I think that the point of the article is that the middle class is
disappearing, not that it has always been a myth. The middle class, as
defined by most Americans, has had to do with income level and life style.
The definition hasn't been scientific but it has involved owning a home and
car, being able to save money so that one could send one's children to
college, retire with security, go on vacations, etc. To most people,
working class has meant living from pay check to pay check, renting rather
than owning a home, and struggling financially for any luxuries one might
have like cable TV or a smart phone. Most Americans have never defined
class in political terms. Rather, they have defined it in financial,
practical terms. I posted this article because it illustrates that point.
The writer's statement sounds like what you have been saying, but it really
is not.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2016 12:26 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Myth of the Middle Class: Most Americans
Don't Even Have $1,000 in Savings
As I've suggested before, the Middle Class has always been a myth.
Middle of what? How do we tell a Middle Class American from a Working Class
American? We can tell the Upper Class and the Ruling Class apart from the
Working Class. But what does the Middle Class have that makes it "better"
than the Working Class. It has been a bit of snobbishness, played upon by
the Ruling Class. Divide and conquer.
"Why, I am not of the working class. I have a college degree." But many
Working Class folks have college degrees. And by the same note, many so
called Middle Class folk do not have a degree.
"I'm a white collar worker and he is a Blue Collar worker, so I'm Middle
Class." Good enough. If collar is important to you, just remember that
lots of Blue Collar Workers out earn many White Collar Workers. Mainly this
is true because the Blue Collars have the good sense to organize, while the
White Collars are under the bosses thumb.
It's all snobbery. My co-workers all had bachelor or masters degrees.
Some even had the title, Doctor, in front of their names.
But as a college drop out, I supervised them all. One "doctor" was enough
upset over this that he got in my face. "How can you manage people far more
educated than yourself?" he demanded.
"What is education?" I asked him. "I rose through the ranks to become
assistant director, while you, with all your degrees have remained a field
worker. What does that say about education? Could it be that I learned
some valuable lessons in how to rise in and organization, while your
education took you down a different road?"
Over my years with the Department of Services for the Blind, I have
supervised people far better Educated than I. I have supervised people far
brighter than I. And I have supervised people far more ambitious than I.
But what I had that they did not have was the education I'd picked up along
the way, the education that taught me how to swim upward through a pool
filled with similar fish.
My goals did not really include becoming assistant director, but to achieve
my goals, which had more to do with our quality of service than our personal
advancement, I took the offer of assistant director because it afforded me
better options in my efforts to improve services.
There was a great deal of snobbery within that agency. We had the lofty
management team, the respected field workers, and the lowly support
staff(secretaries).
But in the eyes of the state legislature, who were our real bosses, we were
often viewed with contempt as being lazy, fat drones. All of us were seen
as the same. But by our snobbery keeping us divided, we greatly decreased
our ability to demand better working conditions.
And so it is with our Middle Class, which refuses to rejoin the Working
Class.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/15/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
it.
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Myth of the
Middle Class: Most Americans Don't Even Have $1,000 in Savings
________________________________________
Myth of the Middle Class: Most Americans Don't Even Have $1,000 in
Savings By Ben Norton [1] / Salon [2] January 14, 2016 American
politicians constantly speak of the middle class. Democrats,
Republicans and even many independents all insist their policies defend
But what does it really mean? This question is rarely asked. Whatpoverty.
exactly is the middle class?
A new study suggests that the U.S. hardly even has one.
More than half of Americans - 56 percent, to be exact - have less than
$1,000 combined in their checking and savings accounts, according to a
recent survey, Forbes reported [3].
This is to say, most Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Furthermore, almost two-thirds of Americans - 63 percent - do not have
enough in their savings for an emergency. A substantial majority of
Americans would need to borrow money if faced with an unexpected expense.
U.S. politicians frequently rant about supposed "American exceptionalism,"
but, compared to other industrialized nations, the U.S. has grossly
disproportionate poverty rates.
Roughly 15 percent of Americans live in poverty [4] - 46.7 million
people, in 2014. Close to one in every four American children suffers from
And, among black and Latina/o Americans, the economic hardship is evenplanet.
worse.
