> Rose is really cherry-picking - he builds his
> argument towards the incomes of two-earner,
> prime-age, married-couple families, who are
> hardly representative of the population.
Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's op-ed:
> But as Robin Toner and Kate Zernike of The
> New York Times pointed out yesterday, what
> actually characterizes the new wave of
> Democrats is a "strong streak of economic
> populism."
Stephen Rose wrote in his anti-Frank piece:
> What it does mean is that Democrats
> should modernize their policy agenda and
> political message based on a sound understanding
> of American society as it really is.
> The party must speak to the plain realities
> of middle-class aspiration in the 21st century.
You say "potatoe." I say "potato." You say "middle class." I say "working class."
> Moreover, it is an occupational hazard of those
> with big hearts to overestimate the share of the
> population living in economic distress. That is
> easy to do with yearly income data because annual
> figures can be deceptive.
And looking at a lifetime can be *very deceptive* when there are no good markets for regular individuals to smooth consumption and risk across points in time. It's not only the expected income over a lifetime that matters. The dispersion of individual incomes (around the mathematical expectation) also matters. In fact, in an economic environment with a large degree of uncertainty, accumulating large lumps of private wealth is the way most people try to hedge against fluctuations. Poverty is by and large exposure to everything "the economy" may throw at you.
Public insurance makes a difference. Economic uncertainty doesn't look the same to a graduate student in the U.S. and one in, say, Canada. Even if in Canada the expected return on grad education is lower, the distribution of returns may more normal. Here it has fat tails. Most U.S. workers would recognize their situation when framed in terms of "risk" -- as opposed to "poverty." Rose fails to note they are equivalent. Even if current (and expected) income is higher, the U.S. "middle class" is poorer because the higher risk discounts their future income more heavily.
Frank's analysis is rough. His body of evidence is weak. But his main point stands: It is feasible for U.S. workers to develop a class political identity on the basis of their common needs in U.S. society, through a process that *starts* with those needs closer to their livelihood, pay, working conditions, etc.
It starts there, but it doesn't stop there. And it doesn't require the notion of a predominantly blue-collar working class. It seems to me that Frank's (implicit) definition of the U.S. workers is -- close to mine -- of those who, over their lifetimes, formally or not, live off their work, i.e. fund regular lives with a wage or salary -- as opposed to living in affluence off the returns of accumulated wealth, position, or power.
I haven't read Rose's more technical papers, but on his articles to the broader public he caricatures the position he criticizes. And his is a narrow, ad-hoc, definition of workers. It is a low trick to use the existing safety-net legislation and regulations as the benchmark. In a sense, it is Rose who clings to the outdated notion of workers as mostly blue-collar paupers.
I can see how the tremendous differences in income, backgrounds, living conditions, etc. among U.S. workers may lead to believing that the working class (in itself) does not exist. These differences replicate themselves and globalization, technology, etc. -- shoved through markets -- enhance the differences and pit workers against workers. That may lead people to question the possibility of U.S. workers taking collective action within the life of our generation, developing a class identity. And ideas inform people's actions, thus becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. With flexibility, but we have to keep trying. We can break the spell.
And people are really ill informed about the broader economic and political context of their lives. With their minds fogged by ideology and ignorance, we can shoot themselves in the foot at the polls. If not, what's the reason for the existence of this enormous propaganda machine made up by media, academia, and organized mysticism. The deeper causes that buffet our lives are not always apparent.