Collapse of the Middle Class in the West
Written by Alfonso Elizondo
According to experts of the independent think tank, The Economy Journal.com, the rapid disappearance of the American middle class began in 1930 with the policies of Roosevelt’s New Deal to address the great economic depression of 1929. Until then, American society had been very unequal, with a few mega-rich and a large mass of poor people without any protection from the State.
Between 1935 and 1945 there was a brief phase of greater balance in family income in the United States and by the mid-1950s the average income doubled compared to 1929. The rich became poor because the State created special taxes for them. The New Deal raised the rates of profit for the rich from 35 to 63% in Roosevelt’s first presidential term and up to 79% in his second term.
Shortly thereafter, in the mid-1960s, the famous anti-communist Barry Goldwater, with the support of the Ku Klux Klan, created a far-right political movement that used the phantom of the ‘Cold War’ to pave the way for an economy that fostered inequality through the popular vote. But it was Ronald Reagan who really put an end to the New Deal, hand-in-hand with Britain’s Margaret Teacher, destroying the middle class and facilitating, to this day, the reduction of taxes on the rich at the expense of the poor.
According to the brilliant economist Paul Krugman, the US is suffering the consequences of new technologies that have led to the demand for highly skilled workers, greater international trade, increasing imports of labor-intensive products that reduce the demand for semi-skilled workers, massive immigration, a sharp drop in the minimum wage and a considerable reduction in labor union power. All of this results in tax changes that favor the richest to the detriment of the poor.
The existing historical data shows that for its entire existence the American society has not been egalitarian and has linked wages to wealth, with people seeking to be like the rich.
However, the increase in wealth does not correspond to an increase in salary; instead the opposite is the case. Between 1950 and 1960 a typical American family with three children could live comfortably with a single source of income, could buy a modest home, acquire two cars, one of which would be modern, could enjoy vacations away from home and even save a little. At present, this situation is no longer possible for millions of Americans.
Addendum: The current geopolitical landscape has been complicated by various problems in all regions of the world, without the existing transnational organizations having been able to do anything about it.
There is no specific problem that can be considered nodal; they are so diverse throughout the world that there is no idea, however wise and conciliatory, that is able to stop this new stage of human society from which a new global culture and a new form of social coexistence will surely emerge, where we will want violence of all kinds to be eliminated.
From our particular standpoint, we believe that China is very close to having political and economic control of the current world. In the meantime, the US and what remains of Europe and the Middle East are reaching their final stage as world leaders and their old empires have come to an end.