A Touch of Class

vs

Martini or beer? Eduardo Porter, editorializing in today’s New York Times, mused about exactly which middle class each candidate is talking about helping. These elusive words are often tempered with “upper” or “lower,” and “working class” seems all but to have disappeared from the lexicon. The concept gets even more difficult when you compare income with buying power in various locations. Try $50,233 – our “median income” – on a lifestyle in New York City’s Manhattan or San Francisco – do you get the top bunk or the small room at the back? Public housing?

Many Republicans think the number ratchets up to $5 million to divide rich from middle, while the magic number for Democrats appears to be $200,000. Ask the people and, the Times notes: “According to a poll by the Pew Research Center, a little more than half of Americans consider themselves middle class, including a third of those who make more than $150,000 per year. For many people, to be ‘middle class’ is to work hard, to struggle to succeed, often against unfair forces. Forget the money.”

What is the “middle” to academics? “Development economists sometimes define the middle class as those making more than the bottom fifth of the population but less than the top fifth. In this country, that would include households making between $20,291 and $100,000.” Okay, we need numbers to define tax rates in a progressive (marginal rates increase as you earn more money) system of taxation. But are we really developing any real understanding of exactly who and what we are as Americans?

We are obsessed with labels and categories; Americans believe that you’ve nailed a problem or identified an issue simply by putting stuff in the right box. “Liberal” versus “conservative” (I am so confused!), “socialist” versus “free market economist” (my mind is hurting), “upper class” (you mean it has nothing to do with Virgin Airlines?!) versus “middle class” versus what??? The “working poor”? The “under class”? The unemployed?

I am reminded of the infamous words of Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart, writing on what constitutes hard-core pornography in his concurring opinion (which he later withdrew as untenable) in the 1964 obscenity case of Jacobellis v. Ohio: “I know it when I see it.” We're all gonna need a lot more beer and martinis if this keeps up!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.