Whither America’s Middle Class?

Our hearts bleed for endangered creatures. Without human intervention, it seems, those delicate species would vanish from the earth. Extinct is final, no coming back. These specimens have names we can scarce pronounce, much less know that by our unwitting actions, we are causing their demise.
Last week, I read a story that the middle class is endangered. Wow! Who wudda thunk? They are talking about us.
On reading of this vanishing class to which many cohorts belong, an image that photographer Jim Brandenburg snapped in 1986 immediately came to mind. That image was of a wolf leaping from one scarce ice floe to another in search of food on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada. It was a pitiful, heart-wrenching portrayal, and, I believe, symbolic of the state of the middle class. There is nowhere to go. Surrounded by a vast sea set to swallow us, there is precious little respite.
Brave hearts, though we are targeted, and squeezed nearly to extinction, in the dying words of Capt. James Lawrence in June 1813, whose USS Chesapeake was heavily damaged in a battle off Boston Harbor with HMS Shannon, “Tell the men to fire faster. Fight ’til she sinks, boys. Don’t give up the ship.” In short, my friends never give up. Although everything seems to be imploding (or exploding) around us, we must remain sure in our determination not to unwittingly give in to those who want us (and our loot) gone.
Oh, “they” pay us lip service, those boastful politicians who do not fully comprehend. We are the spark that lights the fire of prosperity. We, the middle class, don’t expect much from our government. We want to work and pay our own way. We want more take-home pay because that’s the way the nation works. Without us buying clothes and washing machines, flooring and roofing shingles for our humble abodes, lots of people go without work.
I break some bad news for the bright-eyed: There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody’s paying the bill, and bills can’t be paid with fake dollars.
Most of us don’t work for government, we work for small businesses. Quite honestly, I cannot understand why anyone would put themselves through the grinder of a small business. Oppressive government regulations and bureaucratic regulators always have their hand in your wallet. Customers beef about prices, and you are faced with escalating costs. Still, thank goodness, there is a spirit among some who long to be in business for themselves. If only they were appreciated by those who oversee them.
Regardless of the disregard in which the middle class finds itself by the haves and have nots, we remain the heart and soul and fighting spirit of this great land. We are taxed almost to oblivion. We are ordered by unelected bureaucrats to abide by regulation after regulation, many of which make little sense.
We are the economic engine that drives America. We are the majority that votes, in the belief it is our patriotic duty and right to do so. We know many have served in uniform to secure that precious freedom.
We have been seriously overlooked by bigwigs in capitals around the nation, and even in the hallowed halls in The Capitol. They figure ways to take what little we have left after taxes, and somehow reapportion it to “the poor.” Every time I heard a term that equates to “wealth redistribution” I shudder. Such nonsensical talk is communism pure and simple. It always was a godless demon and still is, regardless of the smiley face some try to put upon it.
Communism failed and it will fail again. Still, we in the middle class remain “the silent majority.” We don’t like what we see, yet we feel powerless to rectify the wrongs being foisted upon us.
The article to which I referred earlier appeared in USA Today Feb. 3. But it didn’t take a newspaper story to open the eyes of anyone who has been around longer than yesterday to translate the handwriting on the wall.
Most middle class Americans are a tough, proud lot, thank goodness. They would rather starve than take “a handout,” even something to which they are entitled. They vote, and wonder why they do. Many shake their heads in puzzlement and wonder “Who elected this guy?” They ask because they cannot find anyone in their circle who cast a vote for the Oval Office incumbent.
Still, they drink their beer and wonder why they ever donned a uniform to serve a nation that has virtually spit in the face of veterans. They ask rhetorically, “If I were young again, would I volunteer to fight for this country?” Of course they would. Still they ask themselves that query, as they, middle class souls, see their beloved nation heading ever faster down a path they do not like, understand, nor can they abide it.
We, the middle class, struggle to make ends meet. We read of lucrative contracts, always for someone else, sports stars, corporate chieftains, and entertainers, whose lifestyles would cause their grandparents nothing but shame. We look around and ask “How come?” It’s been a long while between salary raises for many in the middle class, as a result, they earn less today than five or 10 years ago.
They don’t have to be a math whiz to figure why they aren’t basking in the lap of luxury. Many shun costly appliances, shop in thrift stores, watch for sales, and make the old jalopy last a bit longer than expected.
Regardless, we are the ones every merchant hopes to lure into their shop. They need us to spend what we have left after paying insurance and mortgage, food and utility bills, credit card bills and maybe a bit for charitable donations. We are the ones whose illnesses are targeted by pharmaceutical firms in racy ads on TV for drugs we can’t possibly pronounce to cure illnesses we never knew we had.
Our greatest sickness? Being ignored, disregarded, played for fools and wondering just what tomorrow holds. If “they” accomplish ridding America of the middle class, I desire to be neither rich nor poor, because at that time, this nation will cease to be the one we can call our own.