I was prepared not to like it but I found an important kernel of truth in James R. Rogers’s post on America’s “new socialists” at the Library of Liberty and Law. Here’s the snippet that I think bears consideration:
My suspicion is that most Americans still don’t resent really rich people. They may envy them, but we don’t resent them. In market economies people can get rich without making other people poorer. And while living standards for most Americans haven’t increased much over the last generation, they haven’t decreased either.
Where there has been a shift, however, has been a transfer in risk, particularly a shift that places more risk on the American middle class. While there can be multiple causes, this transfer of risk to the American middle class accounts, I think, for much of the angst that has made Americans more willing to identify as “socialist,†at least in the weak sense of socialist, of support for broadening and strengthening government systems of social insurance.
The emphasis is mine. I think he’s on to something. Many of us are anxious with good reason. An enormous percentage of American even prosperous Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And I think that one thing that divides the middle income from the wealthy is risk aversion.
Consider the Affordable Care Act, for example. It is a risk transfer program. It does not transfer risk from the poor to the rich. If it had it might have received strong popular support than it has but it also would never have been enacted into law because the rich would have mobilized against it. As constructed it transfers risk from the sick to the well, from the young to the old, and from the not actually poor to the not nearly rich.
The poor have always been insecure. But the middle income being insecure is relatively new.
Risk has been transferred from employers to workers and from the rich and poor to the middle income. I would conjecture that the uncertainty doesn’t just pertain to the economic sphere but to the social and other sectors as well. Something to think about.
Mr. Schuler, you recently posted photos of your backyard, re sculpted for drainage, and new sod laid, looks great, but no one in my circle could have paid to have that done, we do everything by ourselves. I don’t even belong @ your blog, but I find it interesting, up until you decide to block me, I’ll tune in. A couple of decades ago, we were middle class, but stagnant wages and rising prices,(Insurance, taxes,gas, electric, garbage), you name it, nothing goes down but pay. So, yeah, I am now working lower class.
My wife inherited a small amount of money from her mother who died earlier this year. Her mother was an avid gardener who took great pride in her yard and garden so my wife used the small amount to do the landscaping, sort of a tribute to her mother, who would have been pleased.
And all are welcome here.
@Gray Shambler
You should not be apologetic for being in the working lower class. Not everybody here is well off, and it rounds out the discussion. I am probably somewhere in the middle but ‘living above my means’.
Hopefully, you stick around, and share not only your views but also your experiences. Personally, the different opinions have influenced me.