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How Long Will the GOP Continue to Shrink the Middle Class Rather than Grow It?
A middle class, when mishandled, can be a powerful and fearsome thing, as the rulers of Iran and Russia are discovering. Both regimes are now teetering on the edge of collapse because of popular uprisings that would not have happened without a middle-class in each country.
People paralyzed by grinding poverty rarely revolt — it takes a lot to produce “barrio uprisings” — because their lives are consumed with day-to-day survival issues.
But when people are prosperous enough that they’ve left behind the most severe economic insecurity — believing they’ll always find another home, job, or can get into another university — they begin to demand a responsive government and will rise in protest when it fails to meet their demands.
Republicans have been warning about this since the 1950s, although not in the way you may think.
While President Franklin D. Roosevelt started America on the path to becoming the first nation in the history of the world to see over half its citizens in the middle class, conservative thought leaders have been warning their politicians about the danger of an “over-large and over-prosperous” middle class.
This explains why Republican actions always work against middle class people, worsen…
