Buh Bye Middle Class

The shirking and shrinking middle class is not a new item for anxiety. Part of the reason the illegal immigration debate has suddenly sprung forward in the last few years is because it is being framed in terms of how it directly affects the middle class, it is being sold as an explanation as to why the middle class is suffering. Illegals are taking middle class jobs. It is a great way for Republicans and Dems to transform themselves into populists and divert questions of the other ways in which the middle class has been subverted.

I am a legal immigrant myself and you would think I would have stronger exclamation points about my own validity versus that of illegal immigrants but I don’t. I lived in the border area of South Texas for a few years and we were so close to the other side that it was possible to park and walk over. Many of my patients were illegals and I had many colleagues who were once illegal but managed to change their situation. I can’t speak knowledgeably about all of Mexico, but I can say this: if I had lived in Piedras Negras, I might have crossed the Rio Grande myself. In the summer, the Rio ain’t so grande and it is possible to cross and not drown.

I suspect that it doesn’t matter who is in power in Mexico, elite power groups and whoever happens to be governing see illegal immigration as a practical solution that acts as social safety valve that essentially prevents any kind of national revolution and maintains the status quo there. I stress this as an opinion, not an objective fact.

Astra Taylor offers some ideas about what happened to the concept of middle class. She notes that a combination of rising costs of living without corresponding salary increases combined with changing expectations about what it actually means to be middle class have created a ghostly presence of decline. The cost of rent in major areas: New York, Boston, and San Fransisco surged between 60 and 70 percent between 1995 and 2002. Minimum wage is worth 30  percent less than it was in 1968 and college tuition, the supposed gateway to the middle class life has outpaced inflation by three times. In addition, Pell grants used to much more of the total tuition for students they now cover only about a third of tuition compared to three quarters of the cost in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Combine this with rising health care costs, salaries that are becoming flat, the disappearance of the “job for life” that many corporations once offered Americans, and it is not hard to see how unattainable the middle class lifestyle is becoming.

However, she goes on to notes that our expectations about what middle class actually entails has also expanded. A Pew research study notes that our notions about the stuff we can’t live without has greatly expanded since 1973. Part of that is because more “stuff” is available. Part of that is because we have convinced ourselves we need it. Most of my friend’s parents still live in the same homes they grew up in. They did not feel the need for an upgrade. My mother survives quite nicely without a computer, cell phone, or cable television. She considers all of them a “waste of time”.

Taylor also argues that part of the reason younger Americans aren’t progressive is that they are working longer hours for comparatively less money and have less free time to devote to “causes”. I think one might be able to extend that reasoning to all Americans.

But clearly our attachment to our stuff what we consider “necessary” is the way in which we become trapped. On the other hand, more and more Americans aren’t even being given the opportunity to become middle class, they aren’t attached to their “stuff” they are attached to the basics: decent shelter, enough food, and a month without a health crisis that could make them homeless in the blink of an eye. Since middle class people don’t want to examine the basics of their own myths, issues like illegal immigration become lighting bolts for anxiety. I am not trying to dismiss the debate so much as wonder why it has suddenly become front and center. There were illegals here when times were good and while people did not like it, they were not viewed as competition.

My middle class myth issue is the “steady job”, I went into a field that I turned out to be relatively competent at but have no real love for, because of a few times of unemployment that were humiliating and draining. I deliberately picked nursing because I thought the likelihood that sick people would disappear was minimal. My own cowardice has probably prevented me from exploring facets or talents as being inherently unpractical, so while I want fundamental change, I can hardly critique the consumptive middle class as being too apolitical without looking straight at myself and wondering what I am doing to prevent the change I say I want.

What is middle class and how badly do we really want it? What will we lose if we ditch the myth and create a new economic reality?

32 comments

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  1. My brain is fried after doing an oncology recertification on line that I left to the last minute and vastly underestimated the amount of effort required.

    • Edger on November 4, 2007 at 00:48

    if we ditch the myth and create a new economic reality?

    Artificial “security” and a few balls and chains attached to our ankles?

    I just happened to be listening to this song when I read your essay, undercovercalico.

