UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting Brian Thompson
CEO Shooting Almost Sparked A Renewed Sense Of Class Consciousness
America was founded by ambitious immigrants moving to a new country to find success. For a long while, there was an air of trying to protect the common people against big business and the wealthy. When big business interests began to rise in the late 19th and early 20th century, numerous laws were put into place to curtail the size and reach of corporate interests, as well as excessive wealth accumulation.
This all had changed by the 1980s. During the 1970s, the US economy stagnated due to the peaking of US oil production. Conservatives did not hesitate to blame it on liberal policies like high taxes on the wealthy, big business, and the ‘over-regulation’ of big business.
When Ronald Reagan came into office, he immediately began rolling back taxes on the rich and deregulating big business.
The founding ideal of Horatio Alger ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ played its part — this sustained fantasy of American prowess and the idea that social mobility undergirds hyper-individualism and a ‘can-do self-reliance’. This ideal severely undercut class identity as a personal attribute.
