In his Oct. 20, 2002, New York Times Magazine article titled "For Richer: The Disappearing Middle Class," Princeton University economist Professor Paul Krugman wrote, "For the America I grew up in -- the America of the 1950s and 1960s -- was a middle-class society, both in reality and in feel. The vast income and wealth inequalities of the Gilded Age had disappeared. ... Daily experiences confirmed the sense of a fairly equal society. The economic disparities you were conscious of were quite muted."



Krugman's vision of income inequality and the disappearing middle class is an excellent example of the classroom propaganda college professors use to exploit America's immature and inexperienced youth. Let's look at it.











A no-brainer is that, if the middle class has disappeared or is disappearing, it means that America has become or is becoming a nation where there's only the rich and the poor -- like a Third World country. I'd like to see Krugman's evidence.



Krugman sees the '50s and '60s as a time of a "fairly equal society." Even if his observations were factually true, so what? Does it mean that the average person enjoyed a higher standard of living? The fact of business is that the 20th century has been the best ever for all Americans. Cato Institute scholars Stephen Moore and the late Julian Simon document this in "It's Getting Better All the Time." Let's take a small sample of their evidence.



The average life expectancy in 1900 was 47 years. Today, it is 77 and rising. The infant-mortality rate has dropped from one in 10 to one in 150. Americans who're considered poor have routine access to a quality of food, health care, consumer products, entertainment, communications and transportation that even the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers could have only dreamed of.



Rich people have always had servants to spare them the drudgery of having to beat the dust out of rugs; the advent of vacuum cleaners spared the common man of that kind of drudgery. Henry Ford became very rich, but the benefits reaped by the common man by being able to afford an auto trivialized whatever gains were reaped by Ford. Air conditioning and air travel, as late as the '50s, were something for the well-to-do; now, half the poor people have air conditioning and travel by air, and more than half own automobiles. In the 19th century, almost all teen-agers toiled in factories or fields.



Now, nine in 10 attend high school. Today's Americans have three times more leisure time than their great-grandparents did. The price of food relative to wages has plummeted: In the early part of this century, the average American had to work two hours to earn enough to purchase a chicken, compared with 20 minutes today.



College professors, politicians and others whose agenda calls for increased government control over our lives promote the lie that things are getting worse. If we buy into that lie, we'll kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. We might ask ourselves: Why is it that so much of the progress of the past 100 years has originated in America? Moore and Simon provide a simple but compelling answer: "The unique American formula of individual liberty and free enterprise has cultivated risk-taking, experimentation, innovation and scientific exploration on a grand scale that has never occurred anywhere before."



Finally, let's keep in mind that inequality of income is a result, and if we looked at the distribution of productivity, which economists haven't been able to do very well, we might not be surprised by inequality of income. In other words, how surprised would you be if I told you that I know how to play basketball and I try hard, but nobody is willing to equalize incomes by paying me as much as Michael Jordan earns?

And here I was thinking we had one of the worst rates of infant mortality in the western world, while millions of us go without without fundamental health care.



Silly me!

What horseshit! This is what this whole pile of stinking propaganda boils down to:

"Why is it that so much of the progress of the past 100 years has originated in America? Moore and Simon provide a simple but compelling answer: "The unique American formula of individual liberty and free enterprise has cultivated risk-taking, experimentation, innovation and scientific exploration on a grand scale that has never occurred anywhere before."

Simple?....more like simplistic and ignorant of historical fact. American's do not enjoy more leasure time becasue of "free enterprise", they fought for it themselves, and some died in the process. What about equal rights for African-Americans? What politician or "free-enterprise" granted that? How about women's sufferage, child labor, worker's rights, social security. The progress that benefit the people mentioned in this article was denied them and they had to fight for it.

Compelling? Maybe compelling to you, but the article offers no evidence to support this claim other than to declare it "compelling". That is weak to say the least. Funny that the article hold up Henry Ford, who was a known anti-semite and Nazi sympathizer, as a model to be admired.

Here's a link to a picture of Ford recieving a medal from the Nazi's.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/images/nazi4_113098ap.jpg

have not the people in the rest of the world been fighting for more leisure time, equality under the law, worker's rights, etc?

And yet how come the rest of the world hasn't made the same strides in these areas as the US??

The number of women in the world who get to vote is infintesimal. Why has a womans suffrage movement not prevailed in the Sudan?

Gets right back to the main point: The American system provides greater freedom and greater prosperity than any other system dreamed up by mankind.

God, your as limp as an overcooked noodle, aren't you SheMex.

His point was that Americans enjoy those rights because of free enterprise, when the truth is they enjoy these rights in spite of it...nowhere does he mention the struggles of the common man that are really behind these advances, and wants to lay credit where only condemnation is deserved.

...and "the rest of the world" in some cases is far beyond where we are in the US on worker rights, so your premise is, as it always is, bullshit.

the fact that the rest of the world has better workers rights is why people all around the world come to the US looking for work. . .

Are there lines around the block at every US embassy in Central America because people are trying to get AWAY from the wonderful workers rights they have there?? Yes, they must WANT to be oppressed.

You idiot...forget the strawman bullshit...do you deny that there are other countries that are ahead of America on workers rights?

Of course you can't, so go ahead a change the subject...I wonder where you will take us...millions of dead under communism...the Left turning a blind eye to the plight of workers in East Jabip...whatever...

