimination of jobs and retirement accounts, record home foreclosures, decline in home prices and an unsteady economic policy. These economics believe that our public schools are a start to the decline of the middle-class. We all know that a good education leads to success, but the public-school systems “leave too many students unprepared for the jobs that now pay middle class wages”. Rebuilding the middle-class will require our public schools to get students ready for the future job market. In order to this, “there needs to be a demand for better schools and using it to produce an educated workforce”. To get better schools, the government-run school system needs to be eliminated because, “we won’t improve our schools until we get government out of the way”. Cox, Alm, and Krugman suggest that the private sector should run public schools. The private sector has already built a strong foundation for middle class, by creating market competition, “driving innovation, raising quality and lowering costs”, and it can do the same for the public-school system. Veteran economic analyst Alperovitz believes that too much wealth brings too much power, political power, and institutional power.
Alperovitz says that “Wealth gives the wealthy the capacity to ‘rent’ politicians and control the political process”. In other advanced countries, unions challenge the government on wages and how income is distributed, and they offset the power of wealth, but in the United States, we have a weak labor movement and there is nothing to offset the political power of wealth. Alperovitz believes that power needs to be taken away from the rich who can buy politicians, and given to the middle-class, who can become stronger and contribute to a healthy Democracy. He believes that setting up worker co-ops and getting rid of capitalist firms is the solution. A Worker cooperative is a business that puts the benefits of the community first. Workers own the business and they work hard in the organization to contribute to its financial success. Each worker has” representation on and votes for the board of directors, adhering to the principle of one worker, one vote”. Worker-owners also manage the day-to-day operations of the organization. Alperovitz believes that it is time for democratic ownership. He believes that if we can have 10,000 worker co-ops, this will lead to ”the beginnings of a new economic order”. This will give ownership to the worker and community rather than rich capitalist. This can also lead to “other forms of commonwealth and democratic ownership like city and state banks”. Tomasello, an American psychologist, who does not have any economic background makes an excellent point. He says that large corporations today do not “sync with our evolutionary roots and may not be good for our long-term success as humans”. He thinks that worker-owned co-ops are organized around their members, and as a result, workers of co-ops identify better with each other, which results in trust and an increase in productivity and growth.
This in turn will eliminate “centralized control”. Tomasello believes that people who work for large corporations are isolated from the people they work with, when they should be involved with each other and work together toward productivity, which leaves them dissatisfied. Big corporations are required to maximize profits for their investors, so employees of the corporations are working to please investors who have no personal connection to their own lives. If more worker-owned co-ops grow around the world, we could start to see a difference in the world we live in. A world where people work and live together in a common interest, an “environment that the human species has long called home. '' In the film “Requiem for the American Dream”, Noam Chomsky gives the viewer his perspective of how a diminishing middle class is affecting our democracy. He states that the definition of democracy is that public opinion has influence on democracy, because the government carries out actions determined by the population. He points out that there is an inequality in this country that is diminishing our democracy and putting a negative impact on our society as a whole. He says that “super wealth” which is 1% of the population, is causing this inequality. The American dream of working hard, owning a home, a car, and a comfortable life has collapsed. One of the reasons for this inequality is the high costs of elections. Major corporations “buy” politicians and fund their campaigns, so they in turn pass tax policies, deregulation, and set rules for corporations to benefit the corporations, so the corporations get richer and they in turn contribute back to the politicians. This has become a vicious cycle.
For centuries, the wealthy and powerful sector has never liked democracy, because it “takes power away from them and puts it in the hand of the general population”. Back in 1776 an economist names Adam smith stated in his book and in those days merchants and manufacturers were the wealth of England and they put their interests first before the common folks of England even though it was not good for their society. Today multi-national corporations and banking institutions are doing this. In his film, Chomsky states that there are “Ten Principles of Concentration of Wealth and Power”. The first principle is “Reducing Power”. James Madison and Aristotle both thought that if power was given to the poor, that they would get together and take away what belonged to the rich. Both men had similar views of democracy, but they had totally different solutions. Adams thought the power should be given to the wealthy because they were more responsible, but Aristotle thought instead of eliminating democracy, we should reduce inequality. In the 1960’s there was a period of increased democracy. People started making demands, like minority rights, women’s rights, environmental rights, and they started showing concerns for other people. The fear of this increased democracy let to the second principle which is “Shape Ideology”. This was a backlash to the civilizing effects of the 1960’s. In the 1970’s businesses realized that they were losing control over society and an excess of democracy was developing. They needed to stop special interest groups from entering the political arena and taking wealth away from the big business. Principle three is “Redesigning the Economy”.
