Posted on 07/14/2010 12:17:31 PM PDT by neverdem
Class, the Industrial Revolution’s great political dividing line, is enjoying Information Age resurgence. It now threatens the political future of presidents, prime ministers and even Politburo chiefs. For this growing class divide can be found globally: In China, for example, technological change and globalization have produced a new proletariat that, unlike in the past, is disinterested in warmed-over Maoist ideology.
Perhaps nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the unrest at the Foxconn Technology Group. Workers produce cool products — for companies like Apple, Dell and Nintendo — but under such oppressive conditions that some have been driven to suicide.
As in the Industrial Age, new technology is displacing whole groups of people — blue- and white-collar workers — as it boosts productivity and creates opportunities for others. Inequality is on the rise — from the developing world to historically egalitarian Scandinavia and Britain.
Divisions are evident here in the United States. Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama lagged in appealing to white middle- and working-class voters who supported Hillary — and former President Bill — Clinton.
Now, these voters, according to recent polls, are increasingly alienated from the Obama administration. Reasons include slow economic growth, high unemployment among blue- and white-collar workers and a persistent credit crunch for small businesses. These factors could cause serious losses for Democrats this fall — and beyond.
This discontent reflects long-term trends. Since 1973, for example, the rate of growth of the “typical family’s income” in the United States has slowed dramatically. For men, it has actually gone backward when adjusted for inflation.
The past few years have been particularly rough. About two in five Americans report household incomes between $35,000 and $100,000 a year. Right now, almost three in five are deeply worried about their financial situation, according to an ABC poll from March.
This should give Democrats an issue, theoretically. But to date, Obama and his party seem incapable of harnessing the growing middle- and working-class unrest.
In fact, according to recent polls, these have been the voters that Democrats and the president have been losing over the past year as the economic stimulus failed to make a major dent in unemployment.
Part of this problem lies with the party’s base, which the urban historian Fred Siegel once labeled “the coalition of the overeducated and the undereducated.” Major urban centers like New York, Chicago and San Francisco might advertise themselves as enlightened, but they have lost much of their middle class and suffer the highest levels of income inequality.
Representatives from these areas now dominate the party and reflect their bifurcated districts. They often stress the concerns of the educated affluent on issues like climate change and gay marriage, while their economic policies focus on the public-sector workers, “green” industries and maintaining the social welfare net.
Not surprisingly, this agenda does little for the middle-class — mostly suburban — voters.
Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), for example, won his margin of victory in largely middle- and working-class suburbs, where many voters had backed Obama in 2008, according to demographer Wendell Cox. Brown lost by almost 2-to-1 among poor voters — and also among those earning more than $85,000 a year.
Given the danger revealed by these numbers, Democrats and other center-left parties around the world should refocus their policies on issues — such as taxes, private-sector job creation and small business — that affect such voters.
Mounting protests about Foxconn’s employment practices, and a recent rash of strikes in China’s Honda plants, reveal the disruptive potential of this class conflict.
Even as China’s corporations and government become richer, inequality is widening. Indeed, over the past 20 years, China has shifted from an income-distribution pattern like that of Sweden or Germany to one closer to Argentina’s or Mexico’s. By 2006, China’s level of inequality was greater than that of the United States or India.
Not surprisingly, class anger has reached alarming proportions. Almost 96 percent of respondents, according to one recent survey, agreed that they “resent the rich.”
China’s class divides may be extreme, but similar patterns can be found almost everywhere. From India to Mexico, economic growth has led to a striking increase in the percentage of urbanites living in slum conditions.
In 1971, for example, slum dwellers accounted for one in six Mumbaikars. Today, they are an absolute majority.
This almost guarantees greater class conflict in the future, even as India’s economy booms.
“The boom that is happening is giving more to the wealthy,” said R.N. Sharma of Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences. “This is the ‘shining India’ people talk about. But the other part of it is very shocking — all the families where there is not even food security.We must ask: ‘The “shining India” is for whom?’”
