Yes It Is, It’s True: We ignore why middle class has declined

I wish I had a dime for every time in the last 30 years I’ve heard people bemoan America’s loss of the middle class. It would be even better if they understood the reason why.

I thought about this sad state of affairs Monday evening while listening to commentary from Wayland City Council members who believe city employees’ paid time off and comp time benefits are too generous. It appears they plan to make changes in what has been policy for the past 10 years.

To be sure, city officials must be good stewards of taxpayers’ money. We cannot abide a city government that spends money like a drunken sailor and then goes into a financial hole. To be sure, this unpleasant policy discussion doesn’t really affect a lot of people.

What troubled me more was a common attitude that has developed slowly, but convincingly over the past 35 years in which working people who in years past were considered middle class now struggle to live paycheck to paycheck and even need their spouses to work to make ends meet. It seems we are not sympathetic at the same time we don’t bat an eye when a corporate CEO gets a hefty raise to continue widening the gap between rich and poor. They’re too big to fail.

It sounds like old hat, but it’s true — The American middle class began to decline in 1981 with the introduction of “Reaganomics.”

President Ronald Reagan’s economic policy, inspired by the Laffer Curve and shepherded by Budget Director David Stockman, featured a massive tax cut for the wealthiest citizens, from a high of 70% to 28%. The explanation was that the richest Americans would use that extra money to invest it back into the economy and the poor and middle class would benefit from the “trickle down effect.”

Stockman several years later resigned and flatly stated in his book, “The Triumph of Politics,” that it doesn’t work. Budget deficits and the national debt began to soar because the federal government was taking in less revenue, yet spending a lot more on defense.

It was in the late 1980s when I often shared my fears that the rich were getting richer and poor were getting poorer. My comments, as usual, were dismissed and greeted with laughter from people who insisted it wasn’t true.

Since then it has become common knowledge that income inequality has reached almost incredible levels, to the point that the United States is flirting with a gap as wide as many Third World countries.

Conservatives who continue to be hucksters for trickle down economics and still worship “St. Ronnie” often tell us the poor are poor because they spend their money foolishly, manage their credit badly and too many of them lack ambition to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go out and make their fortune in the free market arena.

We have become so accustomed to worshipping rich and sometimes devious people that we seem to lead fantasy lives in which we want to be just like them, just like I’d like to be “Just Like Mike” Jordan.

Those at the top of the income pyramid want working stiffs to dream about advancement they’ll never experience, and even better, they want poor and lower middle class folks to fight with each other over whatever spoils still exist. And they want us to hate the government as the culprit.

That distracts us from the “owners” who have orchestrated this wealth disparity mess. They hide behind the spineless government officials, Democrats and Republicans alike, to do their bidding because they are paid to do so and because of court decisions such as Citizens United.

But when it happens close to home, when I hear normally decent people complain that they didn’t have such generous benefits at the private company where they worked. They would rather punish others who get “generous” benefits than lobby to improve their own benefits from their own employers. Where are unions when you need them? They disappeared with the middle class.

Two huge problems are that when you reduce wages and benefits, you may find it difficult to attract quality employees. And if you continue to lower benefits and wages, the huddled masses are less able to purchase goods and services. That’s not good for the economy.

I honestly believe our nation is in decline, and I maintain its eventual destruction began 36 years ago. Because of the skill of marketing and advertising and its massive powers of persuasion, we’ve been conned into thinking everything is all right and rich people, celebrities and athletes know and deserve best.

A troubling quote misattributed to Mark Twain — “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” It still applies, regardless of who said it.