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middle class
A Jeremiad for the Working People of the United States
The prevailing issue that demands consensus is the economic exploitation and deprivation of our economic model for working people of all demographics.
Mar 25, 2025
The oligarchs are laughing. The corporatists are laughing.
They are laughing at working people as the big con continues. They are laughing at the corporate Democratic Party whose genetic code lacks the heart to challenge the autocracy now unfolding. “Good billionaires vs. bad billionaires.” Really?
The political left spectrum is largely catatonic. Progressives lament the ineffectiveness of their wing of the Democratic Party. “Outsider” leftists are skeptical of both political parties, but too small in numbers yet to pose a threat to corporate Democrats.
The time of milquetoasts is over. It is time to recognize what must be done.
Liberals on the left spectrum are flummoxed; some stalwarts attribute their recent political debacle to the inability of the Democratic Party to distribute a cogent message of their accomplishments.
It was not the message that flopped. Rather economic numbers proved that our economic model continued to squash the interests of working people. They then sent a clear message that they were not buying the corporate Democratic dose of doldrums. They voted for President Donald Trump.
Economic Classes
Working people are comprised of the middle-working class and working class. The middle-working class identifies itself as “middle class.” The term is designed to divide working people.
Economic class has nothing to do with salaries or wages; it is about economic power. “Middle class” interests are closer to the working class than the dominant economic class.
Michael Zweig pointed this out in an insightful book in 2000 and revised in 2012. He identified the working class at 63% and the middle class at 35%. The combination presents a significant percentage of Americans who live and work largely by the undemocratic capriciousness of the 2%.
Real Economic Numbers
The income disparity in our country is at record levels as reported by the Congressional Budget Office. The income gap between the rich and everyone else is stunning. Income disparities are now so pronounced that America’s richest 1% of households averaged 139 times as much income as the bottom 20% in 2021.
The wealth disparity is just as shameful. Statista reported that in the first quarter of 2024, almost two-thirds of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10%; the lowest 50% only owned 2.5% of the total wealth.
Make no mistake, If Americans do not take seriously the activities of the dominant economic class, it will be too late for working people.
The Ludwig Institute for Shared Prosperity (LISEP) reported an actual unemployment rate. LISEP tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job, wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.
Their actual unemployment rate for this January was 23.3%.
Shadow Government Statistics (SGS) reported another actual unemployment rate. A significant demographic was mysteriously defined out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in 1994. Those discouraged workers who searched for work for more than one year simply vanished from the BLS unemployed numbers.
SGS reported that the actual unemployment rate for this January was 26.8%.
Inflation
The government’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living and measuring the cost of out-of-pocket expenses. However, since the 1980s the BLS has been altering its methodologies to decrease the actual inflation rate provided to the public.
The BLS ignores food and energy prices in “core” inflation numbers as if food and energy are not basic necessities for living.
The BLS transitioned from their historic fixed-weight basket of goods and services to a quasi-substitution-based basket of goods.
It also changed from arithmetic weighting to geometric weighting and to owners’ equivalent rent (OER) numbers.
Another BLS method to decrease the real inflation rate was a transition to hedonic measures, which actually attempts to measure how much enjoyment a person receives from changing from one product to another.
These changes reflected the BLS intentional artificial deflation of accurate CPI numbers from the American public.
SGS reported that the actual inflation rate for this January was 10.81%.
Big Picture Not So Good
Naturally, working people are seeking relief from this economic suffocation; according to the Council on Foreign Relations we have the largest disparity in wealth and income than any other developed country.
Good paying manufacturing jobs with other benefits left the country in dramatic numbers in the 1960s and 70s. How did this happen?
We can begin with an abysmal fact:
The economic empire of the U.S. is presently over, done, finished.
Our demise began when corporations moved to countries with low wages, regulations were minimal or nonexistent, and unions were absent. This was paradise for the corporate owner class.
This trend is continuing, and those good paying jobs are gone with no reason to return despite the bluster and gibberish emanating from the Trump administration.
