Tonight’s blood boiler, America Without a Middle Class, is brought to you by the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel on banking bailouts, Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warrren.
Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street…
Pundits talk about “populist rage” as a way to trivialize the anger and fear coursing through the middle class. But they have it wrong. Families understand with crystalline clarity that the rules they have played by are not the same rules that govern Wall Street. They understand that no American family is “too big to fail.” They recognize that business models have shifted and that big banks are pulling out all the stops to squeeze families and boost revenues. They understand that their economic security is under assault and that leaving consumer debt effectively unregulated does not work.
One would hope that the Democrats realize that “populist rage” is likely to be the determinative issue of the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Elizabeth Warren always seems to get it right.
Thirty years ago, I made more money than I do now, well, since I was laid off two years ago. That’s how stagnant wages are. Even when I had a new manager, who gave me a raise, I was still making less money than when I was younger.
We can start by thanking the Rethglican’t Congress during Clinton, Bush I, Bush II. Hopefully, Obama will do something to make jobs reappear. I haven’t been middle class in so freakin long, if I could only make $12/hr I would be fuckin thrilled.