This course is an economic history of what happened to ordinary American people and families from about 1930 to 2010.
From the late 1940s to about 1980 ordinary people and families in the United States enjoyed a tremendous increase in their prosperity and quality of life, especially when compared with the conditions that existed during World War II, the 1930s, and before. That prosperity was undoubtedly the highest the world had ever experienced. Because of that, those people are referred to as the great American middle class in these course materials, and that 30-40 year time span was the period that witnessed the creation of the great American middle class.
Unfortunately, that high level of prosperity began to decline in the 1980s and thereafter. In the thirty-odd years since 1980, the U.S. political-economic system has not come even close to regaining that unprecedented high level of prosperity for the nation’s ordinary people and their families. That was the time period, from about 1980 to 2010, that witnessed the destruction of the great American middle class.
The course materials are presented in about one hundred pages of text, divided into thirty-six chapters. Some chapters are longer than three pages, but the large majority are shorter.
Read on, and check out Professor Stan Stasch‘s article in Huffington Post >> “The Decline of the Middle Class: Stealth Governance and Income Inequality”
The upstart highly insulated special interest groups want wealth exclusively for them. They have systematically marginalized american citizens thru their bought politicians from the WH to Both Houses to be “just merely surviving” economic status thru legislation and policies regarding for example savings for retirement (you cannot increase your 401k contribution until age 50, heavy taxation on withdrawals, complicated taxation on 401K monthly payments, restrictions on inheriting the 401K money). Bottomline, this became powerful highly insulated group do not want ordinary hard working folks to build up or acquire liquid assets. It is “Us” up here and “you” down there, that is what they want and are doing; they would not stop to continuously to get rid of middle class and turn them all to just merely surviving. This is the Government/Wall St/Federal Reserve Complex. These upstarts are so well entrenched in their power – they occupy all powerful positions in the government, they are the puppet masters of conniving power and perk hungry politicians. They are traitors to America and its hard working citizens. Evil people.
The decline of the American middle class is directly linked to the DemPublicanCFR ruling elite’s Imperialist/Internationalist pursuit of the total bogus and traitorous globalization/gobbilization trade policies… which has lead to deindustrialization and downsizing of the American economy.