Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi got in trouble with a lot of people for saying the middle class got nothing but “crumbs” from the Trump tax cuts, but I have to say I agree with her, strongly. Ever since the 2016 Presidential Election, the left in this country is so afraid of being labeled “elitist,” that they don’t speak out when they should. Democrats like Pelosi may have lost touch with the plight of working people—such as how badly they need every dollar they can get their hands on just to make ends meet—but it doesn’t mean they should shy away from speaking the truth. It’s how they speak it that needs some adjustment.
It’s a safe bet that when the figures are added up—and the preliminary figures are already in (150 billion to shareholders; 5 billion to workers)—our largest corporations will have spent far more of their tax savings on stock buy-backs than on job-creating investment, let alone salary increases and bonuses for their employees. Stock buy-backs enrich the company’s top executives, its largest shareholders, and the stock-owning class as a whole, but in the meantime the national deficit will go through the roof and American taxpayers will once again be left holding the bag. If they were among the lucky ones, the average person got mere crumbs in the form of a one-time bonus and/or a little bit more in their monthly paycheck, but as per usual, the top 1% came out ahead. We hear a lot about entitlement programs bankrupting the treasury and the dangers of the “nanny state” (a favorite on Fox News!), but we don’t hear nearly enough about the middle-class subsidizing the rich, that top 1% as it’s called these days. Even worse, the scenario described above will only serve to increase the already alarming income inequality in our society, what is very possibly the biggest problem we have.
Having grown up in the antebellum South (for those unfamiliar, “antebellum” refers to the time before the Civil War), I saw the evils of income inequality firsthand, and would hate to see this country lose its middle class to a new aristocracy along the lines of the plantation system. If we’re not careful, we’re going to end up with an oligarchy like Putin’s Russia—talk about income inequality and crumbs!