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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Middle Class Faces Extinction—So Does the American Dream
http://www.alternet.org/economy/income-inequality-defers-american-dreamInequality is now one of the biggest political and economic challenges facing the United States. Not that long ago, the gap between rich and poor barely registered on the political Richter scale. Now the growing income divide, an issue that dominated the presidential election debate, has turned into one of the hottest topics of the age.
Postwar American history divides into two halves. For the first three decades, those on middle and low incomes did well out of rising prosperity and inequality fell. In the second half, roughly from the mid1970s, this process went into reverse. Set on apparent autopilot, the gains from growth were heavily colonized by the superrich, leaving the bulk of the workforce with little better than stagnant incomes.
The return of inequality to levels last seen in the 1920s has had a profound effect on American society, its values, and its economy. The United States led the world in the building of a majority middle class. As early as 1956, the celebrated sociologist, C. Wright Mills, wrote that American society had become less a pyramid with a flat base than a fat diamond with a bulging middle.
That bulge has been on a diet. The chairman of President Obamas Council of Economic Advisers Professor Alan Krueger has shown how the size of the American middle class (households with annual incomes within 50 percent of the midpoint of the income distribution) has been heading backwards from a peak of more than a half in the late 1970s to 40 percent now. The diamond has gone. The social shape of America now looks more like a contorted hourglass with a pronounced bulge at the top, a long thin stem in the middle, and a fat bulge at the bottom.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
tularetom
(23,664 posts)When for more than 30 years every piece of legislation that ultimately became law has ended up screwing the middle class.
You'd think more of them would get it by now. No wonder we are all so cynical.
ananda
(28,895 posts)It's something like the reversal of white flight... where the rich gentrify
the cities and the poor move out to the suburbs and exurbs.
Corruption Inc
(1,568 posts)A great test of it is going to an emergency room. If you've got insurance (a have) you're only worried about your injury/illness, if you don't have insurance (a have-not) you're worried about a massive bill, bill collectors stalking you, denial of treatment, bankruptcy and losing everything.
Very few people have secure, middle class jobs and lives now. Most people are strapped with 10s of 1000s of dollars of debt, even if they appear to be middle class. One lost job or one illness and they're screwed.
I'd say the social shape is like a genie bottle, full of wishes with a huge bottom and a long, thin, slippery neck that one can easily lose traction in and quickly fall to the bottom.
Skittles
(153,298 posts)it's a sad demise