Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class - And What We Can Do about It (BK Currents (Paperback))

265 Pages·2007·12.8 MB·English

by  Thom Hartmann

S C R E W E D
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SCREWED
THE UNDECLARED WAR
Against the Middle Class
–– And What We Can Do About It
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THOM HARTMANN
Screwed
Copyright © 2006, 2007 by Thom Hartmann and Mythical Research, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distrib-
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Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available from the Library of Congress.
First Edition
Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-57675-414-6
Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-57675-463-4
PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-57675-529-7
2007-1
Interior design and composition by Gary Palmatier, Ideas to Images.
Elizabeth von Radics, copyeditor; Mike Mollett, proofreader; Edwin Durbin,
indexer.
In memory of Carl T. Hartmann,
the world’s best dad and the fi nest
human being I’ve ever known.
1928–2006
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C O N T E N T S
Foreword by Mark Crispin Miller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction: Profi ts before People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Part I: A Middle Class Requires Democracy . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 1 Th ere Is No “Free” Market . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 2 How We the People Create the Middle Class . . 41
Chapter 3 Th e Rise of the Corporatocracy . . . . . . . . . 59
Part II: Democracy Requires a Middle Class . . . . . . . . . . 71
Chapter 4 Th e Myth of the Greedy Founders. . . . . . . . 73
Chapter 5 Th omas Paine against the Freeloaders . . . . . 81
Chapter 6 Taxation without Representation . . . . . . . . 95
Chapter 7 James Madison versus the Business of War . . 107
Chapter 8 FDR and the Economic Royalists . . . . . . . 115
Part III: Governing for We the People . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Chapter 9 Too Important for the Private Sector . . . . . 137
Chapter 10 Knowledge Is Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chapter 11 Medicine for Health, Not for Profi t . . . . . 153
Chapter 12 Th e Truth about the Trust Fund . . . . . . . . 163
Chapter 13 Setting the Rules of the Game . . . . . . . . . 173
Chapter 14 Th e Illegal Employer Problem . . . . . . . . 183
Chapter 15 Leveling the Playing Field . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Conclusion: Th e Road to Victory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Aft erword by Greg Palast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
vii
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F O R E W O R D
M C M
Here’s a bit of wisdom on which “left ” and “right” can easily agree:
If you let things go, you’ll have to pay for it eventually; and the
longer you don’t deal with it, the more you’ll have to pay. Wait
long enough, and you’ll pay dearly—when you could have done
the right thing all along and at little cost.
Take the planet, for example. As every reasonable person
and/or group will now admit, this Earth had been gradually heat-
ing up since heavy industry began to blacken and enrich the West
not long aft er our founding revolution; and now that trend, for
years denied, has started to accelerate, with ever-larger chunks of
polar “permafrost” dissolving into sea, polar bears and penguins
vanishing, fl oodwaters rising everywhere, and the weather going
mad. Although for decades the danger was strenuously veiled by
lots of corporate and religious propaganda, it’s now a major story
sold dramatically by Time, CNN, and Hollywood—and an issue of
increasing worry even to Shell Oil, General Motors, and a sizeable
network of rational evangelicals. If we had been allowed to face
the facts not long ago, when scientists fi rst started trying to talk
about them, we might not be wondering now how many species
have a future here.
“Global warming” is, at last, a major story, as an overt catas-
trophe must always be a major story. When it is actually upon us,
fi rst of all, there’s no denying it (unless you’re working in the Bush
administration); and, of course, it off ers just the sort of stark apoc-
alyptic images that no news outlet can resist (unless they come
from places where the scourge in question is our military). Other
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