The Selling Out of the Middle Class is No Accident: Interview transcript part 1, with Donald Bartlett and James Steele

 

Rob Kall: Okay. 

 

James Steele:    Not just expand the money supply.

 

Rob Kall: I want to take a little side trip here. Two areas! Three areas! One, I call this show, the "Bottom-Up Radio Show' because I believe we're transitioning from a top down to a bottom up world, and the top down powers are fighting their hardest, most brutally to hold onto what they have. So I'd like to get a perspective of your work and your writing from the idea of "Top Down" and "Bottom Up." Let's start with that.  

 

James Steele:    Okay.

 

Donald Barlett: Well, the Top Down, there's no question. That is why, this is one of the reason we have the largest concentration of wealth in this country since the "Robber Baron" era. I mean it's just breathtaking how much money is controlled by those comparatively few people at the top. Before... Neither one of us likes to talk numbers unless we have them in front of us, but, the middle class number you were asking about, now $35 thousand to $85 thousand income range, and that's income from a job. It's not an investment income. There were" thirty four [34] million individuals and families that, they represented thirty percent of the more than a hundred and sixteen [116] million tax returns filed by working Americans. The largest number of that group, fifty eight [58] million, fell below our definition of middle class. They're not.. 58 million aren't even in the middle class. And you see this happening because now you're hearing this phase over and over from some people, saying "the middle class are now the new poor!" And that in some ways is very, very true. They do not have the resources to live like middle class people did thirty or forty years ago.

 

Rob Kall: And what about my.. What I say about how the Top Down powers are cranking up..

 

Donald Barlett:      Well..  

 

Rob Kall: " they're hold onto, and grab more and more.

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