It’s over for the New Deal. Good luck, Raw Deal! The white 1% on the far right are using the same “psychology of disenfranchisement” that they have used against minorities for decades to destroy the middle class and bring America back to its “robber baron” roots before Hoover.
The bad news for the middle class, which is the backbone of American politics, was confirmed by the New York Times on Wednesday: they are no longer the wealthiest middle class in the world.
Once the richest in the world, the American middle class is no longer the richest in the world.
Even though the wealthiest Americans are growing faster than many of their peers around the world, a study by The New York Times shows that people in other advanced countries have gotten much bigger raises over the last 30 years, especially in the lower- and middle-income brackets.
A strong middle class is important for a democracy to work well. The United States is also not much of a democracy anymore.
A recent study from Princeton University says that the U.S. is not a representative democracy, but rather an oligarchy:
Economic elites and organised groups that represent business interests have a lot of independent influence on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.
According to the latest report by OXFAM, 1% of the world’s population controls $110T of the world’s wealth. This is 65 times the wealth of the bottom 50% of the world’s population.
In March, the Pew Research Center released a study that said income inequality in the U.S. was at its highest level since 1928, which was the year before the Great Depression.
How in the world did the 1% get to be in charge of the whole country?
The Libertarian media machine run by Norquist, Fox’s Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, the many Right-Wing radio talkers, and their propaganda writer, Frank Luntz, has turned the psychology of disenfranchisement in American politics, which was once aimed at minorities, on to the white majority.
The psychology of disenfranchisement uses feelings of isolation, cynicism, and a sense of being a victim to keep people in line.