The opportunities, conveniences, amenities, and privileges that underpin middle class life in the U.S. and many other affluent nations peaked in the late 20th century. They are now being degraded not only in the U.S. but in many parts of the affluent world. These features of middle class life are not simply features of individuals and households per se; they are deeply embedded in the extensive fabric of institutions and agencies that make up an affluent nation like the United States. The vast array of public and private institutions and agencies create and sustain the opportunities, conveniences, amenities, and privileges that define U.S. middle class life and organize access to them.
The dependence of middle class life on a vast array of public and private institutions and agencies gives the people who run them and the people who control their funding (foundations set up by the rich, corporate leaders, and government officials) the power to instill them with policies and actions that can support or degrade middle class life. This power is now being used to disrupt and degrade middle class life by rendering key institutions and agencies dysfunctional. Steps in this direction have been underway for several decades, with both Democratic and Republican administrations backing away from commitments that go back to the 1950s and earlier. Now, U.S. middle class life is being degraded more quickly and more openly than ever before.
The U.S. ruling class and Trump administration have set about radically defunding the institutional and agency supports for middle class life in the U.S. Corporate taxes that are essential to sustaining middle class institutions are slashed to the bone. Government agencies are empowered to surveil anyone on the slightest pretext. The institutions of democratic elections are being actively undermined. Wage growth is held below the inflation rate to subsidize corporations and government agencies. Employment protections are being gutted. Regulatory agencies are hemorrhaging personnel and regulations that protect middle class life are eliminated, weakened, or not enforced. Other institutions and agencies that pay middle class wages and benefits are being radically downsized. Speculative enterprises (e.g. cryptocurrency businesses) are promoted by the federal government to expand opportunities for the rich to transfer wealth from the middle class through what is essentially rigged gambling.
Underpinning this accelerating degradation of U.S. middle class life are ruling class decisions to increase the capital available to U.S. corporations and defend and expand the U.S. global empire using much more economic coercion and military force. This strategy is a response to an extensively changed global environment that puts the U.S. empire in jeopardy. U.S. corporations are up against intense economic assertiveness from India, China, Europe, and other nations. The U.S. state is up against geopolitical and military resistance from some of the most powerful nations in the world. This combination deeply threatens U.S. dominance over the world-economy.
By the end of the 20th century confronting these forces of resistance was becoming increasingly costly. The September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. soil were deemed an existential threat to the U.S. empire, becoming the impetus for the U.S. ruling class to set about a massive expansion of military spending and spending on both global and domestic surveillance and on a campaign of wars. All of this has been more costly than a U.S. federal government deeply in debt and committed to giving corporations greater control over flows and uses of wealth (by cutting taxes and regulations) can manage. A radical transfer of wealth to the ruling class and its political allies became necessary. Given that the pool of wealth held by the working poor and destitute in the U.S. is extremely limited, perhaps even negative, most of the transfer of wealth would have to come from the U.S. middle class and from other nations. Defunding many of the public and private institutional supports for middle class life combined with changes in tax law changes that give with one hand and take with the other became a key part of the sleight of hand strategy for carrying out the domestic transfer of wealth. Economic coercion and wars are the strategy for transferring wealth to the U.S. from other nations.
The breaking point in this grand strategy for further enriching the wealthy and funding the U.S. imperialist expansion will come in time. But it will not come before much more damage is done to middle class Americans and middle class people around the world. U.S. imperialist expansion will almost certainly foment more resistance from abroad and result in more and more violent attacks on the American people wherever they are. Military, policing, and surveillance spending in the U.S. will keep increasing (perhaps exponentially), accelerating the transfer of wealth from the middle class and driving up the costs for middle class families to protect their homes and for businesses to protect their employees and customers. Personal and family privacy will further erode. Middle class wages, benefits, and job security will further erode. Until domestic and international resistance grows strong enough to break the momentum of this phase of domestic wealth theft and militarizing U.S. expansionism, the U.S. middle class is in for a rough ride.
IWE WORK FUTURES 