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 ...
A middle class is an anachronism in a global economy. By and large it was enabled by manufacturing, and the manufacturing now resides in countries with a lower standard of living. So it goes.
Obama promised “Change”. Why would anyone be surprised that he delivered? Obama, Pelosi, and Reid killed the middle class, leaving us with the working poor, and the parasitic poor. Socialism never works.
The middle class has been getting crushed for decades. It certainly didn’t start with Obama, nor did his policies help to turn the tide.
Truth be told, these people hated the Middle Class to begin with. Serfs are much easier to manage than independent people who can think critically.
Middle-class originally meant doctors, lawyers, small business owners -- people who worked for themselves and maintained a prosperous lifestyle between the working class and the landed aristocracy.
If you worked for a paycheck from somebody else, then you were "working class", even if you made a good salary.
I’ve always been kind of fond of the Communist term, “workers”. Haven’t you, New York Times?
Sarah Elwood? The missing Blues Sister?
Elitists and peasants. The peasants will one day cook the elitists over an open fire.
Not a good development.
This country has always managed to avoid the worst of Socialist excesses because a very wide swath of income ranges all regarded themselves as “middle class”.
If that is beginning to fracture it won’t be long till we turn into France.
On a related note, if you want to see a liberal jackass' head explode, the next time you hear one spouting off about "all the jobs created by 0bama", just ask him, why are interest rates still being kept artificially low, and why are we still printing money and monetizing our debt.
.....And that time is coming for that “cooking” to take place.
Marxists have always hated the middle class, blaming it for preventing the glorious workers revolution they so feverently desire. Thus, Obama has done everything in his power to destroy it. We are seeing the results.
I think you are basically correct. Once people sought to enter the “middle class.” Now they are desperately clinging to it as it ebbs away from them. We are becoming a stratified country, 1% powerful ruling elite, the next 10% or 20% being an influential group of skilled worker drones who actually get the work done (the ancients called them “scribes”). Below them is the mass of peasants who live in ignorance and squalor. For the Romans, it was the “mob,” the indolent institutionalized urban poor who received their bread and circuses. Occasionally someone can cross the boundaries upward. But what we are now seeing is a massive downward migration out of the well-off worker drones and into the Black Hole of the mob, from which they and their offspring will not escape. And with EBT cards, 0bamaphones and “Dancing with the Stars” they won’t want to.
It has always been this way throughout the history of world civilizations. Rarely has more than 10% of a population been literate. It is still this way in China and India, despite their rising wealth.
I suppose we were something of an anomaly. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
Well said.
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