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Well Ceasar Chavez's farm labor union lost 90% of it's membership since it's heyday. Yes, CLEARLY policies have made it possible to somehow find plentiful numbers of workers willing to work for less that have pretty much crushed that union.
Many of the things unions fought for are now law and enabled the middle class: a 40 hour work week, safety rules, workman's compensation, child labor laws.
Well Ceasar Chavez's farm labor union lost 90% of it's membership since it's heyday. Yes, CLEARLY policies have made it possible to somehow find plentiful numbers of workers willing to work for less that have pretty much crushed that union.
Some thing started to happen in the late 80s where factories started leaving the US and going to China. For what ever the reason factories can no longer make a profit in the US like before and have to go to China.
The job creators done it. By creatin' middle class jobs.
Yes, yes they did. They actually did.
There was a point in time, right after World War 2, when those at the top who slice the economic pie decided that (for various reasons) employees, employers, and share holders should share equally in the profits derived from manufacturing. Point to anything you want - unionism, fraternalistic/paternalistic feelings left over from getting through the Great Depression and winning a world war, what ever floats your boat, but the people running the major corporations did have more concern for the people working in those corporations.
That all changed in the 1980's when, for whatever reason you wish to pick, the decision makers began to value share holder profits over other concerns. Personally, I believe that it was the Conservative/Libertarian revolution that began with Barry Goldwater running for president and truly kicked in with Ronald Reagan becoming president. The oil price shocks of the 1970's revealed the Achilles Heel of the US economy - a United States that was no longer the world's biggest oil producer but sill heavily dependent upon oil. It also happened to be roughly the point in time when the United States shifted from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. Good pay for simple jobs in US factories shifted to lower pay for simple jobs at Walmart (as an example).
Of course, this is my opinion. Feel free to educate me.
The American "middle class" didn't certainly wasn't created in the 1950s and it certainly wasn't created as the result of unions. America has always had a "middle class" since long before it was America. A great many people moved to North America and American colonies, not for "religions freedom" as so often promoted, but for economic freedom. To escape the feudal and class systems of Europe. To acquire property and to CREATE wealth, from nothing. To have the chance to keep what they produced.
What made a middle class possible was embraced in our Constitution. Individual rights-most importantly property rights. The limitations upon the legal use of force between men (slavery being another topic, and a stain on our history). The concept of equality of rights-and the limitations on a government's power to abridge those rights. In Europe, ultimate power still resided in a monarchy, a ruling class. Americans rejected that concept and embraced equality. Ultimate-what made a middle class possible was an embrace of Capitalism. A free, voluntary exchange of goods and services. A system in which ANYONE could be a Capitalist, start a business, own property, create wealth.
What made a middle class possible was capitalism. What spread it to a much wider portion of the population was industrialization. Capitalism directly rewards those with the intelligence, drive and motivation to create a business, to recognize and exploit new opportunities, to create new markets, and with the courage to take the risks involved. But only a limited portion of any population will ever have those qualities. Most will not be business owners. In a pre-industrial society-"labor" meant just that. Simple, dumb, often back-breaking physical labor. The people with no more skills or abilities than to do that, were never in a position to advance, to enter the "middle class". (really this whole thread should have first defined "middle class" and how what we would perceive as that has evolved over time).
Industrialization changed that. Instead of simple, brute physical labor being the "power souce", machines became that power source. Instead transporting goods by oxen driven by humans, we used railroads and canals. Instead of poling boats up rivers with men pushing sticks, we built steam engines. Instead of a blacksmith hammering out products one at a time-we built steel mills and foundries.
The key aspect of industrialization-the output of a man's physical labor were multiplied dozens, hundreds or thousands of times. That meant that workers operating levers became more valuable than workers operating shovels. Someone driving a tractor produced more than someone running a hoe. As an individual's output became greater, their value became greater, and wages increased. This allowed those without the skills or abilities to start and operate a business to enter a "middle class". By developing the machines that added so much value to human labor, it allowed those that started business to multiply their wealth and output as well. Industrialization and capitalism enabled those with the drive and the ideas to not just start from nothing and enter the middle class, but to succeed, become very wealth and enter the..what? Elite perhaps, but I don't like that word. Lets just say become rich. Remember that men like Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie started at best from modest roots, if not poverty. The "information revolution" is an offshoot of the "industrial revolution", and we all know the names that have followed similar paths in modern times. Names like Jobs, Gates, Musk or Bezos.
The American "middle class" didn't certainly wasn't created in the 1950s and it certainly wasn't created as the result of unions. America has always had a "middle class" since long before it was America. A great many people moved to North America and American colonies, not for "religions freedom" as so often promoted, but for economic freedom. To escape the feudal and class systems of Europe. To acquire property and to CREATE wealth, from nothing. To have the chance to keep what they produced.
What made a middle class possible was embraced in our Constitution. Individual rights-most importantly property rights. The limitations upon the legal use of force between men (slavery being another topic, and a stain on our history). The concept of equality of rights-and the limitations on a government's power to abridge those rights. In Europe, ultimate power still resided in a monarchy, a ruling class. Americans rejected that concept and embraced equality. Ultimate-what made a middle class possible was an embrace of Capitalism. A free, voluntary exchange of goods and services. A system in which ANYONE could be a Capitalist, start a business, own property, create wealth.
