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  • From: bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] "The Formerly Middle Class " - Commentary
  • Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:34:53 -0800 (PST)

>From today's NYT, I find this commentary by David Brooks a bit depressing
>and the letters to the editor even more so 'The republicans are witches,and
>devils and caused every one of these problems, but; it's okay now, Obama and
>democrats are here', or something to that affect. Most are not that
>rational. Brooks is a center-left leaning Republican....



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The Formerly Middle Class

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: November 17, 2008

At the beginning of every recession, there are people who see the downturn as
an occasion for moral revival: Americans will learn to live without material
extravagances. They’ll simplify their lives. They’ll rediscover what really
matters: home, friends and family.


But recessions are about more than material deprivation. They’re also about
fear and diminished expectations. The cultural consequences of recessions are
rarely uplifting.

The economic slowdown of the 1880s and 1890s produced a surge of agrarian
populism and nativism, with particular hostility directed toward Catholics,
Jews and blacks. The Great Depression was not only a time of F.D.R.’s
optimism and escapist movies, it was also a time of apocalyptic forebodings
and collectivist movements that crushed individual rights.

The recession of the 1970s produced a cynicism that has never really gone
away. The share of students who admitted to cheating jumped from 34 percent
in 1969 to 60 percent a decade later. More than a quarter of all employees
said the goods they produced were so shoddily made that they wouldn’t buy
them for themselves. As David Frum noted in his book, “How We Got Here,” job
dissatisfaction in 1977 was higher than at any time in the previous
quarter-century.

Recessions breed pessimism. That’s why birthrates tend to drop and suicide
rates tend to rise. That’s why hemlines go down. Tamar Lewin of The New York
Times reported on studies that show that the women selected to be Playboy
Playmates of the Year tend to look more mature during recessions — older,
heavier, more reassuring — though I have not verified this personally.

This recession will probably have its own social profile. In particular, it’s
likely to produce a new social group: the formerly middle class. These are
people who achieved middle-class status at the tail end of the long boom, and
then lost it. To them, the gap between where they are and where they used to
be will seem wide and daunting.

The phenomenon is noticeable in developing nations. Over the past decade,
millions of people in these societies have climbed out of poverty. But the
global recession is pushing them back down. Many seem furious with democracy
and capitalism, which they believe led to their shattered dreams. It’s
possible that the downturn will produce a profusion of Hugo Chávezes. It’s
possible that the Obama administration will spend much of its time battling a
global protest movement that doesn’t even exist yet.

In this country, there are also millions of people facing the psychological
and social pressures of downward mobility.

In the months ahead, the members of the formerly middle class will suffer
career reversals. Paco Underhill, the retailing expert, tells me that 20
percent of the mall storefronts could soon be empty. That fact alone means
that thousands of service-economy workers will experience the self-doubt that
goes with unemployment.

They will suffer lifestyle reversals. Over the past decade, millions of
Americans have had unprecedented access to affordable luxuries, thanks to
brands like Coach, Whole Foods, Tiffany and Starbucks. These indulgences were
signs of upward mobility. But these affordable luxuries will no longer be so
affordable. Suddenly, the door to the land of the upscale will slam shut for
millions of Americans.

The members of the formerly middle class will suffer housing reversals. The
current mortgage crisis is having its most concentrated effect on people on
the lowest rungs of middle-class life — people who live in fast-growing
exurbs in Florida and Nevada that are now rife with foreclosures; people who
just moved out of their urban neighborhoods and made it to modest, older
suburbs in California and Michigan. Suddenly, the home of one’s own is gone,
and it’s back to the apartment complex.

Finally, they will suffer a drop in social capital. In times of recession,
people spend more time at home. But this will be the first steep recession
since the revolution in household formation. Nesting amongst an extended
family rich in social capital is very different from nesting in a one-person
household that is isolated from family and community bonds. People in the
lower middle class have much higher divorce rates and many fewer community
ties. For them, cocooning is more likely to be a perilous psychological
spiral.

In this recession, maybe even more than other ones, the last ones to join the
middle class will be the first ones out. And it won’t only be material
deprivations that bites. It will be the loss of a social identity, the loss
of social networks, the loss of the little status symbols that suggest an
elevated place in the social order. These reversals are bound to produce
alienation and a political response. If you want to know where the next big
social movements will come from, I’d say the formerly middle class.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/opinion/18brooks.html?_r=1&hp








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