The Decline of America

Recently the Christian Science Monitor published an article detailing the decline in the standard of living in the United States. Income levels have been dropping, disposable income is vanishing, total wealth is on the decline with falling real estate values and the less than stellar performance of the stock market in the past few years. When I was young parents just assumed that their children would lead better lives than they had. Now many parents wonder how their children will make it which adds to the stress these parents endure wondering how they are going to make it as well. In all of this pain there is one bright spot. At least it is bright if you are in the top few percent of income earners in our country. You see while poverty and despair extends its grip all around you have seen your income go up. Corporate bonuses keep being handed out and huge donations keep getting paid to the politicians who will protect and enhance the wealth of the richest Americans no matter what the cost to most Americans.

We now have presidential candidates promoting tax plans that will shift even more of the tax burden onto the poor and middle class while saving the wealthy millions each year, that's not a typo, the wealthiest Americans would save millions if the 9-9-9 plane were to pass. We have seen the effects of "trickle down economics" and yet we allow our elected officials to keep passing laws that only benefit the wealthy and the corporations they profit from. We have allowed our country to get into this shape, easy and cheap credit allowed us to spend like we were wealthier than we were and as long as we could make the minimum payment we felt rich and saw no reason to change things. We were fooling ourselves and when it came time to pay up we realized we couldn't, we had given just a few people in our country control over our money and what control we didn't give them they bought themselves.

Tea Party supporters often scream about wanting their country back, I'm not sure what country they are talking about. A country with less regulation that ignores its poorest citizens and works only to make the rich richer while everyone else, the people that do the work and spend their hard earned money so the wealthy can be wealthy, get left behind? Well that is the country we have now, so that can't be what they are talking about. Maybe they are talking about the country that placed high tax rates on the wealthy, had a "war on poverty" created safety net programs instead of killing them so the government could save money and pass those savings onto the wealthy. The country that had strong unions which helped make sure that the workers in this country got paid a fair wage. The country that passed regulations to protect the health and safety of its people and knew that the business community was smart enough to deal with these regulations and still make a profit. The country that was prosperous and saw increasing income levels across all economic classes. If this is the country they wan't to get back, because this is the ACTUAL country that we used to have, the I will stand with the Tea Party supporters. Sadly the Tea Party people want the country that the wealthy have dreamed up in the fantasy world they live in and that so many in this country have bought, hook, line and sinker. This country never really existed in the US until now, but it bears a strong resemblance to a lot of third world countries where the rich have ben getting richer for years.

The wealthy love poor people. Poor people will work for less money and complain less for fear of loosing their jobs. Poor people make the wealthy wealthier and they hope to expand the population of the poor in the US. The wealthy will bring jobs back to the US when we are willing to work in the conditions and for the wages that people in places like China and India deal with. The Tea Party didn't take the country back but, with the permission of most of America, the wealthy took it away from us.