WE, the People, call upon Double Pulitzer Prize winners Donald Barlett and James Steele to testify on how The American dream for middle class people has been deliberately stolen – by the rich and corporations.
Barlett & Steele:”The betrayal of the American dream is the story of how a small number of people in power deliberately put in place policies that have enriched themselves while cutting the ground out from underneath America’s greatest asset – its middle class.”
Barlett & Steele: “..between 1999 and 2008, according to Tax Notes..foreign affiliates of U.S. parent corporations increased their employment abroad by 2.4 million jobs, or 30%..they slashed [U.S. employment].. by 1.9 million>’
Barlett & Steele: “..the ruling class is defined by its ability to move money beyond the reach of government supervision..we have created the world’s newest financial aristocracy.”
Barlett & Steele: “We are no longer the democracy we once were. We have become a plutocracy..In 2011, AdAge..declared the era of mass affluence over in America..”Simply put, a small plutocracy of wealthy. elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending.”
Barlett & Steele: “..for tens of millions of middle-class Americans, as well as for the working poor..the American dream is over..Having dismantled the economic support network that underpinned the world’s largest middle class, the members of the ruling class have set their sights on another goal that..would put the middle class in an even deeper hole: they re promoting “austerity” in government budgets and policies – cuts in programs such as Social Security and Medicare – for everyone but themselves.”
Barlett & Steele: “The financial deregulation that enriched Wall street and triggered the Great Recession was just the latest in a long series of moves by the economic elite to consolidate their control of the American economy. They have:
– Created a tax system that is heavily weighted against the middle class.
-Deregulated sectors of the economy and in so doing killed jobs or lowered wages for employees across entire
industries such as airlines and trucking.
-Ignited in the financial sector a wildly speculative run-up in mortgage-backed securities of little value that
imploded in the 2008-2009 recession.
-Encouraged corporations to transfer jobs abroad and eliminate jobs in this country to bolster the value of stock,
increase dividends, and boost executive compensation
-Enabled companies to eliminate positions and replace permanent employees with contract workers t lower pay
and with no benefits.
-Allowed multinational corporations to shelter profits overseas and avoid paying taxes on earnings that could be
used to help stimulate jobs at home.
-Forced 11 million people with mortgages that exceeded the value of their homes to make monthly payments to
the banks that caused the housing collapse – a debt they will never be able to pay off.
-Refused to support the growth of new industries that could generate jobs for the future
Look upon all this as the end of a broad-based middle class in America.
Barlett & Steele: “The last decade alone saw the closing of 14% of the nation’s factories [56,190], the sharpest industrial decline in America’s history. A record 5.7 million factory workers lost their jobs [exceeding Great Depression job loss]..” The cause: “free trade”.. By the 1970s, it was clear..free trade wasn’t going to be good for America’s workers.
Barlett & Steele: “Pension plans were once an integral part of the American dream, a pledge by corporations to their employees: for your decades of work, you can count on retirement benefits.” {No longer]> “..you can thank the rule makers of Wall street and Washington who have colluded to rewrite the rules on retirement that will harm millions of middle-class Americans for decades. Here is what they have done:
– In addition to the 84,350 pension plans killed by corporations since 1985, companies have frozen thousands of other
other plans, meaning..new employees are barred from participating or benefit levels are frozen, or both. Freezing a
pension plan is often the first step toward eliminating it.
– The congressionally touted replacements for pensions – 401[k] plans – have insufficient holdings to provide a serious
retirement benefit. This even though millions will be depending on them.
– As companies have killed or curtailed pensions for employees, executive pensions have soared, largely because
they are based on executives’ compensation – which has ballooned in recent decades.
– At some companies the only employees who have pensions are the corporation’s executives.
– The 401[k] plans promoted by corporations and Congress that have replaced pensions as the main retirement plan
for many employees are uninsured, and they are less secure and cost more to administer than traditional pensions,
but they have provided a windfall of fees for Wall Street.
– Worker’s pensions are insured by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.., but the agency faces mounting
deficits, raising the question of whether it will be able to fully honor all pensions thay may be defaulted by private
companies in the future.”
“The result..is that America has devolved into a land of two separate and decidedly unequal
retirement systems – one for the have-mores and another for the have-lesses..”
Barlett & Steele: “The complete triumph of free-trade ideology has upset the balance. For many Americans, this has meant stagnant or declining earnings, reduced benefits, and fewer job opportunities. This is not the result of inexorable global economic forces. These trade and tax policies were bought and paid for by the major corporations through their investments in congressmen and the lobbyists [thery hired].”
Barlett & Steele: Bare minimum corrective steps: revise the tax code – why not a one-page 1040?; make free trade fair – demand fair treatment & enforce existing trade laws; invest in America – rebuild infrastructure; rethink training – need better apprenticeship programs; uphold the law – seriously prosecute white collar criminals; will the majority rule? – ask congressional candidates: 1] will you support tax reforms that benefit the middle class; 2] will you support a more balanced trade policy benefiting American manufacturing; 3] will you support government investment in U.S. infrastructure; 4] will you help keep benefits of U.S. innovation within the U.S., not outsources?
[note: read the book!!!!!! many more statistics that document how the greatest danger to American, and world, democracy are the rich and their corporations. Do nothing and YOUR lives and that of YOUR families will only get worse. Those of us remaining who lived in 1947-73 can only tell YOU about what America USED TO BE; about how may of us lived in “mixed’ blue and white collar neighborhoods, about the atmosphere of trust for government to do
the right thing” for the majority; about how government tried to “do the right thing” for people.
America has never been “perfect,” BUT we WERE moving in the right direction. Barlett and Steele have supplied YOU with much of the STATISTICAL evidence on how the rich and the corporations engineered “THE BETRAYAL. OF. THER. AMERICAN DREAM.”}
With Justice For All 