Posted by silentpadna on 1/7/2016 7:23:00 AM (view original):
Hey bad, who "blames the poor"? I understand some make illegal immigrants into scapegoats, but that doesn't address the issue. How can a politician (or government) "restore" the middle class, and can they? Can they legislate opportunity and fairness?
What does it even mean? How did the "middle class" get created in the first place?
I know for me, I would love to work up and out of it if possible, but I'm not sure I have the necessary dedication to that above other things (like family time and support and creative enough ideas to climb that ladder).
I was responding specifically to raucous, who said something to the effect of, "stop taking money from the middle class and giving it to the poor." Which is something people say, in one form or another, pretty often.
And it's ridiculous.
First of all, the middle class isn't shrinking because money is moving from the middle down. People in the middle are getting poorer and people in the bottom are getting poorer. While people at the top are getting wealthier. Money is moving from the middle and bottom to the top. A lot of that is directly related to government policy, so raucous is partly right. But not in the way he thinks.
Basic safety nets for non-elderly aren't where the vast majority of the tax dollars go. So even if we stopped spending 11% of the federal budget on programs designed, for example, to keep very poor people from starving to death, taxes on the middle class wouldn't be impacted. At least not to a degree that would impact whether or not a family stayed in the middle class.
But there are policy choices that do impact the middle class. Shifting the tax burden from the upper income brackets to a flatter, less progressive system has a negative effect on the middle and lower classes. Anyone who argues for a flat tax or a 9-9-9 plan etc., is saying that the rich should pay a smaller share of the taxes. Fine, if that's their argument. But they usually hide behind rhetoric about being fair or bullshit about how their plan would actually help the middle class. It's trickle down bullshit with a different label.
On the other hand, reducing the tax burden on the middle class, strengthening labor laws*, increasing inflation (most inflation is wages), and reducing unemployment, would help people in the lower and middle classes and reduce the concentration of wealth at the upper percentiles.
*did you know that under federal law, it's illegal for employers to punish/fire employees for discussing their pay? Yet, the penalties for violating the law are so toothless that employers do it on a wide scale.