This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
All this paints a scenario of a dying middle class heading for extinction. Good jobs are disappearing, wages are stagnant or falling making becoming middle class today, in Hartmann's words "like scaling a cliff." Those who are middle class now are hanging on for dear life but losing their grip, and those aspiring to get there find it increasingly harder to do. It can't be done on the minimum wage or even well above it in a job that pays at the Walmart level. And it surely can't be done without the protection unions once could provide before the Reagan war on labor began reducing their power, or in a nation that once had a strong base of high-paying manufacturing and other jobs now being lost to cheap labor markets abroad. The result in Hartmann's words: "America is regressing (and) Middle-class income has stopped growing." The problem isn't the economy. It's the unlevel playing field where union protection is weak, corporations are in control in league with government supporting their interests, and workplaces are "run more like kingdoms" with workers heading toward becoming serfs with no rights.Hartmann says the cons are winning the battle to weaken democracy "by screwing over the middle class," and he offers a prescription to fight back by reclaiming the government-run programs that created a strong middle class in the first place:
-- let the public again have the right to own the military (without the high-priced private contractors), prisons, and the electoral system.
-- demand a national single-payer health care system for everyone based on how Medicare is run.
-- demand private companies keep their hand off Social Security and keep it as a government-run retirement program and safety net for the disabled.
-- 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.
-- 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.
-- demand a national energy program that "puts people and the planet - not Big Oil - first."
If America rebuilds its middle class, democracy will follow. But if middle-America withers, democracy will as well. Hartmann sounds the alarm - "We've been conned for long enough. It's time to take back America."
Conclusion - The Road to Victory - We must get on it now
Hartmann stresses the situation is dire and the need for change is urgent. He directs his message to everyone of all political party affiliations and says "It's time We the People took back control of our government. He offers his prescription on how to do it.
-- Take back the Democrat party - the party is in crisis having bought on to the agenda of the far-right Republicans. Hartmann says the solution is for progressives to join together to take back the Democrat party just like the cons took control of the Republican party with the election of Ronald Reagan.
-- A third party is not the answer because of our corrupted "winner take all" system under which whoever gets the most votes "gets all of the pie." We're structured this way because it's written into our Constitution which was a huge mistake by the Founders. That's not how it is in a system of proportional representation that most other democracies have under which a party getting 30% of the votes gets the same percentage of seats in the legislature.
-- Republicans also need to re-capture their party from the cons who stole it from the moderates. Today the party is run by the "Ayn Rand utopians, Pat Robertson fundamentalists, and the largest and dirtiest of America's corporate elite." They rejected the values of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Eisenhower, exploited working people and looted the nation's treasury for their own self-interest leaving it for those who follow them to clean up the mess it could take a whole generation to recover from or longer.
-- Change happens, sometimes slowly, and people need to band together to work actively for it which means more than "just showing up for a peace (or other kind of) rally."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