This poverty has tangible, evident implications. It means that the
U.S. has the sixth-highest hunger rate out of all of the economically
developed OECD nations.
In other words, more people go hungry in the U.S. than do in Poland
and the Slovak Republic. Slightly fewer people go hungry in the U.S.
than in Estonia. And hunger is much less widespread in the
poverty-stricken nations of India and Brazil.
Politicians constantly insist that the U.S. is the putative "leader of
the world," but why does this matter if it does not translate into
positive gains for actual working-class citizens? The U.S. may be the
most powerful country in the world, economically and militarily
speaking, but if this does not bring with it a high standard of living
or ensure well-being for citizens, it ultimately does not matter; it
simply benefits the rich, and the rich alone.
And the rich is exactly who benefits.
The richest 0.1 percent of Americans have almost as much wealth [5] as
the bottom 90 percent. 160,000 families have as much money as around
290 million Americans.
Globally, the figure is even more stark. The richest 1 percent is
estimated to have more wealth than 99 percent [6] of the people on the
Put a bit differently, 7.23 billion human beings have less wealth thanburst.
70 million.
Increasingly, "middle class" is an ideological term, not an objective one.
As the moribund middle of the economy shrinks, poverty becomes more
and more mainstream. Terms like "middle class" simply serve to
normalize the myth of the American Dream which, as the dissentious
comedian George Carlin [7] infamously put it, you have to be asleep to
believe.
Meanwhile, income inequality is constantly on the rise. It is at the
highest it has been since 1928 [8] - the eve of the Great Depression.
President Obama admitted in his final State of the Union address [9]
that Wall Street was responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, but
Wall Street is precisely the one who benefited from it. None of the
banking executives who crashed the economy and robbed millions of
American were punished. And, in the eight years since then, income
inequality has only continued to grow.
If most Americans do not have any savings, and this number is rising,
the term "middle class" is useless. Politicians and news outlets may
try to redefine it, but, if a majority of a country's citizens live
paycheck-to-paycheck, that country has been hollowed out - replaced
with an inverted bell curve whose peaks are getting farther and
farther apart and whose trough is so overstretched it will eventually
It is time to admit it: There is no middle class; there is only theit.
working class and the ruling class - the economic elite.
Ben Norton is a politics staff writer at Salon. You can find him on
Twitter at @BenjaminNorton [10].
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [11]
[12]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/myth-middle-class-most-americans-dont-
even-h
ave-1000-savings
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/ben-norton-0
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-americans-d
ont-ha
ve-enough-savings-to-cover-a-500-emergency/#2715e4857a0b313a03186dde
[4]
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/18/ben_carson_blasted_north_korea_for_spe
nding_
money_on_the_military_instead_of_the_hungry_has_he_looked_at_his_own_c
ountry
/
[5]
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/11/income-inequality-rise-1-perce
nt
[6]
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/blogs/2015/01/richest-1-per-cent-will-own-more
-than-
all-the-rest-by-2016
[7]
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1858074
_18580
85_1858083,00.html
[8]
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/05/u-s-income-inequality-
on-ris e-for-decades-is-now-highest-since-1928/
[9]
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/13/obamas_hypocrisy_he_said_blame_wall_st
reet_n
ot_food_stamps_but_he_bailed_out_bankers_and_cut_help_for_the_hungry/
[10] http://twitter.com/benjaminnorton [11] ;
mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Myth of the Middle
Class: Most Americans Don't Even Have $1,000 in Savings [12]
http://www.alternet.org/ [13] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org) Home > Myth of the
Middle Class: Most Americans Don't Even Have $1,000 in Savings
Myth of the Middle Class: Most Americans Don't Even Have $1,000 in
Savings By Ben Norton [1] / Salon [2] January 14, 2016 American
politicians constantly speak of the middle class. Democrats,
Republicans and even many independents all insist their policies defend
But what does it really mean? This question is rarely asked. Whatpoverty.
exactly is the middle class?
A new study suggests that the U.S. hardly even has one.
More than half of Americans - 56 percent, to be exact - have less than
$1,000 combined in their checking and savings accounts, according to a
recent survey, Forbes reported [3].
