To: TimF who wrote (186095 ) 4/5/2004 8:34:53 PM From: Road Walker Read Replies (1) | Respond to re: There was vast quantities of land available. The government might have grabbed control over it and then given it to people to set up their farms but it didn't create the land. Protectionism is nothing new but the industrialization of America and the extra wealth and hire (SIC: higher) salaries that it created would have happened with or without a large degree of protectionism. Similarly the restrictions on women or on men from certain races may have helped white men relative to those groups but they did not "create the middle class". I'm not nostalgic for the 1920s but the prosperity then was created by the market. Then as now the government did interfere in the market and redistribute wealth (it does the latter a lot more today) but the prosperity was created by people acting in a relatively free market. 1 - Increases in productivity are not just in manufacturing. No it wasn't. Earlier in the same article the author says the "third middle class" was office workers and professionals. Neither their jobs, nor the fact that their jobs paid enough to make them members of the middle class, was created by government supplementation of their wages. There never has been such a guarantee, even with systems of redistribution but the typical American continues to get wealthier. I believe this is household income. The typical household is now smaller so the income per person, for all groups, has risen more then these figures suggest. Also the not many of the poorest have lost ground. Many people who where among the poorest no longer are. Many of the poorest are immigrants, esp. illegal immigrants and while they may be poorer in some ways then the poor in America in the past they are wealthier on the average in the US then they where in their home country. GOVERNMENT'S DEFINITION IS SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ENGINEERING
