The Middle Class

Everyone knows the Middle Class is dying in America. The question: is it worth trying to preserve?

Definitions --

The middle class ought to be- a family who owns their own home (one) and can afford to send their kids to college (and graduate school) without excessive debt and without financial aid. Embedded in these two assumptions are that the family also owns a couple of cars, food is not an issue, and healthcare is covered. But given the high cost of education these days, if a family can afford college, it can afford those other things as well. Middle Class isn't just an economic term - it is a state of mind and being, where you are a citizen of the country and don't depend on any type of government assistance to get by either via financial aid or other programs. When you are dependent on government assistance, you are not as free as if you aren't. By taking aid, you are indebted to a certain party or to the government and rely on it for you well being. Obviously, a country with too many people dependent on the government to survive, cannot be considered healthy, like a family with all the grown children living at home.

But with the cost of college and real estate so inflated these days, it is making the middle class non-existent. It pushes people into either lower-middle class or the upper middle class.

Lower middle class is when you work, but depend on government help to you get by either via healthcare, education, rent control, etc. Upper middle class is when you own two or more homes can easily travel outside the country, but to maintain the lifestyle, must work. (vs. rich where you don't really need to work).

Mind you, these are my own definitions based on the way I imagine the idealized 50s-60s post-war boom time for the American Middle Class. I imagine either political party would do quite well trying to enact programs to re-establish an American middle class.

Franklin D. Roosevelt understood what it meant to be a core Democrat and to maintain his party's ranks.

He built winning coalitions around his policies by empowering previously suppressed groups, such as labor unions and urban ethnics. In the process, he created a 40-year dynasty for Democrats.

Today's bunch? Not so much.

The problem for FDR's party is that it hasn't adapted swiftly enough to two realities -- that jobs are the most important issue to the nation, and that the middle class (which Democrats claim to champion) is dissolving under its watch.