This is to say, most Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Furthermore, almost two-thirds of Americans - 63 percent - do not have
enough in their savings for an emergency. A substantial majority of
Americans would need to borrow money if faced with an unexpected expense.
U.S. politicians frequently rant about supposed "American exceptionalism,"
but, compared to other industrialized nations, the U.S. has grossly
disproportionate poverty rates.
Roughly 15 percent of Americans live in poverty [4] - 46.7 million
people, in 2014. Close to one in every four American children suffers from
And, among black and Latina/o Americans, the economic hardship is evenplanet.
worse.
This poverty has tangible, evident implications. It means that the
U.S. has the sixth-highest hunger rate out of all of the economically
developed OECD nations.
In other words, more people go hungry in the U.S. than do in Poland
and the Slovak Republic. Slightly fewer people go hungry in the U.S.
than in Estonia. And hunger is much less widespread in the
poverty-stricken nations of India and Brazil.
Politicians constantly insist that the U.S. is the putative "leader of
the world," but why does this matter if it does not translate into
positive gains for actual working-class citizens? The U.S. may be the
most powerful country in the world, economically and militarily
speaking, but if this does not bring with it a high standard of living
or ensure well-being for citizens, it ultimately does not matter; it
simply benefits the rich, and the rich alone.
And the rich is exactly who benefits.
The richest 0.1 percent of Americans have almost as much wealth [5] as
the bottom 90 percent. 160,000 families have as much money as around
290 million Americans.
Globally, the figure is even more stark. The richest 1 percent is
estimated to have more wealth than 99 percent [6] of the people on the
Put a bit differently, 7.23 billion human beings have less wealth thanburst.
70 million.
Increasingly, "middle class" is an ideological term, not an objective one.
As the moribund middle of the economy shrinks, poverty becomes more
and more mainstream. Terms like "middle class" simply serve to
normalize the myth of the American Dream which, as the dissentious
comedian George Carlin [7] infamously put it, you have to be asleep to
believe.
Meanwhile, income inequality is constantly on the rise. It is at the
highest it has been since 1928 [8] - the eve of the Great Depression.
President Obama admitted in his final State of the Union address [9]
that Wall Street was responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, but
Wall Street is precisely the one who benefited from it. None of the
banking executives who crashed the economy and robbed millions of
American were punished. And, in the eight years since then, income
inequality has only continued to grow.
If most Americans do not have any savings, and this number is rising,
the term "middle class" is useless. Politicians and news outlets may
try to redefine it, but, if a majority of a country's citizens live
paycheck-to-paycheck, that country has been hollowed out - replaced
with an inverted bell curve whose peaks are getting farther and
farther apart and whose trough is so overstretched it will eventually
It is time to admit it: There is no middle class; there is only the
working class and the ruling class - the economic elite.
Ben Norton is a politics staff writer at Salon. You can find him on
Twitter at @BenjaminNorton [10].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [11]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[12]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/myth-middle-class-most-americans-dont-
even-h
ave-1000-savings
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/ben-norton-0
[2] http://www.salon.com
[3]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-americans-d
ont-ha
ve-enough-savings-to-cover-a-500-emergency/#2715e4857a0b313a03186dde
[4]
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/18/ben_carson_blasted_north_korea_for_spe
nding_
money_on_the_military_instead_of_the_hungry_has_he_looked_at_his_own_c
ountry
/
[5]
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/11/income-inequality-rise-1-perce
nt
[6]
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/blogs/2015/01/richest-1-per-cent-will-own-more
-than-
all-the-rest-by-2016
[7]
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1858074
_18580
85_1858083,00.html
[8]
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/05/u-s-income-inequality-
on-ris e-for-decades-is-now-highest-since-1928/
[9]
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/13/obamas_hypocrisy_he_said_blame_wall_st
reet_n
ot_food_stamps_but_he_bailed_out_bankers_and_cut_help_for_the_hungry/
[10] http://twitter.com/benjaminnorton [11] ;
mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Myth of the Middle
Class: Most Americans Don't Even Have $1,000 in Savings [12]
http://www.alternet.org/ [13] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
