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Tag Archives: Wealthy

The “Invisible” Poor & The Middle Class Mythology

19 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, race, Work, Youth

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Tags

American Dream, Aspirations, Chris Hayes, Creflo Dollar, Economic Inequality, Gospel of Prosperity, Journalists, Media, Media Coverage, Middle Class, Mitt Romney, MSNBC, Political Optics, poor, Poverty, President Barack Obama, President Obama, Social Castes, social mobility, Up with Chris Hayes, Uppers, Wealthy


Transparent (or invisible) Woman (cropped), July 19, 2012. (http://cgtrader.com).

This past weekend, I found myself drawn into the discussion of the middle class and middle class aspirations on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes (otherwise known as “Uppers”). It was a good and yet wholly unsatisfying discussion of technical definitions of what middle class is and of the political optics of only discussing the middle class as a socioeconomic category. Chris Hayes and his guests justified this with an all-too-common refrain. “If you’re poor, you’re aspiring to be middle class,” Hayes said on Saturday. With that, Hayes and his guests rendered America’s poor invisible, and failed to see beyond the politics of invisibility in the process.

There are two issues here, and many layers within them, about America’s poor, working, on welfare, or otherwise. One issue is that journalists, commentators, political operatives and most politicians treat the poor as if they are an unknowable group of people. It’s as if they all think the same way, as if there are all Black or of color, and a complete drag on the American economy and the federal budget. And that’s on a day in which the media and politics deem America’s poor as discussable. Most of the time, America’s poor are invisible, shoved into the middle class category by commentators and politicians at every turn.

Yes, America’s middle class is struggling too, fighting tooth and nail to not slip into the class of the invisible working poor, treading water to avoid food banks and food stamps. But they have something to struggle with — and for — at least. Their homes, their cars, a retirement account, their families’ net worth, all accoutrements of being middle class in America. America’s poor don’t possess anything to struggle with or for.

Chris Hayes on a train in Switzerland, November 10, 2008. (Matthew Yglesias via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr.com). Released to public domain via cc-Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Except, maybe, with their vote, if they care to vote at all. Yet no mainstream commentator nor presidential candidate has truly spoken to their needs, their plight, to how their situation is completely interconnected with the struggles of the American middle class, not their aspirations. Not Chris Hayes, nor his weekend compadre, Melissa Harris-Perry, not President Barack Obama, and definitely not the presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney.

It’s a story I’m all too familiar with, as someone who grew up in poverty in Mount Vernon, New York. Not to mention as someone who had to go to college and graduate school and then struggled for two years at part-time work before finding a job with a Ph.D. in ’99 (see my “The Five Senses of Poverty” post from July ’10). I was thirty years old by the time I earned a middle class income. Yet in all of that time, the only mainstream politician who spent time on the issues of the American poor as if these were real people was President Jimmy Carter, and we know what happened with him. Outside of my degrees and my publications, I was invisible until the fall of ’99.

Otherwise, it’s been four decades of Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton concerned with “welfare queens,” “pink Cadillacs,” and “mend it, don’t end it” welfare policies, and the media following suit. It’s like being kicked hard by someone as one is laying on the ground with broken ribs and internal hemorrhaging, as if they want to poor to die, painfully.

But it’s not just the ones with microphones and word processing programs that kill America’s poor by rendering them invisible. Despite the general notion that the media and politicians nurture — that everyone not rich aspires to be firmly entrenched in the middle class — most Americans middle class and poor aspire to be rich, wealthy, well-off.

Creflo Dollar, pastor, World Changers Church International, November 1, 2010. (Zwicky Institut via Flickr.com). In public domain.

This is the other neglected issue, whether inadvertent like with Chris Hayes and his guests on Uppers, or deliberate on the part of President Obama and Romney. Why so? Because they don’t acknowledge that it’s hard to be truly middle class in America these days. To be in the middle class, one must borrow, borrow, borrow, beg and sometimes steal while struggling to pay student loans, car notes, a mortgage and child care costs.

This wasn’t the case even thirty years ago, before the severe double-dip recession, high interest rates and inflation and Reagan Revolution took full hold. Then, a high school diploma and raw initiative was all most folks needed to find a job at a GM plant or to get an administrative job in government or with a large corporation (although, typing at 90 words per minute enhanced a woman’s chances, at least). Now, two years of college or postsecondary technical training, some experience in a specialized field, and a personal connection is the floor for a living wage — not exactly middle class. Of course, no one wants to be in the basement with nearly one in five Americans, 50 million in all, working just to be poor.

