The Goal Is Freedom: Pundit in Wonderland

In one of those boilerplate articles about the deteriorating American middle class, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson points out that a new Pew Research Center survey reveals that an increasing number of people think we live in a country divided into “haves” and “have-nots” and that more people now put themselves in the second group. Have and have-not what exactly? Meyerson has little to say about that rather obvious question beyond mentioning job stability and retirement security, as though being without those things is equivalent to being in poverty. Nevertheless, he offers an explanation for why Republicans are more reluctant than Democrats to acknowledge this great division in our land: “Apparently, so great is Republicans' loyalty to the Bush presidency that they're willing to overlook their own experience. And, in many cases, to attribute the nation's transformation solely to immigration, rather than to the rise of a stateless laissez-faire capitalism over which the American people wield less and less power” (emphasis added). Excuse me? More . . .

A NEW article by Sheldon Richman