The loss of relative wealth to the top 10% (and especially the top 1%) by the rest of those in the US has been thoroughly bipartisan in the sense that it has proceeded during administrations of both Democrats and Republicans. Trump tax policies certainly favored the very rich. The loss of relative wealth by those in the middle of the social structure helps account for many of the MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hats that we see in the US.
In your book, you discuss Macomb County as a kind of litmus test for "progressive" politics. Greenberg and company would be brought in to influence voters by way of study groups and the like. Macomb and the whole "progressive" movement seemed to be irrelevant this time around. There were few promises of anything from the Democrats, other than getting Trump out. Will we regress to progressive policy promises now that Biden's calling the shots?
For what it's worth, Macomb County went for Trump by about 8 percentage points in 2020 but Biden won the state of Michigan, proving the county once again to not predict electoral success. The secret of appeals to its importance lie instead in their enabling center-right Democrats (confusingly adopting the mantle of "progressive") to profess the centrality of white working people to campaigns without providing substantive programs empowering workers or their unions. Joe Biden is very much part of this center-right wing of the Democrats and seems likely to continue such a tradition. The Democratic platform does include planks on green politics, labor law reform, and racial justiceit long has included progressive languagebut the lack of a strong majority legislatively and the professed desire to govern in concert with the Republicans argue against expecting much.
A central thesis of your book is that the Middle Class should be allowed to fail -- essentially, you argue, because it's already a failure as a class to aspire to. Middle Class life seems almost Dickensian in its misery. Can you say more on that?
So many of the appeals to --save the middle class" in the US assume that if the decline could somehow be halted, and a little material prosperity returned, all would be well. One contribution of The Sinking Middle Class is to retrieve something of the critique of the conformity and consumerism of the middle class and of the miseries of white collar labor that was so much a part of US culturethink Herman Melville's "Bartleby" or Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesmanbefore the Cold War insisted on a strong middle class as a unique achievement of US "free enterprise." The levels of debt, uncertainties of jobs, hours of labor, and management of the looks and personalities of office and sales workers make it clear that being middle class is a plight and not just a perch.
Do you believe the Covid-19 pandemic will hasten the demise of the sinking Middle?
I think so but in complicated ways. So far, those who can work remotely have more success at continuing work and staying safe. To some extent that tracks tech, white collar, and academic jobs. However, the vulnerability of all is manifest and university employers, for example, are seizing this as a way to further cut jobs, perhaps then hiring people back for less and having them work from home. The dwindling number of people considering themselves middle class by virtue of having a good unionized job will face great precarity in a climate of post-COVID austerity. Many laid off middle class workers are losing their insurance at the worst possible moment.
Now that Bernie's "radical" democratic socialism solution has been pushed back successfully, what is the future for Left "progressive" politics?
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