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As Middle Class Fades, So Does Use of Term on Campaign Trail
The New York Times ^ | 11 May 2015 | Amy Chozick

Posted on 05/11/2015 7:51:22 AM PDT by Theoria

Hillary Rodham Clinton calls them “everyday Americans.” Scott Walker prefers “hardworking taxpayers.” Rand Paul says he speaks for “people who work for the people who own businesses.” Bernie Sanders talks about “ordinary Americans.”

The once ubiquitous term “middle class” has gone conspicuously missing from the 2016 campaign trail, as candidates and their strategists grasp for new terms for an unsettled economic era. The phrase, long synonymous with the American dream, now evokes anxiety, an uncertain future and a lifestyle that is increasingly out of reach.

The move away from “middle class” is the rhetorical result of a critical shift: After three decades of income gains favoring the highest earners and job growth being concentrated at the bottom of the pay scale, the middle has for millions of families become a precarious place to be.

A social stratum that once signified a secure, aspirational lifestyle, with a house in the suburbs, children set to attend college, retirement savings in the bank and, maybe, an occasional trip to Disneyland now connotes fears about falling behind, sociologists, economists and political scientists say.

That unease spilled out during conversations with voters in focus groups convened by Democratic pollsters in recent months.

“The cultural consensus around what it mean to be ‘middle class’ — and that has very much been part of the national identity in the United States — is beginning to shift,’’ said Sarah Elwood, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and an author of a paper about class identity that one Clinton adviser had studied.

Rising costs mean many families whose incomes fall in the middle of the national distribution can no longer afford the trappings of what was once associated with a middle-class lifestyle. That has made the term, political scientists say, lose its resonance.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2016; 2016election; economy; middleclass; waronmiddleclass
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To: Theoria

Obama has destroyed the middle class.

We now gave a ruling elite that manipulates a near majority underclass to whom the elites give free government handouts at the expense of the now minority working class and middle class


21 posted on 05/11/2015 8:56:11 AM PDT by rdcbn
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To: Theoria

The middle class is no longer a significant part of the electorate.

A proper socialist oligarch government cannot allow a middle class to exist.

You will either be part of the business class, the political/government class, or a serf.

There can be no other class allowed in socialist America.

The US will end up emulating the chinese communist/quasi oligarch model, and that model is being put into effect as we speak.


22 posted on 05/11/2015 9:01:53 AM PDT by factoryrat (We are the producers, the creators. Grow it, mine it, build it.)
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To: Theoria

The common thread in third world countries is a small or non existent middle class.


23 posted on 05/11/2015 9:37:17 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose o f a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped.)
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To: Theoria

There is still a middle class, it has just been redefined. Now it means those who live paycheck to paycheck.


24 posted on 05/11/2015 9:40:42 AM PDT by LambSlave
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