Thursday, October 11, 2012

AN ACADEMIC WRITES OF HOW DURING ELECTIONS THE MIDDLE CLASS BECOMES VERY POPULAR - NATURE OF CHANGES OVER LAST 50 YEARS


POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOHN SAINSBURY IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

It wasn't so just 50 years ago, but now you never hear words about workers or the poor.

It's a reflection of two developments.

First, the middle class has grown in size with general prosperity.

Second, politicians have discovered that it is the middle class who dependably vote, not poor people.

The results are inevitable, even if the words of politicians are annoying.

I would also throw in the modern philosophical reality that in America - which influences everyone with its spillage - any notion of class warfare is verboten: Americans are just all happy consumers of one level of spending or another.

In the United States, the appeal of the term "middle class” is such that people as low on the totem pole as, say, Wal-Mart workers view themselves as being middle-class.

Further to this development in language, Americans, for years now, have not been addressed as "citizens" but as "consumers" at 4th-of-July-picnic speeches by local politicians.

The vision is of one vast conveyor belt of production and distribution and marketing to a sea of mouths.