I remember reading Lou Dobbs' book, The War on the Middle Class, and feeling as though what I had been noticing, sensing and observing for so long was finally being named.  Over the past three decades, the gap between

rich and poor has grown steadily.  But as the very rich have gotten richer, it is not just the poor who have gotten poorer.  The layer of people who emerged with new opportunities during the Industrial Revolution and continued to thrive until "the music stopped" beginning in the Reagan era, "the middle class," have lost standing over the past three decades and have now emerged as an underclass.

When I was a kid, plenty of of my peers defined success as "having more than their parents had."  While that might have been possible for past generations, for those who are parents today, it is far more difficult to accomplish.   According to an article on money.cnn.com/2011/02/16/news/economy/middle_class/index.htm, in 1988 the average American tax payer had income of $33,400 adjusted for inflation.  In 2008, the average income was still just $33,000 according to data from the IRS.

On the other hand, the richest 1% of Americans, those making $380,000 or more, have experienced a 33% growth in income over the last 20 years.  The gap between the richest and everyone else has grown, while the middle class, trapped with stagnant income in the face of rising costs of living, has experienced a decrease in their standard of living.

I remember a friend of mine from Europe commenting that the United States was well on its way to becoming a 3rd world country, while what used to be known as 3rd world countries were gaining new wealth thanks to globalization.  As American workers watched their jobs move overseas, with nothing to fall back on, workers in India, China and other 3rd world companies found themselves with new opportunities.  Corporations took advantage of cheaper labor in other countries to cut costs and increase profits, and found new markets in the countries they were "developing" their new workforce in.

The article also notes that with the decline of unions and other labor protections, American workers had no voice and no power.  Add to that anti-regulation that loosened rules governing banks in the 1980's, barriers between commercial and investment banks dissolving during the Clinton era, the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which weakened oversight of complex securities and the Bush era tax cuts that benefited the most wealthy, and the pathways for the wealthy to become "the ruling class" broadened and deepened.

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Copyright 2010 Linda Marks