A report from the Pew Research Center found that, for the first time since the 1970s, families defined as "middle income" are in a minority in the US - squeezed from both ends by an enlarged poverty-stricken group below them, and an enriched group above them.
Vice President Harris announced in her Convention acceptance speech that a major part of her presidency will be devoted to bring back the middle class.
“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said. “I strongly believe when the middle class is strong, America is strong.”
It's becoming clear that our Middle Class--the midsection of U.S. earners and consumers--has shrunk alarmingly. And this is the main reason for the political polarization today that in the words of journalist Christopher Hedges, has driven the Republican Party "insane"
Our society has become so polarized that Donald Trump needed the support of the Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists, and Vladimir Putin to become President. Whereas it has been such middle class values of probity, honesty and science, first satirized in Moliere's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, (The Middle Class Gentleman), that has been the stabilizing influence in American politics since WWII.
The main difference between poverty and middle class, and between middle class and the wealthiest, noted one researcher, "is belief in, and planning for, moving up as a working assumption." A report from the Pew Research Center found that, for the first time since the 1970s, families defined as "middle income" are actually in a minority in the US - squeezed from both ends by an enlarged poverty-stricken group below them, and an enriched group above them.
This graph shows the shrinkage of those defined as middle class from 1979 to 2014 -- from 38.8 percent (gray line) to 32.09 percent (blue line), according to the Pew study. The shrinkage reads like a textbook example of the future that French economist Thomas Piketty predicts for the world in his 2014 best-selling, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In 1971, there were 80 million households in the US defined as middle income - compared with a combined 52 million in the groups above and below. Now, there are 120 million middle-class families, but 121 million rich and poor - "A demographic shift that could signal a tipping point," says Pew.
So who or what is at fault for the result; record income inequality last reached in 1929 that led to the Great Depression? We can fault President Reagan, who was first to break the unions with his firing of all federally employed Air Traffic Controllers that belonged to PATCO, the traffic controller’s union.
Or, conservatives' espousal of the Reagan motto, "government is the problem," which caused the massive downsizing of government regulation, as well as the ensuing de-regulation of whole industries, such as the airlines, telecommunications, and financial markets.
But the truth was that Democrats were also implicated -- in fact, from the Presidency of Bill Clinton. For it was President Clinton who veered so far to the right in his 1966 reelection campaign that he preempted the Republican platform by continuing to deregulate the financial markets with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that separated FDIC depositor-insured banking from higher risk investment banking, financed the addition of 100,000 more police to combat the drug epidemic, and downsized poverty programs with welfare reforms that required welfare recipients to take low-paying menial jobs to receive even a limited amount of financial support.
The Republicans, as Chris Hedges said, were driven politically insane. They no longer had those bread and butter issues (such as law and order, smaller government) that were once their own, which led to formation of the Tea Party, and a new political civil war declared on Big Government ruled by the northern elites. It was our 150 year-old Civil War taking a new form—red states vs. blue states—but with almost the same mix of combatants.
Even more significant is the record income and wealth inequality since 1979 that has resulted; a more partisan and unequal electorate fearing further losses in their status as Americans.
Vice President Harris has said building up the middle class again is one of her priorities. So let us hope a majority of Americans realize this as well in November; that our prosperity and stability rest on a middle class that hasn't given up hope for a better future.
Harlan Green © 2024
Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
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