On Jul 19, 2006, at 7:46 AM, W. Kiernan wrote:
> The median family income in the U.S.A. is stagnant at about
> $45,000. Meanwhile the prices of many of the basics this family
> needs or wants - a house to live in, gas for the car, a college
> education for their otherwise career-doomed children - continue to
> skyrocket up out of reach. Do you think the median voter actually
> thinks of himself as "upwardly mobile"?
Could well be. You're citing empirical reality, which often has only a tangential relation with people's self-perceptions. We all "know" that this is the land of upward mobility and universal middle- classness, unlike those rigid societies of Old Europe, even though they have a larger proportion of middle-income households and at least as much social mobility as we do. Facts, remember, are stupid things.
Doug