The reality of America today is that the many in the white-collar "middle class" are falling into the working class, and many in the working class are falling into poverty. Over the last 10 years, the median income went DOWN:
The problem isn't due to the recession. Would that it were. The decade just concluded is the first in which Americans, on average, have seen their incomes decline. Median household income increased by about $4,000 per decade in the 1980s and '90s: from $42,429 in 1980 to $46,049 in 1990 to $50,557 in 2000 (in 2007 dollars). In 2009, the most recent year for which we have figures, it had declined to $49,777 - but 2009, of course, was a year of deep recession. If we go back to the peak year of the last decade, 2007, we find that median household income was just $50,233- roughly $300 less than it had been in 2000.
WaPo, Harold Meyerson, Corporate America, paving a downward economic slide
This is the new America. A large number of folks seriously hurting, a large numbr of folks barely getting by, and falling fast, a few doing okay or better (the 10%ers), and the 1% who own more wealth than the bottom 90%.
The share of our civilian population employed has dropped to 58.2 percent - the lowest level since the early '80s, when far fewer women had entered the workforce.
WaPo, Harold Meyerson, Corporate America, paving a downward economic slide
Yes, the economy is showing a little bit of improvement and we all hope that unemployment will be reduced, but it looks to me that the new normal may be 7% unemployment and we won't reach that goal for several years.
For a long time in this nation, the poor disappeared from our eyes (unless you were poor). The War On Poverty was overcome by Nixon and Reagan and they waged war on the poor. People defined away the poor by calling them "the underclass":
The term underclass is a coinage which functions as a morally neutral equivalent for what was known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the "undeserving poor". The earliest significant exponent of the term was the American sociologist and anthropologist Oscar Lewis in 1961. The underclass, according to Lewis, has "a strong present-time orientation, with little ability to delay gratification and plan for the future" (p. xxvi). Many other terms have been used to "describe a section of society which is seen to exist within and yet at the base of the working class."
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In the United States the term is used by certain sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert to describe the most disenfranchised socio-economic demographic with the least access to scarce resources. The American underclass is estimated to constitute roughly 12% of households. Incomes are far below the median and often fall below the poverty line. The vast majority of persons in this class are, for a variety of reasons, not active participants in the labor force. The underclass is, therefore, distinguished from other social classes by its reliance on government transfers. Only a few members of this class have graduated from high school. Further discussion of the social implications of labeling the underclass can be found in Herbert J. Gans' book The War Against the Poor.
Underclass, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Generally, it meant black or brown poor folks who lived in the inner cities of our nation, at least it was used that way in the late 1970s when I first became acquainted with the concept (from Time Mag or something).
Many white Americans turned their backs on the poor, often because of their own racism, although there is a long history of hating the poor in Anglo-American culture.
In the 1980s and 90s, our society left them behind to suffer. In the 2000s, little was done to help bring people out of poverty. Remember the "ownershp society?" Many people bought into that concept, but they were not in the Top 10%, so it was only a rhetorical charade.
Barack Obama had their number on that:
In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.
Barack Obama Democratic Convention Speech
I still feel anger at those who left the people in the inner cities behind, who voted for Republicans because of their own racial fears or racial hatred. Well the chickens are coming home to roost, but that is no reason to be happy. Their suffering just increases the suffering in our nation:
The social pathologies long associated with the inner-city poor - single-parent households, births out of wedlock, drug and alcohol abuse - now stalk the white working class in rural and post-industrial regions far removed from big cities.
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The great sociologist William Julius Wilson has long argued that the key to the unraveling of the lives of the African American poor was the decline in the number of "marriageable males" as work disappeared from the inner city. Much the same could now be said of working-class whites in neighborhoods that may not look like the ghettos of Cleveland or Detroit but in which productive economic activity is increasingly hard to find.
WaPo, Harold Meyerson, Corporate America, paving a downward economic slide
Band-aids will not help. Incremental reforms may help some people, and so I support them because they reduce suffering. But they seem to be unable to overcome the processes of our economy. The impoverishment of Americans will accelerate if Republicans break unions, and even if they do not, impovrishment seems to be the new normal for far too many.
We need radical change. This is far beyond Barack Obama and our current leaders. They operate under the premise that the system can be reformed without fundamental change. Certainly the President has a good heart and he and his administration surely do try. But it is clear that the real problems are far deeper than what they want or can do now.
Harold Meyerson:
Our economic woes, then, are not simply cyclical or structural. They are also - chiefly - institutional, the consequence of U.S. corporate behavior that has plunged us into a downward cycle of underinvestment, underemployment and under-consumption. Our solutions must be similarly institutional, requiring, for starters, the seating of public and worker representatives on corporate boards. Short of that, there will be no real prospects for reversing America's downward mobility.
WaPo, Harold Meyerson, Corporate America, paving a downward economic slide
That means organizing and building and supporting unions and other organizations based on class solidarity. One can vote for Obama and the Democrats all you want, but we cannot get to where we need to be from that alone. (I am not saying do not vote for Obama or Dems. I likely will do so. I am saying that their reforms are not enough and we need to build new organizations that will fight for real radical change.) People need to organize and fight on issues.
Both Marx and Dickens wrote during industrialization. We may see the same kind of poverty and pain now.
It is up to each of us as to whether we accept this in our nation or whether we fight. Solidarity is our only hope.
Update I: NY brit expat wrote an excellent diary that also discusses these issues that was published just before I published this:
Musings on Solidarity
It so fits together with my thoughts.
Having solidarity is not simply a slogan or an abstract idea; rather, it is a meaningful concept that is extremely relevant not only in discussions of support for workers fighting for better wages, benefits and working conditions. It is an expression of the interdependence of human beings, in other words, how the conditions of life of one person affects us all.
snip
What I think is that we need a good dose of solidarity to underlie our fight. I understand that many people do not respond to this notion in any sense, for these people we can resort to arguments relating to altruism and self-interest. Justifications based on altruism and self-interest for the maintenance and extension of the social welfare state abound and we can use them. But I think that maybe, just maybe, we can try the notion of solidarity ...
Musings on Solidarity
Just excellent. And she knows her stuff on economic theory. She had a great series on Smith, Ricardo, Marx and others a while back. I highly recommend reading and reccommending her diary.
Update II: Here is solidarity expressed by Barack Obama, perhaps derived from religious beliefs:
That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.
Barack Obama Democratic Convention Speech