Defining the middle class statistically is difficult but you know it when you see it. She gave some income ranges but I felt that the low end of 45,000 per year for a household is pretty darn low if that income has to support several children and a mortgage in a location with high property values. On the other hand, if a couple is retired with a paid for home, then that can become a comfortable income.
She points to the obvious culprits. Washington is completely broken and controlled exclusively by Wall Street and high priced lobbyist who speak for corporations and not people. While President Obama has at least tried some things to help, his successes are limited and approaches are timid. She points to the recovery act as a positive idea but because the substance was put together by politicians who are bought and paid for, it was not able to do what the WPA did during the Great Depression.
She spends a great deal of time on the "Too Big to Fail" banks and what an obvious scam it was to bail them out. If they were in fact too big to fail, then they were too big. And why has there been no meaningful reform? Well again, we know the answer to that. You can hardly call it capitalism when corporations take no risk for loss but pocket all the profits.
What does Arianna Huffington, publisher of the The Huffington Post suggest we can do to turn things around? A lot of her ideas are not political and fall into the realm of what we can all do as human beings to help our fellow citizens that are suffering. She also suggests we boycott the big banks and keep our money in local small banks or credit unions. This is an idea that I love and fully support. She does suggest that we absolutely must have vast, meaningful campaign finance reform. Without it, we will never be able to look to government to do the right thing. And without a government working for the best interest of the people, it is really hard to imagine that anything will ever change.
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