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SandyG's avatar

Re corruption and crony capitalism - those things are perrenial and features of the system. What killed the middle class was much more than that: Three decades of neoliberal policies.

"We can thank former President Ronald Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for our current state of affairs. The neoliberal reforms of the 1980s were based on the idea that unfettered markets would bring shared prosperity through a mystical trickle-down process.

"We were told that lowering tax rates on the rich, financialization, and globalization would result in higher standards of living for everybody. Instead, the U.S. growth rate fell to around two-thirds of its level in the post-war era — a period of tight financial regulations and a top marginal tax rate consistently above 70% — and a greater share of the wealth and income from this limited growth was funneled to the top 1%.

"Instead of the promised prosperity, we got deindustrialization, polarization, and a shrinking middle class" [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/three-decades-of-neoliberal-policies-have-decimated-the-middle-class-our-economy-and-our-democracy-2019-05-13].

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Travis's avatar

This echoes one of the other replies I left here: "This all goes back to Reaganism, Milton Freedman's supply-side economic theories, and blessing the rich with enough tax cuts to give them the economic power to poison the wells of politics, the economy, and our meritocracy. The GOP through Reagan's economic policies grew the oligarchy that consumed both their party and our economy, and Trump and Musk are direct products of that original sin of low taxes for the rich."

Corruption and crony capitalism don't need to be perennial feature of our system. They are allowed to be because we refuse to highlight the problem and push to do something about it. We'd rather do (checks notes) infrastructure spending, student loan forgiveness, green energy spending, etc., etc. Maybe if dems put this kind of thing at the forefront of their agenda instead of their little pet issues the working class would take them more seriously. End the possibility of corruption by liquidating the wealth that the oligarchy uses to corrupt the system with and then Citizens United becomes meaningless. You can't make corruption happen in nobody has gigantic piles of money to do corrupting with.

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SandyG's avatar

The low taxes for the rich didn't just come out of thin air. The economy in the 7Os was stagnant from the oil shock which was triggered by the Yom Kippur War. The theory of supply-side economics - freeing the rich and reducing regulation - would produce economic activity that would help everyone. It didn't. This failure is the economic platform the Dems need to run on.

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Tara's avatar

A high tide lifts all boats. Wealth from the top will trickle down. The postcards from David Stockman. This big lie is the Reagan legacy.

The rush of wealth to the top causes Dickensian conditions at the bottom.

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