The Economic Policy Institute reported that the U.S. lost 5 million manufacturing jobs in the last 25 years. To place our country in an advantageous position again will require transformation to a different economic model with smart negotiations and intelligent diplomacy with other countries.
A troubling result of the massive exodus of manufacturing jobs is the U.S. declining Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Consider in 2024, the GDP of the U.S. grew 2.8%; the GDP of China grew 5%. India, another member of the BRICS economic bloc, grew 5.6%.
Economic Tree
It is not that complicated here.
Our economic model is characterized by an economic tree for working people. At the root of the tree is the primary issue of wages and salaries.
Moving up the tree are branches that comprise secondary issues. They are viable employment opportunities; effective, affordable healthcare; comprehensive educational opportunities; comfortable, secure housing opportunities; wholesome nutrition; safe, reliable transportation; environmentally clean water, air, and land.
Will progressive organizations coalesce into a national movement for economic and political democracy and seize the Democratic Party?
The third branch are cultural issues: They are reasonable gun control, effective immigration reform, women’s healthcare rights, and LGBTQ rights. These issues are important to their demographics; however, they have been manipulated into wedge issues that distract working people from the real source of their discontent—that is the political power that maintains the privilege and power of the dominant economic class.
Working people must accept cultural issues without necessarily agreeing with them. The prevailing issue that demands consensus is the economic exploitation and deprivation of our economic model for working people of all demographics.
Emphasizing cultural issues with so called “woke” identity politics over economic class politics has resulted in the grotesque policies of Mr. Trump and the Republican Party cult.
It is these tertiary issues that Mr. Trump used to provoke and frighten MAGA working people. It distracted them into ignoring their economic class malaise.
An effective political party must work to transform primary issues into an inclusive party. Until then, cultural issues will be little but distractions for marginalized groups without actual progress for their causes; Democrats will continue to bay in the wind and lose elections while an autocratic political model is established. Project 2025 is that model and a blueprint financed by the corporate and oligarch class.
A Smart Direction
The shelf life is over for assorted corporate Democrats and corporate union leaders. Their vapid strategies and tactics unwittingly encouraged working people to support Mr. Trump. Consider that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) defeated Mr. Trump in polls in 2016 and 2020. Yet the Democratic Party corporate sycophants denied Sen. Sanders the nomination.
The time of milquetoasts is over. It is time to recognize what must be done.
The arc of our progressive history includes the abolitionists, labor rights, women’s suffrage, civil rights, anti-war activities, and environmental movements. All had a common theme: They were mass movements that began as large groups of people who knew they could do better.
This may be what it requires to shake us free from the dehumanizing, exploitative crimes and corruption of neofascism that Mr. Trump and his MAGA cabal have been implementing. As contradictions sharpen and immiseration increases, the choices are stark.
Make no mistake, If Americans do not take seriously the activities of the dominant economic class, it will be too late for working people. The flurry of political attacks on our Constitution are not some frivolous actions that will be remedied in two or four years. The Trump cabal is playing the long game. Even the legal foundation of American democracy, Marbury v. Madison, is in jeopardy.
The judicial branch may strike down some of the more absurd legal and constitutional excesses of Mr. Trump’s supporters. However, his cult leaders of Project 2025 are preparing for a permanent autocratic model to replace our democratic republic. It will have the veneer of democracy, but will be an autocracy in form.
Remedies
Each day, the administration plows ahead with truculent policies chipping away at the lives of working people. Will the time arrive for working people to create a national database of progressive organizations as an informational foundation for an authentic progressive movement? Will it facilitate petitions, mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, and general strikes?
Will progressive organizations coalesce into a national movement for economic and political democracy and seize the Democratic Party? Third-party options, while advancing democracy, are chimerical at this time. ICE is the new Gestapo, and waiting for a new political party to emerge is delusional.
Will our spiritual and secular organizations lead a movement or remain docile?
