Working Class...
Sep 6, 2007 Most Americans identify themselves as “middle class” - but in the middle of what is not clear. Anything that would identify working people as a group with a collective set of interests that are different from and at times antagonistic to the interests of corporations has pretty much been erased from public discourse. People will refer to “blue collar workers”, “working families”, “the poor”, the “working poor”. But the working class simply does not exist. Gary Young, The Guardian
Huh? The idea that working class does not exist, is, I think, erroneous. Don’t believe me? Most of my neighbors, when I see them heading off for work in the early hours of the morning, aren’t wearing suits and ties, or even “business casual.” It’s coveralls for some and many simply wear jeans/shorts and tee shirts.
My next door neighbor drives a dedicated truck route to Deleware every day for Pepsi. A few doors down, the air conditioning repair van leaves every day at 7:00 AM and returns about 5:00 PM. If my neighbors hapened to be a married couple, the wife usually works too…as a nurses aid or maybe in a school cafeteria or something like.
The working class has become invisible in America. We just don’t attract a lot of attention. The neighborhoods we live in are rough around the edges, as mine is. We have a drug problem, but gunshots don’t ring out on our streets. The neighborhood has declined, but not to the point of boarded houses and empty lots. There are houses here which have had only one or two owners, lots of elderly folk, some youngish couples, some folks who rent through the Section 8 program and few things in between.
We’re not a neighborhood full of sparkling new McMansions with Toyota Corrollas parked out front and whose inhabitants take trips to Disney World every other year. We may have to buy the store brand of soda, but we’re not poor. Our lives don’t change all that much with the administration. If the price of gas goes up, we just don’t take as many car trips. We don’t go to the movies every night. Our kids still play outside after school because we can’t afford to have them in multiple activities to make them well rounded people. We get by every month, one way or another.
The working class does exist, on my street and many across America. I imagine there are as many democrats as republicans on my street. Obama won’t be campaigning here…or Fred, Rudy, Hillary or anyone else. We just aren’t interesting enough. Should I be upset about this? Probably so…there are a lot of McMansions that wouldn’t get built, and the hot lunch at school wouldn’t get served if it weren’t my neighbors. But frankly, to a lot of people, we just don’t exist, until, of course a toilet gets stopped up somewhere….
Laura N.
I’ve been told by a couple of people that the article and my blog are not antithetical…and it’s probably true. Like a lot of people (including a lot of politicians) I tend to run my mouth without thinking much. But I do continue to wonder what Gary Young would think were he to walk through my neighborhood. I’m sure most people would call it “poor.” We’re in a weird place. Truthfully, we’re not really middle class. But I wouldn’t say “poor” either. So, what are we? And is there a politician out there who has anything to say to our “class.” I don’t think so. We don’t have enough money or enough political clout…
Laura N.
Yeah, OK…another follow up. I think if you actually read the whole article (titled, btw, In the US, class war still means just one thing: the rich attacking the poor), you’ll understand why I drew the conclusion that I did. Some other quotes from the article:
So it would have seemed last Tuesday when the US census bureau revealed its latest findings on income, poverty and health. The report showed that since George Bush came to power the poverty rate had risen by 9%, the number of people without health insurance had risen by 12%, and real median household income had remained stagnant. On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina we learned the racial disparity in income and the gap between rich and poor show no sign of abating.
and
According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 1989 American CEOs earned 71 times more than the average worker - today, by most calculations, it is up to around 270 times. Meanwhile, social mobility has slowed to a level below that in most of Europe, including Britain.
I don’t know…maybe I read too much into it, but is he saying the middle class is now poor? There are a lot of us out there who manage to “get by,” not really rich, or poor…or middle class exactly. My Godson and I are bantering this whole thing around via email…it’s been interesting. I’m definitely not as smart as I think I am!!
