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The Middle Class Crisis
And How Our Military
And Corporations Helped Us Get There
deLyn Alumbaugh,
Cocalico Democrats President
For years
any serious public discussion of military expenditures has not taken
place probably for fear that it would be misunderstood as unpatriotic.
There has been no public debate on the huge amount spent on three
wars. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 was $693 billion. This was more
than all other discretionary spending programs combined.
As of July
28, 2011, the cost of wars for Americans since 2001 was $1,
226,613,900,900. Try counting up to that number. You can’t. The cost
goes up every minute.
Our
federal discretionary budget is so heavy with spending in defense that
it weakens our actual security. Some of the biggest security
challenges we face are the declining value of the dollar, and not
enough manufacturing in America. Americans are not being offered
enough American products and neither is the rest of the world. Those
security problems lead to unemployment and foreclosures and eventually
America becoming a second-class economy. Or, are we already there?
Our
national debt is more than $14 trillion. Under current policies, our
national debt will continue to grow by hundreds of billions of dollars
every year. The out of control war spending has stolen from our local
and state programs. Those monies would be better spent on creating new
factories, job creation, education, fixing or replacing roads and
bridges, healthcare and other services that are desperately needed
during a recession.
So what
does decades of huge military spending cost us beyond the actual money
spent?
There is a
Middle Class Crisis. A new report, "Under Attack: Pennsylvania's
Middle Class and the Jobs Crisis," created by the Keystone Research
Center in conjunction with Demos of New York, found that
Pennsylvania's middle class is in serious trouble. Pennsylvania is
short at least 230,000 jobs for people who want them.
Pennsylvania companies have fewer jobs. Those same companies have
lowered wages and in some cases they have eliminated health care and
retirement packages.
Young
workers fare no better. The same report found that adults aged 25 to
34 are having a difficult time becoming middle class because of
smaller wages and the lack of the lack of employer provided health
care.
Young
Pennsylvania workers are far more in debt than ever before.
Pennsylvania is near the top of the list of states with students
having huge college debt. One fourth of every young worker in
Pennsylvania does not have access to health insurance, and forty of
hundred workers do not have an employer sponsored retirement plan.
Bob
Herbert of Demos said, “What makes this decline different than those
in the past is that while post-World War II policies were geared to
benefit the lower and middle classes, policies over the past three
decades have favored the rich.
Between
1947 and 1973, incomes grew faster for those in the bottom classes
than for those at the top. Since the 1980s, the upper classes have
benefited most from financial gains.” The upper 5 percent of
Pennsylvanians has had a 58.8% increase while the middle class has had
a 16.7% increase in earnings. And now "for the first time in
generations, more people are falling out of the middle class ranks
than joining its ranks,” stated Stephen Herzenberg of Keystone
Research Center in Harrisburg. If it continues, the once-vast middle
class will become a minority in Pennsylvania. - Intelligencer Journal
Lancaster New Era July 28, 2011
The rich
are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer has never been more
true! Eighty three percent of all American stocks are owned by one
percent of our people. Policies in America today lean toward making
the bottom lines of corporations rich at the expense of everyday
Americans. Profits have become more important to corporations than
over patriotism. Americans need to address this issue today for future
generations of Americans. It isn’t the government taking the worker’s
money as much as it is actually the wealthy doing it.
How many
working class Republicans blindly vote against their own economic
interest by voting Republican because their parents did? The
Republicans have fought against raising the minimum wage, various
social security and health care benefits for workers, but they have
supported low taxes and high incomes for corporations.
Comment on this
Commentary - Comments should be directed to Ken Ralph, Editor of
LCDC Media at his
email address. Comments will be posted
here.
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