We are not entering a new gilded age but fully immersed. The last thirty years wrought a rise in decadence. Under the guise of meritocracy, we have seen our paychecks slashed and the cost of living skyrocket. Those with more today outpace their historical counterparts reveled in a modern PC Divine Right, the claim their wealth is solely from years of effort. Ignoring the disparity in effort needed between children from the various classes to achieve a middle class life. The rich have negative effort, the middle need focus, but the poor must climb Olympus and force the Gods to kneel. It is more than unfair: it is unsustainable.
I say this today because Trump has nominated Andrew Puzder, Carl Jr. or Hardee himself to be secretary of labor. Puzder blames the ACA for a “restaurant recession” saying premium hikes eroded the middle class budget for dining out. He ignored 30 years of wage stagnation that truly destroyed the middle class budget. This “restaurant recession” has been coming for years. It is similar to many libertarian claims that taxes are the main culprit of lower paychecks. We know that to be false historically. From the first gilded age we learned mass wealth inequality creates poverty. Anyone can see that the taxes taken would not benefit more in the pocket than the shared services it buys like police or fire. These few public services are the only safety net for much of the population that ensures life and liberty. Libertarians never ask why so few need so much. They are robotic in their desires. I think the founders would have found them to be despicable for selling out their citizens for luxury. We need some regulation of Greed to have a functional republic. The crash and boom cycles caused by deregulation supports the need for a long view. None of us is an island and that’s what the libertarian ideology requires us to be. The tide will continue to rise as we re-legalized Greed.
-E.C. Fiori
The Radical Centrists 