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SQUEEKY2's avatar

Is it an agenda for the government, the wealthy, and industry to wipe out the middle class?

Asked by SQUEEKY2 (23474points) March 25th, 2022

Inflation is going through the roof, the cost of everything is going up faster in the past few months than it has in years.
The only class it really seems to hurt is the middle class.
If it is an agenda what do they gain by wiping out the middle class?

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32 Answers

Blackberry's avatar

We’ll never really have evidence, but I think all those “we need a plague, there’s too many people here” jokes are coming to fruition.

The industry needs fresh bodies to cycle through, although we have the bodies, yet people are starting to fight back against the “system”, so it makes sense some fat needs to be trimmed, similar to a corporation laying people off for profits.

HP's avatar

Well since it is the wealthy who own both the industries AND the government, it’s more accurate to state that the wealthy employs the other 2 to wipe out the middle class. And to be fair, the destruction of the middle class isn’t their primary agenda. It is instead the fastest, easiest, and most assured method of transferring the assets of that class to themselves. So the answer is of course YES. THEY WANT IT ALL!

elbanditoroso's avatar

It isn’t in the government’s interest at all.

Economic theory requires a managerial level middle class for several reasons.

1. To be consumers
2. To keep control over the proles.

It is not in government’s best interest to only have rich and poor.

HP's avatar

@elbanditoroso. That’s what we’re told but it is an analysis that does not jibe with visible reality. And the rich know better, which is exactly why every effort is made to OWN the government, the greatest assured return on investment there is.

SquirrelEStuff's avatar

They’re not calling it “The Great Reset” for nothing. https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/

WEF Predictions for 2030: https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=10153920524981479&_rdr

elbanditoroso's avatar

Well @hp it is difficult to refute such a fact-free and unsupported statement such as yours.

HP's avatar

Listen up. Here are a couple of OBVIOUS facts. If the rich consistently fatten up while everyone else falls behind, only an idiot might conclude it possible minus GOVERNMENT collusion. You are confusing what’s good for the country with what’s good for government. What’s good for government doesn’t have shit to do with good or equitable government.

elbanditoroso's avatar

Maybe obvious to you and your superior intellect, but I sort of like analysis and facts.

Your first argument is a stretch and your second point builds on that as support.

Essentially you are laying out a self-referencing tautology and calling it a fact.

Think what you want. The premise of your response isn’t as obvious as you think.

HP's avatar

Which of my points do you find disputable? Is the middle class in decline? And are the rich struggling? If in the midst of an epidemic induced crippling recession the stockmarket roars to record highs, while unemployment and homeless rates set comparable records. If every tax cut in my lifetime turns out to favor the rich and nobody poor stands a chance of being elected. And the million to one shots that do make it, manage in a few years to transform themselves to wealthy on their government salaries, what conclusions are left? Here’s a question for you. Do you believe big money political donations are about good government or patriotism?Your and my government OPENLY FOR SALE. You need statistics for this?

JLeslie's avatar

The government doesn’t want to eliminate the middle class. There might be some people in government who don’t give a shit that the middle class is being squeezed, and they don’t care about the long term. They are short sighted and greedy just like so many fat cats in business.

The middle class is the engine of a good and healthy economy and prosperous nation. The United States of America used to be the shining example of this economic theory, but so many in the US seem to have forgotten how that works, or don’t have the integrity to care.

Plenty of people in the US government still understand how that works, and the ideals of our nation are to have a large middle class, we just don’t accomplish it as well as one would hope. Some years we do better than others, it goes in trends.

It is STUNNING to me that so many Americans don’t understand that runaway capitalism and taxation policy that allows the super rich to get richer and the middle class to struggle more will slowly destroy America is not corrected. I believe in capitalism, but too much power and money is concentrated in “one” place. Too many monopolies and oligopolies and attacks on basic education and unsafe neighborhoods, it’s depressing to witness it.

Make bunches of money, but then what, so we have the super rich and they have poverty all around them? Is that how they want to live? It’s really shortsighted to screw the middle class. Most people with half a brain know it.

JLoon's avatar

I’m almost in the middle class… but not exactly.

From where I am it all looks like what my mom and dad lived through, and used to warn me about. Either that or or it’s just some big mistake involving a few trillion $$, and the end of human civilization.

As long as Jeff, Elon, Mitch, Nancy, and Shakira sort everything out before the bank calls again I’ll be fine.

I think.

HP's avatar

Everybody knows it, including the rich, but what of it? The system is at its base dog eat dog and all of us, rich and poor are lectured and taught that as individuals we all somehow have an equal shot at doing the dining. This is clearly not the case, nor will it ever be if the government “of the people” is owned by the top 10%.

flutherother's avatar

On the contrary, it should be the agenda of the government to preserve the equitable distribution of the country’s wealth in the face of blind economic forces and that should be one of the main reasons for voting it in.

SQUEEKY2's avatar

It should be but it isn’t @flutherother but money from lobbiests make all the rules these days and it mostly benefits the wealthy.

