Businesses thrive if there are healthy and financially capable consumers, which is why part of President-elect Biden’s plans is to save America’s middle class. Moreover, the incoming U.S. president’s plan is not only to revitalize the middle class, but also to make the sector more racially inclusive. Above all else, addressing the COVID-19 crisis remains the top priority of the incoming Biden Administration.
While Trump tried to make it appear that Joe Biden’s plans are left-leaning, the latter has explained time and again that he intends to launch programs that are achievable rather than revolutionary in addressing economic disparity. As the former Vice President who had plans of becoming the Democratic candidate to replace Donald Trump, Joe Biden had said in his 2018 speech at the Brookings Institute
“I do not think America’s 500 billionaires are the reasons why we are in trouble.”.
Yet the former vice president said he believes in the thriving middle class as the backbone of America’s society and of their importance in achieving political and social stability in the country. What he sees as the problems that beset the country is the lack of opportunities and the false sense of optimism being fed by phony populist politicians like Donald Trump.
Rather than encourage the younger generation’s inclination to question the essence of the country’s capitalist system, Biden preferred to maintain a centrist stance in solving America’s economic problems.
Who are the American Middle Class?
In a 2018 survey conducted by the Pew Research, about 52% American adults make up the middle-income households representing the middles class in the country. Pew Research described them as adults whose annual household income is in the range of between $48,500 and $145,500. The middle class income is equivalent to about two-thirds of twice the national median, after said incomes have been adjusted according to the size of the household.
Pew compared the U.S. middle class income with that of other advanced economies, which revealed that proportionally, the U.S. has a smaller middle class sector. Experts at the Brooking Institute corroborated the Pew study as their analysis showed that there is also a growing disparity of income in the middle class — as only the top 20% of the sector was able to recover from the Great Recession in 2007 to 2009.
It was Joe Biden’s centrist policies that made him the Democratic candidate who can mount the most formidable challenge against Donald Trump, who has relentlessly sowed the seeds of divisiveness in America. The results of the election and the large participation of voters from both the Democratic, Republican and independent voters showed that the majority of the American populace seeks unity rather than polarization.