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By Mark Price, Third and State
Labor Day 2012 is behind us, but the challenges confronting the middle class are not.
As we do each year around this time, the Keystone Research Center has released the State of Working Pennsylvania. My co-author, a.k.a El Jefe, had a Labor Day op-ed in the Harrisburg Patriot-News where he laid out the theme of this year’s report — namely, that the middle class in Pennsylvania and the U.S. cannot afford another lost decade.
The next three figures lay out the major elements of this year’s State of Working Pennsylvania: employment growth over the last decade has been weak (Figure 1.10); as a result, incomes over the last decade declined (Figure 1.11); and in the first year of the recovery and of the new decade, income inequality resumed its growth as the top 1% increased their share of all income (Figure 5.1).
With job growth weak and many policymakers advocating that we lay off more teachers and continue to put off needed investments in infrastructure, we are very concerned that working and middle-class families may end the next decade with less income from work than they started with in 2010.
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The fact that the middle classes are starting to wake up (even the white and male members thereof) is of course why the GOP is pushing voter suppression so hard, even though (or perhaps because) it burns huge holes in state and especially local budgets:
http://my.firedoglake.com/phoenix/2012/09/01/mn-gops-voter-id-plan-would-cost-two-rural-counties-nearly-1-million/
http://my.firedoglake.com/phoenix/2012/09/03/mn-gops-photo-id-amendment-hits-minnesota-counties-with-huge-costs-even-as-gop-legislature-slashes-local-government-aid/
What is this “middle class” of which you speak?
We have seen that voting has not worked. We can see that voting is not going to work. OWS has proven that peaceful protest is not truly allowed. Contitutional free speach is nothing but a Christmas card. It is pretty to look at on paper, but you will never get to ride the sleigh in the picture.
We don’t need another OWS. We need a TBWS (take back Wall Street). We need another OWS, except we need to have someone hand out axe handles and pitchforks to everyone and take control of the situation. We need an armed populace marching across the country.
Look at Syria. That is our future. We have a presedential dictatorship. The right and left are not happy with our political leaders being bought, like the third world tyrants they have become. We protested with leaflets. Next, we can tell them that if they do not like axe handles and pitchforks, we can always come back with guns. If they let us protest in peace, we are happy to be peaceful and leave weapons at home, but somewhere, we have to make a point with these monsters that they will not get a free pass.
This is how everybody should be talking, too many for HLS to monitor. Its called being a true patriot. Obviously, we have domestic enemies of the constitution.
The Middle Class damn sure can’t afford 4 more years of the lying, thieving, murderous war mongering right-wing conservative Trojan Horse presidency of Barack Obama.
With job growth weak and many policymakers advocating that we lay off more teachers and continue to put off needed investments in infrastructure, we are very concerned that working and middle-class families may end the next decade with less income from work than they started with in 2010.
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