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The state of the American wallet is bad
Commentator Amelia Tyagi
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TEXT OF COMMENTARY
TESS VIGELAND: This week's State of the Union address could easily have been labeled "the State of Your Wallet." The president pushed for more jobs, health care reform, a bigger child care tax credit, changes to how you pay back your student loans. And he wants employers to automatically sign up their workers for retirement plans.
Commentator Amelia Tyagi wonders whether any of this will make the average American feel better about what's in their wallets.
Amelia Tyagi: The State of the Average American Wallet is bad. Really bad. For millions of Americans, it feels like being a patient with double pneumonia and cancer, who's in the middle of a knife fight.
Now, if this were a good TV show, the handsome Dr. Obama would have discovered a Miracle Cure, and the ailing American middle class would be on the mend by the end of the show. But this isn't television.
The middle class is suffering from stagnant wages and massive uncertainty about whether they can even hold onto the jobs they have. Think of that as the double pneumonia. Then there's runaway costs for health care, education, and child care -- that's the cancer. Add to that spiraling personal debt, the disappearance of pensions and retirement security, and an explosion in dangerous mortgages and credit card traps -- those are the knife attacks.
And this is all happening at the same time.
Did Dr. Obama propose the perfect cure? Of course not. The speech missed a few biggies, most notably disability coverage, a gaping hole in the safety net that drops millions of families into bankruptcy. And a pittance more for a child care tax credit just doesn't close the gap for most middle-class families.
But let's face it: the American wallet has been under attack for three decades. And it's still reeling from the worst recession in living memory. There is no miracle cure. We need a dozen different medicines to treat a dozen different ailments.
That doesn't make for great television, or even great speeches. But if Dr. Obama really can address the problems he outlined -- jobs, health care, education, and retirement -- the middle class wallet would certainly be a little healthier than it is today. Perhaps the most important thing President Obama did for the American Wallet was to continue sounding the alarm: "This patient is sick, and we need medicine now."
That may sound obvious, but just a few years ago, it was common wisdom on Capitol Hill that a family with money troubles pretty much deserved what they got. The State of the Union address kept the American Wallet right where it belongs -- front and center on the national agenda, reminding us yet again that empty wallets are everyone's problem to fill.
Vigeland: Amelia Tyagi is co-author of "The Two Income Trap" and chief operating officer of the Business Talent Group.
Bennet Cecil says eliminate corporate income taxes and this will "trickle down" to us peons and they will magnanimously create jobs. Reagan and Bush Jr. spouted this trickle down fallacy and the middle class has been in decline ever since. Our government is run by multinational corporations who now, thanks to the Bush Jr.3 and Reagan 2 now have a pro-corporate majority. Welcome to the fascist state
Amelia Tyagi’s states that “Perhaps the most important thing President Obama did for the American Wallet was to continue sounding the alarm…â€? To whom was he “sounding the alarmâ€? Average Americans who gambled on him in the voting booth? Or his predator pals in D.C, Wall Street the medical industrial complex, the military industrial complex and the parasitic insurance industry? In aggregate the latter have been handed trillions of our dollars that could have gone for the social programs some of which Tyagi mentions. For Obama and his cronies these programs are “front and center on the national agenda†all right---to be cut. The alarm being sounded is for the bottom 95 percent of Americans. The message is that our government will not be helping us because it has transferred so much of our wealth to the oligarchs. The oligarchs gambled with huge amounts of leverage and lost and our government is covering their losses at our expense. It’s a zero sum game and it’s no longer just the state of “the American wallet.â€
A Chalmers Johnson once said in a related context "I fear... that the U.S. has indeed crossed the Rubicon and that there is no way to restore Constitutional government short of a revolutionary rehabilitation of American democracy." If not now, when?
Doctor Obama has the wrong prescription for the middle class. As he continues to take precious resources from the private economy and transfer it to the federal government he will push the middle class into the poor. He should eliminate corporate income tax on American manufacturing done in the US by Americans. This would cause an explosion in high paying jobs in Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere.
If you think the middle class has fallen behind now, wait until the US dollar collapses when US bonds collapse like Greek bonds are doing right now. Cut federal spending and shrink the US government so that Americans can prosper.
