How About What's Fair for the Middle Class?

Everyone running for president has been talking about what's fair in this country. The Democrats claim that the rich aren't paying their fair share. Republicans say that it's not fair to burden small businesses with an even higher tax load.

But forget the folks at the top and the bottom for a second.

How about the folks in the middle? It's always the middle-class taxpayers who get squeezed. And they never have the lobbyists or the advocacy groups speaking out for them.

On college tuition, for example, the rich can afford the bills, the poor get the freebies, and the middle class gets squat. On health care, the rich get the golden benefits, the poor get Medicaid, and, again, the middle class have to go in hock to pay the bills.

And we all know if Obamacare ever gets fully implemented, it won't be "free"...somehow the middle class will end up paying the lion's share of the extra costs.

And now we just got another example of how this system is unfair to the middle class. The average school teacher in America makes $56 an hour, which is about double what the average taxpayer makes. When I was teaching junior high about 30 years ago, teachers made significantly less than the average taxpayer. Now it's double. And depending on the city, a similar pay differential is often true for cops, transit workers and even garbage men.

What the heck happened? A system in which public servants are paid a lot more than the taxpayers who fund them is not only unfair…it's unsustainable.

Of all the unfairness in this country, it's the unfairness of dumping on the middle class that has to be stopped first, no matter which candidate or which party comes into power.