...plus a pretty good rip on Sarah Palin.
http://www.politicususa.com/...
the large thriving middle-class that America used to have didn’t just appear out of the blue.
It was created using an economic tool called socialism.
Oh, I know we never use that word here in buzzword nation, but that is exactly what our government did after World War II. It taxed the rich up to ninety percent and massively redistributed that money through the GI Bill so that more than half the population benefitted from free college, free job training, cheap mortgages, and much much more. Yes, for a brief shining moment, we were Finland. Now we can debate whether that is a good thing or bad thing to go back to, but what is beyond debate is that is what happened. The Fifties and Sixties are the era of socialism in America.
Here’s the reality. A middle-class is actually not the byproduct of capitalism. Ask any historian, a middle-class is actually a fluke in history.
And, of course, this is true. Free markets make it easier to make money if you already have money, and harder to make money if you have none. Capital gains are nothing more than welfare for the rich: they get to make money simply by having enough money to own stuff. But capital gains are the #1 example of people sitting around doing absolutely nothing, and collecting a paycheck--while other people work hard to increase the value of the business.
Whereas poor people don't have enough money to even have access to the most basic tools they need to succeed with their labor in the market: elite schools, investment capital, safe neighborhoods, etc.
Such feedback loops are strong in a free market, causing an ever-widening gulf between a society of wealth and a society of poverty. There may be a few individual exceptions to this dynamic, but they will become rarer and rarer without socialist intervention in an economy creating opportunity for all.