avatarWalter Rhein

Summary

The article argues that Republican policies systematically disadvantage the middle class for the benefit of the ultra-wealthy.

Abstract

The author of the article expresses deep concern over the Republican Party's policies, which they claim are designed to strip wealth from the middle class and transfer it to the social elites. The article outlines six specific ways in which this occurs: through cuts to education, attacks on Social Security, tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate bailouts, limiting access to healthcare, and the privatization of critical industries. The author contends that these policies not only harm the middle class but also undermine the country's long-term economic health and democratic values. The article suggests that the middle class is being misled by propaganda and that the only way to prevent further exploitation is to vote out Republican officials and replace them with Progressive candidates who are committed to protecting the working class.

Opinions

  • The author believes that working-class people are misguided in their support for Republicans, as the party's policies are detrimental to their economic interests.
  • Education attacks by Republicans are seen as an attempt to create an ill-informed electorate that is easier to manipulate with false political arguments.
  • Cuts to Social Security are viewed as an outright theft of money that workers have earned and paid into the system.
  • Tax cuts for the wealthy are criticized for placing an undue financial burden on the middle class.
  • Corporate bailouts are condemned as a mechanism that devalues the currency and transfers wealth to the richest individuals, at the expense of the middle class.
  • The author is critical of Republican efforts to limit access to healthcare, which is a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States.
  • Privatization of critical industries is seen as a way for the wealthy to acquire public assets at potentially unfair prices, leading to higher costs and poorer service for the public.
  • The article asserts that the Republican platform aims to exploit the working class, treating them as assets rather than as citizens with rights and value.
  • The author suggests that while Democrats are not doing enough to support the middle class, they are preferable to Republicans, who are portrayed as universally dedicated to robbing the working class.
  • The article calls for political action, urging readers to vote against Republicans and to support Progressive candidates who prioritize the protection of the working class.

6 Ways Republicans Steal From the Middle Class

They won’t stop until they’ve taken everything

Photo by Shail Sharma on Unsplash

One thing I can’t understand is why working class people continue to support Republicans despite the fact that so many right wing policies have no purpose other than to strip wealth from the middle class. There is not a single person in my social circle who has enough money to benefit from Republican policies, yet many of them are rabid Trump supporters.

Lately, network television programming has been flooded with political advertisements that are blatant lies and propaganda. Many of the ads consist of clips of regular citizens expressing concern over non-existent tax hikes that they claim represent the Democratic platform. However, the reality is that Republicans are the ones who place an undue burden on the middle class to pay for the excesses they provide to social elites.

The transfer of wealth from working class people to the ultra wealthy has already reached a critical point. If allowed to continue, the imbalance might become so extreme that our very freedoms will be erased. This article will provide five examples of how Republican policies crush the middle class, and supply some suggestions for what we must to do to stop them.

1. Cuts to education

Attacks on education have been a consistent part of Republican propaganda for decades. I don’t understand why parents could vote for a political party that’s doing everything it can to minimize the quality of the education their children receive.

The attacks on education represent one of the most nefarious assaults not just on families, but on our whole way of life. Our country is a representative republic, and the way to achieve power in this nation is to earn public support. If the public is poorly educated, it’s much easier to earn personal power with phony political arguments. Uniformed voters tend to vote against their own best interests.

The more access our citizens have to good education and accurate information, the better equipped they are to make appropriate decisions both in the voting booth and in the business office. Eroding education makes our country less capable of competing in the global marketplace. However, some individuals are so power obsessed that they are willing to sabotage the long-term prospects of our society for their own immediate personal gain.

2. Cuts to Social Security

The proposed tax to Social Security really should have people picking up pitchforks and torches and taking to the street. Everyone from Rand Paul to Mitch McConnell has had the nerve to refer to Social Security as an “entitlement.”

It’s not an “entitlement,” that’s your money. It was taken out of your paycheck.

Making cuts to Social Security is no different than if the government reached in and took your 401k. In fact, if we allow the government to steal our Social Security, they may just feel emboldened to go after our other assets and savings.

The dialogue and attacks on Social Security are offensive on a level that cannot be expressed. Republican politicians that call it an “entitlement,” need to be booed out of the building. They’re literally picking your pocket and trying to pass it off as doing you a favor. The position Republicans take against Social Security should be enough to disqualify them from holding public office all on its own.

They’re thieves. They’re thieves. They’re thieves. That money is YOURS!