Pope Paul VI wrote Populorism Progressio in 1967. He stated that the restructuring of society was a welcome possibility. Though he admonished against violent means, he acknowledged a form of violence was an option:
Everyone knows, however, that revolutionary uprisings—except where there is manifest, longstanding tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country—engender new injustices, introduce new inequities, and bring new disasters. The evil situation that exists, and it surely is evil, may not be dealt with in such a way that an even worse situation results.
The question must be asked about a time table for ameliorating the poverty, deprivation, and suffering that will surely follow the scabrous policies of Mr. Trump. Each day is a new attack on our political and social norms; neofascist laws appear like a new head regenerated on a hydra. The courts may strike one down and another one is hatched immediately by the Trump cult.
This is addressed in a quote from Mexican poet Homero Aridjis in 1991: “There are centuries in which nothing happens and years in which centuries pass.”
We will certainly find out soon enough. We must ask ourselves are we Americans willing to take the risk; as Victor Hugo stated in an essay in 1845: “You have enemies, Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
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Fighting the Neoliberal-Fascist Coup by Trump and Musk
Time is short during a fascist takeover attempt. And Trump and Musk are moving at breakneck speed. The stakes could not be higher.
Mar 20, 2025
At what junctures do Elon Musk and Donald Trump, each proceeding from a distinctive starting point, forge a new and hyper-dangerous coalition? Well, the Afrikaner refugee joins an extreme version of neoliberalism to a fascist drive to state takeover, and the fascist orange man, who demands unfettered state power and loves tariffs, nonetheless caters to neoliberal drives to concentrate wealth, income, and power even more extremely at the highest reaches of society. Together, they pursue what is best called oligopolistic fascism.
What's more, while both may have once believed the old Friedrich Hayek story of how market deregulation secures a robust economy of steady growth, each displays active signs today of no longer believing the very ideology he pedals. Musk does so through his project of planetary escapism and his obsession with driving Inspector Generals from governmental institutions; Trump does so through his constant lies and belligerent demonization of vulnerable people who disagree with him. Indeed, each contains within himself a minor voice sliding into the major voice of the other. They both now believe that the old order that has sustained their extreme privileges can now only be protected by fascist means.
So, let's define our terms a bit more closely. Neoliberalism was a market theory, most prominently developed by Friedrich Hayek in the 1960s and 1970s as a series of rejoinders to a Keynesian model of growth and social welfare. Neoliberalism promised rapid and sustained economic growth, if the state would radically reduce regulation of private corporations, subsidize them whenever needed, severely limit the power of labor unions, create a court system committed to neoliberal jurisprudence, and, most importantly (and too often less noted by critics), install a national ideology of regular individuals committed to a market regime--a national ideology saturating schools, unions, churches, the government, the media, think tanks, and universities.
In this ideology each individual and institution sees itself as first and foremost a participant and beneficiary of a privately owned market economy. Hayek himself emphasized these themes in his neoliberal social philosophy, a social philosophy that included an economic theory but extended well beyond it to include all other social and state institutions. This all found elaborate expression, for instance, in his 1970 book Rules and Order. In it he emphasizes how the Supreme Court must set rules beyond the powers of legislative revision to nurture the sinews of a neoliberal economy. And he says a neoliberal ideology "may well be something whose widespread acceptance is the indispensable condition for most of the particular things we strive for." (Rules of Order, p. 58). He knew that minority groups who refused or could not imbibe this ideology had to be controlled by other means. A neoliberal regime along Hayek’s lines, then, is one in which the prison population grows.
In fact the neoliberal order in the United States, supported actively by neoliberal Supreme Court justices, has pushed previously unheard of wealth concentrations to the top of the social hierarchy; supported a unitary President; increased economic insecurity for workers, the poor and mid-level professionals; encouraged hi-tech, super-rich bros to pour vast amounts of money into right wing electoral campaigns; restricted state efforts to fend off climate change and help the poor; and supported media gaslighting to deny the contributions a neoliberal economy makes to accelerating climate wreckage and periodic crises. You can take the 2008 economic meltdown, during the G. W. Bush administration, to be a notable instance of the latter.
