Matt Yglesias posted this revealing graph about class structure in today's US, to which he adds this comment: 
...perhaps the best way to describe the social reality that Cervone is noting here is simply to abandon the idea of the United States as a predominantly middle class society. Instead, there's a smallish economic elite composed primarily of high-ranking executives and the princes of Wall Street. Then there's a much larger middle class composed, more or less, of people with college degrees like this hypothetical cop/principal couple. And then there's the working class majority with no bachelor's degree.
Which reminds me of the Chicago law professor who complained about how limiting his $500k/year household income was, and Delong astutely noting that, to the professor, no doubt his income feels limited because he compares himself to his financial betters, whose income has exploded, while his own strata has merely grown moderately.
That professor took down his post because (a) his wife disagreed with his opinion, and didn't want to share her family's financial details with the world, and (b) a lot of people gave him a cr*pload of sh*t about his views. Which is a shame, because from his viewpoint, his opinion isn't unreasonable. Still, that his family has nearly as much yearly disposable income -- after taxes, bills, household and education expenses -- as half of Montana households' total income (or the median Illinois household income, if you think geography should be factored in), shows the professor suffers from a bad case of classist myopia.
This all explains the hysteria coming from the $250K crowd, who contemplate a tax hike if Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are rolled back, and all of the "debate" on what it means to be "rich." The fact of the matter is, if you make $250k, no matter where you live, you're doing all right, much better than the vast majority if American households, for most of whom their slice of the American pie has been steadily shrinking under conservative rule.
In any case, the graph also makes it clear just who benefits from free-market economic policy. And it's in this context that raising taxes on the "ordinary" rich is unfair. |