This growing inequality in the developing world is already shaping global politics. The failure of the Copenhagen climate change conference can be largely ascribed to the unwillingness of China, India, Brazil and other developing countries to sacrifice wealth creation opportunities for ecological reasons.
Like their counterparts in New Delhi and Beijing, politicians in wealthier countries also face class conflict.
In Britain, for example, even a massive expansion of the welfare state has done little to stop the U.K. from becoming the most unequal among the advanced European democracies.
Alienation among white working-class voters — particularly those in the public sector or with modest small businesses — may have contributed to the Labour Party’s poor showing in the recent elections, according to Liam Byrne, the former Labour treasury secretary.
A similar phenomenon appears in Australia. Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, an icon among upper-class liberals, resigned in large part because of a precipitous decline in the polls among middle- and working-class suburban voters.
What is not clear is whether conservative parties can abandon their often slavish devotion to big corporate interests to take advantage of these new dynamics. For years, these parties have relied on divisive social issues, like immigration, to win working- and middle-class voters. But it’s possible that a focus on profligate government spending might yet increase the right’s appeal among mid-income voters.
As this current shift to greater inequality continues, the self-styled “popular” parties’ tendency to ignore class issues could prove disastrous.
Unless they start addressing class issues in effective ways, they may lose not just their historical base but the political future.
Joel Kotkin is a distinguished senior fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and an adjunct fellow at the Legatum Institute in London. He is author of “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.”
I think, in a new twist, that the next set of instigators of the next revolution won’t be the poor, but the middle class or rich against the freeloaders.
Marx HATED the middle class. He saw them as sell outs and traitors to the cause.
Thus converting to a Marxist/Socialist system is putting the squeeze on the middle class - who now get to bailout irresponsible millionaires and low class moochers.
The worst place to be in 2010 is middle class. If you’re poor the government will take care of you. If you’re rich, you can buy influence. But the middle class is screwed.
The Democrats’ middle class problem is that they have not yet destroyed the hated middle class.
Their problem with the middle class is that it still exists.
Every policy is intended to eliminate the class of people that live nearly like the “elite” in lifestyle yet don’t “deserve” to live like the “elite”.
Fred Siegel once labeled “the coalition of the overeducated and the undereducated.”
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Or as I prefer to refer to them “the coalition of the brainwashed and the propagandized.” :P
Dems don’t want a middle class they want poor that need their help and rich that they can demonize, the democrats promised they would only tax the rich they just never said if you have a job and a home you are ‘rich’
This is just too funny. The writer is suggesting that Democrats become conservatives.
Nobody could have said that any better!
Another analysis that I’ve heard is that the middle class are the milk cows of society.
The “ruling class” milks the cows for all they’re worth, skims the cream off the top for their own lifestyles,
then “distributes” what’s left to their dependent class in order to get their support to stay in power.
The dependent class tend to be the “democrats”,
the middle class tend to be “republicans”,
and the “ruling elite” tend to be communists.
Do these Washington elites have a clue as to what is happening to our country? The middle class is being destroyed. People in their 20’s are living at home with their parents. People are out of work unable to pay their mortgages and monthly bills . People who worked hard all their lives are forced to take low level jobs just to support their families. People are spending their life savings and will soon have nothing left for retirement.
The middle class is being decimated.
Who Killed California's Economy?
*******************************************EXCERPT***********************************
Joel Kotkin, 07.07.09, 12:00 AM EDT
Right now California's economy is moribund, and the prospects for a quick turnaround are not good. Unable to pay its bills, the state is issuing IOUs; its once strong credit rating has collapsed. The state that once boasted the seventh-largest gross domestic product in the world is looking less like a celebrated global innovator and more like a fiscal basket case along the lines of Argentina or Latvia.
It took some amazing incompetence to toss this best-endowed of places down into the dustbin of history. Yet conventional wisdom views the crisis largely as a legacy of Proposition 13, which in effect capped only taxes.
And snakes should begin to walk.