Stacks of money, April 13, 2008. (Allureme via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via cc-Attribution 3.0 License.

America’s poor and fledgling middle class both aspire to be rich (or die tryin’), and not just middle class. The rise of fundamentalist Christianity, mega-churches and the cult of prosperity as these pastors reimagine the New Testament. The endless lines for Powerball and Mega Millions whenever the pot is more than $100 million. The fascination with reality shows about the well-off or about competing to be well-off. All of this is the manifestation of the warping of the American Dream since the early 1970s, where the pursuit of riches has led to debt slavery for millions.

The old American Dream has become myth, and the old American middle class is but the story of Camelot, Timbuktu and Shangri-La. In our new world, “the poor will be with us always” has been made a plain and unyielding truth by those in power, reinforced by those with a media platform.

When Politicians Say, “The American People…”

15 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Patriotism, Politics, race, Work

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Tags

Class Politics, Class Warfare, Comcast Center, Corporate Interests, Corporations, economic rights, Entitlements, environmental rights, Human Rights, Koch Brothers, Lobbyists, New Deal, President Barack Obama, Rep. John Boehner, Social Justice, social mobility, Social Welfare, Supreme Court, The American People, Wall Street, Wealthy


Elephant, as image of Republican Party, bowing to their "American people," the CEOs of Goldman Sachs ans Exxon Mobil, August 13, 2011. (Source/Donald Earl Collins)

Wall Street banker poses on his new rug, February 3, 2009. (Source/JD Crowe, Alabama Press Register). Qualifies as fair use under US copyright laws, as cartoon is of low resolution and is used for illustrative purposes only.

We should all roll our eyes, pick up a snowball we’ve stashed in our freezers since the middle of February, and hit the politician in his forehead whenever we hear one of them start a statement with, “The American people.” Because as many of us have realized for years, they’re not talking about us. As we discovered with the Supreme Court decision about corporate and foreign contributions to campaigns last year, corporations and the wealthy define whom most of our leaders think of when they’re saying “The American people.” Especially since Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil and NBC Comcast collectively count as “American people.”

When Speaker John Boehner says, “The American people don’t want us to raise taxes,” as he did on June 24 during the debt ceiling-blackmail meetings, who is he talking about? Not me. And not most Americans, I’d assume. But, in Boehner’s mind and actual life experience, “most Americans” are people whose last concern is “job creation” or “economic growth.” In fact, they’re the ones who want “government off our backs,” who seem to think “entitlement reform” is good for the country, because it saves them money for another yacht.

Because of people like Boehner, it’s hard to believe President Obama when he claims that eighty percent of “American people want higher taxes” on the wealthy. Why? Not because Obama might not be telling the truth via multiple polls. It’s more because his actions of capitulation let the rest of us know who’s really in charge – lobbyists and wealthy people who are as patriotic as Judas was loyal to Jesus. And corporations who as people might be as evil as Stalin and Pol Pot put together.

My question is, does the Comcast Center in Philadelphia now get the right to vote under the 14th

Comcast Center, tallest building in Philadelphia (58 stories), and physical representation of an American person, January 3, 2011. (Source/Smallbones/Wikipedia Commons).

Amendment, as well as the right to pay federal income tax, as under the 16th Amendment? Really, what is the end game here? Do we each have to incorporate ourselves in order for a politician or some leader beholden to the wealthy notices the rest of us?

No, the end game is a pre-New Deal America. One where the majority of us work the way our grandparents and great-grandparents did in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. Where there wasn’t anything close to a guarantee of social mobility. Where the average person’s income was $1,500 a year ($15,000 a year in today’s dollars). With no unemployment insurance, retirement, health care system or insurance. Without unions, or government regulation curtailing corporate monopolies or excess, environmental damage or employee abuse.

Ultimately, the wealthy and the greedy corporations want to beat 300 million people here into subservience and submission. They want to do what they as people accuse the federal government of doing — controlling every aspect of our lives. Including every breathe we take. And make no mistake. The Supreme Court, most of the Congress, many a state and local politician and leader, maybe even the President himself, represents the interests of those “American people.” We may have to move to a more progressive nation for our interests as human beings to be fully represented. Because even as foreigners, we’ll be better off in the UK or China than here.

Boehner Shares Stage With David Koch At Wall Street Club, May 9, 2011. (Source/AP/ThinkProgress.org).

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