Squeezing the Middle Class

There are two economies in this country. One for the very rich and one for the rest of the United States. Why do we tolerate it?

From AlterNet:

The commercial media is telling us two perfectly contradictory stories about the American economy. The first is how wonderfully rich we are in the United States. The stock market's booming -- some analysts predict the Dow will break the 15,000 this year -- the economy is expanding at a healthy clip, productivity growth is up and unemployment and inflation are relatively low.

But, at the same time, we're also told that we don't have the money to pay for a robust social safety net. When it comes to paying for universal health coverage, affording retirement security for our elderly, investing in programs for the poor or educating our children, we need to pinch pennies. According to this storyline, we face a looming "entitlement crisis" -- we won't be able to afford to keep the Baby Boomers in good health and out of poverty, we're told, unless we slash their benefits and privatize the programs that their elderly parents enjoy today.

This is the line we hear from the Administration when it talks about entitlement "reform": Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says that "The biggest economic issue facing our country is the growth in spending on the major entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security." The solution, according to the Heritage Foundation, is to cut entitlement spending: "Reforming Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is the only way to get the budget under control."