This administration is bound and determined to destroy the private sector. This party is not "center-left", it is completely anti-capitalist, so it is INCAPABLE of focusing on anything but government solutions. The author acts as if this would be a simple adjustment instead what would represent a complete reversal of everything they've done thus far.
At some point Obama will say. ...Mission Accomplished
In practical terms, that translates to millions of us dead, the rest of us in chains. Some of them have said as much. They are all monsters - killers without conscience.
In Britain, for example, even a massive expansion of the welfare state has done little to stop the U.K. from becoming the most unequal among the advanced European democracies.
did the author think massive expansion of the welfare state would somehow shrink the divide?
"But to date, Obama and his party seem incapable of harnessing the growing middle- and working-class unrest."Joel Kotkin, you fool, it's Obama and his party that causing the growing middle- and working-class unrest. How the hell are they supposed to "harness" that? Quit giving cause for unrest, perhaps? Nawwwwwww.
In any case, Joel doesn't get it, lamenting the poor put-upon middle-class being driven out of existence, leaving only the rich and the poor, who he claims are who vote for the Rats. Well, he's the got the facts more or less correct, but not the context.
Joel, everything Obama is doing is focused on killing the middle-class! He's doing it on purpose, you moron! He's eliminating those who might not vote for Rats.
And once Obama does that, then he'll proceed to eliminate the rich, leaving only the poor and oppressed, totally dependent upon government handouts handed out by the Rats running the show. Of course as Maggie Thatcher used to say, "The trouble with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money to give away."
Exactly! We’ve watched the corrupt banksters, labor unions, and leaches get billions in bailouts and handouts while we have seen the economy nearly fall apart around us, with our taxes getting ready to go up.
I don’t want a bailout or giveaway of any kind(however, I wouldn’t turn down a $10million check). All I ask is for the politicians to get the hell out of the way, so we may have a good economy where anyone who wants to work can find a good job doing what they do best.
“Their problem with the middle class is that it still exists.”
Actually I think they still need the middle class. They need a substantial number of people being productive so the Dems can tax them to the fullest extent possible. The rich can find ways to get out of paying taxes so the Dems need a tax base to feed upon which is not strong enough to fight them off.
Where I think the Dems have a problem is with the unions, although I am sure they don’t agree.
But, in a global economy, the United States has no excuse for having an uneducated citizenry. However, labor unions have built themselves up by promising high-paying lifetime jobs for minimally-educated workers. The only way to preserve that hegemony is to have protectionist legislation to stop foreign competition. The problem with that, however, is that Third World countries are struggling to build their own middle-class base and need those manufacturing jobs to establish the first generation middle class. Without that middle-class, those countries are unstable and vulnerable to manipulation by the likes of Al Quaeda and others. So preventing Third World countries from moving up, in the name of protecting union jobs here means higher national security worries and costs. (I here want to distinguish between manufacturing jobs with nationals security applications versus consumer manufacturing. I do recognize the need to have domestic manufacturing capability for defensive and offensive weapons.)
Other unions gumming up the works of making progress are the federal and state employee unions. They are heavily invested in ensuring the country has lots of dependents to serve (or pretend to serve) while they feather their own nests. These are the people who largely control who and what is taxed or subjected to fees to support the public employee sector. Right now they are the only “healthy” members of the middle-class but will remain so only as long as they can continue to hold the governments hostage to their demands.
Add to that the education unions which are invested in an anachronistic, politically-correct public education. This means our own citizens, who could be educated to take on more white-collar jobs professions, are not getting that education. We have too many students walking out of school illiterate but feeling good about their illiteracy.
The whole nation is being jerked around by unions who want to maintain the status quo, even if it means an unstable world, another generation of youth lured by the fraudulent promise of lifetime union work, and knowingly building a house of cards which hopefully won’t tumble down until the current union leaders are retired and vested in largesse. The Dems in particular are in thrall to these special interests, although it is clear more than a few Republicans have gone the same way. When the only real discussion among the pols is how much taxation and burden they can impose upon the middle-class without killing the host, it is a corrupt and inevitably fatal infection on the body politic.
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