Santorum uses the phrase "middle class" on his website

[Gustaf]

There is a lot of confusion in this thread.

Politico seemed to be making 2 points:

1. That income mobility is higher in the US than elsewhere.
2. That economic inequality does not translate into social inequality in the US to the extent that it does elsewhere.

Posting Gini coeffecients is completely irrelvant to both of those claims, since none of them make a statement about economic inequality.

However, that said, the first one is pretty much false. All data I've seen refute that hypothesis. Scandinavia has higher income mobility, for example. That's not to say that there isn't considerable income mobility in the US, of course.

The second claim is harder to evaluate using any objective metric, but I'm inclined to agree. The class division in Western Europe is more based on entrenched elited who are culturally different from the working class whereas Americans seem to share more culturally across class-barriers.

[pbrower2a]

America is probably the most classless society on the planet. Even most of the very wealthiest Americans do not look down upon lower earners (I wish I could say the same about some acquaintances I know from abroad). It is a stark contrast to what you will see virtually everywhere else in the world where the wealthiest look down on those who are not as well-off.

Even today America still has the largest degree of social mobility, too.

In good times, class distinctions are either the distinction between occupations (plumbing contractor vs. college professor) even if the economic differences are slight, choice of entertainment (art museum vs. stock-car racing)  or between dreams that can be similarly expensive -- or as I like to put it, the sailboat versus the motorcycle. So it was in the 1970s, when America was on par with most of western Europe.

In bad times, class distinctions are between power and fear, excess and deprivation, connections and atomization. These are bad times in America for economic disparities, when the economic divide suggests something more characteristic of a fascist tyranny than of a liberal democracy. The fascist economy that we now have, one in which birth and bureaucratic power determine where one stands, portends a fascist order in politics if we aren't careful.

Our tax policies foster greater concentration of wealth and power at the expense of small business. That's one way to squeeze the middle class into oblivion.

Sure, we have more social mobility in America -- but for those not born into the Right Family, it's mostly downward - and bosses and shareholders use that as a threat. If anyone thinks that the threat of abject poverty spurs people to bigger and better efforts -- that's how the American economy now operates.

I'll take the 1950s, thank you, when the norm was to get less for one's money (because there was little discounting) but be satisfied with what one has; when small business was the norm in retailing, banking, and even banking; when people who did the heavy work got middle incomes;  and when economic disparities were mostly between the manufacturing-based economy of the North and the agricultural-based economy of the South.

1950s with advanced technology, women's rights, minority rights, gay rights, and some more choices in media and cuisine? That's the right direction.   

[Politico]

America is probably the most classless society on the planet. Even most of the very wealthiest Americans do not look down upon lower earners (I wish I could say the same about some acquaintances I know from abroad). It is a stark contrast to what you will see virtually everywhere else in the world where the wealthiest look down on those who are not as well-off.

Even today America still has the largest degree of social mobility, too.

In good times, class distinctions are either the distinction between occupations (plumbing contractor vs. college professor) even if the economic differences are slight, choice of entertainment (art museum vs. stock-car racing)  or between dreams that can be similarly expensive -- or as I like to put it, the sailboat versus the motorcycle. So it was in the 1970s, when America was on par with most of western Europe.

In bad times, class distinctions are between power and fear, excess and deprivation, connections and atomization. These are bad times in America for economic disparities, when the economic divide suggests something more characteristic of a fascist tyranny than of a liberal democracy. The fascist economy that we now have, one in which birth and bureaucratic power determine where one stands, portends a fascist order in politics if we aren't careful.

This has to be right up there with the most over-the-top rhetoric I have seen on here.

A cheap LCD TV most anybody can buy at K-Mart is more powerful than the absolute best TV that Bill Gates could afford fifteen or twenty years ago. That's progress, and it's brought to us by American free enterprise.

Everywhere you look, free enterprise has benefited the common person more than the wealthiest. If you take away advancements in transportation and healthcare, what the wealthy have today is really not much different than what they had 300 years ago (although obviously the nice things in life have taken on a different form over time). But the common man? It is the common man who is much, much better off than they were 300 years ago. If you think things are bad now, go read up on what the commoner endured in Britain 300 years ago.

[pbrower2a]

America is probably the most classless society on the planet. Even most of the very wealthiest Americans do not look down upon lower earners (I wish I could say the same about some acquaintances I know from abroad). It is a stark contrast to what you will see virtually everywhere else in the world where the wealthiest look down on those who are not as well-off.

Even today America still has the largest degree of social mobility, too.

In good times, class distinctions are either the distinction between occupations (plumbing contractor vs. college professor) even if the economic differences are slight, choice of entertainment (art museum vs. stock-car racing)  or between dreams that can be similarly expensive -- or as I like to put it, the sailboat versus the motorcycle. So it was in the 1970s, when America was on par with most of western Europe.

In bad times, class distinctions are between power and fear, excess and deprivation, connections and atomization. These are bad times in America for economic disparities, when the economic divide suggests something more characteristic of a fascist tyranny than of a liberal democracy. The fascist economy that we now have, one in which birth and bureaucratic power determine where one stands, portends a fascist order in politics if we aren't careful.

This has to be right up there with the most over-the-top rhetoric I have seen on here.

A cheap LCD TV most anybody can buy at K-Mart is more powerful than the absolute best TV that Bill Gates could afford fifteen or twenty years ago. That's progress, and it's brought to us by American free enterprise.

That is engineering -- not capitalism. When you see people doing more with lesser material cost, then you have technological process. 
 

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300 years ago against today? Irrelevant. Things are largely worse than they were thirty years ago except for technological and medical miracles. All of the other 'progress' has been the progress of wealth and income going toward a very small part of the American people.

