Topic: Political and economic
This posting is in response to the Yahoo Finance article entitled "The Middle Class in America is Radically Shrinking. Here are the Stats to Prove it." The problem identified is that the American middle class is disappearing, resulting in a polarization of the US population into the very rich 1 or 2 percent and the 99 percent poor service sector servants. The Yahoo commentator, it seems to me, has a part of the cause right, but has not completely identified the causes. The prmary cause, as I see it, is the transition from the historic situation in which the economy was run by rich people to the current situtation in which the economy is run by rich corporations.
There was a reason the framers of the Constitution, and nearly everyone in the Federal and various state governments in the U.S. until about 1870, deeply distrusted corporations. In the early days of our republic, corporations could be created only by a special act of Congress or a state legislature, and were created only for carefully limited purposes for a set period of years. The framers distrusted corporations because they are not human. Individual wealthy people, like the framers of the Constitution themselves (all of whom were wealthy and influential men) have consciences and normal human ties to their community and nation. Corporations are artificial people that have no conscience, no ties to the community, and no motives except their own continued existence, expanding power, and, above all, profit. We are seeing the fruit of going completely and unreservedly corporate in the destruction of our middle class and the impoverishment of almost all of us for the benefit of immortal corporations.
See my Warning Concerning Idolatry, first posted October 8, 2000, for a related warning about trust in corporations. I've been saying this for some time!
