There was a large complacent middle class from the very beginning of America... Only about a third of the country, led largely by the upper class, whom had the most to gain but also the most to lose, wanted to revolt against England. Another third, again, largely led by the upper class that were scared to lose, wanted to continue our relationship with England. The final third didn't really care, they just wanted to be left alone to do their thing.

Anyway, at the time, we had the very wealthy - large plantation owners, the very poor - slaves, indentured servants and the like, and a large middle class made up of independent businessmen and the help they hired. That held true up until the 20th century, when the government decided that it needed to become involved in the business of redistributing the wealth as a reaction to the extreme wealth created by the industrial revolution, largely due to a fad regarding Marx, Engels and such.

The post-WWII boom wasn't created by the policies of Wilson, FDR, LBJ or whatever progressive hero you have, it was created by the simple fact that most of the factories in the rest of the industrial world were destroyed by war and Europe, Eastern Asia and the like had to rely on the unscathed factories of the United States and Canada to rebuild. It was only natural that, as the manufacturing capacity of Europe and Asia were rebuilt, that the United States would decline. You've been trained to blaim the policies of Nixon, but it was simply the duration of the rebound of the first world economy outside of the Americas.

What we had done in the meantime, was create numerous entitlement programs which, especially regarding the Great Society, were unsustainable. Specifically in the case of the Great Society, with welfare, Medicaid, Medicare and the like, Congress decided to raid the Social Security Trust Fund (via an Amendment in 1967) to paper over the huge costs, which had far exceeded CBO projections prior to passage. The truth is, in addition to taxes, inflation, and bonds, Congress was raiding the other "lock boxed" source of income, largely so they could continue to lie to people, telling us that we could afford something they already knew would bankrupt us. They lied and they were either retired or dead before people began to catch on - but they got to stay in office longer, having duped the masses.

So, by all means, blame Nixon. Blame Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush if you want to... but be sure to blame Obama, Clinton, Carter, LBJ, JFK, Eisenhower, Truman, FDR, Hoover, Wilson and TR too, since they all contributed to our current problems in their own way. Don't be a partisan hack and pretend all the problems fall on one side or even one President, because they were all involved. More importantly, don't forget their Congresses, since the President can't introduce legislation on their own and all spending, in particular, must originate in the House.

Be sure to blame the unions too... for demanding more than what was responsible in the long term, but like the 1967 Congress that authorized raiding the Social Security Trust Fund, blame the union leadership for cashing in on what they knew was unsustainable so they could maintain and grow their own power, influence and pocketbooks. Likewise, blame the executives that capitulated to them.

Under the guise of redistribution of wealth, you end up with two classes - the rich that have the money to defend themselves, and the poor, who demand everything from anyone else. It's the middle class, which has enough money to provide for themselves but not enough money to defend themselves, that suffer from the powers that demanding wealth redistribution, be it the government or the special interest groups that advocate it. It's also the natural result of converting the government from a body solely meant to protect our rights into a body out to seek reparations from one group on behalf of another.

It wasn't the Tea Party people that bit off someone's finger at a town hall. How about the SEIU beating up a black conservative in St Louis at a town hall meeting?

Do you have any actual examples of these "retired tea baggers with drugged, crazy eyes" commiting violence or are you just regurgitating rhetoric the way you happen to remember it?

Remember Alan Grayson talking about how the GOP plan is for everyone to die quickly? Or shots being fired at Eric Cantor's office?

Speaking of Medicare, the Democrats cut it by a half trillion dollars to fund ObamaCare, but when the Republicans came out with a reform package this summer, what did the Democrats do? ran an ad about how Republicans want to literally push grandma over a cliff."

So yeah, it's those Republicans pushing their scare tactics on their constituents, commiting acts of terror. Actual violence committed by Democrats? eh, that's not terror under the same definition because, well, they're on your side.

Wasn't it Obama that said having to raise the debt ceiling was a "leadership failure" when he voted against it in 2006? Do you hold him to the same standards as you do Republicans, or is this another one of those my team good, your team bad things?

And the crisis WAS manufactured... by Obama. The US has enough revenue that it won't default on it's debts if the limit wasn't raised. We have enough revenue to fund all of the most critical portions of the federal government too. It was a scare tactic to get people to panic so Obama wouldn't have to think about fulfilling his campaign promise to actually cut back the waste in the federal government.

Nice to know that everyone that you don't agree with politically is a terrorist while you ignore the actual violence and threats perpetrated by your team. You do realize that you just repeated GWB's "you're either with us or against us" rhetoric, right?

