Restoring The Middle

Over the decades I have noticed a lot of loose talk about the “Middle Class”. Most recently I read something by a computer geek who claims that computers eliminated the Middle Class. My immediate comment was that the MC was doomed to decline from its first moment. After further consideration, I realized that the problem is with definition. What has been called the MC since WW II may be near the middle of the socio economic spectrum, but is what was more accurately called the Working Class, and that tem should still be used, if we define the Middle Class based on what people do?  If we decide to define Middle Class as that class of people who are between the higher and the lower classes, then sure the middle class is there and it is a third of the people. If we decided to make the definition based on the status of what people, then the situation becomes shaky, because the middle class is, or was, the bourgeoisie, above the peasants and manual workers and below the aristocracy. Regardless of how one defines it, the Middle Class has lost economic strength over the last few decades.

The worst part of the problem was the expansion and contraction of the upper part of the Working Class, especially industrial workers. There aren’t many of them left. With the loss of factory jobs in the U.S. workers don’t have nearly as many options left, and the options don’t pay much. Most of those jobs have left the country, and pay has dropped on the ones that remain. Just fifty years, people in the U.S. didn’t have to ever buy imported goods, unless they wanted to. All types of clothing, tools, household goods, etc. were produced in the U.S., and the goods were of good quality and reasonably priced. Today few things are produced I the U.S.; it’s easy for someone to have no clothing not made the U.S. Federal tax policies are the main reason why manufactures have let the U.S. It has become cheaper to ship things ten thousand miles than to make them in Lowell, Pittsburg, or Montgomery. As a result, many people have trouble buying such goods. Manufacturing clothing and general merchandise was never a tremendously profitable or well-paying part of the economy, but people could make a living.

Since 1950 the good paying manufacturing jobs migrated first from the North to the South, then they migrated to other countries, but that migration excluded the very best manufacturing jobs, aerospace, defense, and parts of the computer industry. We were left with an economy that produced little of its day-to-day things, which were shipped in from far away, and many workers were permanently put out of work. That situation has continued and gotten worse. As a result of the dotcom bust of 2000 many, many web artists and coders lost jobs and have not been able to get comparable work since.

I started this as a counter argument to the idea that the internet destroyed the Middle Class, and the more I think about that assertion the less rationale I can see for it. The internet is one of the few parts of the economy where there are jobs available that are suitable for the Middle Class, and those are truly Middle Class, rather than Working Class.  Rather than arguing about what has gotten rid of the Middle and Working Class, it might be a good idea to think about how we could restore the U.S. economy, including the Middle Class and/or Working Class. I think that it would be easy. Both Federal and State laws would have to eliminate most of the barriers to starting a new business, and taxes would have to be made fairer.  If there were a simple income tax in which everyone paid the same percent over a fairly high basic exemption, then it would be easier to tell how a business would do, and the workers would make more in after tax income. We would have to get rid of benefits that were not applied equally to everyone, so it would be worthwhile for people to work, and we would have to provide an effective “safety net” for those who had conditions that didn’t allow them to work. Today most of the people who are permanently unemployed could work, if there were jobs, and most of them would be happy to work. 

So make me emperor, ad everything will be wonderful.