MIDDLE CLASS FUNK, True of False: there is one.

MIDDLE CLASS FUNK, True of False: there is one.

 

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics," was a statement of Disraeli, Mark Twain or someone else.  Whenever the counting started so did the lies, or, to be kind, the exaggerations.  But is it correct that how the middle-class feels is exclusively a product of statistics, of monetization?  And if so, exactly how does having or not having physical things contribute to their so-called funk?  The headline begs the question, the fallacy that simply assumes that there is there a middle-class funk.  Who says there is?  Compare the middle class in the ‘Fifties to which my parents belonged.  They didn’t seem to care much about money or what the “Joneses” had (as in “keeping up with the Joneses”) or if they did it didn’t trickle down to us kids.  We were very late with a television, but I can’t remember being jealous, we just went over to Doug’s house.  His dad was a dentist and they had a TV they were happy to share.  So why is there all this angst now?   Or is there?  Let me move on to the expression, “Is the glass half empty or half full?”  With respect to the title of William A. Galston’s OpEd "Behind the Middle-Class Funk" (Wall Street Journal, Opinion, August 7, 2013), I would argue that if a typical middle-class family was placed under a microscope, one would get two answers to the fullness of the glass.  They probably would be emotional answers, not statistical, as in “I feel it’s half empty” or “I feel it’s half full”.  In the “Fifties” half-emptyness were fear of the U.S.S.R. or “the bomb”, half-full was having a house, car, television, food on the table, and the wife at home to take care of the kids.  Today I’d argue that we’re afraid of terrorists (about as likely as the bomb back then) and enjoy (“half-fullness”) iPads, smart phones, and the Internet’s social media offerings.  Is their really a great “funk”? 

 

How many middle-class couples really even understand what “median income” is, or where they stand in comparison?  I offer that, after the prosperity of the Reagan years, the then-self-titled “liberals” needed to convince us that things weren’t as good as we felt they were.  Liberals served up statistics showing how miserable we should be, in order to win votes against the Republicans.  The mass media piled on and “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind,” Jim Morrison late of the Doors might have said.  The now-Progressives (neé  liberals) have apparently convinced most of the country that we’re in an absolute unfair mess and they are needed to fix it.  Republicans have accepted the mantra of the Progressives that our country needs a major change and don’t offer much in return.  And they have been losing, and will continue to until they can re-frame the message from funk to “Look what we have, look how business offers you jobs, look at the innovation for the future.”  That they haven’t and don’t seem to get it puts me in a funk.