Published on Saturday, September 29, 2007 by The American Prospect The Rise
of the Have-Nots
The American middle class has toppled into a world of temporary employment,
jobs without benefits, and retirement without security.
by Harold Meyerson
Last week over lunch, a friend in his 30s prodded me to explain how my
generation, the boomers, had botched so many things. While not exactly
conceding that we had, I said that the one thing none of us had anticipated was
that America would cease to be a land of broadly shared prosperity. To be born,
as I was, in mid-century was to have come of age in a nation in which the level
of prosperity continued to rise and the circle of prosperity continued to
widen. This was the great given of our youth. If the boomers embraced such
causes as civil and social rights and environmentalism, it was partly because
the existence and distribution of prosperity seemed to be settled questions.
Nor were we alone in making this mistake. Our parents may have gone through
the Depression and could never fully believe, as boomers did, that the good
times were here to stay. They remembered busts as well as booms. But the idea
that the economy could revert to its pre-New Deal configuration (in which the
rich claimed all the wealth the nation created while everyone else just got
by), the notion that the middle class might shrink even as the economy grew:
Who, among all our generations and political persuasions, expected that?
Yet thats precisely what happened. Median family income over the past
quarter-century has stagnated. The economic rewards from increased
productivity, which went to working-class as well as wealthy Americans from the
1940s to the 70s, now go exclusively to the rich. The manufacturing jobs that
anchored our prosperity were offshored, automated or deunionized; lower-paying
service-sector jobs took their place.
Its no great achievement for a people to recognize that their nations
economy has tanked, but recognizing that their nations class structure has
slowly but fundamentally altered is a more challenging task. Its harder still
for a people who are conditioned, as Americans are, not to see their nation in
terms of class.
Which is why a poll released this month by the Pew Research Center reveals a
transformation of Americans sense of their country and themselves that is
startling. Pew asked Americans if their country was divided between haves and
have-nots. In 1988, when Gallup asked that question, 26 percent of respondents
said yes, while 71 percent said no. In 2001, when Pew asked it, 44 percent said
yes and 53 percent said no. But when Pew asked it again this summer, the number
of Americans who agreed that we live in a nation divided into haves and
have-nots had risen to 48 percent exactly the same as the number of Americans
who disagreed.
Americans assessment of their own place in the economy has altered, too. In
1988, fully 59 percent identified themselves as haves and just 17 percent as
have-nots. By 2001, the haves had dwindled to 52 percent and the have-nots had
risen to 32 percent. This summer, just 45 percent of Americans called
themselves haves, while 34 percent called themselves have-nots.
These are epochal shifts, of epochal significance. The American middle class
has toppled into a world of temporary employment, jobs without benefits,
retirement without security. Harder times have come to left and right alike:
The percentage of Republicans who call themselves haves has declined by 13
points since 1988; the percentage of Democratic haves has declined by 12 points.
This equality of declining opportunity, however, isnt matched by an equality
of perception. The percentage of Democrats who say America is divided between
haves and have-nots has risen by 31 points since 1988; the percentage of
Republicans, by just 14 points. Indeed, though that 13-point decline in
Republicans who call themselves haves has occurred entirely since they were
asked that question in 2001, the percentage of Republicans who say we live in a
have/have-not nation has actually shrunk by one point since 2001. (It had
increased 15 points from 1988 to 2001.) Apparently, so great is Republicans
loyalty to the Bush presidency that theyre willing to overlook their own
experience. And, in many cases, to attribute the nations transformation solely
to immigration, rather than to the rise of a stateless laissez-faire capitalism
over which the American people wield less and less power. Which helps explain
why Republican presidential candidates bluster about a fence on
the border and have nothing to say about providing health coverage or
restoring some power to American workers.
But the big story here isnt Republican denial. Its the shattering of
Americans sense of a common identity in a time when the economy no longer
promotes the general welfare. The world the New Deal built has been destroyed,
and we are, as we were before the New Deal, two nations.
Harold Meyerson is executive editor of The American Prospect and a columnist
for the Washington Post. Click here to read more about him.
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