The Incredible Shrinking Middle Class

The once-ultimate goal is more elusive.

John Balzar

Los Angeles Times     May 19, 2002

I'm sorry to see the middle class and the aspirations of middle class-ness fading.

It was the dream of my grandparents to reach the middle class. It was the soil in which my parents rooted their lives, and from which I sprouted. I was taught the lesson early, and later I saw it with my own eyes: The egalitarianism of the middle class distinguished this country from much of the world, and we were better off as a result.

Embedded in those words- "middle class"- was a communal sense of domain, purpose and economic equilibrium. If you don't know where you are, said the writer Wendell Barry, you don't know who you are. The middle class gave people a place no matter where they were.

Yes, there was ridicule, no small measure of it justified. The middle class was conformist, insipid and stifling. At some point, and I'm not exactly sure when, I became aware that describing someone or something as middle class was a criticism, not a compliment.

Maybe its shortcomings were the result of the fact that the middle class didn't have time to work the bugs out. The post-Depression, postwar ascendancy of the middle class lasted less than half a century before it began to pull apart.

The latest census report only confirms the obvious: In trend-setting 2 1 st century Southern California, the wealthy class and the underclass are mushrooming at the expense of the center. Naturally, there are many more poor than rich. So when the numbers are averaged out, this "unprecedented era of prosperity," as we mistakenly called the 1990s, actually produced a decline in median household income- 7.5% in Los Angeles County and 1.8% in adjacent Orange County.

Today, less than one-third of the residents of Los Angeles can afford the price of the average home.

Nationwide, income is more unevenly distributed than at any time since at least 1941, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The research organization's latest accounting shows the top I% of Americans have amassed 38% of the country's personal wealth. One-fifth of the population accounts for 83%, leaving four-fifths to share in only 17%. U.S. News & World Report says that the United States now leads the industrialized world in the gulf between rich and poor.

Optimists might see good signs in the census figures. At least part of the American dream is alive, you cannot deny that. The affluent command respect and admiration. At the other end of the economic barbell, immigrants are drawn to Southern California as the land of opportunity, never mind that they are classified as living in poverty.

Still, the trend represents the defeat of idealism.

The rise of the middle class represented a leap forward in social

progress, both in aim and fact. Better living for everyone. By contrast, a stratified society with a thin veneer of wealth atop a growing underclass is an atavistic throwback in the social order. And a disturbing one from my middle-class perspective. Such arrangements historically depend on force, not consent. Better living for a few. I remember the chill I felt the first time I saw a house in Los Angeles with broken glass cemented on the top of a masonry wall--a sign of our certain descent into the class disparity and dissension that I associate with lesser places.

The thing about the middle class is that it was plausible. We proved that, at least for a time. Our competitive urges could be collectively satisfied, and not necessarily at the expense of others. Between Ford people and Chevy people, there was not much of a gap. That old phrase, "All men are created equal," had a truer ring to it.

Today our public debates echo middle-class tenets, such as equality in public education and fair reward for honest work. But our individual actions increasingly recognize that ideals are disappearing into myth. We seem to have accepted the fact that only a few will excel in the bitter competition we have arranged for tomorrow, while far more will be losers. Capital is more important than labor.

At the convenience store down the street, I watch immigrant workers park their beat-up commuter bicycles at the door. They know the fable about how hard work is justly rewarded in America. You can read it in the sweat stains in their shirts.

But the reality? A decent house for their family? A good school for their kids? Reliable medical care when they are sick?

For those things, honest work may not be enough anymore. They reach into their slender wallets and buy lottery tickets.