Dear Log,
«Whereas the second American middle class was founded on high wages for workers in the industrial sector, the third American middle class was founded on the supplementation of wage income by government benefits that collectively constituted a "social wage." The social wage included not only private-sector benefits encouraged by the tax code, such as employer-provided health insurance, but also subsidies such as the home-mortgage-interest deduction and government entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare (which freed many middle-class families from the bankrupting burden of caring for elderly parents), the GI Bill for higher education, and student loans. As the Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker has pointed out, when the hidden welfare state is counted along with the visible welfare state, the United States has a system of social provision as generous as those in Western Europe-though in this country much of that system extends only to the middle class and the professional elite.»Where's that Guatemexcan maid to take care of my grandpa -- before it's too late!--"Are We Still a Middle-Class Nation?": It's no accident that the United States has always been an economic paradise for the middle class-that class was invented and reinvented by the government. Now the government needs to reinvent it again -- before it's too late
