Getting Ourselves Out of this Middle Class Decline

I was chatting with a homeless man I met and I asked him how it has been for him in all of the freezing weather. He answered, “It’s not been that bad. All the snow has insulated my tent.” He added that he is not without means, but not enough to rent a place to live. His desire is that he can find a regular job. His observation is that the people living in the woods are not what many expect, but just temporarily down on their luck. He added that the recent articles in the Herald have caused a number of people to seek ways to help them get on their feet.
In my lifetime I have never before seen such hardship in our nation. Mankind is constantly developing better, faster and cheaper ways to create the essentials for life, so why it is that mankind can become needier? Having studied economics, my mind tends to looks for an answer. Obviously there exists a force stronger than our growing productivity.
In great measure, man’s internal quest makes him who he is. If everybody is pulling on the rope, and pulling today a little harder than yesterday, then we are making more progress than we did yesterday. So if we are ending up with less to go around, either everybody is not pulling, or less of what is being produced is going to the rope-pullers, or a combination of each. As a nation we have to figure this out, and change it.
So let’s unpack this. Is everybody pulling on the rope? The answer is no; unemployment rates are high. Why? Why have we made such slow progress dragging ourselves out of the recession of seven years ago? If we had come out of it normally, there would be more and better-paying jobs. So what is it? Are there too many regulatory and tax impediments to business getting back on its feet? Are there too many able-bodied people drawing from the system instead of contributing to it? Clearly yes. We need to fix that, and stop electing politicians who use our tax dollars to buy the votes of non-rope pullers. I am not talking about those who are looking for work but are unable to find it.
Are there too few workers trained in the necessary skills to fill today’s ever-more technical positions? Why are there nine million unemployed people while at the same time five million job openings, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics?
We hear a lot today about too much of America’s wealth going to the small percentage of people at the top. Why are they getting more? Are they stealing it, or is what they do worth more in the evolving global economy? We could give more power to government to take from them and give it to everybody else; the problem is, where that has been tried, it has failed.
We need to build upon what made us who we are. We need to demand of ourselves our best, and not expect government to provide. We have failed to educate and train our youth and as a result, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), we have fallen to 20th place in science and 27th in math. Whether it is the family’s or the school’s fault doesn’t matter – we need to fix it.
We have a national election upcoming next year, and the politicians are right now setting their platforms to address these issues. We need to hire leaders who understand the fundamental strength of the American people. When England faced Hitler, they knew the fight would be extremely grueling. For that reason they chose Winston Churchill, because he told them the truth when he said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
To address the middle class decline, let’s look to ourselves individually. We, the people, have gotten ourselves into this mess and we must be the ones to get ourselves out.
From the Bible: The man who wants to do right will get a rich reward. Proverbs 28:20