Take an imaginary trip back in time with me to about 1960:
Well, here we are! Andy Griffith isn’t even on TV yet. Gunsmoke is, though. It’s a simpler time. Something’s going on in a place called “Viet Nam,” I hear. Damn Communists, I guess. Kennedy is the president. I’m not asking what my country can do for me, I’ll tell you!
It’s a time when the average American is a member of the Great Middle Class, the pride of the nation. It is rare for a woman of the times to be allowed a middle class career, but if she is permitted to take part as a man does, she can afford to purchase a brand new automobile on a third of her yearly salary. The typical workingman can buy a comfortable home for a single year of his salary. That’s right. One year. My dad did it! Tell ya more about that later, but not until Act III.
In the 1960’s, a man’s retirement program is fully funded by his workplace, and once he’s vested, it’s “guaranteed.” She works around forty hours a week, occasionally more. He does the same, takes maybe a little more overtime when he has the opportunities, but he still has plenty of free time at home with the family. On her salary, she can support a spouse and children. Day care is an option, but usually not a necessity. Fortunately, he doesn’t need specialized skills or a degree to find work. Multitudes of factories, mines, construction companies, and other industries are producing both goods and services. Unfortunately, she needs to know someone of influence, or she must have extraordinarily good fortune, to find a middle class job; but man or woman, a member of the middle class who works hard and responsibly and remains loyal to the company (and labor union, of course) can depend on a living wage and opportunities for a steadily improving standard of living.
American society is not separated into classes, exactly. Instead, it is often compared to a beehive. At the top, there are very few filthy rich people. That part of the hive is little. At the bottom, there are also very few of the destitute. In the middle, there’s a fat part, representing the vast majority of people who live and work in the country. They are the people who support its businesses, industries, and services.
She takes out a loan on that new car. He withdraws a large portion of his savings from the bank (where his money has been earning perhaps 5% interest per year), puts that money down on a new home, and signs for a mortgage on it. She pays for gasoline and car maintenance and repairs, purchases groceries, and picks up all sorts of home supplies. Medical expenses are not all covered, but his employer’s excellent health plan makes it easy for him to take the kids to the dentist and the eye doctor for regular check ups during some of his free time. She buys items for home improvement and upgrading the comforts of their home. While the kids are little, one of the parents stays home. (It’s almost always the mom.) But health care remains secure; the bills get paid. Maybe they don’t save much money, but they can save some. They don’t enjoy too many luxuries yet, but wages will go up, and for now, the basic needs of daily living are easily met.
Skip ahead a generation plus five years. It’s 1985.
This is different! Hard rock, what was that all about? Bell bottoms? Leisure suits? Where did they all go? What’s on TV? I stopped watching when they took Archie Bunker off the air.
The average American is still a member of the Great Middle Class, the pride of the country. That’s why we loved Archie Bunker. He reminded us of ourselves. He was a crusty bigot, but we could laugh at his bigotry and ours. We were invited to ridicule our narrowmindedness back then rather than to glory in it. Archie had a soft side too. He dearly loved Edith. He was still able to earn a living in 1980 or so. But Americans began working a little harder by 1985, after Archie went off the air.
How are people doing nowadays? Well, she has better chances of getting into that middle class, but it’s still not exactly easy. After (and if) she gets in, she can’t afford to purchase a brand new automobile on a third of her yearly salary the way her parents could, but she can drive a good used one. She needs to have a car in order to get back and forth to her job. He can’t buy a comfortable home on a single year of his salary the way his dad might have done a generation ago. But if he doubles his salary, he can probably afford an average home. He tries to save for a down payment in the meantime, though it hardly pays to keep money in the bank anymore. They charge you a “service fee” for it, and they don’t offer you much interest.
She works forty-five hours a week, sometimes more. He almost lives at work, but he needs all the overtime he can get in order to maintain their standard of living and maybe gain on it a little. Neither of their salaries alone can support a spouse and children at their current level of comfort, not that they waste much of their money on comforts. Most money goes to necessities, one of which is day care. OK, maybe it’s still not absolutely a necessity, but if she didn’t take advantage of it and work outside the home, they would never stand a chance of getting that down payment put away. He still doesn’t need specialized skills or a degree to find a job, but without them, obtaining a career that pays a living wage would be very difficult, and he has both. She’s fortunate to be employed by one of the disappearing American automotive parts factories. If she works hard and responsibly and remains loyal to the company, there’s a good chance she’ll have a job for years to come, and maybe it will even provide opportunities for a steadily improving standard of living. Labor unions? Well, there are still some around, but they aren’t really necessary in this day and age, are they? The middle class isn’t as fat as it used to be. That beehive looks more like a cylinder now, only, the bottom third is starting to swell up a bit.
