Middle class

Throughout history the norm has been a few well off at the top and a large number of poor at the bottom. The most obvious example is the King along with his nobles and then a mass of worker bees. This was the case until the 1800 when the industrial revolution started. To begin with the old system remained with the robber barons, people like Rockefeller and Carnegie, but in time work rules were past and business was regulated and unions were formed and a middle class arose. The lesson is that the middle class is not something that comes about naturally but must be fought for. The only weapon the worker has is to organize. This is what happened after WW 2 in the US as the war machine turned into consumer products and companies formed partnerships with the workers and all profited. These years from post war up to the 1970’s represented the time when salaries increased each year a little more than inflation and workers were able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Over the next 50 years the US moved from a manufacturing economy to a financial economy and this was the downfall of the middle class. Today as the country begins its return to growing manufacturing it is time for the workers to unite as they did in the 1950’s and once again bring back the middle class. People say that automation will stop the working person but the same problem existed in the 1950’s. Automation was a hot topic in the 1950s and ’60s—a subject for congressional hearings, blue-ribbon panels, newspaper editorials, think-tank studies, scholarly symposia, documentary films, World’s Fair exhibits, even comic strips and protest songs.