They're Always Fighting for the Middle Class

 

The next time you hear a politician say he or she needs to be elected so they can help the middle class, I’d recommend voting for their opponent. But most likely the opponent will be spewing the same schpiel. Because the only thing a politician can do, especially liberal Democrat politicians, is to deliver the middle class to the lower classes. In 2008 , presidential candidate Barack Obama chose Sen. Joe Biden for his running mate. Sen. Biden would be entrusted, we were told, with helping and sustaining the middle class. Six years later I have yet to hear of one initiative as the middle class continues to contract. I tend to agree with Clint Eastwood, who, when addressing the Republican Convention in 2012 described Vice President Biden as a “grin with a body behind it.”

Pithy platitudes aside, we have not seen any real economic progress. There is no recovery. Remember shovel-ready jobs? There are just talking head politicians and wannabe politicians skulking around promising a piece of the American Dream. Unfortunately, the American Dream is on life support.

It was predicated on the premise that if you worked hard you could succeed. All you had to do was take advantage of the cornucopia of opportunities available. A lot of those opportunities have packed up and left and they ain’t coming back.

One of the most often used lines by candidates is that they want to give everyone an opportunity to succeed – just as their immigrant families have.  They wheel out their time-honored family history. The patriarch or matriarch entered the country; penniless, of course. And worked their way out of the old neighborhood; saved some money, bought a house; sent their kids to college. Garnered for themselves a piece of the American Dream. And that’s what they want for everyone. And this time they’re going to fast track you to the American Dream. With short cuts so it won’t be so hard this time.

It won’t be a generational wait. It begins to happen as soon as you cast your vote. They’re promising away the very essence, the core value of the  middle class. That working hard is your ticket to the next rung on the ladder.

Every time I hear  about all these new, non-existent opportunities to help every one get to the  middle class, it has a strange similarity to the housing give-a-way disaster a few years back. We know where that left us. Unless people work for what they get they never appreciate it. And if you give them something for nothing, they’ll always abuse it.