What made a middle class possible was capitalism. What spread it to a much wider portion of the population was industrialization. Capitalism directly rewards those with the intelligence, drive and motivation to create a business, to recognize and exploit new opportunities, to create new markets, and with the courage to take the risks involved. But only a limited portion of any population will ever have those qualities. Most will not be business owners. In a pre-industrial society-"labor" meant just that. Simple, dumb, often back-breaking physical labor. The people with no more skills or abilities than to do that, were never in a position to advance, to enter the "middle class". (really this whole thread should have first defined "middle class" and how what we would perceive as that has evolved over time).
Industrialization changed that. Instead of simple, brute physical labor being the "power souce", machines became that power source. Instead transporting goods by oxen driven by humans, we used railroads and canals. Instead of poling boats up rivers with men pushing sticks, we built steam engines. Instead of a blacksmith hammering out products one at a time-we built steel mills and foundries.
The key aspect of industrialization-the output of a man's physical labor were multiplied dozens, hundreds or thousands of times. That meant that workers operating levers became more valuable than workers operating shovels. Someone driving a tractor produced more than someone running a hoe. As an individual's output became greater, their value became greater, and wages increased. This allowed those without the skills or abilities to start and operate a business to enter a "middle class". By developing the machines that added so much value to human labor, it allowed those that started business to multiply their wealth and output as well. Industrialization and capitalism enabled those with the drive and the ideas to not just start from nothing and enter the middle class, but to succeed, become very wealth and enter the..what? Elite perhaps, but I don't like that word. Lets just say become rich. Remember that men like Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie started at best from modest roots, if not poverty. The "information revolution" is an offshoot of the "industrial revolution", and we all know the names that have followed similar paths in modern times. Names like Jobs, Gates, Musk or Bezos.
I agree that you have to overall prosperity in a country to have a healthy middle class. Industrialization made overall prosperity possible. However, that's not the extent of it. The USA had a steadily increasing GDP during the Guilded Age from 1870 to 1900. What it didn't have was a reasonable distribution of that national income. That didn't happen and wasn't going to happen until various measures were taken. For example, the rich paid no income tax before the Sixteenth Amendment was enacted around 1916. Government was financed through tariffs and liquor excise taxes. The tariff burden fell on working people who were forced to pay inflated prices for goods made here in the USA by industrialists. Plus, without an income tax there was no government money available for education, infrastructure spending, or relief.
I note that the middle class was probably the healthiest in the fifties and sixties when individual income tax rates were the highest.
It took a series of measures that I've previously outlined to obtain the change in income distribution that allowed for a large middle class not just prosperity. It's the old "trickle-down" argument. Little trickling down would have occurred without specific policies being enacted.
The US has never been a capitalist nation. We have always had a mixed economy since the Washington Administration. The establishment of the (first) Bank of the United States (one objection was that private banks should hold govt. monies), the Lighthouse Act of 1789 (in which private and state property was nationalized), the Tariff Act of 1789 (which favored certain industries with the goal of realignment of American industry) all interjected the govt. into business affairs.
This expanded more directly into specific businesses during the Adams Administration with the 1798 Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen in which the govt. required businesses to collect monies for the health care of seamen. The intervention continued during the Monroe Administration when a national road was started in 1817*; that bypassed private toll roads and was the largest national road project until the Eisenhower Administration. Then the adoption of Clay's "American System" expanded even this. Lincoln's currency acts took the printing of paper currency out of the private sector and into the govt.'s hands and the trans-continental railroad provided govt. funding for the building of that rail line since the private sector couldn't provided the funding...in short it's the mixture of govt. and private business with its ebb and flow that enabled the expansion of the American economy and the middle class.
*On his last day in office, President Madison had vetoed a road bill (internal improvements) saying a Constitutional Amendment would be needed; Monroe did not agree and hence the road was started. President Madison's veto message: https://millercenter.org/the-preside...rovements-bill
I agree that you have to overall prosperity in a country to have a healthy middle class. Industrialization made overall prosperity possible. However, that's not the extent of it. The USA had a steadily increasing GDP during the Guilded Age from 1870 to 1900. What it didn't have was a reasonable distribution of that national income. That didn't happen and wasn't going to happen until various measures were taken. For example, the rich paid no income tax before the Sixteenth Amendment was enacted around 1916. Government was financed through tariffs and liquor excise taxes. The tariff burden fell on working people who were forced to pay inflated prices for goods made here in the USA by industrialists. Plus, without an income tax there was no government money available for education, infrastructure spending, or relief.
I note that the middle class was probably the healthiest in the fifties and sixties when individual income tax rates were the highest.
It took a series of measures that I've previously outlined to obtain the change in income distribution that allowed for a large middle class not just prosperity. It's the old "trickle-down" argument. Little trickling down would have occurred without specific policies being enacted.
I hear there was a middle class in the 20s and 30s may be not has strong as the 50s and 60s. So clearly the American middle class got created with all those factories jobs.
Well Ceasar Chavez's farm labor union lost 90% of it's membership since it's heyday. Yes, CLEARLY policies have made it possible to somehow find plentiful numbers of workers willing to work for less that have pretty much crushed that union.
People just have no clue how unlimited immigration destroys blue collar jobs and unions.
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