Actually, that's what the Founding Fathers wanted... they wanted local governments to provide the services local constituents wanted. They realized that the federal government was too large and distant to be able to provide for the nuanced needs of local communities, so they deliberately forbid the federal government's involvement, leaving those powers to the states and people.

Communities need to decide the needs of their respective community, if the federal government tries to do it for them, we end up with crap like NCLB or the (federal) Department of Education allocating grants for schools to buy computers even if they just bought new computers and need new books instead.

Not all fire trucks are red. My town has red, a neighboring town's are yellow. I've also seen white nearby and powder blue ones when I was traveling elsewhere in the country.

Regardless, there were numerous reasons why red was chosen by many fire companies (visibility, pride/using it as a show piece during parades, etc), not just the communist diatribe about how red ended up the chosen color.

What he means, is if you disagree with Obama's policies, as the Tea Party movement generally does, it must be because of Obama's race. After all, that's what the echo chamber says...

The sad part, is that the race card has officially been played out.. so when someone legitimately calls "racist" in the future, most people will just roll their eyes. Much like you'll see lefties mockingly call each other "communist" or "socialist" on slashdot when someone posts something pro-goernment, righties mockingly call each other "racist" whenever someone opposes some government policy.

The AC you replied to is just another mindless lemming that most likely pats himself on the back, thinking he's doing some great deed for society, when, in reality, he's just a troll.

1) The total number of people withdrawing from Social Security is GROWING, not remaining stable. The single largest generation (the baby boomers) are just starting to collect. Over the next 20 years, the boomers will greatly weigh down the system and they will be retiring much faster than old people are dying AND young people entering the workforce.

2) Again, the boomers are going to retire, removing people from the workforce. Some have suggested that we should even go so far as to entice the boomers to retire early as a solution to our unemployment problems, ignoring that it means they'll be sucking money out of the Social Security system even sooner.

3) People receive roughly 3 times as much money FROM Social Security as they put into it... it is promising a great return and it is absolutely expected that you will be able to withdraw as least as much as you put into it, if not more. That was the "whole point" behind the system - to ensure old people never end up destitute, regardless of how long they live. On top of that, life expectencies have far exceeded the increase in minimum collection ag.

Stick your head in the sand all you want. Social Security is already paying out more than it is taking in and there is NO money at all in the "trust fund," just a bunch of IOUs from the Treasury Department... and when Social Security runs a deficit, as it is currently doing even though the boomers are just starting to reitre, it means the money must come out of the general fund - the same fund bleedling $1.5 trillion a year right now. Social Security outlays alone have exceeded national defense spending since 1993 and by 2017, they'll amount to roughly $1 trillion a year (which is abut 50% higher than they are right now).

As for fixing it, every time someone suggests modifying it in some way (usually a Republican), the scare tactics of how grandma is going to be forced to eat cat fod and whatnot come out. It's called the third rail of American politics for a reason, because if you touch it, you die. What Social Security is, is institutionalized generational theft - today's recipients steal from today's workers, leaving today's workers to steal from tomorrow's workers... and on top of that, today's retirees and the people they voted for drained the trust fund so that they could spend even more money that they didn't have, leaving today's and tomorrow's workers in even worse shape. It's going to come down to either telling grandma to take a cut or telling your kids to pay even more in taxes so that maybe they can no longer afford a house or food for their baby when they're starting out and not making much money and neither side is going to give in - grandma and her me generation is too greedy (they paid in already and want it back!) and sonny literally can't afford to pay more, especially since he can't even get a job because of the policies his grandma's generation pushed before he was even born.

The bigger the Ponzi scheme, the longer it can run (Charles Ponzi's originally lasted 2 years and was wortha couple million, Bernie Madoff's lasted a couple decades and was worth billions, Social Security will last about a century and was worth trillions).. Just because Social Security hasn't collapse yet doesn't mean it isn't a Ponzi scheme, it means it is a well funded Ponzi scheme, mostly due to the fact that it is a Ponzi scheme made compulsory by the government.

In 1967, LBJ and Congress realized they couldn't afford the newly passed Great Society programs nor the escalation in Veitnam, so they passed an amendment to the Social Security Act stating that ANY government program which creates a surplus, will loan that surplus to the general fund, in return for a promise that the general fund will repay the program in the years that the program runs a deficit.

Since that day, the entire Social Security "Trust Fund" has been drained to paper over the endless deficit spending by the federal government. Last year, Social Security started paying out more than it takes it and that difference must come out of the general fund - the same general fund that is already bleeding $1.5 trillion in deficits per year. Simply put, Social Security was raided just like those private pension funds because the politicians knew that by the time the shit hit the fan, they'd be dead or retired and, thus, untouchable. Only problem is, there's nobody to bail out the government the way the government bailed out those pensions... We're $14.5 trillion in debt with an additional $15 trillion in unfunded Social Security obligations (and another $100 trillion if you count the Medicare programs).