You make an assertion THAT WAS WRONG, then when faced with the facts.....it's time for a little round of Three Card Monte...

...well, we ain't followin' your queen, asshole, ply your hustle down the block...

I do deny that there are other countries where workers have more rights than here in the US.

What are you talking about -- French month long holidays??

You need advise on wine or cheese, go to the French. Otherwise, take their advice, reverse it, and you'll be doing well.

...If you deny then you are an idiot, ignorant of reality...but then again your version of workers rights is that they have a right to work somewhere else...so I guess I can understand how you WOULD see it that way.

Well, wait, there's BURMA...hell, they have legal slave labor there, and CHINA...oh hey, then by your standards, they have much MUCH better worker's rights than we do...if they don't like it they can DIE....

Capitalists dream....

Just calling someone an "idiot" isn't exactly the same as producing evidence that they are wrong, you know.

You know, in France, its against the law to work more than 35 hours per week!

Imagine that -- no OT!!

How is a simple manual laborer supposed to make his life better if he can't work some OT to put some extra scratch in his pocket?

Well, he can't. Which is why the French GDP is so anemic.

Freedom is what its all about. And the Left despises freedom. It means regular people make their own decisions -- and regular people just don't seem to make the decisions the Leftists want them to make!

What the fuck do you know? OT is a bad thing unless it is used in situations where the need added resources cannot be predicted or adjusted for, which should be rare. Managers that pile on OT just to keep their headcount low are being irresponsible to their workers and their company. And if a worker needs OT to get by, MAYBE THAT'S CAUSE HE'S UNDERPAID!

Now, just calling someone an "idiot" isn't exactly the same as producing evidence that they are wrong, unless it is conventional wisdom, then, hey, who needs proof?

And calling you an idiot for the drivel you post on this board I think will be accepted by the majority of posters without further explanation...they can see for themselves.

who has ever really worked for a living would say that over time is a bad thing.

Down on the docks, guys compete for OT. That's what pays for their vacations, for their 20 foot Grady White, their new bike, for their kids' tuitions.

You've just revealed yourself as a pampered little brat.

Then you should fall down at may feet and admire me like your little BushyBrat there, SheMex...

...let's straighten you out...

Your lack of understanding shows that it is YOU that never worked a fuckin day in your life. You think these "guys on the docks" you're acting like you know something about WANT to be at work more than 12 hours a day? You think they want to spend their lives workin' and sleeping while their kids grow up not knowing them just so they can have a better life? Fathers who drag themselves to school after working 10-15 hour day just so they can get ahead...and their kids don't know them....

..but they understand. Those people don't work OT "for their vacations, for their 20 foot Grady White, their new bike", they work it for their lives, they work it because they HAVE to.

.....now...what's YOUR backround with the working class you little weasle...blowin' the "guys down on the docks"?

AND...

I do not call you SheMex because I am being sexist...I call you SheMex because you're a pussy. Nothin' bad about being a pussy, is there, really?

Hey tmex, gimmie your name and adress so i can FUCKIN STAB YOU IN THE FACE WITH A DULL KNIFE UNTIL YOURE DEAD. The only good fascist is a DEAD FASCIST

BLOODY REVOLUTION... mmm... bring it on.... i cant wait to kill me some CONSERVATIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!

You guys are totally stymied. Some day, maybe you'll grow up and thank me for showing you the way!

That IMC LA would even showcase governments spooks like

you and their cointel pro crap on this sight.

Don't like what you read, scream Spook! What are you, six?

SheMex, you spoon fed sap...you never worked a day in your life, have you? Private school....? Dad's dad had money..trying desperately to justify your hollow existence....?

...fuckin' leach....

...and BushBlower...how's the crusade comin' along? Knock off any windmills, lately?.... (Simpleton can be your Sancho...)

Sancho Panza! That guy is cool. I prefer to think of myself as Atom Boy. Jiminy Jillikers, Jiminy Jillikers.

...Do you look like James Coco?

Because they have skipped some posts in their mostly

patty cake, low octane, apparently pointless background

noise. I have seen this phenomenon on all of the latest comments sights. Is this a general work in progress from our intelligence agencies?

Always the heckler and the indigenous right wing camper(s).

I'm interested. Simple Simon is also seemingly called in sometimes as a fairly more time responsive poster with the same themes of right wing nonsense. It doesn't look like the right, if you can call it that, sound like anything but ideologues unable to respond to logic; filling Indy with babble in an effort to disfuctionalize this open forum.

These regular "campers" fill it with ridiculous beginning posts and then congratulate themselves on the tripe forever, even when they are the only ones on the thread.

Any serious concept is set upon in a hail storm of derision

by these "campers". Where do they come from, one wonders.

Ignore them all.

Interested, although you are wrong about me being a mole...you are right about everything else...I will not taunt the baddies anymore....

...My apologies to all...keep fighting the good fight, brothers!

Signing off.

I'm guilty myself. Maybe we should let them carry on their pointless rant, with their own self generated

self congratulating self right wing masturbation. Detestable as it is; it's transparent and almost easy to

step over. 'me' is correct on this, in my opinion.

Victory in the general election, and now even the field of Indymedia is ceded to us. Ah, triumph.

We'll just avoid the spray of rancid spooge comming from the self absorbed right.