Postless in Gaza… Well, in lovely uptown Arizona, anyway, where at a little after 9:00 p.m. the outside temperature hovers just below 100 degrees.
A great raft of 2500-word papers has floated in on the molten sea. I’ve managed to read three of them today. All 20 or so have to be read, assessed, commented upon, and graded by Friday morning.
Sat down to a dinner of poké salmon and tuna, snabbed from Whole Foods on the way home by way of a still relatively decent Target (tar-zhay) on the fringe of what was once an upper-middle-class shopping mall, where I went in search of another baby gate to block Charley from bedrooms where he might eat furniture and kiss electric sockets. To rest my weary eyes while dining in solitude I picked up the latest edition of The Atlantic, which came in the mail today.
Something there is about print, something that turns Internet copy to ephemera.
You need to go out and buy this month’s edition—that would be September 2011. It has impact. If you can’t afford it or you can’t bring yourself to touch paper, then for hevvinsake go to the site. Take a long, horrified look at Don Peck’s piece titled “Can the Middle Class Be Saved?,” in which he describes “the hollowing-out of the American middle class.” Read Rhett Miller’s brief, gut-wrenching mini-memoir, “About That Day.” And whichever side of the gun control issue you happen to reside on, get your mind bent by Adam Winkler’s “Secret History of Guns.”
Can the middle class be saved? There’s a question to file under the heading of “a day late and a dollar short.” Middle class? What middle class?
This morning I had occasion to drive through several of the strip malls that surround the former glory that was Paradise Valley Mall. Next to the Tar-Zhay: a dollar store. I’ve been in that dollar store: it smells bad and there’s not a thing in it anyone who wasn’t pretty desperate would want to buy. Apparently Paradise Valley has enough desperate residents to support it. Across the road: retail strips pockmarked with empty storefronts. Places that are still on your GPS or your iPad or your iPhone that just aren’t there anymore. Other stores hang on in tired buildings that need, at the least, a paint job. This is not the middle-class American shopping center that you and I knew a scant ten years or fifteen years ago.
I am scared.
I’ve never been so scared for my country. And I’m an old lady who has lived through some scary times: the Cold War, when we were serenaded once a week by air-raid sirens atop our apartment building; the Chicago riots; Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis…all the way to 9/11. None of those times seem nearly as scary as the times we’re in right now.
Why?
Because we’re doing it to ourselves. In World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, we had an enemy without, even if sometimes that enemy was largely imagined. Today we have an enemy within. We are the enemy within. We consume ourselves.
We who are Americans are destroying America.
There’s no treaty for it, no end to it but entropy. And I am scared. You might be, too.
I never understood in whose best interest it would be to eliminate the middle class. I mean, what happens then? The rich get rich largely because the middle class fuels growth that in turns makes the rich richer. Without that class of people and their ability to spend money, buy homes, send their kids to college…you know, everything that drives the freaking country, none of that continues to happen.
Maybe it is actually happening but it’s so counter-productive to logic that I still can’t fathom that getting rid of the middle class is a goal.
Look Eeyore we need to stop the woe is me and do something! We lived in the world our parents created and it was good. Our children will live in the world we created and OMG! Nobody did this to us, we did this to ourselves. Any suggestions?
@ Money Beagle: Well, I think a lot of Americans and their elected representatives are unaware that the middle class is in fact a function of government largesse. Many of our parents (well, in my generation: possibly your grandparents?) went to college on the GI Bill; federal loans make college or vocational programs possible for millions of young people today; home loans were put within reach through federal lending programs; and few older Americans would be spending their dotage in the middle class were it not for Social Security. Same is true for unions: without the Masters Mates & Pilots, for example, my father would not have earned a middle-class wage as a merchant mariner, nor would he have had a chance at saving enough to support a family and pay for a house, a car, college for his child, and retirement. Despite the popular vilification of unions, all you have to do is compare wages in right-to-work states with those in states where wages are driven by union bargaining to see the difference in income and quality of living for workers of all collar shades. So when it comes to eliminating programs and organizations that keep most of us in the middle class, few people seem to understand the implications.
Second: yes, IMHO there are elements who see the third-worldization of America as in their interest. After enough Americans are out of work long enough, as a people we will begin to accept lower and lower wages, until our pay is on an par with those workers we’re competing with in waypoints like Indonesia and India. Then companies who have taken their operations offshore will be that much closer to bringing their companies back to the U.S., where their home offices are located and workers speak the same language as management. Much more convenient. In my opinion, the goal is to push wages in this country down to third-world levels; this will increase profits and simplify operations. At the same time, putting right-wing ideologues into office will facilitate removal of environmental, health, and safety regulations, bringing working conditions to much cheaper third-world levels, too.
@ Sarah: My suggestion? Vote in leaders who are not in anyone’s pockets, who are educated in national and global history, economics, and science, who are neither puppets nor fools, and who will work for the good of the country rather than for an ideological agenda.
I have to agree with your assessment and for the reasons you provided on your comment. My parents though are not much older than you and doing fine. My Dad had a pension and was a public employee for many years. They don’t make a lot but enough for them to live off of, and their mortgage paid off an bought a long time ago. Public employees are targets now and pensions non existent. They worry for me but also for people their age who weren’t as lucky as they are and have only social security to draw on. We all agree benefits should be asset based to help those who need it more. I don’t plan to need it but I think it’s a crucial lifeline for so many. I know extremely wealthy people who draw on it and don’t need it.
I have a different perspective on the mall thing though. My suburb has been a happening place since probably 2010. On my days off i’m always shocked how many people I see out driving around and spending money. I always think, “don’t these people have jobs?” and if not, how are they all out buying things? I don’t live in a particularly ritzy area. My only guess is things are getting better or people are still living beyond their means.
I haven’t heard these ideas expressed so eloquently. The scary thing is, you are probably correct and most people, even the educated, are so busily hanging on to their shirts they’ve no clue…
Given the state of political parties and the wanna-be candidates here, it is hard to imagine anyone fitting the description of a good leader or leaders and therein lies part of the problem…
Excellent points! Only through articles like this one can we hope to reach enough people to make a change. I went back to college at age 36 and graduated at age 40. Being a therapist in rehab I figured I had made it. From 1996 to 2009 I never had a real wage change. Talk about flat. Now I am on disability. My husband has his doctorate in Music Ed and teaches at the college level. Thank goodness his job is stable. My house is now worth what I paid for it 15 years ago and what retirement savings we have looks terrible on paper. Three of my college educated children are underemployed and struggling. What will our future truly be?