America's rich, it's powerful, it's professional classes and its politicians have spent a generation now not just betraying ordinary working Americans, but telling them that their endless betrayal was actually good for them, and that just like cod liver oil, they should shut up, suck it down, sit down and wait for the good times to happen again if they just do everything they were told to.

The result, for non-supervisory, hourly employees has been that they haven't made a single wage gain since about 1976. The result for the US's rich is that they have a greater proporiton of the nation's wealth and income than at any time in the United States history, surpassing even the Gilded Age.

But ya'know, I've covered the numbers before, what I want to talk about today is the disconnect and the rhetorical betrayal. Think about it, for a generation the talking heads, the academics, the think tankers, the politicians, the journalists and the chattering classes have all had some nostrum they wanted the middle and working classes to swallow. In the 80's they first had to suffer through Volcker strangling inflation. Then Reagan dropped progressive taxes and told working people that they'd get a "trickle down effect". Well, perhaps I shouldn't be too harsh on Reagan - it was true, they got nothing more than a trickle. Or to put it more vulgarly, all they got was trickled on.

In the meantime the Fed decided that the type of inflation it cared most about was wage push inflation. Let me translate that for you - for most of the eighties, all of the nineties and to a certain extent till today, with rare exceptions, whenever there were widespread wage gains that actually outstripped inflation, the Fed would grab the economy by the neck, like a chicken, and strangle it to death. Because while bankers and creditors were assured inflation plus profit for most of that period - because while useless rentiers living off other people's work had to be coddled and made richer - ordinary people couldn't be allowed to actually get ahead.

Then came the 90's and neoliberalization. Working people were told that what was necessary was to sell financial objects to other nations and ship the jobs there. Endlessly, endlessly, they were told that that shipping work to people earning 10 cents on the dollar was good for them, because a little bit of the difference was used by places like Wal-Mart to drive down prices on consumer goods.

But ya know what, CPI didn't actually go negative, and wages didn't actually rise, and consumers kept taking on net debt, and you know what that means? For most people, actually, it didn't work. Oh don't get me wrong, there are reasons to believe in free trade (if only we had some) but the policies of neoliberalization were a failure on their merits - ordinary people didn't get ahead because of them.

And then there were the fiddly ways the working and middle class got screwed. Things like using hedonics to adjust inflation, because the fact that your computer is tons faster now than it was 10 years ago sure makes most people's lives so much better. Hedonics was an attempt to say "poor today, is what poor forever will mean." If it had been put in in 47 and the goal had been to keep people above that poverty line, most people wouldn't have toilets today.

In the tech industry, where a tight labor market gave workers decent wage increases, Congress let huge numbers of foreigners in on work visas. Meanwhile, older computer specialists (40 is old, baby) couldn't find jobs - showing it was never about there not being enough tech workers, it was about making sure peons (and I spent most of the 90's laughing at tech libertarians, the shmucks) didn't get too far ahead.

Then in 2001 Bush decided (with the complicity of most of Congress, Democratic and Republican alike) that giving tax cuts to the rich was the most important thing on his agenda. And Greenspan, that pandering simpering courtier, kept his foot on the gas and allowed a huge rise in housing prices. Meanwhile wages went essentially nowhere and people took on debt by borrowing against their increased house prices. Increases most of them will never really be able to realize. They took on debt to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

Why do people scream for protectionism now? Why do people pay no attention to the talking heads opinions of "free" trade. Why do they ignore academic theorists whining about optimal Pareto equilibriums?

'Cause you all had your chances, baby. And you blew it. Repeatedly, for over 25 years, you blew it. Why should anyone listen to any of you any more? Who cares what "leading" neo-liberal thinkers think? You got it wrong. You were wrong about what neo liberalization would do to the US, you were wrong about what it would do the third world, you were just wrong.

And as for the apologists for trickle down, for the Laffer curve and other such nonsense. Again, you got it wrong. The record shows that when you give the rich tax cuts the only people who benefit are ... the rich. Gee, who would have thought?

You were nothing but bought and paid for kneepadding shills for the rich, all of you who who sold things like the Laffer curve. And I have to say, most of you got what you sold your souls for - you got the money, you got on TV, you got your fellowships.

But you're scum, and your prestige and your comfortable life were bought by screwing the majority of your fellow Americans and by making the US economically weak in the face of its enemies.

As for the Neo-Liberals. You failed. You were, in the end and in the general, wrong. Yes, you can nitpick the details, but basically, it didn't work. The rule for academic theories is that their proponents never give them up, you have to wait for them to die to move on. I hope that the more honest and well meaning neoliberals will not let that be their fate. If you don't, not only will you fail those who are effected be economic policy, and most vulnerable to it, you will fail yourself and increasingly be marginalized over the years.

The last thirty odd years has been the big screw. Regular people have not seen any wage increases, and have taken on debt, while the rich have gorged themselves till the money they bought by corrupting politicians has left them morally corpulent and without the least regard for their fellow citizens. Feeling that nothing they do matters, a near majority of US citizens don't even bother to vote - why bother when both the choices will simply vote for the interests of those who bought them years ago?

The first step to fixing all this is just to admit it. Yeah, there has been a class war and the rich won. The majority of Americans have spent the last thirty years being trickled on, and being told they should like it, beg for it, ask for more, and show gratitude for it to their betters.

The last class war was lost by ordinary Americans. The next war, the question of the next twenty years, is about whether the rich get to keep it all, and the middle class gets to pay off all the US's debts, while giving up good wages, their pensions and any chance at decent healthcare.

Which side are you going to be on? Because there are only going to be two sides, in the end.