    And when I die let me die
    Withe a dream in my mind
    A smile on my face and no trouble behind
    And no cross on my grave
    To show my restin’ place
    So I can listen to the wind blow
    Let it blow let it blow
    Sand over my trail
    I got my saddle on the ground
    And that ol’ moon he can still be found
    Hidin’ in the desert sky

    Desert Skies

    • Edger on November 4, 2007 at 01:06

    All your house is, is a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.

  2. it really is the driving engine of consumerism ….

  3. wondered to myself WHY?  Why, this sudden onset of an attack on (illegal) immigration?  I believe, it has been merely a vehicle to shift the onus of what is REALLY happening on to illegal immigration, without going into great length and detail.

    The so-called “middle-class” have been losing ground for a long time now — I, myself, consider myself as belonging to the “upper poor,” not because I didn’t work hard, believe in the American dream, etc.  It is and was that the “American dream” didn’t believe in “me,” euphemistically speaking!  And I am a “native born” American! 

  4. is $5.85.  I made $5.00 an hour during the summer in 1985….22 years ago.  That’s scary as hell and remains scary as hell having 18 year old children.

    • mango on November 4, 2007 at 02:31

    in Mexico makes less than seven dollars a DAY!

    • Pluto on November 4, 2007 at 03:07

    …of what America deserves in response to its vile hatred:

    CEOs in their sweaty white fat bodies picking my vegetables.

    People trying to buy heads of cabbage for #12.00 each.

    Denny’s 2-egg special for only $24.00 — if you bus your own table.

    Motels where you wash your own sheets before you go to sleep.

    Oh, please, god, let me live long enough to see these chickens come home to roost.

  5. I love shoes.. line me up and shoot me for it. I guess that makes me a piss poor agitator!

  6. to boot. Middle class has  always been a shifting dream /illusion. Now it’s a freaken’ nightmare that seems not only immoral but just plain old nasty and boring. I for one would like it to fall apart as I feel it’s the carrot used to keep the slaves laboring and the questioners silent. Were all caught one way or another for as you said one has to struggle to just maintain, whether you believe in this ‘life style’ or not were all slaves to the new order. Excuse my bitterness but I went to mall land today and it freaked me out. Maybe if the Middle class quit thinking it deserved all this shit we could all live and prosper. 

    • fatdave on November 4, 2007 at 06:50

  7. One thing that characterizes the poor I think is instability.  Even with a relatively low income, if it remains stable, while family and home remain relatively stable, it is not as hard as when there is constant upheaval.  If you are “middle-class,” but you lose your job several times over a period of years, have kids who get sick, can’t afford to fix your car, don’t live near a bus, etc. etc. even if you are able to get a new job within months, that can be incredibly distressing and debilitating–you might as well be poor.  A few bouts of that, and we’re all more likely to say hitch me up to the water wheel.  Sure, I’ll walk around and round all day as long as I can go home at 5 o’clock.  Do I get health benefits?  Thanks.  I thnk the danger is that we tend to almost equate stability with middle-class status.  As others have said, it is the new feudalism.  The thing with feudalism is, we may all be peasants, but it is a stable lifestyle.  People like that.  Where’s my collar?  I want to be a middle-class peasant.  Yea.

    • Edger on November 4, 2007 at 17:07

    why I’m supposed to want the “stuff”.

    I must be fundamentally deficient, somehow?

  8. may I recommend 16 Tons, by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

  9. …this is when, as another (if scruffier) member of the petit bourgeoisie, I turn and whisper, sotto voce, that though we may be doomed, we shall not be so vulgar as to complain about it on a (sharp intake of breath)blog :}

    Great essay sorry I missed the main window…personally I find the gadgets of the petroleum age a sort of bleak but rewarding anodyne.  The argument about economic insecurity fueling resentment of immigration makes perfect historical sense, of course.  Though I guess I tend to see fear and hate like a weather front; they creates conditions to fuel themselves, chaotically, until landfall or a mountain range spills all the energy.  (remember “block that metaphor” in the New Yorker?  Moments like this remind me…)
     

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