And the feeling is widespread. Families earning any where between $20,000 and $200,000 call themselves “middle class” and feel themselves on a financial treadmil Gingrich declared himself “middle class” last week, explaining why he found it hard to turn down a $4.5 million book contract. Middle class is a state of mind, not a financial statement: the sense of frustration expands to fill the pocketbook allotted to it.
And there are good reason why middle-class malaise per sists, and won’t be cured by a tax break or an upswing in the economic cycle. Taxes are only the easiest symptom to cite when a middle-class person is asked for his complaint. And he’s not likely to be comforted by statistics that show marginal gains in income. The malaise has to do with hopes and expectations nurtured over the lifetime of today’s wage-earners, and with features of middle-class life so familiar it’s easy to forget their wearing effect on the nervous system.
Take Brian and Michele Houlihan, who work the family farm in Harpers Ferry, Iowa. and count among life’s blessings their two children and Michele’s $28,000 job in a local prison. The Houlihans are no whiners; like many Americans, they’ve taken to considering a steady job a privilege. “I’m lucky to have a job that makes a decent income,” says Michele. In the evenings, Brian writes loans for a local bank. But Brian’s parents never had to work off the farm, and they seemed to have more time to visit with the neighbors. The Houlihans are exhausted trying to pay for day care, their own student loans and saying for the kids and retirement. And there’s a nagging sense of insecurity: Will their parents need a nursing home? Can they hold onto the farm, which didn’t make monev this year? “We’re OK,” says Michele. “It’s just that right now we don’t feel we can get ahead.”
In the Wonder Bread years of today’s baby boomers, getting ahead seemed like a birthright. The one-car garage grew to two, the black-and-white TV was replaced by a color set, the fan by an air conditioner. But the grown-up boomer combs the budget for ways to pare back. Nor is quality of life only a matter of consumer goods. With vastly more women working, spare time has become a luxury item. Remember how Donna Reed’s husband poked his head back inside the door to kiss her goodbye? In 1995, he might think better of wasting that precious nanosecond; today superspouses barely brush past each other in the morning rush. Nor did Donna expend time and emotion decoding HMO brochures or poring over her 401(k) prospectus. Life is not only more compl cated but more menacing. he boomer’s mother worried that she was dating too early; th boomer worries that her kid could get AIDS. And she probably worries alone, with less support from family, church or neighborhood.
Of course, the middle class could take a harder look at the choices that keep it chained the treadmill. Childhood was cheaper when playtime was Nintendo but hide-and-seek And bridge costs less than the current national pastime, shopping. Baby boomers decide to “downshift” – fewer CDs. more time – have figured this out: Owen Byrd and Maria Lines of Palo Alto, Calif., a public-interest lawyer and an engineer, decided to cut their $100,000 income by $20,000 this year to get an extra day at home.
Popular culture has begu to show some support for downshifted expectations. Shows like “Grace Under Fire” reflect economic realit while shows like “Dallas” stoked desire. Still, being free to define luxury as a moving target was exactly the boast the American Dream. If today’s middle class feels cheated, it’s mostly because they learned that lesson well.
