When Kamala's Middle Class becomes the Survivor Class
When presidential candidate Kamela Harris speaks of her middle class roots in her debate with Donald Trump she is being disingenuous. She failed to mention the middle class is now extinct. A more honest assessment of America’s class structure can be found with candidate Jill Stein of the Green party.
Whether one lives in Canada or the US, the middle class has been devastated over many decades to where it is now the “survivor class”.
A society that destroys its middle class destroys itself.
By the time Harris reached the age of majority in the 1980s neoliberalism had already kicked in where the wealth of the middle class was being skimmed off by the corporate class soon to be labelled the super class or the “1%” of the obscenely wealthy. Under neoliberalism wealth has gushered upward to where billionaires are a dime a dozen, governments are now in corporate capture, and populations disenfranchised.
Where representative and responsible government once existed it is no longer. Populations have lost any leverage on power as they have been betrayed by self-serving political parties that have “gone over” to being cheerleaders for more wars, social chaos, and predatory capitalism.
Who is the middle class has always been a nebulous term. It can be defined as the amount of money -discretionary income- the average family has to spend on the good life after all the bills are paid, ie, travel, savings, education, contingency. Other measures are how far from the poverty line is net household income.
The decline of the middle class has been simultaneous to the collapse of democracy in the West. Like the non existent middle-class, it is another of our pretentious conceits. When democracy is desecrated out of existence social contracts are broken and down goes the middle class. We have yet to realize the advent of neoliberalism was a shattering of social contracts where the fiscal Philistines—the corporatists— were granted free rein to eviscerate democracy and the middle class.
What were flourishing democracies with social mobility, accessible education and promising futures, have now become debt ridden slave states to corporate wars. Wealth travels upward in a gusher where too much money and power all in the wrong hands devastate the West.
Where dissipated legislatures will allocate tens of billions to foreign wars at the drop of a hat they suddenly become stingy when it comes to social spending and building better societies.
I come from a generation where only one parent worked now two is the standard, with too many struggling to pay the bills.
Most politicians are willfully ignorant of social indicators and the extremes of wealth and poverty festering in their own homeland. They are off fighting wars, minding other peoples business while ignoring their own and destroying others homelands; thus creating more social instability abroad and the waves of refugees that come to create chaos in their own home land.
Social indicators for both Canada and the US are dismal, especially when we are self-touting role models claiming to epitomize social democracy and our avowed “exceptionalism”.
Credit card and car payment defaults are at record levels. 50% of Canadians live from pay check to pay check. In America unexpected medical expenses are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy. Still, America as the so called leader of the West, cannot provide its citizens with affordable health care while trillions are squandered on foreign wars. Where the meager social welfare states of the 20th century have been crushed out of existence the corporate welfare warfare state is even a greater burden many times over.
Socialism as a beneficial ideology and the glue that holds societies together has been purged from our societies by the MacCarthy hearings of the mid-1950's and the overwhelming dominance of corporate power where wealth is privatized and debt socialized. Political parties speaking for the center and the left are long gone, all homogenized under the banner of neoliberalism.
It has been said more than once the imperialist politicians are the crazy busy-bodies who find it much sexier to wage war around the world than do the “dull” work of making America great again(MAGA) or building back better(BBB). Instead elections are reduced to theatrical sloganeering and promises never for the keeping. It is a sad comment on our times when the Republic is reduced to a slave state in support of the “new Rome’s” foreign wars.
Where I might mention Canada is a “corporate welfare state”, I get the look as if I am from another planet. It is very much so and has been for decades. During the COVID pandemic while populations were struggling and dying corporations were making record profits. Some, so brazenly applying for “COVID relief” even though their profits were more than adequate and flush with cash on hand.
In the west we have come to accept ruinous ideologies and tyrannies as the new norm.
Western politicos ride the gravy train shirking their responsibilities, refusing to face the real challenges of building better societies and futures for too many decades. Where there is no equilibrium there is no progress and the precipitous decline continues.
Like their Chinese and Russian counter parts they must recognize that building better societies is a decades long quest. While the West has been waging war the East has truly been building back better, and successfully so.
Instead of eating crow and joining in the emerging multipolar world, the spiteful West is only capable more wars, genocides and endless moral depravity.
As the despots of the “Wild West” leaves its decline unchecked the survivor class becomes more and more inclusive for all.
For further reading :
Globe and Mail censored criticism of Israel by award-winning Indian author
Years ago, when privatizing everything under the sun was the 'in thing' for bigger profits, etc. etc. ...that is when, in my opinion, the 'middle class' started vanishing. I still am of the opinion that no service rendered to the public should be in private hands...NONE!
Well said sir.