Why The Republican’s Old Divide-and-Conquer Strategy—Setting Working Class Against the Poor—Is Backf

[applegrove]

Why The Republican’s Old Divide-and-Conquer Strategy—Setting Working Class Against the Poor—Is Backfiring

by Robert Reich at Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/09-12

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It was a cunning strategy designed to split the broad Democratic coalition that had supported the New Deal and Great Society, by using the cleavers of racial prejudice and economic anxiety. It also conveniently fueled resentment of government taxes and spending.

The strategy also served to distract attention from the real cause of the working class’s shrinking paychecks — corporations that were busily busting unions, outsourcing abroad, and replacing jobs with automated equipment and, subsequently, computers and robotics.

But the divide-and-conquer strategy is no longer convincing because the dividing line between poor and middle class has all but disappeared. “They” are fast becoming “us.”

Poverty is now a condition that almost anyone can fall into. In the first two years of this recovery, according to new report from Census Bureau, about one in three Americans dropped into poverty for at least two to six months.




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[DJ13]

1. K&R