What about fascism? Well, fascist movements seek to secure capitalist states by new means during hard times. This was true even in the most extreme instance, when Hitler in Nazi Germany protected large private industrialists as he attacked Jews, social democrats, labor unions, homosexuals, the Romani, and communists. In Mein Kampf, the Jews were defined to be the "red thread" that tied them, social democrats and communists together in one phalanx. To attack the Jews was thus to attack these other organizations and movements too. The regime was inaccurately called "National Socialism"; a closer label would be "National Capitalism," an economic regime of private profit in which a fascist state became the key definer and regulator of life.
How does a distinctive aspiration to fascism proceed today? It does so by promulgating "big lies" to mobilize hatred in its base; fostering an extreme version of white, Christian nationalism; ransacking state regulatory institutions; intimidating the media, courts, unions, localities, and universities; engaging in coups; mobilizing private militia to intimidate vulnerable elements of the populace; treating immigrants of color to be inferior and "vile" people; and joining with other autocratic states to weaken democracy and promote oligarchical rule. Indeed, today Trump treats immigrants of color and their liberal supporters to be the red threads tying all his enemies together. And he never acknowledges how the very anti-climate policies he promotes accelerate the desperate marches from South to North that he castigates so fervently.
As I previewed in a 2017 book, Aspirational Fascism, Trump has profound fascist aspirations, displayed prominently today in promulgating a battery of big lies, fostering a violent coup attempt after he lost an election, aligning with Putin in foreign policy, pardoning all those who participated in his 2021 violent coup attempt, attacking universities, insisting upon the hegemony of a unitary president who sidelines Congress, the states and (increasingly) courts, and unleashing Musk to reshape the state.
What draws Musk and Trump so closely together now?
Well, Musk shows signs of losing faith in the neoliberal ideology that informed his thinking hitherto, while continuing to deploy it strategically to clean out the federal government of officials—the "Deep State"—who could expose fraud and regulate corporate excesses. To take one instance, he has moved from an earlier stance of concern about accelerating climate wreckage to saying, even as he knows better, that climate change is real but moving at a very slow pace. Even after more extreme hurricanes, the Los Angeles wildfires, and other destructive events.
And Trump, who knew in fact that he had lost the 2020 election, has joined belligerently the project of heaping more and more wealth on the extremely wealthy at the expense of those working and middle class white nationalists who provide a key portion of his political base. The tax cut for the rich he is pushing through Congress shows that. He may well think he will not need to cater to that portion of his base so much, after he has silenced the media, universities, unions, progressive churches, and Democratic Party. He has already silenced critical Republicans and high rolling donors.
What about white working- and middle-class members of the Trump/Musk base? They have displayed signs not so much of believing all the Trumpian lies peddled to them as embracing the lies because of the ways they unsettle liberal elites on both coasts and activate racist impulses already there. Not too many Trump supporters believed the ugly story about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats. They merely loved to hear and repeat the story. That is why intense media efforts to expose Trump's lies have not penetrated the armored base. That protective armor itself was forged during a period when the democratic left had lost touch with the needs and insecurities of those constituents, while focusing only on their ugly racist and misogynist tendencies. In fact, curtailments of racism and misogyny need to be pursued in tandem with reductions in class inequality, if either agenda is to succeed. But it remains to be seen whether Democrats can learn this lesson.
Today, the neoliberal/fascist nexus is taking another turn. While it focuses white working class attention on violent immigrant deportations, it also plans to weaken Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security severely, perhaps even to destroy them. Why? To give yet another huge tax break to the superrich who also finance their campaigns. Increasing numbers of the old base are now beginning to see through this scam by the scammer they used to love. It turns out the "Deep State" contains many essential services and protections, now on the block.
The Trump/Musk team hopes to complete dismantling and then reordering the Deep State before the base catches on. Then, once the media, universities and liberal donors have been intimidated sufficiently, it will be too late to protest effectively. That is the plan.
The urgent task today is to expose this nexus and its plan at every turn, in every possible venue, and by all democratic means necessary, from publicity to protest to electoral mobilization. For time is short during a fascist takeover attempt. And Trump and Musk are moving at breakneck speed. The stakes could not be higher, nor the urgency more acute.
