I heard you this morning on the 1A on NPR.
I have some issues with what you had to say there.
I know you are a pundit, and I’m not. I also know you got it wrong.
We will begin with the Whisky Rebellion, which you mentioned, but, obviously don’t know much about.
As I live in the Monongahela Valley, where the rebellion took place, I do.
In 1794, farmers in this region grew rye, most of which was distilled into whisky, because it kept better that way, and there was a large market for it.
Then Congress, eager to raise revenue for the new nation, passed an excise tax, that’s a tax on liquor. It made sense. People don’t need liquor. But it was a problem for farmers here in the Monongahela Valley, where whisky was big business.
So, they rebelled. They tarred and feathered a tax collector, among other things.
George Washington led troops out here and managed to put the rebellion down in a few days.
The leader, who lived in what is now Washington, Pennsylvania, avoided arrest by jumping out of a second floor window, onto the roof of a shed, and then onto a horse. He escaped to New Orleans, which was, then, not part of the United States, and died there of yellow fever.
The house where he lived is now open for tours. One can see the window he jumped out of, but the shed has been torn down.
The Whisky Rebellion didn’t work.
Instead, local farmers voted for Thomas Jefferson, who repealed the excise tax.
The country would not have another one until after the Civil War.
(Yes, this will be on the final.)
Anyway, the Whisky Rebellion was not a conflict between the haves and the have nots. It was more a conflict between the haves and the haves.
Now, about the missing middle class.
I live in a rust belt city, one of many that grew up around the mills in the Monongahela valley.
If you drive through, you’ll see that this was, once, the home of prosperous families, who could live, comfortably, on one wage earner’s salary.
Most of those homes are now rental properties, blighted and rundown.
Our downtown area has much of the charm and ambience of London after the blitz.
When the mills closed the men who worked in them had to find new jobs. Most of them did. Most of those jobs were in service industries, so they didn’t pay as well as the jobs in manufacturing.
Many of them were, officially, part time and temporary, which meant they didn’t pay overtime, or benefits.
Men, who once worked 40 hours a week in a steel mill, now work 40 hours a week, driving for UPS, or digging up yards for Rotorooter, then work another 20 hours waiting on customers at Home Depot, or driving for Lyft. While their wives do medical billing and coding, or data entry, or look after patients in a nursing home, and they still struggle to pay the gas bill.
We have a lot of poor people in this country, Mr. Zakaria, no matter what you say.
We also have a lot of very very rich people, because this country is a good place to live in, if you’re a billionaire.
Elon Musk lives here, because we speak English, and he pays less taxes here than he would in Great Britain, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.
We live in a country where working people get their groceries from charities, while billionaires own five mansions.
We had something similar during what some called the Robber Baron Era, and Mark Twain called the Gilded Age.
If you were to visit Chatham University, in Pittsburgh, you would see some of the former homes of the robber barons.
These once elegant mansions now belong to Chatham University.
In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was elected president. The person many of those wealthy families called, “That Man In The White House” and “A traitor to his class”, because he made it kind of tough to be wealthy.
When those mansions were built, taxes on the rich were fairly low, and good help was very easy to find.
Most young women left school somewhere between the ages of 12 and 14. Many of them would go to work as live ins. It meant a saving for their families, who would have one less mouth to feed, and a little more space in a crowded home.
High schools were there. High schools were free. But families needed the money their children would earn.
If they were lucky, those young women might find work in one of the big mansions, where families would need a staff of servants to run their large house.
The nation’s wealthy could, easily, afford to pay a staff of seven a salary of three to four dollars a week, plus food and a place to sleep, while the people who worked for them where happy to get it.
But taxes went up, and, suddenly, it cost to be a millionaire.
At the same time the young women who would, once have been happy to find jobs as live in servants, where now going to high school, and becoming file clerks, switch board operators and secretaries.
A few would go on to college to become nurses or teachers.
As a result, some wealthy families gave their stately homes to Chatham (and got tax deductions for doing so.) They moved to cheaper and more manageable residences.
The Democrats succeeded in bringing the blue-collar work force into the middle class.
The Republicans have spent the past sixty years trying to undo everything That Man In The White House did.
They created a new class, the working poor.
During the past few years, Mr. Zakaria, I have, occasionally, provided one of my neighbors with food, something my grandmother did during the depression.
At the same time, Republicans have been able to distract people in the nation’s heartland with non issues, like library books, drag shows, Gay rights. You know the list as well as I do. I expect you, sometimes watch Fox News.
But, Mr. Zakaria, the problem is the economy, an economy where an Amazon driver may work sixty hours a week, and still be called part time.
Donald Trump has been able to convince some Americans, that this is happening because Mexicans and Hondurans are crossing our borders without proper documents.
Fox News had been able to convince a certain percentage of the nation’s workers that their problems are caused by drag queens, transgendered people, critical race theory, Antifa, etc.
As Hitler and his henchmen convinced the German people that their real troubles were caused by Jews, Roma and people with disabilities.
Dear Mr. Zakaria, you are a pundit. I am a small time fantasy writer. But, today, on NPR, you got it wrong.