I haven't heard much about the "Middle Class Bargain" Joe Biden has been speaking about. He calls for the “bargain with the middle class” to be restored: “There was a bargain in place for last 50 years that if you worked hard, you played by the rules, you helped increase productivity in America, you got a piece of the action. You benefited.” Joe Biden heads the Middle Class Task Force.
The unfortunate thing about this task force? Who's heard of it? This task force was started in 2009. I can't find any meaningful action going on with this Task Force since 2010. Coinciding with the Tea Party's takeover.
"The Task Force will be studying and recommending the most far-reaching and imaginative solutions to problems working families face; from the need for good jobs and the ability to keep their homes, to the availability of affordable health care and a quality education".
This will hopefully be the central part of Joe Biden's speech, along with calling out the Republicans for all their lies. "America works when everybody plays by the same rules." is another point Biden likes to make, since it's pretty clear Romney makes up his own rules, then changes them, whenever it's convenient.
Paul Ryan is supposedly this serious financial wonk squawking about Social Security and Medicare vouchers while Joe Biden is fighting for the middle class and nobody knows it? What gives? Biden is not really known for being a quiet, unassuming guy. I would have thought that he would have talked a lot more and a lot louder about the "Middle Class Bargain". There's also a good chance that he was drowned out by the conservatives in power.
It's going to be interesting to see how much he will say about the "Middle Class Bargain" which has been no bargain for the last 10 years at least, maybe more. Poverty has been addressed, in a superficial way, but so far no real plan to deal with the issue of millions of former middle class Americans that have taken the hell ride into poverty. Courtesy of the economic crisis, that we are still trying to dig our way out of. President Obama has been accused over and over again of being the "Food Stamp President", because according to the Romney/Ryan ticket, just let 'em eat cake.
We all know what that led to
The problem with the way politicians talk about the "middle-class" is that they act like it's a fixed group of people, rather than a segment of society that's always in flux. The politicians also act like the middle-clas is somehow walled-off from the poor, the implication being that it's the poor's fault that they're poor, but the middle-class is unfairly being picked on by the rich. The truth of the matter is that the only way to "help" the middle-class is to grow it. If you have a growing middle-class, you have less poor. A shrinking middle-class (as is the case lately) you get more poor. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteI know why politicians, including some reluctant liberal politicians (Biden perhaps?), do this. We have a culture that encourages middle-class people to identify more with than the rich than the poor, whom they're taught to despise. In reality, the middle-class has a lot more in common with the poor, and their fates are inextricably intertwined. Once the middle-class realize this, maybe we can get some real change going in this country.
Kirk, I think they are realizing it. There is hardly any middle class left. So many have slid into poverty or know they are a paycheck away. The problem is what Elizabeth Warren said it was. "The game is rigged".
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