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We the People Face the Abandonment of America's Foundational Principles
Are we ready to defend our ideals, or have we lost interest in distinguishing virtue from vice and public good from private greed?
Feb 05, 2025
Misattributed quotes and next-level gaslighting aside, we find ourselves yet again at a crossroads in time—a moment demanding serious reflection on the foundational principles that shaped our republic. This is not hyperbole.
For far too many years, most of what we have been willing to believe contradicts the ideals of the figures said to be revered by those we have entrusted with our government.
As to misattributed quotes, we could jump right in with Thomas Jefferson's actual words regarding our shared principles, but let's first reflect on the insights of his revolutionary compatriot turned bitter political rival, John Adams. In a letter dated April 16, 1776—less than three months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence—Adams shared this wisdom:
Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.
Now, recognizing that those working to recreate our nation—in their own oh-so-very perfect image—may not favor the Federalist Adams, our indispensable second president, let us fast forward some 140 years to Theodore Roosevelt. "Teddy" Roosevelt, a man well-versed in the ideas of our Founding Fathers and our foundational principles, had this to say in a letter dated January 1917:
Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood—the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
The focus on virtue as the foundation of national character contrasts sharply with the narrative we have been fed by those who, in reality, promote "the things that will destroy America." God only knows why we, the people, have been so accepting of their manipulative tactics instead of insisting upon promoting "the virtues that made America." Regardless, we have once again set ourselves up to watch as policies that overwhelmingly benefit a growing cadre of super-rich are implemented.
Yes, they will fuel their economic fire sufficiently so that some of us will enjoy a few crumbs. But regardless of their justifications, the harsh realities facing the shrinking middle class and the most vulnerable will be disregarded. They'll tell us that our best way forward is to be dragged down some technological path by today's Monied Interests, feeding us an amped-up version of the same greed-driven trickle-down bullshit that we've willfully consumed for nearly half a century. And for good measure, they will, this time, destroy as many ballasts of good governance as they possibly can. Then, their blaze will exhaust itself—leaving behind a stunning path of destruction. Never mind the damage done.
We the People should by now recognize their ways.
Let's now acknowledge that many of our antagonists today would prefer that we conclude this essay with the Anti-Federalist Jefferson's 1801 Inaugural Address, wherein he listed his governing principles and said, "These principles form the bright constellation, which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages, and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment..." However, it seems anything but likely that those currently at the helm of government are willing to acknowledge this in context.
For example, we are far removed from Jefferson's agrarian society, our need for a standing army is without question, and the Monied Interests have evolved beyond anything Jefferson could have imagined. So, we'll conclude, in a moment, with another example of Jeffersonian wisdom. Nonetheless, here's an abbreviated look at Thomas Jefferson's "bright constellation":
- "Equal and exact justice to all…
- Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations…
- The support of the state governments in all their rights…
- The preservation of the General government in its whole constitutional vigor…
- Absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority…
- A well-disciplined militia…
- The supremacy of the civil over the military authority…
- Economy in the public expence…
- The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith…
- Encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid…
- The diffusion of information, and arraignment of all abuses…
- Freedom of religion; freedom of the press; and freedom of person…
- and trial by juries impartially selected."
To close, let's turn to the wisdom of an aging Jefferson, as he penned in an 1819 letter:
Of Liberty then I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will: but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law"; because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.
We may not yet fully realize it, but we are literally in the process of deliberating (for lack of a better term) our foundational principles, and the chaos to come is going to test our commitment to Jefferson's Rightful Liberty—our foremost foundational principle of liberty and justice for all. We will soon know if we, as a nation, will continue our pursuit of a more perfect union.
The good news is that we, individually and collectively, get to decide which path we will pursue. The choice is ours.
Are we ready to defend our ideals, or have we lost interest in distinguishing virtue from vice and public good from private greed? Are we really to be remembered as the ones who abandoned America's Foundational Principles?
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