Who needs a middle class anyway?

May 21, 2004 1:22 PM

Middle-Class 2003: How Congress Voted (executive summary) Who is doing better under the a Republican White House and Congress? If you're part of the vast majority...the middle class...it isn't you. So finds a very useful new report out today from the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a non-partisan think tank. Full report here. (PDF) The study defines middle class as Americans with incomes between approximately 200 percent of the federal poverty threshold and those of the top 5 percent of earners -- roughly $25,000 to $100,000 a year. (Which excludes Congresscritters, who have consistently given themselves raises to well over 150k a year.)
posted by dejah420 (13 comments total)

The Drum Major Institute is hardly non-partisan. It is run by and for Democrats (Andrew Young, Fernando Ferrer) to push a vision which is not only partisan, but narrowly partisan, being largely concerned with Democratic solutions for the inner city.
posted by MattD at 1:58 PM on May 21, 2004

The Prog Blog?

They may be "non-partisan", but so is CATO.
posted by trharlan at 2:05 PM on May 21, 2004

Like the bumper sticker says: if you want to live like a Republican vote Democrat!
posted by photoslob at 2:38 PM on May 21, 2004

I don't want to say that this is a "Duh Now" kinda thing, but it is a "Duhbya Now" kinda thing.







Okay, I did want to say that its a "Duh Now" kinda thing.
posted by Wulfgar! at 2:48 PM on May 21, 2004

You're telling me... the Bush administration... is screwing over the middle class...? No, I don't believe it.
posted by benjh at 4:24 PM on May 21, 2004

So, the overwhelming majority of Republican voters don't vote for the Republicans for economic reasons. Who didn't know that already?
posted by aeschenkarnos at 5:49 PM on May 21, 2004

It's no longer the economy, stupid; now it's the stupid economy.
posted by interrobang at 12:23 AM on May 22, 2004

Hey MattD / trharlan, how about talking about some of the substance of the article?

hah.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:50 AM on May 22, 2004

Who believes this stuff all those pointyheaded academic types say anyway? They can't even tie their own shoelaces. What did science ever do for us?
posted by troutfishing at 7:21 AM on May 22, 2004

trharlan - well, I agree with CATO sometimes. I take it issue by issue.
posted by troutfishing at 7:22 AM on May 22, 2004

I generally agree with the points made in the article, but if the source was truly non-partisan, it would be something much more powerful. Given the fact that there seems to be little concern for the truth among the media, the government, and the population at large articles like this are just dismissed as partisan propaganda.
Personally, I'd like to see their methodology, but I am too lazy to go dig for it.
posted by bashos_frog at 7:23 AM on May 22, 2004

Anyway, what's so bad about a huge, poor underclass?

Brazil has one, and it's been very beneficial to the growth of the Brazilian private security services industry which - so I've heard - is emerging as a World leader.

As income distribution inequality approaches the vanishing point of 100%, the rich are then compelled to divert a larger and larger percentage of their incomes towards hiring vast private armies to protect their personal wealth - and so it is easy to see that VERY extreme income equality becomes tantamount to a sort of Free-Market induced neo-socialism (but with the hyper-rich taking the place of the socialst state).

In practice, preliminary models of how this would work out in practice have already been demonstrated :

Such as in Guatemala, in the early and mid 1980's.
posted by troutfishing at 9:39 AM on May 22, 2004

Ok, I may or may not have been mislead about the "nonpartisan" aspect of the site...but what does that have to do with the substance of the report?

The report itself is a record of votes. The fact is that the current congress has consistently voted itself into a payscale of the wealthiest population, and has then written and passed votes which benefit that income class.

Why the derail about the messenger, instead of discussing the message? Or is it that the republican votes can't be defended except to cast aspersions at anyone who dares to mention what they're doing?
posted by dejah420 at 11:14 PM on May 22, 2004