People have been warning that Social Security was eventually doomed to failure since the early 60s. The same people that told us, just a couple years ago, that Fannie and Freddie were fundamentally sound are still telling us that Social Security is as well. The dirty truth is, we're closer to collapse than most people think.

You're enamored with a single tree and losing sight of the forest. There are more banking jobs today than there were in 1990 - ATMs didn't take jobs away from anyone, though they did make banks more productive, reducing the need to hire gobs more (just some more). Those people not in banking are then free to seek a job where they can be productive and, as someone that knows a couple bank tellers, I'm sure they aren't making any less money (tellers don't get paid squat, it's just another unskilled job virtually indifferent from working at McDonalds).

Something else to consider, which probably has a bigger impact on bank tellers than ATMs handing out money, is most banking is done purely electronically today. Gone are the days of people taking their payroll check to the bank to deposit, making a cash withdrawal, writing a check for their shopping purchases that the retailer then has to take to the bank, etc. Today is all about direct deposit, swiping debit cards at the cashier, electronic transfers over the internet, eletronic/scanned submission of checks rather than bank teller processed ones, etc. Should we get rid of all the electronic systems so we can hire more tellers, igoring how many well paid people are employed along that side of the industry? Maybe we should get rid of computerized records and go back to the days of paper ledgers so we can hire more people to do useless jobs. Just think how many tellers your 3 local branches can hire then!

So, even though there are more bank tellers employed today, ATMs obviously ran people out of work because there are fewer tellers per branch? Hello, there are MORE BANK TELLERS today than there were a decade ago, not fewer tellers. Nobody got fired because of ATMs, maybe not as many new employees got hired as the number of banks expanded despite industry consolidation, but nobody lost their place within the industry. Isn't that the argument, that ATMs put bank tellers out of work? It's a flat out lie. Did people go work at a different branch or otherwise leave and seek another job to be replaced by another teller? Did tellers per bank shrink by attrition? Sure, but that happens in every industry. Spin it however you want, simple truth is, if your goal in life is to be a bank teller, they need more of them today than they did a decade go.

and what about the people that make and service ATMs? Do ATMS magically appear out of ether and never break, or is there a whole new industry behind their creation and maintenance?

From http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/06/obama-doesnt-get-atms-or-job-creation

But don't let things like facts get in the way of proliferating Obama's talking points.

Besides, should we still be employing the buggy whip makers since cars displaced them? At what point should a job be declared obsolete?

California controls 53 seats out of 435 in the House of Representatives, the body that initiates spending. No other state has that many (Texas is next at 32). If Californians have a problem with how the federal budget is doled out, they have a pretty substantial bloc to change it and I'm sure they could get a few more big states that pay more than get back to join in. If they don't have a problem with it, then they can stop whining about it all the time.

I love how proponents of big government always have to exaggerate to the worst case scenario. I'm saying get rid of the dead weight, tear down the stuff that isn't necessary and just caauses ongoing maintenance headaches.. Don't build just because you can (or want to pretend you can) afford it today, build what you can sustain. The government builds gobs of useless infrastucture in the name of bringing home the bacon (the Bridge to Nowhere is a good example even though public outcry stopped it) and/ir creating a named monument to themselves (there are thousands of buildings named after sitting Congresscritters that didn't pay a dime of their personal money to erect them). Quit using federal dollars to build local-only stuff and let the local taxpayers decide whether or not it is worth their money to build their project (it's way easier to spend someoen else's money). Enough with the grants that keep tearing up the same stretch of road/highway in the name of some non-existent improvment usually just for the sake of showing that you're "working for the people." One federal road in my town has been redone twice in the last ten years even though it didn't need it and a neighboring town has been redone three times, meanwhile, the local interstate has pot holes that you could lose a dump truck in. My school district of about 2000 kids spent over $100 million expanding buildings in the last 20 years, claiming that future classes would be too large for the existing campus and, as it turns out, they only had one class marginally larger than any others in the last three decades and now they're shutting down a building all because they couldn't inconvenience the teachers by utilizing one of the dozens of empty classrooms "belonging to" another teacher.

