Forty years ago, in the year 1973, during the Presidency of Richard Nixon, the middle class, which had been steadily growing since the end of World War II, reached its peak in economic terms.
In the years of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon, an optimism that the future would be better was fulfilled, and the “American Dream” was a reality for millions of Americans, many of whom emerged from the lower middle class or from poverty.
This was the age of liberalism, a time of expanded government and social programs, whether under Democratic Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, or Republican Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon.
But a right wing reaction was beginning to emerge, and reached its ultimate success under Ronald Reagan, after sniping at Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, undermining both of them in their attempts to continue the direction that the nation had been engaged in for 28 years.
And despite what seemed like improvement under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, the reality was that conservative ideology even infected him, and while some benefited from the prosperity of the tech revolution of the 1990s, many were left behind by the trend toward making government the evil, rather than the source of much of the prosperity that brought about the middle class advancements.
And once the Republican Party gained the two houses of Congress in 1994 and kept it until 2006, and then regained the House of Representatives, beginning in 2011 until now, the middle class continued its decline, and here we are with hardly any wage increase and asset growth for the middle class, or what used to be the middle class, as we reach the two generations that have passed since the ultimate peak of the middle class.
Leave it to the GOP, and as long as the wealthy do well, they will continue to war on the middle class and turn them against the poor, so as to keep the wealthy in a privileged position, paying lower levels of taxes than they ever did during the years from FDR to Nixon!
So those who see themselves as middle class, and are struggling, need to realize who the real enemy for them is—the Republican Party and conservatism, not the Democratic Party and modern liberalism and progressivism!
Hello Professor,
In 1972 – 73 I worked at a local national grocery store chain. I worked under a Washington D.C. retail clerk union and was making $7.50 per hour with retirement and medical coverage. Today speaking with grocery store workers I found out what the average wage for them is….. Yes $7.50 per hour and all unions have been busted so they have no voice or repersentation. Plus most are part time worker so there is no retirement or medical.
I give this as evidence of the continued deescalation of the Working Middle Class….. and in the South & Mid-West continue to vote for those who would continue to depress their standard of living while enabling the 1% in completing that task.
Thanks, Engineer, for your testimony demonstrating how the middle class has been destroyed by the Republicans and their anti labor supporters, and how Republican voters in the South and Midwest and Great Plains seem totally unaware of who their real enemies are. It shows the problem of pure ignorance of politics, a great weakness, by those who if they understood, would vote Democratic!
Hello Professor,
I would also pass on these current day facts.
1 in 4 people working in the private earn less than $10.00 per hour.
Eric Cantor works 126 days and will earn over $200,000. He as also sees fit to present a bill in Congress that will eliminate overtime pay for hourly workers.
Engineer, Eric Cantor is one of the most despicable members of Congress, and should be ashamed of himself for advocating elimination of overtime pay for hourly workers. But you can be sure someone I will not name, who rants and raves on here, will have no complaint about this, which makes everything he utters totally lacking in credibility!