“Compared with the Western European experience, the adult population in the U.S. is more economically divided,” said Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at Pew. “It is more hollowed out in the middle. This speaks to the higher level of income inequality in the United States.”
For example, between 1991 and 2010, the proportion of adults in middle-income households fell to 59 percent from 62 percent, while it rose to 67 percent from 61 percent over the same period in Britain and to 74 percent from 72 percent in France.
.. Households that earned from two-thirds to double the national median income were defined as middle income in the Pew study; in the United States that translated into annual income of $35,294 to $105,881, after taxes, in 2010.
.. incomes in the middle rose faster in Europe than they did in the United States, according to Pew. Median incomes in the middle tier grew by 9 percent in the United States between 1991 and 2010, compared with a 25 percent gain in Denmark and a 35 percent increase in Britain.
.. “There is an aura of redistribution of income from middle income to upper income.”
.. “But I liked Trump’s message that he was going to help the middle class and get the jobs back,”
American Affairs: Why a New Policy Journal?
Social discord, frequently inflamed by proliferating versions of identity politics, is becoming more prevalent.
.. what if public discontent is a reasonable response to a misguided and complacent elite consensus?
.. American political theatre stages ever shriller battles over increasingly trivial matters.
.. We believe that recognizing failures and encouraging new ideas are not betrayals of American “optimism” but are instead healthier expressions of it.
.. Today, the celebration of “disruptive” technological innovation is virtually unanimous. Why then is corporate and government investment in basic research in decline? Why is productivity stagnating?
.. we are told that more and more jobs will be lost to automation, and that the “new economy” will be a highly bifurcated service economy. But if “average” is truly over, what does that mean for an American republic predicated on a strong and independent middle class
.. Yet the most conspicuous global phenomenon of the present time would appear to be the resurgence of nationalism
.. Can nationalism be leavened by justice—or even be essential to it—rather than being abandoned to its worst expressions?
.. Was meritocracy fated to produce social stratification? Or are we privileging certain forms of merit while excluding others?
.. Have the permanent campaigns of identity politics on the left and the “culture wars” on the right concealed the true content of our common citizenship?
.. The promise of America is no longer being realized as it once was. Revival and realignment are critically needed.
The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet. It’s the End of the Middle Class
At a time when the Trump administration is promising to make America great again by restoring old-school manufacturing jobs, AI researchers aren’t taking him too seriously. They know that these jobs are never coming back, thanks in no small part to their own research, which will eliminate so many other kinds of jobs in the years to come
.. At Asilomar, they looked at the real US economy, the real reasons for the “hollowing out” of the middle class. The problem isn’t immigration—far from it. The problem isn’t offshoring or taxes or regulation. It’s technology.
.. the number of manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979 and has steadily decreased ever since. At the same time, manufacturing has steadily increased, with the US now producing more goods than any other country but China.
.. “I am less concerned with Terminator scenarios,” MIT economist Andrew McAfee said on the first day at Asilomar. “If current trends continue, people are going to rise up well before the machines do.”
.. Also on researchers’ minds was regulation—of AI itself. Some fear that after squeezing immigration—which would put a brake on the kind of entrepreneurship McAfee calls for—the White House will move to bottle up automation and artificial intelligence.
1992 | Gwen Ifill’s Cleareyed Coverage of Bill Clinton
“The Democratic candidates for President, anxious to woo back the disaffected middle class, have all but abandoned their traditional role as champions of the disenfranchised,” Ms. Ifill wrote in January 1992.
“It is almost an oversight, this eerie silence on the campaign trail about issues that affect the poor. But it is a telling omission for the party that had traditionally spoken for the disadvantaged …”
“Instead, wooing the middle class has become all the rage. They are angry and they vote. What Presidential candidate could resist?”
.. She noted the criticism among Democrats, including followers of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, that Mr. Clinton, by now the Democratic nominee, had “decided to sacrifice black voters’ support in exchange for winning back the Democrats — most of them white — who voted for Ronald Reagan and George Bush.”
“Politicians call it taking the base for granted, a tactic that is the opposite of the one Republicans chose at their national convention to woo their base of evangelicals, conservatives and bedrock Republicans.”
.. Gov. Bill Clinton’s voice has been hoarse and strained for months, but it was not until he won the New York primary that he had the political luxury of taking the advice any good doctor would have been giving him for months: Shut up.”