Guest post by Ed Stephan
Most of post-WWII politics in this country has operated on the assumption that the United States is committed to the well-being of its solid middle-class with its not-too-surprisingly middle-of-the-road politics.
Americans don’t like to talk in the class-structural terms familiar to most Europeans and much of the rest of the world. We’re neither Marxist (as many European left-wing parties are ideologically) nor elitist (we lack the aristocracies and established churches associated that end of the scale, too). Proud of striving to be a truly “classless” society, we characterize extremist points of view as favoring “class warfare” (which Martha Stewart would call “a bad thing”).
I had hoped to elaborate on this a good deal more but (1) I’m hardly expert (probably not even qualified) in economic sociology and (2) I have simply run out of time this week. All I managed to do was download some historical data for a graph which might provide a basis for discussion here.
The 1947-2001 data are from the U.S. Census Bureau, augmented by two additional years. The graph shows the percent of family incomes taken in by each fifth of families, from the lowest fifth to the highest. As you can see, the most significant change is for the wealthiest 20%. All through the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s they took in slightly more than 40% of the income. Then with the presidency of Ronald Reagan — and almost continuously ever since — they have increased their take. Their gains have come from losses spread almost evenly across the lower four groups.