as SoCalDem eloquently put it in another thread at
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2875769&mesg_id=2876108 .
I wrote this reply and thought it stood on its own well enough for a re-post:
Largely out of the public eye, US multi-national corporations mastered the art of manipulating political systems in third-world countries, to bring about no-tax and union-free business environments. Then, with the election of Ronald Reagan, IMO they succeeded in bringing their plutocratic version of "democracy" home.
Most of the unfortunate changes in the economy you mention--the virtual end of defined-benefit pensions, wholesale corporate theft of pensions, offshoring (downsizing) of good jobs, wage growth stalled during 25 years of skyrocketing worker productivity, mortgages structured to maximize defaults and foreclosures--have come about since 1980. And you omitted the most ingenious Party-Of-The-Super-Rich triumphs: cutting the highest marginal income tax rates by TWO-THIRDS, and shifting that tax burden onto FICA payroll taxes. All in the name of "saving Social Security" in 1981, while setting up a "Trust Fund" with no real assets. Alan Greenspan feared a real-asset Trust Fund would lead inevitably to "socialism"--ie largescale government pension reinvestment in urban areas that instead were redlined, becoming ungovernable and unable to counteract the Republican vote-canceling machine.
Doubtless many corporations and Republican political coalitions were trying to achieve what GE apparently achieved by making Ronald Reagan their mouthpiece. A recent book by a REPUBLICAN author is a real eye-opener on how the highly successful "revolt of the haves" you describe came about:
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From
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/publicity/evansexcerpt.html :
"THE EDUCATION OF RONALD REAGAN -- Thomas W. Evans -- CHAPTER ONE
... during his years with General Electric, Reagan developed more than a set of prepared remarks. He eventually became an integral part of the company's elaborate political initiative, probably the most comprehensive in corporate America. The program extended from the executive suites to GE's employees on the plant floor to the voters in the towns and cities where the plants were located. Reagan later described his experience as "an apprenticeship for public life." Toward the end of his years with GE, when transcripts of still-evolving versions of "The Speech" were made available to the public for the first time, Reagan felt he had experienced a conversion. He wrote in An American Life, "I wasn't just making speeches„I was preaching a sermon."
Reagan was a self-confessed Democrat and New Dealer when he arrived at GE. After his eight-year "postgraduate course in political science," conducted largely under the aegis of GE's vice president and labor strategist, Lemuel Boulware, Ronald Reagan came to expound on the need to reduce taxes and limit government. He described international communism, as Boulware and GE president Ralph Cordiner did, as "evil." He observed Boulware, who was regarded by many in corporate America as the most successful labor negotiator of all time, and Reagan himself became a knowledgeable negotiator during this period, equally at ease with corporate executives and blue-collar workers. His education stretched well beyond the bargaining table. ...
Lemuel Boulware believed that it was not enough to win over company employees on narrow labor issues. They must not only accept the offer but pass on GE's essentially conservative message to others, helping the company to win voters at the grass roots who would elect officials and pass legislation establishing a better business climate. In short, they would become "communicators" and "mass communicators," (Boulware's words) as they went through the company's extensive education program. In time, the program would also help to produce a "great communicator." And yet, for all the recent interest in the Reagan presidency, little has been written about how his change from liberal to conservative, from actor to politician, came about. A veil of secrecy has been drawn over this crucial period of Ronald Reagan's education. Part of the reason for this was Cordiner and Boulware's concern that GE's political efforts might come under attack as violating federal and state statutes that made partisan corporate political activity a crime. They also felt that GE's unions might find Boulware's aggressive negotiating posture„dubbed Boulwarism and still referred to as such in labor law texts„the basis for an unfair-labor-practice charge.
...several recent events bring new light to this study of Ronald Reagan's "education": the discovery of a collection of hitherto unpublished papers and a repository of GE corporate documents last published during the 1950s and 1960s; interviews with GE personnel who had been silent until now; and a reexamination of other publications and oral histories that now have a more meaningful context. Many observers consider the changes in Ronald Reagan during his GE years to be profound. ... To truly understand Ronald Reagan during and after the GE years, it is important to know what he was like when he came to the company. It is also important to know what the company was like„as later chapters will make clear„at the time when Reagan was an employee...."
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