The Death of The Middle Class
July 19th, 2013 // 10:51 am @ Oliver DeMille
Columnist Joe Klein said on The Chris Matthews Show:
“This is the biggest problem that we’re facing going forward. We were a homogenous, middle class country, by and large, for the fifty years after World War II.
“Now we’re no longer homogenous, and there’s a good aspect to that in that we have become a true multiracial country. But there’s a bad aspect to that, in that the middle class, which was the heart of this country, is beginning to fracture, and to panic, in many ways.
“And unless we figure out a way to find jobs for the vast middle class in this country, it’s going to be really hard to sustain democracy. We now have a plutocracy in this country.”
This is exactly true, and many Americans feel Wall Street and Washington are working together against the middle class.
Worse, many people aren’t sure that any solution is ahead.
Many experts suggest that education can solve the class divide, but the people realize that most schools are actually increasing the gap between elites and the rest.
Modern schooling has become a huge part of the problem, not a solution.
The only real solution is a widespread shift from the employee mentality to entrepreneurship.
As David Ignatius points out, many immigrants to America see the United States as a great place to start businesses.
Sadly, most native-born Americans are afraid of entrepreneurship and feel that jobs should be plentiful—as if it were a birthright.
The future of American freedom hinges on this question: will the current generation of Americans embrace entrepreneurialism, or will we keep whining about Washington while waiting for more jobs to somehow appear?
Is the American spirit dead, or is free enterprise still one of our greatest American traditions?
Only the regular people can make this choice.
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Oliver DeMille is the chairman of the Center for Social Leadership and co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
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Keith
10 years ago
The middle class will continue to collapse. Various combinations of power will actually see that this happens. Rather than free enterprise of individual entrepreneurs, consider what would happen if whole groups of people combined in an order of common consent to create their own health plan based on nutrition and organized farming? They then create a coop to serve their local needs. This is far more powerful in securing more liberty and more freedom than teaching individuals to be entrepreneurs. Individual responsibility is only as strong as the local social responsibly allows. Increase more social responsibility in the form of social entrepreneurism and you give more consent and more agency to dissent to all individuals, and this is what is needed most. See this video and skip to about minute 3:30 and listen carefully to the homeless indian. He is not illiterate, he does not need food, he just needs a place at the table of discussion. But because the reservation suffers from the idolatry of power popular centers, the once powerful common consent that defined their ancient culture, which also inspired the United States Constitution via the Iroqui Five Nation Constitution, is now a popular democracy driven by idolatry and state control.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDTHDYb1CVM&list=TLlLuow8_vlww
Chritopher
10 years ago
What exactly is the “middle class”? How is it defined? In this country, there is only two classes; Those who make the laws and and exempt themselves from those laws, and those who have to have to abide by them.
Allen Levie
9 years ago
We need help. I think sustainability will come with the entrepreneurship but its not going to happen from Mises style motivation alone. I think it needs to come from the 3% who inspire and build the forms needed to make it work.