Reply #59: Not bad-- that is, if you're middle- or upper-class

[no name no slogan]

You didn't mention that the working class didn't make much of an improvement in the 1990s.

The middle class and upper class did quite well, thankyouverymuch, while the working class got little more than a "trickle" down from on high.

The gap between the rich and poor got wider and wider, and workers wages only stopped their downward slide since the 1970s by a very small margin. In fact, due to the repeal of depression-era laws on the financial markets, more wealth "migrated" upward in the 1990s due to the easy availability of "investments" and loose credit.

Indeed, the effects of these two policies (encouraged by Clinton and Alan Greenspan) have been outright disastrous on low-income Americans. Due to wage stagnation, more working-class Americans have had to borrow money, just to keep up with what they previously earned in wages. Personal bankruptcies are spiraling out of control, and more Americans owe more money now than ever before.

Lax regulation of the securities markets (and the virtual destruction of the Glass-Steagal act-- the law that separates banking from insurance and investments) led to a free-for-all on the securities markets. More and more working-class, unsophisticated investors saw the markets as a cash machine, not aware of the true risks of investing. This led to a huge bubble which inevitably burst in 2000, causing many working- and middle-class people to lose their investments.

True, Greenspan may have been a Reagan appointee, but he was reappointed by Clinton. This is a Fed chairman who said, repeatedly, that growth of workers' wages was a BAD thing, because it "could" lead to inflation.

In retrospect, Clinton may seem progressive (even inspired when compared to what followed), but his neo-liberal "trickle-down" economic policies did little to change the declining plight of the working class in this country.