The article below from the LA Times is both extremely interesting as well as depressing from a cultural standpoint. For four decades now, the General Social Survey has asked Americans how they identify themselves from a class perspective. While it was always quite common for less fortunate folks to identify themselves as “working class,” there has always been a reluctance to identify as “lower class.” Until last year that is, when a record amount of Americans identified as such.
I believe the reason for the change has to do with how the less fortunate view their future opportunities for upward mobility, and the idea that they are stuck in their position for good. This is very bad and it is a direct result of millions of Americans seeing the oligarchs bail themselves out while leaving the rest of society to rot. It’s also why there will be no sustainable recovery until the crony “elites” in power are removed from their positions of influence and the rule of law is restored. From the LA Times:
Roquemore is among the small but surging share of Americans who identify themselves as “lower class.” Last year, a record 8.4% of Americans put themselves in that category — more than at any other time in the four decades that the question has been asked on the General Social Survey, a project of the independent research organization Norc at the University of Chicago.
Unemployment surged during the downturn. Millions of homes were repossessed in the years since, and millions more people slipped into poverty. And years after the recession ended, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported record shares of households were still struggling, at times, to put adequate food on the table.
Last year, less than 55% of Americans agreed that “people like me and my family have a good chance of improving our standard of living,” the lowest level since the General Social Survey first asked the question in 1987. An unusually high share of the unemployed — more than 4 million Americans as of August — have been out of work for six months or longer.
Last year, the richest 10% of Americans enjoyed more than half of the income nationwide — the biggest share in nearly a century, a recent UC Berkeley study showed. In countries around the world, the starker the difference between rich and poor, the more likely people are to think of themselves as worse off, said Robert Andersen, a professor of social science at the University of Toronto.
What would we have done if the oligarchs hadn’t saved us by giving themselves trillions of dollars.
Full article here.
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