Dog Bites Man
Sep 29th, 2006 at 6:07 am by Susie
This is only news to people who live in the Beltway Imperial Bubble:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The typical double-income family is worse off financially than ever, a study released Thursday said, warning that few Americans have saved enough to brace for financial setbacks.
Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health insurance, transportation and their children’s college with wages that have not kept pace with higher prices, according to the study by a think tank headed by a former top aide to President Bill Clinton.
The middle class’s financial condition has been a key issue ahead of the November elections, as Democrats warn that this group is fast losing economic ground amid skyrocketing prices and tax cuts that offer them little benefit.
“In our estimates, it’s becoming harder for families to afford what we consider a typical middle-class lifestyle,” said economist Christian Weller of the Center for American Progress, the political think tank headed by John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff.
Politics is an expression of economic drives, always.
The prime demand of the world’s economies right now is stability, and their second demand is greater equality in trade and development. An end to hegemonies everywhere is the emerging norm.
This drives a steady shifting away from the US-dominated world economy — from the Dollar System that sees the world’s largest and most profitable commodity (oil & gas) sold only in dollars.
That petrodollar lift is all that keeps America aloft, consuming at 6 to 25 times the rate of other nations.
The US economic elites drive US politicians to their current attempts to militarily dominate the world’s oil & gas supplies, since it is no longer possible for America to economically dominate them.
If we can kidnap the oilfields of the Middle East, we can sell our stolen oil in dollars for the foreseeable future.
US politicians of the singular War Party (composed of the Dem Brigade and the GOP Brigade) pursue war as the best option of preserving the Dollar System .
To afford and to pursue these resource wars, America needs to cash out of its middle class lifestyle, cash out of its safety nets, pensions and even veterans care, and trend steadily toward a banana republic, with an ever-widening the gap between the super wealthy owners of all national assets, and the renters and workers at the sinking bottom of the scale.
It won’t work, in the end. America will lose these wars, and fall all the harder and swifter for the trying.
But the working American will lose everything in the meantime.
That’s why the only sensible political direction for Americnas is to tax wealth, withdraw from all resource wars, and put America to work rebuilding America a middle class nation.
You known, a people who make things.
Great post, Antifa.