Two of the usual sources of middle income have been vanishing -- manufacturing jobs and small business.

[Franzl]

Even today America still has the largest degree of social mobility, too.

This is simply untrue - but I doubt there's anyway to convince people that can't accept any other possibility.

[Politico]

America is probably the most classless society on the planet. Even most of the very wealthiest Americans do not look down upon lower earners (I wish I could say the same about some acquaintances I know from abroad). It is a stark contrast to what you will see virtually everywhere else in the world where the wealthiest look down on those who are not as well-off.

Even today America still has the largest degree of social mobility, too.

In good times, class distinctions are either the distinction between occupations (plumbing contractor vs. college professor) even if the economic differences are slight, choice of entertainment (art museum vs. stock-car racing)  or between dreams that can be similarly expensive -- or as I like to put it, the sailboat versus the motorcycle. So it was in the 1970s, when America was on par with most of western Europe.

In bad times, class distinctions are between power and fear, excess and deprivation, connections and atomization. These are bad times in America for economic disparities, when the economic divide suggests something more characteristic of a fascist tyranny than of a liberal democracy. The fascist economy that we now have, one in which birth and bureaucratic power determine where one stands, portends a fascist order in politics if we aren't careful.

This has to be right up there with the most over-the-top rhetoric I have seen on here.

A cheap LCD TV most anybody can buy at K-Mart is more powerful than the absolute best TV that Bill Gates could afford fifteen or twenty years ago. That's progress, and it's brought to us by American free enterprise.

That is engineering -- not capitalism. When you see people doing more with lesser material cost, then you have technological process.  

If you think LCD TVs have nothing to do with free enterprise, if you think all of the goods/services we produce and consume have nothing to do with the economy (!), I don't know what to say in response. I am speechless.
 

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Consumers eventually get what they want, and clearly most of them are not interested in paying top dollar for certain manufactured items, or paying top dollar at certain small businesses, where cheaper alternatives exist. Furthermore, there is this thing called comparative advantage that you should look into if you want to understand international trade a little bit. Like Bill Clinton said in 1991/1992, those manufacturing jobs are not coming back.

Disclaimer: This is coming from a guy who consistently wears a pair of shoes that are actually made in America (my casual oxfords, which are Red Wings assembled in Minnesota), and I have never owned any automobile by anybody other than Ford or GM.

[pbrower2a]

If you think LCD TVs have nothing to do with free enterprise, if you think all of the goods/services we produce and consume have nothing to do with the economy (!), I don't know what to say in response. I am speechless.
 
Consumers eventually get what they want, and clearly most of them are not interested in paying top dollar for certain manufactured items, or paying top dollar at certain small businesses, where cheaper alternatives exist. Furthermore, there is this thing called comparative advantage that you should look into if you want to understand international trade a little bit. Like Bill Clinton said in 1991/1992, those manufacturing jobs are not coming back.

Disclaimer: This is coming from a guy who consistently wears a pair of shoes that are actually made in America (my casual oxfords, which are Red Wings assembled in Minnesota), and I have never owned any automobile by anybody other than Ford or GM.

Consumers? Even if it is consumption that ratifies the bulk of the economy, consumers need income. Working people without income are the sullen, angry proles that Karl Marx and his followers believe await the "Socialist" revolution that will drive off or kill their exploiters.

Nobody denies that the major inventions of the 19th and early 20th centuries (telephone, electric light, recorded music, movies, radio, automobile, vacuum cleaner, refrigerator) were impossible without a free market. They also required that there be a market for those things. The economic elites were slow to adopt them; they didn't need any of them.  Have you ever heard of the expression "carriage trade"? The economic elites had servants to send and receive telegraph messages; they were content with gas lamps because they didn't have to wait until getting off work to read for pleasure; horse-and-buggy transportation led to the railroad to get them where they really wanted to go; they could afford plenty of ice for the ice box; they relied upon live theater and concert halls for live entertainment (still more satisfying than movies and recorded music). Contrary to myth, the middle class was quite small around 1880.

It was the working people who had to become a mass market for consumer goods. That was even more revolutionary than Marxism in its own way -- and a win-win proposition for the new capitalists who could profit immensely from new technologies and the expansion of penetration of new ones. Capitalism thrives to the extent that working people are a market and not simply expendable toilers worked as hard and long as possible on behalf of ownership and management that the proles would love to overthrow. The contemporary elites of America act as if they would move toward the economic norm of economic deprivation and personal subordination as Karl Marx said was the norm. Those elites seek to establish such norms among the middle class... and the middle class is turning on those elites politically. People who distrust their bosses and the shareholders don't vote as those bosses and shareholders insist except under threat.

Economic elites are fools to revive the class struggle unless they are evil enough to establish the torture chambers, shooting pits, and slave-labor camps of a fascist tyranny.       

[Torie]

My impression is that the class divisions in the US are steadily getting more ossified over time these days (in part due to our dysfunctional educational system, in part due to worldwide structural economic changes), and that the erosion of social mobility is a serious problem (it may be there is more downward rather than upward mobility at this point). It would however be useful to get some serious study on this issue on the table for purposes of this discussion, rather than just share our impressions.

[ilikeverin]

My impression is that the class divisions in the US are steadily getting more ossified over time these days (in part due to our dysfunctional educational system, in part due to worldwide structural economic changes), and that the erosion of social mobility is a serious problem (it may be there is more downward rather than upward mobility at this point). It would however be useful to get some serious study on this issue on the table for purposes of this discussion, rather than just share our impressions.

Amen!

[Linus Van Pelt]

The odd thing about this thread is that the Republican Party is normally quite eager to emphasize the theme that a certain type of cultural elite is, in fact, looking down on the average American, in a way that isn't reducible to economic status, and this has frequently been a successful electoral strategy.