Comments on: CBS Poll: The Middle Class Squeeze

Majority Think Life Has Gotten More Difficult For Middle Class

[iceman_1960]

"A Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts"

The principle behind the Bush tax cuts.

[acauble1]

"Myself before any other." --- The new GOP slogan for the 21st Century.

Posted by acauble1 at 06:28 PM : Apr 15, 2007


Oh... and one other thing...

Based on the record of the GOP in the past six years, (and beyond)....

... JESUS WOULD URINATE ON TODAY'S CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN PARTY!

[acauble1]

Personally, I'd like to see some one from the GOP side layout all the great and wonderous things the GOP model has brought us in the last 6 years.

From where I sit, they've been a complete disaster.
Posted by jpesot at 06:04 PM : Apr 15, 2007

.........
As this story suggests, the GOP model has brought 'wonderous things' to those who primarily have annual incomes well into the six digits and higher. And it's primarily those people who will defend the GOP and Bush till the bitter end. These wealthier Americans will defend Bush's policies, including the war in Iraq, not because they totally believe in it, but only because they have more money in their wallets thanks to the Bush administration. Sadly, that's all that matters for many of those "Americans" in the upper income brackets.

"Myself before any other." --- The new GOP slogan for the 21st Century.

[radiob-2009]

How long has it been since a republican president has won a war?

[omega39-2009]

Did they create a new Deal? Win a War? Balance the Budget? Improve Health Care? Improve life for the average American? Improve the Environment? Stablize the middle east? Improve the US's standing in the world? Medicare? Social Security?

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.-Posted by jpesot

LOL!! Well of course they were just about to get to it, but first they had to ban gay marriage and make sure they tacked on "We support our troops" to the "We support the way George Bush is running the war in Iraq" resolution.

[candojj1]

To understand why the middle class is shrinking first understand that Bush is a scholar(?) of Hobbes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes#Leviathan
And just as the Cold War and The Truman Doctrine instilled fear into the hearts of Americans, so too the WMD instilled fear. So if one examines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfowitz_Doctrine and sees how leviathan's plan was to be carried out by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, the World Bank and the IMF and WTO at the cost of the middle class (all in the name of helping our society survive as Hobbes put it at all costs) by borrowing huge amounts of dollars and distributing them to the military economy and the third world democracies (now 185). And with the annexation of the 10 USSR nations into NATO and into the IMF, Russia is back into Cold War mode. So Cheney is certain that the congress will not cut off spending, as they can't, or the dollar can and will collapse. While the battle seems to be raging in Iraq, even greater battles are being fought where Russia, Iran and OPEC are aligned to change the OIL trading business entirely into EUROs from dollars causing a ripple effect, where our biggest creditors Japan and China would have no choice but to demand their debt be repaid. This might cause the weakest of the 185 democracies to fold and the dollar to collapse as the $ has no gold backing.
So consider yourself lucky, for now, as you might need an AK-47 and won%u2019t be able to buy bullets without $s.

[jpesot]

Its interesting to see so many posts reaching back a few decades on this topic -- rather than to look at what has occurred since the GOP controlled the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

If their philosophy worked, surely after 6 years of their control we'd see more evidence.

For 6 years, congress did what ever Bush wanted, and in return, Bush let the GOP pork up every bill.

They put cronnies in every office they could, in every department they could.

The GOP control of the US has been as complete as it has ever been.

Did they create a new Deal? Win a War? Balance the Budget? Improve Health Care? Improve life for the average American? Improve the Environment? Stablize the middle east? Improve the US's standing in the world? Medicare? Social Security?

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Personally, I'd like to see some one from the GOP side layout all the great and wonderous things the GOP model has brought us in the last 6 years.

From where I sit, they've been a complete disaster.

[fascistusa]

Organized Labor can be Unions. Or it can be People Organizing in Mass to protect themselves FROM the Government. Your Labor (resources) are what The American Elite want.

A Middle Class is typically the class between The Elite/The Rich and the Poor. The Middle Class typically makes a certain amount of Money. Enough to make investments, save, start businesses, or waste on materialistic goods.

We live in a Corporate Controlled Fascist Country. Small business is being slaughtered by Corporations. Where there use to be Mom & Pop store we now have a Walmart, Walgreens, Gamestop, McDonalds on every corner. ONE Wal Mart consistes on 20 small businesses. One Microsoft consists on 100's of smaller computer companies that could have existed if not for the crushing, MONOPOLISTIC actions of Microsoft.

I love the idiots that say Wal Mart has a Competitor - Target. The question being... CAN YOU START A BUSINESS AND COMPETE WITH WAL MART??? No way.

We were ruled by MONOPOLIES in the late 1800's. Carnegie, Rockerfellar, J.P. Morgan. The Robber Barons. We are RULED by MONOPOLIES not. The American Elite.

[hypnotoad72]

When an entry level helpdesk support job that pays $10/hr demands nothing less than a BACHELOR'S degree, there's a huge problem afoot.

hawksprings - your Dem argument is accepted. Now tell me what Republicans are doing to spare us the indignity of slavery that Dems purportedly put us in? And if Repubs are so much anti-slavery, how come they no longer shout "We are the party of Lincoln!"? Or even "We are the party of fiscal responsibility!"? MORE IMPORTANTLY, how come republicans give welfare to large, successful corporations? (you may know it as 'government subsidy'.) In short, both sides don't give a frig about the working class. And if it wasn't for the working class, there would be NO upper class at all.

king77shaw - China cannot be our enemy. Otherwise we wouldn't have been doing what we have been since the early 1970s. Even liberals loved Nixon's visit to China and the subsequent low-low-priced goods that came from it.

[omega39-2009]

Here's a statistic for you: an average entry-level college grad with a degree in science or engineering had his/her salary drop by 27% between 1967 and 2007 (Source Chicago Tribune, see Chicago Magazine April issue for discussion).

That's not a misprint - the entry level salary for Engineers had not just dropped in the last 40 years but dropped significantly.

Posted by chicagotp at

Chicagotp, did you see the story last week about the 2008 H1B1 visas being snapped up in one day? The tech companies are clamoring for more, they claim they can't find technical people but what they mean is those willing to work 30 to 40% under market value. The company I work for is one of the biggest offenders, you would be hard pressed to differentiate my stateside campus from Bangalore if you didn't know where you were.