Reply #20: Reagan raised SS & payroll taxes from 6.25% to 15.3%.... a big hit on the working and middle classes

[FogerRox]

on the middle class, & he changed from progressive taxation to regressive taxation.

A War on the Middle Class generally attacks the 3 pillars holding up the middle class. Progressive taxes, labor & education. Again I look to Thom Hartman: Jefferson said, in an 1824 letter: "This degree of education would ... give us a body of yeomanry, too, of substantial information, well prepared to become a firm and steady support to the government." Jefferson started the University of Virginia with the intent to provide the yeomanry with a free education so as to be prepared to take part in the Government, the citizen legislators if you will.

The current war on the middle class started with less progressivity in tax rates, then union busting. More recently, tax breaks for corporations to move our jobs overseas, increasing illegal immigrantion to enlarge the labor pool, which drives wages down.

Enter Ronald Reagan and the start of full spectrum warfare on the middle class. The opening salvo, the PATCO strike. Busting the Air Traffic Controllers union was the start of a multi front military style operation to drive wages down for all Americans. Then we were told that Social Security was going broke, this represents the opening of a second front of the War on the Middle Class that resulted in the doubling of payroll taxes.