https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/03/08/the-experiment/
by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic
A middle class that outnumbers the combined poor and aristocracy is a
relatively new phenomenon, dating back to around 1900. The rise of the
middle class was the result of Industrial Revolution capitalism. It has
been one of the most significant and epochal developments in history,
yet the intellectual reaction for the most part has been to either
ignore it or treat it with disdain. Now the project to destroy the
middle class is well under way, with unpredictable and uncontrollable
consequences that promise to be just as epochal as its creation.
Intellectual condescension towards the middle class is so common it’s
a cliché. What’s rare are attempts to go back in history and see things
through the perspectives of that despised group and its progenitors,
the poor.
In 1800, virtually everyone was poor, living under conditions of
deprivation and grinding poverty. Even being wealthy was no picnic;
present-day poverty-line Americans live better. Life expectancy was an
estimated twenty-nine years. Farming, the occupation of most, was
dangerous, backbreaking labor from dawn to dusk. Most of those so
engaged eked out a tenuous subsistence. There was no electricity, no
running water, primitive sanitation and health care, and none of the
machinery, gadgets, and appliances we take for granted. Only a few
wealthy poets who didn’t have to wrest a living from nature waxed
euphoric about its “joys.”
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Saturday, March 9, 2019
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