In the fifties the slogan for Big Business was “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” The inference, of course, is that the largest company and employer is bound to have a beneficial effect on the economy in profits, growth, improving wages and growth of the middle class to sustain business activity. Today this economic concept is lost.
“What’s good for Wal-Mart is not necessarily good for the country.” For the implication here is that this current largest company and employer may benefit the consumer which unquestionably helps the economy in profits and growth, but it does not improve wages and growth of the middle class. I do not want to slam Wal-Mart again, it is now an enduring fact of everyday life; however, the point is that much has changed over the years in how we perceive our citizens.
After the energized years of post WWII generated an enormous middle class, of which the older generation and baby-boomers were the benefactors, amnesia crossed the consciousness, and sense of gratitude of the collective mind. After all, a relatively modern infra-structure was in place — inter-state highway, connecting bridges and tunnels, electricity and communications, industrial base for the South — why not switch gears, slow down, cut taxes to increase the capital and build stadiums, Taj Mahals, casinos, McDonald expansion, and Disney World? Why not, with amnesia now chronic, leave it to the Wiz Kids, like Milkin, Trump and the Boomer brokers on Wall Street to decide on what matters most to a great country, thereby increase the riches of many Baby Boomers now eager to rush to the top? — unbeknown that the laissez-faire structure would make the mini boomers vulnerable.
Enter the barricade to the middle class for those who followed. In the 80s it was acceptable and a way of life for high school and college grads to be saddled with low paying jobs, unless they were lucky enough to be the children of most of the early boomers, or were pioneers of the computer age, that was, incidentally, spawned decades before by universities and great companies like Xerox, IBM and AT&T — let alone the government decades old defense and space contracts.
It was Howdy-Doody time again for the early Baby Boomers solidly ensconced with Reagan’s voodoo in office as he unraveled unions, encouraged foreign investment and exportation of American corporations that revolutionized the retail industry with the likes of farmer-market and discount outlets stocked with products of foreign labor — truly, a mixed blessing since the middle class spenders were shrinking geometrically as the upper crust grew exponentially.
Aside from a slight bump in the top marginal rate and a mildly gentler approach, the Clinton years made little headway in undoing the drive to lowering expectations of the later, average American. Now that W is here and reincarnated Reagan’s policies to the hilt, the debilitation of the middle class — as it was supposed to be — is complete.
X & Y be damned.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: January 8, 2004.