Middle class
By Neal Boortz
Yesterday on the program I had a truly ignorant caller try to tell me that it was the government that created the middle class. This man is, unfortunately, representative of a growing number of progs, libs and ignoranuses in this country. Just like Barack Obama, he believes that Americas greatness comes from government. America would be nothing if not for our magnificent government to fuel our prosperity and build the ideal society.
This growing mentality is disconcerting, to say the least. The American middle class was built on the individual pursuit of the American dream. The federal government exists solely to ensure that your pursuit of the American dream is not infringed upon by another individual or the state. It is not the job of the federal government to provide this American dream to you.
Now lets talk about the middle class. The truth is that there is no real definition of the middle class. Income wise, middle class Americans earn anywhere from $20,000 to $91,000 a year, give or take the economic times. The average salary is somewhere in the neighborhood of $48,000. A college education is usually associated with a middle class status. I read somewhere that the middle class tends to value independence, adherence to intrinsic standards, valuing innovation and respecting non-conformity. Whoever wrote that clearly does not subscribe to our callers theory of a middle class built by the government. Innovation, individualism, independence these are not words often associated with government.
The current economic climate has had its impact, but most middle class Americans are homeowners. Homeownership, as politicians throughout the years have tried to emphasize, has become synonymous with the American Dream. The recent housing bubble shows where government managed to mangle that dream by forcing banks to make loans to Americans who couldnt actually afford to be homeowners. Most middle class Americans can be found in urban centers and in suburbs, and most have two cars or more.
Lets take the concept of the suburb filled with subdivisions. This has also become synonymous with the middle class. If we subscribe to the callers theory, it would be the government that would have planned this concept of the suburb some may call this central planning. Libs and progs like Obama are a big fan of this concept because they believe that government knows best how to build communities. But it was a private citizen by the name of William Levitt who created the first subdivision in Long Island, New York in 1947. No one from the imperial federal government came to Long Island and declared that they had a plan to build communities for middle class Americans flooding to New York. Nope. Instead Mr. Levitt turned 4,000 acres of potato farms in Long Island into the largest privately planned housing project in America. Houses were built like an assembly line and tada! the subdivision was born.
Now why were workers flooding to urban places like New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and other places? Work. In the early 20th century, that work was mainly in factories. These were not government-owned factories. These were innovators who were trying to grow their business. The promise of government handouts isnt what drove the Industrial Revolution in America, which led to an explosion of income and population growth. It was an entrepreneurial spirit for innovation and business.
Take Henry Ford. He was a farm boy who became an engineer. As a young engineer working for Edison Illuminating Company he eventually worked his way up to Chief Engineer in 1893. This job afforded him the time and money to do personal experiments on the side on internal combustion engines. While he was not the first to conceptualize the automobile, he was the first to identify a market for it: the middle class. He saw the need for an affordable mode of transportation. He failed, not once but twice in his initial attempts to create a company to make automobiles. But he continued to pursue his goals. His real innovation came with the perfection of the assembly line and the concept of vertical integration. These were his ideas for ways to make his business better, to do things faster, to grow his business and his wealth and as a result he created thousands of jobs. It wasnt just his plants where jobs were needed. People were needed to create the parts and materials. People who lived and worked around the plants needed to be fed. They places to live. Construction workers were needed. They needed churches and schools and hospitals. Gas stations were necessary to fuel their new modes of transportation.
Do you see how this happens? There was no federal mandate. There was no central plan sent from Washington. There were no government incentives. Government did not build the middle class. The middle class was built by people like Henry Ford. He is just one example of the many Americans who were fueled by their individual pursuits to make a better life for themselves and their children. THATS what the American dream is all about.
