The Coming Class War and How to Avoid it: Rebuilding the American Middle Class

by Peterson; Paul E

• ISBN13: 9780765601971
• ISBN10: 0765601974
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-08-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In addressing the decline of the middle class, the authors determine that the middle class has not only continued to shrink, but that the majority of economic benefits have continued to be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, increasingly the upper one half of one percent of the population. Financial interests of the powerful are overriding the ability of the growing lower and shrinking middle classes to get their economic views represented in Washington. As a result, our society will face growing class conflict in the coming quarter century. The authors conclude their argument by suggesting strategic changes in policy that will stave off the upcoming crisis.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
From Middle Class to Underclass to Class War?	3	(16)
A Touch of Class (Tension, That Is)	5	(6)
A Little More Class Tension---Some Simple Numbers	11	(2)
The Coming Class Tension---Some Harder Numbers	13	(2)
Do You Have a Friend in Prison?	15	(2)
How Did It Get This Bad?	17	(2)
Money, Wall Street, and the New American Plutocracy	19	(24)
Twenty-Five Years of Prosperity---``The Age of Keynes''	24	(4)
The End of the Bretton Woods System	28	(2)
Emergence of the ``Casino Economy''	30	(2)
Enter the Transnational Corporation	32	(3)
Enter the Financialized Economy	35	(4)
America and the Financialized Casino Economy	39	(4)
The Deliberate Path Toward a New American Class Structure	43	(32)
Debunking the Big Lie: Middle-Class Decline and World Economic Decline	46	(2)
Doing It Slowly	48	(1)
The Role of Capital and Organized Corporate Interests	49	(2)
The Reasons: Middle-Class Decline and Class Creation	51	(6)
The Economic Lobbying Success Story	57	(4)
The Smoke Screen over the Classes	61	(1)
Political Non-Response to Middle-Class Decline Number One: Clinton's Failed Campaign for Change	62	(4)
Political Non-Response to Middle-Class Decline Number Two: The Not-So Unsuccessful Contract with America	66	(2)
The ``Contract''---A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing	68	(4)
The Next ``Contracts''---A Flat Tax and a National Sales Tax	72	(3)
The Disenfranchised Middle Class---The Quasi-Economics of Confusion	75	(24)
Confusing the Electorate---The Scare Tactic	78	(3)
Confusing the Electorate---The Use of Guilt	81	(1)
The Confusing Magnitude of the American Economy	82	(3)
Confusing the Electorate---The Use of Quasi-Economics	85	(2)
The Quasi-Economics of Confusion	87	(4)
Genuine Economics	91	(3)
Muted and Isolationist Economics---The Silence of the Economic Lambs	94	(5)
Class Warfare American Style	99	(28)
Karl Marx and Class Warfare	100	(2)
Marxism and History	102	(2)
America's Egalitarian Class Structure: 1945 to 1973	104	(2)
A Changing American Class Structure: The 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s	106	(1)
The New Class Structure in the United States	107	(4)
Dual Labor Markets, the Shrinking Middle Class, and the Emerging Labor-Dependent Class	111	(1)
American Class Warfare---Intraclass Style	112	(1)
Racism	113	(1)
The Law-and-Order Versus the Criminal Classes	114	(1)
Gender Issues	115	(1)
Integenerational Class Conflict	115	(1)
Single-Issue Politics	116	(1)
Long-Term Trends in Income and Wealth Distribution	117	(6)
Long-Term Trends in Social Health Deterioration	123	(2)
What Is to Be Done?	125	(1)
Appendix: Summary of Reich Classification on Work in America from the Work of Nations	125	(2)
Some Solutions for Class Harmony	127	(40)
Productivity and Growth	127	(7)
Rebuilding America: A Twenty-First-Century New Deal	134	(3)
Facilitating Rebuilding America I: A Federal Capital Budget	137	(1)
Facilitating Rebuilding America II: A National Development Bank	138	(1)
A Modern Full Employment Policy	139	(2)
The Need for Primary-Labor-Market Jobs	141	(2)
Health Care and Tax Reform	143	(2)
Federal Tax Policy and the Drift Toward Class Tensions	145	(5)
The ``Manufactured'' Class Tensions over Social Security	150	(4)
Needed: A Federal Tax System to Reduce Class Tensions	154	(1)
The 1997 Budget-Balancing Tax Bill	155	(1)
Toward Strengthening and Preserving Social Security	155	(1)
The Kerrey Plan	155	(1)
Balance the Social Security Budget?	156	(1)
The Strobel-Peterson Social Security Plan	157	(4)
What Can Be Done?	161	(1)
Ending the Dominance of the Political Process by Money	162	(2)
Relegitimize Government	164	(3)
Summary, Observations, and a Prediction on the Problem	167	(25)
Financialization as the Road to Political Control	170	(2)
The ``Republicrats''	172	(1)
Economic Confusion	172	(2)
The Deafening Silence of Economists	174	(1)
A Three-Step Process of Control	175	(4)
Elitist Democrats and the Proletariat Republicans	179	(1)
Some Solutions	180	(2)
Rebuild America	182	(2)
A Single-Payer Health Care System and Tax Reform	184	(1)
Putting ``Security'' Back into Social Security	185	(1)
Campaign Finance Reform	186	(1)
Anti-Statism, Class Warfare, and the Loss of American Culture	186	(1)
Teddy---The Other Roosevelt	187	(2)
Whither Corporate Statesmanship?	189	(1)
Whither Democracy?	190	(2)
Notes	192	(7)
Index	199	(8)
About the Authors	207