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Middle
Class Life in our Country is not a Given
The
40-hour week, minimum wage, collective bargaining, affordable housing and cheap
home loans, free education, some retirement security, Medicare, job safety
protections were not provided by the founders in 1776, and they certainly were
not given to us by generous corporate chieftains. Rather, the middle class framework was built by us…We the
people.
In the first century of our republic, there was very little in the way of
a middle class. But in the
intervening decades, ordinary working stiffs agitated, organized, and literally
battled the bosses, politicians, and media until, piece by piece, over the
generations, we put into law the provisions that have given us a modicum of
control over our own livelihoods and economic destinies.
But now, piece-by-piece, the bosses and politicians are rapidly
dismantling our middle class framework. So far, their thievery includes: looting
our public treasury through tax giveaways to the rich; cutting regulatory
protection for everything from work place safety to health care; high-tech
industry’s manipulation of immigration loopholes to displace middle-class
American employees; privatizing more and more of the government; secretly
negotiation trade deals that empower global corporations to subjugate workers
throughout the world; maneuvering to gut pension laws and…and so much
more.
Excerpt from
“Hightower Lowdown” March 2004
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