Another Think Tank Report Displays Elite Dems’ Distance from Suffering

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Another Think Tank Report Displays Elite Dems’ Distance from Suffering

Friday
June 25
4:09 pm

By Roger Bybee


When I started reading a new report called "The Polarization of Job Opportunities n the US Labor Market," I expected to encounter a wealth of valuable information documenting the destruction of America's middle class.

But it turned out to be an infuriating reminder of the upper-class blinders worn by top Democratic Party leaders and their chosen scholars at the Hamilton Project (housed at the Brookings Institution) and the Center for American Progress, which published the report in April. Their message to Americans is all too familiar: Stop whining about the good jobs lost to globalization, and go back to college.

Polarization, written by MIT economist David Autor, tells us that the American labor market—which it somehow separates from economy itself—is increasingly taking on an hour-glass shape as middle-class jobs are sharply declining. Job growth is largely confined to "low-wage, low-skill jobs" and "high-skill, high wage" professions. But it offers neither the clear, useful data nor the fierce moral urgency of the superb, fact-filled article "America Without a Middle Class" by Prof. Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Ovoversight Panel on the banking bailouts.

What's going on here? ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6148/pollarization_displays_dems_own_distance_from_suffering_base/

[The Magistrate]

1. Mr. Bybee, Sir, Nails It In One

[treestar]

2. so why are the Democrats responsible for an MIT professor's work

[Fumesucker]

3. The Democrats are responsible for policies that are killing the middle and lower classes..

I hope that's clear enough.

[Luminous Animal]

4. Center for American Progess touts itself as a liberal think tank...

I prefer to classify them as neo-liberal.

[William Z. Foster]

5. "liberal"

People are so attached to the word liberal, and yet so many conservative programs are now being promoted and touted by liberals or under the banner of liberalism, that we are unable to fight back against the privatization of schools, trickle down economic models, regressive taxes, "free trade" and "free market" ideas, "personal responsibility" ideas and on and on without being treated as "traitors" to the cause or to the party. Then we hear the idiotic "who are you to define what liberal means or what the left is?" It does not take much in the way of smarts to know that the privatization of schools, trickle down economic models, regressive taxes, "free trade" and "free market" ideas, "personal responsibility" ideas are all pure Reagan-era right wing politics. What difference does it make how we classify them or what label we put on them? If the same exact ideas and programs that Reagan stood for are being pushed by Democrats and liberals, must we therefore support them? They are right wing ideas and programs and we ought to be able to call them that. Opposition to them is left wing and we ought to be able to say that, as well.

[RainDog]

6. agree absolutely

and this is a major, if not the major problem with American politics at this time.

[Luminous Animal]

7. Most of the time I communicate on another board...

That has as many Canadians, Australians, and UKers. They and the Americans on that board, understand the distinction between liberal, neo-liberal, social liberal, conservative, radical, reactionary, socialist, anarchist, syndicalist, etc., etc.

Sometimes I forget that I say neo-liberal on this board, few people have a clue to what I am talking about.

[Curmudgeoness]

8. So enlighten us, what do you mean by neo-liberal? nt

[Luminous Animal]

10. Quickly because I have to leave to go babysit....

The primacy of consumer over citizen. Individualism over community. Markets over government.

[Curmudgeoness]

11. Thanks. Sounds rather ominous to me.

So neo-liberals could be said to side with business? Please don't tell me that they have faith in business to "do the right thing". I have to ponder this, and do a little research on the term. God, I never have allowed anyone to make me ashamed to call myself a "liberal"---have to rethink this. I will have to ask them what kind of liberal they think I am before I just smile at them.

[Riftaxe]

13. The true irony is that position

reflects the original liberal philosophy in the age of enlightenment.

[William Z. Foster]

15. maybe

I don't care, because I don't think personal beliefs have much to do with politics. Politics is about power and resources - who does and who does not have access to those, and how and why. Figuring out philosophies and beliefs and what label goes with what is best done in retrospect by people not engaged in the struggle.

[bobbolink]

14. And therein lies the problem....

If we say that now on DU, that some of these policies and "suggestions" are actually Raygunite, that is grounds for deleting.

What's a good "liberal" to do? :)

[amborin]

9. K&R they made sure their bankster buddies were ok....

[Swamp Rat]

12. k&r