The idea here was to increase the role and power of the financial institutions like banks, investment firms, and insurance companies. In the 1950’s the U. S. economy was based on production and manufacturing. Financial institutions has a small part in the economy and their job was to give loans to businesses. In the 1970’s the production and manufacturing started to decrease, as the financial sector became more involved in the economy. This put the middle-class working people in competition with each other all over the world, which reduced the income level for the working class. This keeps the working class unsure and kept them under the control of big businesses. No one was going to complain about working conditions, or decent wages, and they were happy just to have a job. The fourth principle is “Shift The Burden”. The 1950 and 1960’s, was the golden of economic growth for the middle-class. Ford raised the salaries of its workers, so they can afford to buy a car, the product that they were building for the consumer. Today, corporations produce products for the wealthy class, and we live in a society that allows plutonomy, “where a small percentage of the world's population is gathering increasing wealth” and the middle-class live “increasingly precarious lives”. In the 1950’s and 60’s, large corporations and the wealthy paid higher taxes, but today their taxes have been significantly reduced based on policies that have been put into place to protect them, and the burden has fallen on the middle-class, which lowers their already tight income.
The 5th principle is “Attack Solidarity”. Today people seem to care only about themselves, and not what would help others. This shows in many policy changes today, like the attack on Social Security. Social Security was established based on the principle of solidarity. It was established to help a group of people, like the elderly. We pay payroll taxes so we can have income in our older years. Social Security has not benefit the rich, so they want to defund it and get rid of it. Another example of loss of solidarity is the attach on our public school system. The public school system has diminished in this country. In the 1950’s and 60’s, when we lived in a less privileged society, higher education was free. Today we live in a much wealthier society, and do not have the resources to offer free higher education to the youth and the future of our country, and those who obtain a higher education comes out of universities with large amounts of debt. The sixth principle is “Run the Regulators”. In the 1970’s and 80’s, big business did not like high taxes and the high cost of strict regulations, so deregulation began, causing economic crisis. The government bailed out many big companies from going under, by giving them millions of dollars. Taxpayers were called upon to bial out these big companies while the working class did not get any help from the government. Once again the rich get richer and the working class suffers. The seventh principle is “Engineer Elections”.
The 14th Amendment states that “no person’s rights can be infringed without due process of the law”. (Chomsky) The intent of this amendment was to protect freed slaves, but it has been used by large corporations. Corporations get personal rights like human beings, and they become more powerful and wealthy. They put their money in the pockets of politicians and these politicians appoint supreme court justices to make decisions the benefit the corporations making them even richer, and the cycle goes on and on. The eighth priciple is “Keep the Rabble In Line”. Orgaized labor is a “democratizing force which puts up barriers that defend workers and rights”, that interfears with big businesses who run and manage society. (Chomsky) In the 1930’s there were alot of labot movemnts, activism, and striks. Now less than 7% of the private sector has unions, which has caused inequality of wages in the private sector, causing the middle class to shrink, and allowing the rich to get richer. The ninth principle is Manufacture Consent”. Today advertizment controls peoples attiutudes and decisions by “fabricating consumers”. (Chomsky) The advertizing industry tells the consumer what they need, what kind of gadgets they should have, what thier proper life should be like, and conusmer spend all thier time and enegery trying to obtain this kind of life.
Adverizing targets “uniformed consumer to make unrationalo choices”. (Chomsky) When PR compnies run elections, things work the same way. They target uninformed citizens which in turn make unrational choices against thier own interets. Politicians are being marketed tot the public and the public is eating it up. The tenth principle is “Marginalize the Population”. Chomsky says that “70% of the populaiton has no way of influencing polidy”. (Chomsky) This has created anger and distrust, and the population is acting against eachother. The pulic has started to care only about themselves and not others. All normal human emotions and sympathy like solidarity, and mutual support has vanished and we have turned into a very “ugly society”. (Chomky) A society where maximizing personal gain is done, even in the expense of others. Today we live in the freeest society in the world, and we enjou many rights that others have fought for. We need to continue to fight for our rights, and form organiztions agianst the is corporations and demand equality in classes, and regain our democray and democratic rights.
The veiws and reaserch of ecomonists, authors, political analysts, psycologists, and scholars have all proven the imporatace of the middle-class for the survival of our democracy. A strong middle-class is needed to increase productive investments. A strong middle-class is needed to encourges social conditions to help growth. A strong middle-class is needed for people to share common values and common goals, and to be able to trust each other and work together toward a common goal. A strong middle-class is needed to help the government run better, where citizens participate, and encourage policies that benefit the society as a whole. A democracy is having the input of the majority that is the middle-working class, not the input of the minority which is the rich and corporate America.
The powerful coporations need ot stop buying politicians, who pass policites and legislations only to benefit the rich and powerful. Power needs to be put back in the hands of the middle-class. The middle-class is the key to a healthy democracy, and we as citizens need to improve the condition of the middle-class in America today. To do this we need orgaizations that stand aginst corpotations and demand equality in wages and right. To do this we need co-ops, where the workers are in charge and are making the decisions on how thier lives are affected. To to this we need to stop the middle-class from diminishing, make it grow, so we can have more input on policies and legislation.
