Parabasis

Rock Music and Class

This isn't meant as any kind of criticism, but rather as an observation, but Vampire Weekend is one of the few bands I've ever heard where I could tell upon first listen that they all come from fairly privledged backgrounds (which from what I've subsequently read about them turns out to be true). But I don't quite understand what it is about them that provoked that observation. Anyway, they're a fun band, check 'em out and see if you feel the same way.

Being somewhat narcissistic, this lead me to the following question: can people tell from watching shows that I direct that I come from a privilege?

More Class Notes, Electoral Politics Edition

From Ezra Klein:

To say this explicitly, it's okay to be rich if you act rich. The amount of flak Edwards is getting for being both wealthy and concerned with the working class versus the amount of criticism Giuliani and Romney are getting for being uber-richandutterly unconcerned with issue of class and wage fairness is telling. The press doesn't care if you're loaded and out-of-touch, or self-interested. But to both make a lot of moneyand thinkother people should make relatively more money? Why, that's-that's-that's-that'shypocrisy*is what that is!

Paralyzing the Middle Class

Blogosphere buddy Malachy Walsh writes about money, his impending baby, and trying to get out of grad school debt at Lit Dept. When people talk about the plight of the Middle Class, it's issues like having to seriously worry about paying off your debt while simultaneously having a very marketable skill set (like Malachy's in advertising), due to the fact that said debt is insanely high.  $1400 a month for a couple is a lot of money.  Compounded with a need for health insurance (since we don't have universal health care) and we can see where this eventually leads.

I want to draw a connection between Malachy's fine writing and some of the really great writing on Universal Health Care that's been going on at Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein's places (amongst others) because I think it highlights something that's rather jarring for a lot of people: the increasing lack of mobility in the Middle Class.

I'm not talking just about class mobility, which has (with the notable exception of the Post-WWII years) been a lot less attainable than people like to think (and was only possible because of the massive-- and massively successful-- government welfare program called the GI Bill), but also the disappearing number of options for Middle Class Americans. If you have a medical condition (say, epilepsy, or chronic migraines) you can't move to a different workplace because your (very expensive to treat) illness becomes a "pre-existing condition" and your new health insurance provider won't cover it for a calendar year.  This seriously limits your options.

Debt seriously limits your options too.  When you have to pay between $500 and $1500 a month in school debt before you even get to your living expenses, what you decide to do employment-wise get more and more limited, and doing something basic and encouraged of the middle class like buying a home becomes almost impossible, because amassing enough money for a down payment is quite hard.  So now your options are continue paying rent (which unlike your mortgage isn't tax deductable) or take out a mortgage on your downpayment which, considering the debt you're already in, you're not likely to get the greatest interest rate on. Add in the predatory lending policies that lots of deregulation has caused, and you could end up serious trouble.  If you do, through a mixture of bad choices on your part and villainy on the part of others, the Bankruptcy Bill makes it even harder to declare bankruptcy and get out of the crushing debt you've amassed.

So what we have a system whose end result (or perhaps design) is to limit options for the Middle Class.  Now... I wonder who that benefits, ultimately?

There are things that can be done about this. Universal Health Care is one.  Dean had a great student loan proposal when he ran for President that should be revived and expanded.  Re-regulating predatory credit and undoing the Bankruptcy Bill would go a long way. This is why economic progressivism is so important at this point in time, because there is still a chance to do some concrete good. This is why I find my support for John Edwards hard (despite his many screw ups) to let go of.  He highlights the struggles of poor, working class and middle class Americans and links them into positive, progressive policy proposals.  And by staying in the race, he forces the other candidates to at least address the things he brings up.  And that's more important that his big house or his stupid fucking haircut.

Class Tools

The New York Times has created the handy-dandy wealth calculator, an interactive tool that allows you to calculate your wealth over time and compare it to people in other demographic groups. Check it out here.

More Class Notes

This time from Kevin Drum.  Money Graf:

My guess is that lefties are generally much more class conscious than money conscious. Having money is one thing — what are you going to do, turn down a raise? — but egalitarianism is one of liberalism's core beliefs. Probably the core belief, in fact. This makes us uncomfortable with behavior that punctures our egalitarian self-image too overtly.

Conservatives, by contrast, are basically fine with heirarchy and adapt pretty well to being at the top of the heap. Somebody's got to be there, right? However, I confess that the money thing puzzles me. Why don't righties adapt well to having lots of money? They sure seem to adapt just fine, don't they?

He also links to this post about how ideology shapes people's attitudes towards their own changes in class.

Problems with Defining Class

UPDATE: There's a really good conversation happening in the comments section. Rather than actively participate, I'd just like to heartily encourage you, dear reader, to get involved!

NB You might have to hunt around in the links I'm providing to find the statstics I'm using. I apologize. I also apologize in advance for any statistical or mathematical errors I might make, please post any corrections in the comments section.

NB2 Also note this is the debut of a new category, namely "class". Since these issues seem to be coming up more and more in the theatrosphere, I thought it might be useful to create a new category.

Anne and I were trying to figure out today what it meant to be one of the wealthiest 1% of Americans. So we did a little google searching and it turns out to be a hell of a lot more complicated than you'd think.

Why? Well... let's look at the different things that have to be decided to tell you who the wealthiest 1% of Americans are.

First is what wealth means. When defenders of the Bush tax cuts want to argue about the impact of raising taxes on the wealthiest 1%, the group they talk about are those households that show the top 1% of income. But income (the amount you make each year) is way different from wealth (the total amount you own).

To give you a good example of this, judging from the various articles I read, the top 1% of earners in 2003 earned around $337,000 a year or more. But the wealthiest 1% earned somewhere between $700,000 and $940,000 a year and as of 2005 earned $1.07 million dollars.

The second rhetorical trick is to use outdated numbers. When this article claimed that the wealthiest 1% earned only $208,000 a year I was quite suspicious. Until I realized that the statistics the article was using came from 1997.

So once you've defined wealth in whatever way will suit your argument, there's then all sorts of other things to consider. Howabout how much each dollar is actually worth? You can stretch $100 in Richmond, VA a lot farther than $100 in New York City. Howabout whether or not property counts? I read an article somewhere (can't remember where, sorry) that was defining the category "mega-rich" as those who are worth more than $5.5 million, not including their property. But is that just real estate?

Anyway, this is how it's easy to bend these numbers in all kinds of ways.

And this is why defining what "middle class" is is really hard. Class isn't really just about how much money you make (just so's you know, to be in the median of incomes, your two-income male/female household would have to make around $74,000 as of 2005). It's also about how much money you have. And it's also about other things that aren't monetary, like your extended network of support etc. It's hard (For me anyway) to really think of a family that makes $75,000 a year but is up to their eyeballs in debt and is looking at two kids who need to go to college as middle class. But to a Presidential candidate, that couple is very much the Middle Class they're talking about when they talk about wanting to help the middle class.

A marxist friends of mine defined "middle class" as a number of things. She said that the easiest way to tell is if you could live without working for three months. By her definition, working class means someone who has to work for a living and middle class means someone who doesn't. Above that are the wealthy, the upper class. This definition isn't shared by a whole lotta people, but I actually think in terms of progressive politics it has potential to be far more useful.