3. Tax cuts for the wealthy

The massive tax cuts that wealthy people get do not eliminate the naturally occurring expenses of our nation. The money has to be made up from somewhere, and whenever the elite class gets a tax cut, it ends up being the middle class that is forced to shoulder the burden.

If you look at the tax code from back in the decades when the United States was fiscally solvent, there were always massive taxes on extreme wealth. These taxes existed to provide incentive to major corporations to invest in their people and maintain a high standard of living for the middle class. This allowed those businesses to show a higher payroll expense and provided them with an obvious means of staying out of the high tax brackets.

Now that there are no longer any high tax brackets, those corporations just keep that money for themselves. That’s why the minimum wage has stagnated for decades and it’s no longer possible for families to support themselves on a single income.

4. Corporate Bailouts

A bailout represents a moment where the government prints up a couple trillion dollars and hands out the majority of that new money to the richest people in the country. Republicans always claim that they have to support the big industries that provide jobs, but that argument is nonsensical. There is no advantage to putting working-class citizens on the hook for trillions of dollars because major industries are so poorly managed that they need government assistance every ten years.

Remember that every time the government prints up a couple trillion dollars, it reduces the value of money already in circulation. This doesn’t hurt extremely wealthy individuals, because they are the ones that receive 90–95% of the bailout money.

The middle class, on the other hand, sees their total net worth reduced by a major percentage due to the immediate devaluation of currency. Sure, they still have the same amount of money in their bank accounts, but that money is now worthless. Bailouts represent a massive transfer of wealth from working-class people to social elites.

5. Limiting access to health care

Trump recently signed an executive order to reduce the cost of insulin. However, executive orders are temporary and there’s no guarantee the lower costs will remain after the election. Trump has had many opportunities to enact widespread, binding reform to reduce the costs of pharmaceuticals across the board, and he has failed to do so. His executive order is nothing more than a transparent vote grab that is not truly designed to help anyone.

Everything Republicans do is designed to limit the ability of working class people to achieve affordable health care. Health care costs are the number one cause of bankruptcy in our country. In instances where Republicans have control of the Presidency, House, and Senate, they always fail to enact any healthcare reform.

In fact, they generally dedicate their efforts to reducing the consumer protections and insurance coverage we already have. The actions Trump has taken to dismantle Obamacare and deny people insurance in the middle of a global pandemic is inhumane, immoral, and borderline criminal.

6. Privatization of critical industry

Privatization is taking publicly owned institutions and transferring control to private citizens. As it currently stands, the American people actually own the post office. Think about that for a minute. All those buildings, all those mail trucks, all those kiosks you see at airports are our property. Privatization means that ownership of all that infrastructure will be transferred to some rich jerk. What guarantee do we have that the rich person will actually have to pay a fair market value when the transfer happens?

Who is negotiating on our behalf?

The whole concept of privatization is completely offensive and ripe for exploitation. The right likes to obfuscate the theft with all their propaganda about how “the government can’t run things efficiently.” However, whether you’re using UPS or Fed-Ex, the fact is that US Postal Service carriers are going to be subcontracted for many deliveries.

Sure, there’s some truth to the fact that the government is inefficient, but it’s dishonest to say that without mentioning that private corporations are also inefficient. Yes, the government doesn’t always care about your best interests, but neither do for-profit corporations. Privatization usually results in the same bad service we get now, the only difference is the prices go through the roof and the middle class sees even more of their personal wealth permanently eroded.

Republicans don’t care about people who actually work

The whole Republican platform is designed to turn us all into ignorant worker bees. They want to squeeze as much money from us as they can, and then discard the husks of our corpses when they’re done. They don’t care about fairness. They don’t care about our health and well-being. They see us as an exploitable asset.

You can go right down the line and make an easy connection between Republican platforms and a desire to separate working class people from their assets. There’s absolutely nothing that Republicans do to help money flow from the social elites to the people who actually perform the labor that makes our country and our economy function.

The simple fact is that Democrats aren’t doing enough to help the middle class either, but, unlike Republicans, at least they aren’t universally dedicated to robbing us every chance they get. To change this trend we must first vote every Republican out of office, and then we have to swap out incumbent Democrats with Progressives that actually make protecting the working class part of their political platform.

Unless you have a net worth of a couple hundred million dollars, a vote for a Republican candidate is a vote against your personal wealth, it’s a vote against the health and well-being of your children, and it’s a vote against any hope of a sustainable future. Seriously, wise up. You’re getting robbed. Don’t stand for it!

Election 2020
Finance
Politics
Justice
Personal Finance
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