Corporate America's Plan to Loot Our Pensions Is the Latest Battle in Decades-Long Assault on the Mi

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/arun-gupta/33201/corporate-americas-plan-to-loot-our-pensions-is-the-latest-battle-in-decades-long-assault-on-the-middle-

Corporate America's Plan to Loot Our Pensions Is the Latest Battle in Decades-Long Assault on the Middle Class

The severe economic crisis, now in its fourth year, is being used to batter the remnants of the social welfare state. Having decimated aid to the poor over the last 30 years, especially in the United States, the economic and political elite are now intent on strangling middle-class benefits, namely state-provided pensions, health care and education.

The initial neoliberal assault under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher reorganized the capitalist economy and hammered private-sector unions into submission. This was accomplished by putting labor back into competition with itself by off-shoring industrial production, through deregulation and with frontal assaults on labor rights, organizing and solidarity.

Similarly, the current attack is a two-pronged effort to reorganize state social services, either by eliminating or privatizing them, and decimate public-sector unions whose workers provide those services. While the safety net is being withered by attrition, police and spying agencies are getting more powers and funding, and the wealth of the super-rich and record corporate profits are deemed off-limits to taxation to close any government budget gap.

Simply put, the elderly are superfluous to capitalism. With high rates of joblessness the “new norm,” more and more people are being made disposable. This leads to an efficient if brutal logic: cutting old-age income and health care will make it easier to scrap old, useless workers. In fact, this reality is already coming to pass. One study published in 2008 found that over a 16-year period life expectancy had declined for many poor American women — precisely those who are disproportionately represented among the elderly heavily dependent on Social Security and Medicare.

More at the link --

[Matariki]

1. Having looted America's surplus of the 90's - what's left?

It's a beast with an insatiable appetite.

[Newest Reality]

2. While I think that the idea of a Middle Class is good

the definition of said is questionable. Many people consider themselves to be Middle Class without necessarily using financial criteria to define it.

With a fast-growing Underclass, (inclusive of the homeless, those in poverty and the working poor) it seems that we have a substantial block of people who more in common than in the past. That is, especially since record numbers of those who consider themselves Middle Class are rapidly joining the Underclass, or are facing an increasing understanding of how insecure their socioeconomic position has become. In fact, rather than expecting upward mobility, lowered expectations are becoming more the norm and the erosion of stability is tangible.

The block of the Middle Class can be considered to be a potential front due to the fact that they may still have enough resources and stability to respond in kind to the current crises. However, the direction in which they choose to align themselves may prove to be significant as this crises unfolds.

[DJ13]

3. Page not found

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