Separate Realities: The Dream and the Iceberg - Scarecrow Press

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52 Chapter 2 as bound by shared cultural assumptions, values, experiences, worldviews, and organizational memberships. 35 These shared qualities lead to strong, common commitments to maintaining the economic, political, and cultural status quo. 36 Such views lead members of these two classes (and most Americans) to explain material and social success (or failure) on the basis of factors other than class-based resources. 37 Despite the taboo driving public neglect of class analysis, it has become virtually impossible for workers and their families, politicians, reporters, and even privileged-class members to ignore several class-related trends that are transforming the nature of social geography and social experiences in the United States today. Although these trends are increasingly obvious and growing in significance as subjects of public commentary and even political discourse, they are only the most visible and obvious features of the social-class iceberg today. ABOVE THE WATERLINE: NEW CLASS SOCIETY TRENDS I agree that rising inequality is a concern. The strength of the economy itself requires a belief of the broad American public that they are beneficiaries of a rising economy. —Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, BusinessWeek.com, February 16, 2006 While American society has always been divided by substantial class inequalities, recent developments in the economic, political, and cultural arenas have produced major changes in the U.S. class system. Three important class-related trends fall above the waterline of the class iceberg in the sense of being increasingly visible and obvious sources of growing public concern and commentary: (1) class polarization, (2) downward mobility, and (3) class secession. Class Polarization We’re becoming a society increasingly divided between haves and have-nots. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is one layoff or illness away from bankruptcy. —Henry Cook, Responsible Wealth member, Too Much, April 18, 2005 Class polarization refers to the growing division of the United States into two main classes: the privileged class and the new working class. This trend is the result of four convergent developments that have become increasingly evident since the early 1970s. First, a pattern of growing income inequality has placed increasing numbers of persons and families in the upper- and lower-income ranges, with declining numbers in the middle. Second, a corresponding pat-
Separate Realities 53 tern of stagnating or falling real wages for many working Americans has eroded living standards for all but those in the highest income groups. Third, a pattern of shrinking fringe benefits for more and more workers has emerged, particularly in the areas of health care and pensions, resulting in ever higher levels of economic insecurity among middle- and low-income groups. Finally, the increasing use of contingent, contract, temporary, and part-time workers by a wide range of employers has contributed to a growing “contingency workforce” characterized not only by low pay and prestige but also by vanishingpoint levels of job security. Once upon a time—and not too long ago—the material realities of life for middle-income Americans were such that references to this group by social scientists and journalists as the “middle class” were understandable, if overstated. Of course, as is often the case with class issues, the precise meaning of this concept was (and is) somewhat elusive and subject to debate. Even so, since the end of World War II, for most mainstream academic researchers, as well as for the American public, middle-class status has typically been associated with an identifiable core of economic and social resources. These include “respectable” jobs (mid-level prestige or higher); stable, mid-level (or higher) incomes; security benefits (health care, pensions); and participation in conventional social institutions such as churches, schools, community groups, and other voluntary organizations. 38 For the first three decades of the post–World War II period, most academic definitions and popular perceptions of an American middle class were grounded in an economic reality whereby a majority of middle-income individuals and families possessed stable jobs and experienced gradually rising real incomes. 39 The reinforcement of these core features among middle-income groups by additional material resources anchored middle-class status (e.g., expanding levels of employer-provided benefits, including health care, life and disability insurance, vacation time, and pensions). 40 This stable resource base made it possible for many middle-income families, over time, to increase their stock of investment capital (by homeownership and investment savings), skill capital (by additional education and by sending children to college), and social capital (using more free time to participate in various social groups and organizations). The material and social resources of middle-income Americans, combined with widespread egalitarian cultural beliefs of America as a middle-class nation, were reflected in subjective class-identification studies that from the 1940s through the 1980s consistently found majorities of Americans identifying themselves as members of the middle class or upper middle class. 41 In short, the middle-income/middle-class linkage was predicated on workers’ access to organizational resources that went beyond income alone. In post–World War II America, job stability and rising real wages, combined with other economic and social resources available to middle-income households, produced a large group that could readily realize a modest version of the
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