Middle class Americans spend much more money and time than they used to supporting the businesses, industries, and services of the country. With luck, though, he will be able to afford a mortgage someday. She holds down one full-time job and a part-time job, pays on the credit cards she uses for gasoline and car maintenance and repairs, and tries to keep enough money from the bill collectors to purchase groceries and supplies to last the month. He doesn’t have much free time, but they somehow get the kids to the dentist and the eye doctor once a year. Good thing she has a health plan. It doesn’t cover everything, and he worries constantly about what they would do if they had serious health issues. They borrow money to fix the transmission in the old car so she can keep going to work. She puts something in the freezer so their oldest child can make supper after school. She gets the pre-school kid from daycare at 5:00, during her break from her part-time job, drops him off, and hurries back to work. They cycle through the bills at the end of the month, deciding which ones not to pay in full. Mom and the kids have a modern TV and VCR, so they partake in the newest form of entertainment: They stay home and watch rented videotapes. The kids might go to a Sunday matinee once in a while.
Add another twenty years and a few more, and we arrive at the present day, closing in on 2010. We still rent movies, but lately, they’re on DVD’s, and it won’t be long before our old TV’s will be obsolete. Those videotapes are practically a thing of the past, but not to worry; we don’t have much time to sit and watch anyhow.
Although a lady can now get what’s called a “middle class” job much more easily than ever before, she’s still too poor and too busy to feel any pride about the fact. Nobody in the world works harder than the average American. If the median wage earner saves every penny of his salary, he might be able to afford an average home after three years. If she saves a third of it, she might be able to buy a really, really good used car. “Career” is no longer the operative word. Today, you go after one of those “More Jobs.” “More Jobs” is the mantra and crown jewel of the current “Go, Go, Christian” Administration. You hear it sung all the time (“More Jobs!” “More Jobs!”), backed up by tunes such as “The Global Economy,” “Free Enterprise,” “Make Those Tax Cuts Permanent,” and “Ain’t that Small Business Community Great?”
There are “More Jobs” around now than ever before. Glory Halleluiah! You can take one of those “More Jobs” at Wal-Mart, Sta-Mart, K-Mart, Econo-Mart, Pet Smart, Smart-Mart, Small Mart, Look Smart, Feel Smart, Smell Smart, Farmer’s Mart, Old Navy, New Navy, Good Gravy, Kohl’s, Buck’s, Starbucks, Big Bucks, Big Lots, Little Lots, Lotsa Luck, Tom’s Bar and Grill, Dick’s Grill and Bar, Harry’s Grills and Buoys, Sam’s Bar, the Sand Bar, and numerous other bars, marts, and shops from that glorious segment of American society called the “Small and Medium Sized Business Sector,” named with singular and possessive nouns, or not, followed by “Inc.,” or “Co.,” or not, for just a little more than minimum wage, or not.
A very large portion of the “More Jobs” are part time, so they’ll only let you work 39 hours a week, but you can get two of those “More Jobs” and work as much “More Overtime” (without overtime wages) as you want. In most cases, you’ll have to forget about retirement or health benefits with these “More Jobs.” If you’re intelligent and educated and skilled, you can bypass the “More Jobs” and land a career with a real company that will hire you at entry level into a “lean” workforce that operates at peak efficiency for the benefit of shareholders, meaning, they keep you at entry level wages for as long as possible and work you like a horse. They string you along, putting a carrot in front of you and stick behind you, and dribble small raises at you that never quite get you where you want to be financially, until you drop dead or quit.
Dispite their efforts, middle class America today can no longer support the businesses, industries, and services of their own country. On her way to and from her two part-time jobs, she pays for gas by abusing a credit card and prays that the car doesn’t break down again during the time she has skipped two oil changes. He took out a mortgage on a house. It was a special deal. He didn’t need a down payment, and so far, they’ve been able to afford the monthly payments, but it’s going up in a few months, and he’s not sure how they’re going to cover it. He opted out of paying for the deluxe health plan in this new economy, where the modern American breadwinner is free to make decisions about benefits such as that one and retirement, because they’ve been all but surgically removed from the picture, and he might start a 401K someday, but right now, he’s too busy earning the damn bread, and he’s got to pay full cost for his blood pressure pills every month. She pays for gasoline and car maintenance and repairs, purchases groceries, and picks up toilet paper. They haven’t seen a dentist or eye doctor for years, and nobody visits the hospital unless it’s an emergency, because that’s what his health plan covers. They cycle through the bills at the end of the month, deciding which ones they can put off for another month. Their home is a mess because nobody’s home long enough to clean it. They can’t afford day care, but they have to pay for it, and when both kids start school, the kids’ll learn to daycare themselves.
Being “middle class” just “ain’t what it used to be,” as my dad might have said, if he were still alive. “Hain’t no middle class no more.”
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