Americans: Bernie Sanders or Hilary Clinton

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You cannot can lay the decline of the Middle Class all at the feet of the Republican party. The Congressional Republicans only make show votes. Obama has pretty much gotten every thing he's wanted. Even then, I'm entirely convinced that the very existence of a 'middle class' isn't just a historical anomaly. Perhaps, the rich-poor divide is the default position and trying to cling to the model of how we think things should be versus how they actually work may blind us to other possible, perhaps even more effective, social orders.


I mean, in the West we have already largely solved the problem of absolute poverty. Our poor have cable television, cell phones, and indoor plumbing. What we have now is relative poverty in which the poor do have enough to live but just not as much as others that unsurprisingly live better. Any remaining absolute poverty is largely the result of poor decisions, mental illness, or evil. Those problems require a different kind of intervention that 'basic income'.

I wouldn't lay the absurd decline of the Middle Class at the feet of anyone except for the very rich and the depressedly downtrodden. Plenty of Republicans have accomplished plenty of good, though their continuing shove further and further into far-right extremism is certainly concerning; it's the voting population's continued support of these people that's really of concern to me (the political disenfranchisement and apathy of the general voting-age population is of ENORMOUS significance to the decline of the middle class).

Unfortunately... we in the West have actually NOT solved the problem of absolute poverty, though we have absolutely addressed it significantly in many often-nongovernmental socialistic attempts to provide the poorest amongst us with the barest of necessities to better their lives, whether that be financially or towards their health directly... people who do not have enough money to support themselves and their future are your primary support for the people who are 'even worse off' than they are. This results in a wide variety of people missing many utterly core needs, but typically with some small selection of alleviation SOMEWHERE in their lives, because anything less than anything can be too hard for some barely-less-poor person with any amount of empathy to look at.

But it's true... you can't always 'just throw money' at the problems... but you can create social safety nets and invest in financial counseling, therapy for both mind and body, and everything in our power to rehabilitate and restore those who have suffered great evils... and those whose introduction of great evils to others leaves them suffering still. There is no justice to be suffered while most people are suffering.