There's an absolute ton of money that government has wasted on unecessary infrastructure that we're forced to maintain... and we're so busy spending money on maintaining stuff that never should have been built in the first place that we can't afford to maintain and replace the things we do need. And yes, I suppose you're right, cities are totally non-sustainable and they require a ton of infrastructure and maintenance just to support their dense populations, which in turn causes all the population and ecological problems advocates of a sustainable world complain about. Then on top of that, cities must supply more infrastructure for bread and circuses to keep the population from spending even more time attacking each other (bilion dollar stadiums, trying to force urban renewal and gentrification, etc).

I know this is heresy, but maybe, just maybe, FDR shouldn't have built those things. Maybe private enterprise doesn't build things, not just because of short term interests, but because of the costs of maintaining things in the long run.

The government can buy everyone a car. You'll just get a magical free car out there in your driveway. Catch is, you can never transfer ownership to anyone else. You have to buy the insurance, the fuel, do the maintenance, etc. Suddenly, that free gift is looking pretty expensive, knowing that you'll have to pay maybe $5,000 a year to use it. Ok, so maybe you won' t use it, you'll just maintain it to save money so it holds its value. But you've got a family of four and all of you got a free car, so now you're stuck paying $12-20k a year to maintain and use them (your 4 and 6 year old can't drive, so it's pointless to pay the full $5k on them).

At the end of the year, you also get a bill for the amortized cost of the car over 50 years, so now you're paying an extra $4k/year. 40 years from now, your 4 and 6 year old will still be paying off a car that was already rusty before they could drive it, even if they never asked for it in the first place.

Meanwhile, the four of you see constant improvements and new technology come out, but you can't afford to upgrade because you already have your existing vehicles that you're still paying off and paying to maintain, regardless of their usefulness since you can't afford to pay an additional $20k penalty to take them to the junk yard. Maybe you stop spending the money to maintain them, knowing that you'll eventually have to scrap them anyway, in the hopes that it'll free up money to pay for your mortgage and groceries since you've fallen on hard times. You find yourself falling further and further behind because you're locked in to decades old technology while everyone else around the world gets the latest greatest stuff.

Decades later, maybe you can say that your life benefited greatly from your "free gift" or maybe you can say it was an albatross around your neck. Some of the things government spends money on actually has a well reasoned long time benefit, but lots of it doesn't and just ends up as another weight around the neck of the people. We may have a lot of infrastructure thanks to FDR and Ike (highway), but most of it is crumbling since we couldn't afford to maintain it in the first place and, even knowing we couldn't afford it, we wanted to spend the money designated for maintenance on other projects anyway, constantly shifting the burdens to the next generations while using their money to buy today's voters. Thomas Jefferson warned that it was unfair for any government project to require the money of people 20 years later precisely because it would lead to one generation stealing from the next to benefit themselves without the care of the desires of the future generations.

Instead of building stuff just for the sake of building stuff, how about we carefully consider what we really need government to build, repair and tear down and provide for the future upkeep of that infrastructure up front? Nah, that hurts us too much, we'll screw over our grandkids so we don't have to actually pay for what we want. What could possibly go wrong?

As opposed to the people that believe government has a solution for every problem and consistently refuse to acknowledge its many failures? I mean, we'll totally ignore his bashing of the private sector since that "wasn't" polarizing the issue, right? I guess the state, much like the church of yesterday, should be immune to criticism...

As opposed to the government, which built tens of thousands of bridges, roads, levees, dams, etc over the last century and then utterly failed to maintain them, diverting the tax money generated specifically for that maintenance to other projects, leaving us with crumbling infrastructure that will cost trillions of dollars to repair? That's to say nothing of the even larger miscalculations in the cost estimates of various entitlement programs prior to their enactment and the subsequent decision to drain them to cover other government debts since their creation...

Or, take my old high school... a local wealthy businesman donated a new field house and a bunch of amenities to the football team. That "free" gift costs as much as two teachers a year just to maintain and because the other sports teams were "neglected" by the donation, the parents of those players insisted the school spend additional millions renovating the other fields likewise, again, costing the salary of a few teachers to maintain all of them, use lights for night games, etc. The school district got a major budget cut from the state this year and opted to close a school and cut several more teachers to make up the shortfall. Such a wise investment that government made, always looking at the long term and never considering the short term costs, much less the long term effects of those costs... but, hey, several administrators got their names on buildings they created with our money, ultimately resulting in tax funded monuments to themselves at the cost of a pesky dozen or so teachers just this year...

Government is just as fallible as private enterprise... the fact that every government eventually topples should be evidence of that, yet for some reason, statists always believe that government is visionary, omniscient and has all the right answers.

BTW - those scum sucking leaches that caused the meltdown and quickly recovered... how did they do it? Oh yeah, by the government taking from you and generations yet to come and giving it to them. Your precious government is no more noble than they are.