The Downtrodden Middle Class
I keep seeing ads for Lou Dobbs' show on CNN. He seems to have got a bee in his bonnet about the plight of the middle-class family.
Why, he asks, does it take two incomes to keep a middle-class family afloat? Why oh why, he muses, do Americans work longer hours than their European counterparts? It's time, he feels, to put the middle class first.
Why should the middle class be put first? Are working-class families second rate? One wonders if Dobbs has considered that if it is difficult for middle-class families to support themselves, what does that suggest about the typically lower-paid working-class families? Apparently their plight is not on his radar.
How many times do we hear a middle- or upper-middle-class, white male gripe about the plight of his social group...poor darlings, they do suffer so.
The question seems even more inane when one considers that the answer is fairly obvious.
The short-sighted hostility to labor unions that many middle-class professionals have acquiesed to over the decades is surely a likely culprit for why workers of all social classes have it worse here than in Europe. It is unions that campaigned for and won the higher wages, shorter hours and better benefits enjoyed across the Atlantic.
Universal healthcare was not a benevolent gift of the upper class. It was brought in by political parties that had strong union backing. The same can be said for all the statutory advantages enjoyed by the European worker.
Those in the American middle-class who have refused to speak out against anti-union legislation, or who have even applauded it, clearly fail to see that the benefits that unions win 'trickle up'. As the minimum wage goes up, so do the wages of those higher on the pay scale; universal health care benefits everyone (duh, it's in the name!); legislation mandating 20 holiday days a year applies to lawyers and middle-management as much as it does to those on the shop floor or in McDonalds.
So if the poor down-trodden middle class wonder why their life is so tragically hard, perhaps they should examine their own values and voting history. This situation didn't come about by accident!
Why, he asks, does it take two incomes to keep a middle-class family afloat? Why oh why, he muses, do Americans work longer hours than their European counterparts? It's time, he feels, to put the middle class first.
Why should the middle class be put first? Are working-class families second rate? One wonders if Dobbs has considered that if it is difficult for middle-class families to support themselves, what does that suggest about the typically lower-paid working-class families? Apparently their plight is not on his radar.
How many times do we hear a middle- or upper-middle-class, white male gripe about the plight of his social group...poor darlings, they do suffer so.
The question seems even more inane when one considers that the answer is fairly obvious.
The short-sighted hostility to labor unions that many middle-class professionals have acquiesed to over the decades is surely a likely culprit for why workers of all social classes have it worse here than in Europe. It is unions that campaigned for and won the higher wages, shorter hours and better benefits enjoyed across the Atlantic.
Universal healthcare was not a benevolent gift of the upper class. It was brought in by political parties that had strong union backing. The same can be said for all the statutory advantages enjoyed by the European worker.
Those in the American middle-class who have refused to speak out against anti-union legislation, or who have even applauded it, clearly fail to see that the benefits that unions win 'trickle up'. As the minimum wage goes up, so do the wages of those higher on the pay scale; universal health care benefits everyone (duh, it's in the name!); legislation mandating 20 holiday days a year applies to lawyers and middle-management as much as it does to those on the shop floor or in McDonalds.
So if the poor down-trodden middle class wonder why their life is so tragically hard, perhaps they should examine their own values and voting history. This situation didn't come about by accident!
posted by Sparx at 18:59
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