What about the middle class?

Richard Fisher President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. In his published remarks before the Dallas and Fort Worth chapters of Financial Executives International this chart caught my eye.
As Democrats scramble to create a salient political issue to divert attention from the disaster that is Obamacare they have focused upon raising the minimum wage and have contrived to sell it as sound economic policy and a giant step toward a more egalitarian society. Luckily for Obama and the Democrats Fed officials don't indulge in public political polemics.

Earlier I showed you the gaping hole in the heart of our prosperity: If you remove the job-creating machine of Texas from the U.S. economy, the nation has experienced job destruction that has occurred over the past 12 years in the middle-income quartiles. Let me show you that chart again:

I never refer to “classes”; I do not believe status in a democracy should be defined by the hidebound concept of “classes.” But no matter: The most vital organ of our nation’s economy—the middle-income worker—is being eviscerated.

Considering that data such as these that are generated by the Fed and are the basis on which monetary policy is formulated I would suggest that they are as accurate as they get. These data beg two questions. First, why not focus on the quartiles that have borne the brunt of the economic devastation? To answer that question, I think it accurate to say the easiest solutions would be anathema to the Democratic Party and to big government Republicans. Repealing the corporate income tax would do wonders for the two disadvantaged quartiles but that would leave less money to give to the lower quartile. Rolling back business and environmental regulations would result in smaller government and fewer public sector jobs and those jobs are filled for the most part by good Democrats. A flat tax would spur economic growth but then extracting campaign contributions from lobbyists would be more difficult as there would be fewer lobbyists advocating favored tax status for their clients. So the Democrats are left with futile remedies that do little good for anyone but themselves.
The second question is how grateful will the electorate be  when for the most part its misery has again been ignored? Sure there will still be a few mopes who still hope to land one of the millions of green jobs that were promised and a few dolts will be giddy about their free contacepative and the accompaning sense of empowerment but the electorate at large is going to be pretty unforgiving. It is prepared to fire until it gets it right.
Fisher concluded;

I don’t want to ruin your evening after such a pleasant dinner. But if you wish to know who is at fault for hollowing out the welfare of middle-income workers and the American economy, kindly do not look at me or my colleagues at the Fed. When you go home tonight look at yourself in the mirror. We at the Fed are providing more than enough monetary accommodation. You elect our fiscal and regulatory policymakers. It is time for them to do their job, to ally themselves with us to achieve a fully employed, prosperous America. Only you, as voters, have the power to insist that they craft policies that are needed to restore American prosperity. Please do so.