SQUEEKY2's avatar

No what??^^

HP's avatar

No. Industry and government are just 2 more tools refined and fine tuned to advance the process. Look at it realistically. The first law of Industry is to pay as little as it can get away with, and the government’s role is to enforce that law while foisting the illusion when necessary that it is resisting it.

Inspired_2write's avatar

“If it is an agenda what do they gain by wiping out the middle class?”
Answer more slaves to do the work.

seawulf575's avatar

No real proof, but I suspect so. The middle class changes the dynamic of a society. In a society of haves and have-nots, the have-somes take away the power and some of the money from the haves.

jca2's avatar

In the past week, I saw a 60 Minutes episode about large corporations buying up small houses and becoming landlords, raising rents, and large corporations buying mobile home parks (aka trailer parks), raising rents on tenants there. The 60 Minutes episode talked about the corporations raising people’s rents 30 and 40%, and the article about the trailer parks talked about how trailer parks were traditionally one way for people to live relatively cheaply, and now that’s going away. It’s becoming more of the haves and the have-nots.

SQUEEKY2's avatar

What gets me is if they crush the middle class who is going to pay the nations bills?
The poor simply can not, the wealthy have the means to get around most taxes.
So who is left?
Is it all for power? Are they truly thinking this through.

jca2's avatar

Here’s the 60 Minutes clip – 13 minute video. I wasn’t clear in my post above, the article about mobile homes was from the NY Times.

Here’s the 60 Minutes clip: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rising-rent-prices-60-minutes-2022-03-20/

HP's avatar

@SQUEEKY2 You have just summed up in that paragraph the basic explanation for our galloping national debt and why it can only grow. If the people with the money are allowed to legally avoid paying their share, ask yourself, is this possible in a land with “government of by or FOR the people”? Who can claim to live in a democracy if billionaires mushroom in the richest country in the history of the world while its middle class slides visibly toward destitution? Who can look you in the face and claim it’s “the will of the people”?

seawulf575's avatar

@SQUEEKY2 It’s called slavery. It’s about recreating the world into a two-caste system with the lower caste doing everything and the upper class having everything. They will give the lower caste what they feel they need to survive and that will be about it.

SquirrelEStuff's avatar

@jca2

Here is a great thread about corporations buying up homes, including Blackrock. https://twitter.com/aphilosophae/status/1402434266970140676?s=21&t=NNROD2JbpKPKhsYm6z3otA

Blackrock and Larry Fink are very instrumental in the WEF and The Great Reset.

jca2's avatar

@SquirrelEStuff: In the 60 Minutes episode, the representative from the Wall St corporation said that corporate landlords own only 2% of the residential rental market. I know it sounds scary that they bought an entire neighborhood, and it is.

HP's avatar

It shows you where we’re headed. Watch for corporate moves to stranglehold other essentials, such as muscling out municipal and state control over fresh water resources and infrastructure.

SQUEEKY2's avatar

But @seawulf575 isn’t that what both the middle class and the wealthy do now to the poor?
I keep wondering if they are successful at wiping out the middle class, the wealthy will have to start paying all the nations bills, sorta like what the middle class does now?
Has the wealthy thought about that?

SquirrelEStuff's avatar

Not if the wealthy can continue using government to keep printing money(or adding more zeroes on a computer) and providing corporate subsidies to fund their ventures and then charge use full price for it.
Our monetary policy and economy is that of a cycle of debt slavery, funded by the constant printing of money, with the calendars simply being a tool of monthly bill cycles. The want to eliminate cash and have completely digital currency to monitor it all.

As Henry Ford once posted on the internet, “ It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

SquirrelEStuff's avatar

Typo in last post. Charge Use= Charge Us

And if you think we’re not debt slaves, we’re taxed on income, property, and sales; the three necessities. Pay off your house tomorrow, and you have to pay rent in the form of property taxes. As government spending continues to exponentially increase, we will inevitably be taxed more and property taxes will also become out of reach for most people. Unless of course you are a large corporation and you can buy governments.

Nomore_Tantrums's avatar

I don’t believe in agendas or conspiracies. If you put three people together and task them to plot making a camel, they’d turn out a damn anteater. And call it an elephant. Shit just happens, no one is really in control.

HP's avatar

We all have agendas, even if it’s only to survive. The key agenda underlying our existence and the rat race itself is simply to “get ahead”. We are all taught from birth that there are certain rules, as well as regulations regarding equitable treatment of others in the race. However, the reality on the ground is increasingly about getting ahead at the expense of others in the race. And I swear, that emphasis on this aspect of the competitio increases with the years, to the exclusion of laws, morals, ethics, decency, honor, etc. The government is required to enforce many aspects of our difficulties, and you soon come to understand that my retired ease of life might well hang on the government’s enforcement of your eviction. I don’t have to personally appear at your house to throw you out. I blissfully smoke Cuban cigars and luxuriate toward senility while the government tosses you and your family into the street. But hey, these aren’t my rules.

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