One day after the sixty-eighth anniversary of the Normandy Landings
of D-Day and Scott Walker’s Citizens
United Victory in the Wisconsin governor recall election, Americans need to
look at what is really bankrupting our country. We are not going bankrupt
because public sector unions want to ensure firefighters, police, state
employees, and teachers a modest retirement based on a lifetime of public
service.
We are going bankrupt because
the middle class has been split through false theories of economics. As a country we have lost our sense of shared
purpose toward a brighter future. Too
much Ayn Rand selfishness and not enough Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton
personal sacrifice for a shared society.
Our nation’s bankruptcy started in the Golden State of
California with Proposition 13 based off of the false premise that lowering
property taxes would boost economic growth and prosperity. This premise has since become the religion of
the Republican Party, and its sponsor Ronald Reagan the party’s saint. Yet, the only outcome this Voodoo Economics created is a gutting of
our public schools, local police, local firefighters, public parkland, national
infrastructure, state budgets, and federal budget. Combined with the prolific spending of
Republican administrations from Reagan onward, the loss of revenue and the
increases in spending have thrown our country’s economic future into chaos.
The citizens of California were sold on the idea that
selfishness is good. Then the country as
a whole was convinced of the same false economic argument that by cutting taxes
all would be well. Selfishness is not
good. Selfishness does not lead to
economic growth. Selfishness leads to a
loss of society as each person fends for themselves and does not care for his
or her neighbor. When the employee of a
factory who lost his security fifteen years ago is fighting because his
neighbor the teacher still has a pension and he thinks that is unfair, then
society as a whole is bankrupt. Reagan’s
revolution split the middle class. It
compelled some in the middle class with dreams of future wealth to resent others
in the middle class who hold the promise of stability. It pitted those having to fend for themselves
against those serving the nation through public service at the local, state,
and federal level.
This selfishness created the 401(k) retirement plan, which
since its inception has practically replaced the pension as the means of
retirement for almost all private sector workers. Second to tax policies, nothing has divided
the middle class more than the loss of a secure retirement. 401(k) plans have proven to be no replacement
for pensions as private sector workers who paid into these plans learned in the
financial crisis. Instead, one set of
middle class workers has no security and no retirement to rely upon because
they were forced into 401(k) plans, while public sector workers have a mix of
401(k) type plans as well as pensions and are more secure in their future. The argument to eliminate public sector
pensions is the wrong one.
Instead, if
the middle class was united, it should be arguing to bring back pensions into
the public sector.
Instead of the accolades of sainthood that Republicans hoist
onto Ronald Reagan, the country as a whole will come to see him as the most
divisive and destructive President we’ve ever had. We will see his leadership of the State of
California as well as of the country as the initial steps towards our moral and
financial bankruptcy. We will see the
Reagan Revolution as having split the middle class, cutting it off from the
growth of wealth experienced in the United States, and the creator of the
greatest wealth gap in our nation’s history since the 1920’s.
There are steps we can take to return to prosperity and
reunite the country. First we must
reunite the middle class. A strong, well
paid, middle class is the most powerful driver of economic growth ever found
anywhere in the world. Reuniting the
middle class through the creation of new retirement plans so that everyone can
count on stability as they age would be a good first step. A second would be a return to a progressive
tax system where those who’ve benefited most from society pay the most back
into it. Finally, as a country, we all need to understand, appreciate, and
willingly share our responsibility to pay for the society in which we want to
live. We need to fund our public
schools, our police, our firefighters, our public service employees, and our
private sector employees. We need to
reclaim the middle ground as a country rather than surrendering our economic
well-being to those who do not care for us.
Don’t let the Wisconsin recall make you believe that Voodoo
Economics is winning. It does not have
to if you, me, and everyone we know realizes that our country is being lost
because we are divided. Remember the
sacrifices on D-Day, when National Guard, Army, Army Air Corps, Navy and Marine
Corps troops who represented all of middle class America stormed the beaches of
Normandy to free our world from the morally bankrupt Nazi Empire. The middle class won World War II because it
was united. The middle class can unite
again. If it does so, Americans can win
back our country, our society, our stability.
Let’s unite the middle class.
Let’s regain our society. Let’s
save our country.
