“The title Systems out of Balance suggests that we have problems to address. These problems align with losing our balance with three social systems. We have an economic system of greed in this country; these essays promote merit as an alternative. We have a political system of authoritarianism; these essays promote wisdom. We have a cultural system of idolatry; these essays promote harmony. In each case the alternatives are presented as best for the middle class.”
From “Losing Balance” in Systems out of Balance
The genesis for the collection of essays titled Systems out of Balance began in the eighties. The movie Wall Street came out with the famous line “Greed is good.” This motto, consistent with Reaganomics, seemed to be acceptable to most people in the middle class with at least one odd exception. My father was a staunch Republican who voted for every Republican president, including Reagan’s first term. In the 1984 presidential election, the last one Pop would vote in, he voted for the Democratic candidate for the first and last time.
The reason for Pop’s defection was simple: Reaganomics was not good economic policy for the middle class. Both wealth disparity and debt on all levels grew throughout the eighties. Yet we the middle class seemed to accept Gordon Gecko’s mantra that “Greed is good.” After three decades of growing prosperity for the middle class this new decade of increasing wealth disparity was successfully marketed as “morning in America.”
The Iran-Contra affair raised the other eyebrow. On the face of it, Iran-Contra was more morally bankrupt than Monicagate, and even more so than Watergate. We illegally provided arms to an autocratic foreign government in order to illegally fund the overthrow of a democratic foreign government. Yet no real consequences came out of it, while Oliver North received accolades and a new lucrative career. The most disturbing aspect was that the relatively new 24-hour news network, CNN, was treating this whole surreal situation gently. At the time I just thought the media giant was making an honest mistake in judgment. I now know there are systemic problems behind how corporate media functioned then and now.
Finally, political campaigning was getting truly nauseating in the eighties and grew worse still in the nineties. Since political campaigns occurred every two years this was a cultural phenomenon that we could not get a break from. Meanwhile, public discourse as a whole was degenerating. By the time the decade of the eighties was over I was thinking: “Some day I oughta write a book.”
Fast forward to 2002 and the build-up to the Iraq invasion. OK, so not every middle class citizen goes on the Internet to read the Israeli newspaper Haaretz or listen to the BBC. The middle class should not be blamed if the corporate media of our own country has trouble with investigative reporting. At least our legislators making a critical decision about invading a foreign country would check out the established facts. Right? Right? Forget the pablum coming from Democrats that “if only we had known.” They should have known, and many probably did. The facts were there before we invaded. As an ordinary citizen I knew about the questionable character of Chalabi; the complaints from field operatives received by the CIA ombudsman; and the criticisms of former weapons inspector John Ritter. How come the Democrats were so ignorant? Make no mistake, invading Iraq was not merely the problem of having a loose cannon at the top. Iraq resulted from a systemic problem in our political system. I decided to do some investigating.
My investigation took a turn towards economics, where I stumbled on disturbing statistics from the Economic Policy Institute. From the 1940s to the 1970s all economic classes increased in wealth in near equal proportions. From the 1970s to the present only the wealthiest have increased their wealth significantly. The middle classes have barely increased while the lowest economic quintile actually decreased in wealth. Yes, that’s right. I went to the Statistical Abstracts and did the calculations myself. The decrease was not as much as reported by EPI, I’m not sure what assumptions they were making, but the decrease was undeniable. Meanwhile, Enron and other corporate giants were demonstrating their interpretation of just how good greed can be for certain segments of society. That’s some economic system we’ve got going for us. It was time to write a book.
This web site will feature commentary on the essays in Systems out of Balance over the short term. Long term, after the essays have been covered, the goal will be to continue this site as a forum for middle class issues. A new post will be added weekly, as will additional features as I become more experienced at managing a web site. Thank you for visiting; please spread the word to others.
Kirk Sinclair, author of Systems out of Balance
Tags: Corporate Media, Economic Trends, Middle Class Economics, Misinformation
