Brutal Bookends: Our Middle’s Final Squeeze?

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Brutal Bookends: Our Middle’s Final Squeeze?
January 16, 2011

New governors in New York and California seem hell-bent on delivering a knockout blow to America’s most historic social contribution, the mass middle class.

By Sam Pizzigati


A bit over a half century ago, in the years right after World War II, the United States delivered up onto the global stage something the world had never before seen: a mass middle class.

For the first time ever, a majority of a major nation’s people had “disposable income” — real money left over after paying for basic food and shelter.

Two states, New York and California, would serve as geographic bookends to this colossal achievement. The duo offered “ordinary people,” as historian Kevin Starr has chronicled, lives unimaginable anywhere else in the world.



Activist government made those lives possible. Government-subsidized loans raised new middle class suburbs from potato fields and sugar beet acres. Tax dollars funded new infrastructures in energy, water, roads, schools, and parks.

“California’s children, swarming on all those new playgrounds, seemed healthier, happier, taller,” as Atlantic editor Benjamin Schwarz has noted. “A sweet, vivacious time.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/brutal-bookends-a-final-squeeze-on-americas-middle/