A Baby!

After a many month long hiatus from blogging, I'm gearing up for a comeback. My utmost apologies, but M and I had a bouncing baby boy late November, and life has been, well, just a tad bit chaotic. An absolute joy, but the sleep deprivation has been biting into my blogging time. Until I start to sift through an attempt at understanding the economic carnage, I leave you with a recent article in the NY Daily News that declares it takes $123,322 a year to be middle class in NYC. Class is a wiggly beast, and while M and I fall far short of this article's vision of middle class, I think it would be unfair to exactly call us the working poor. So I'd like to declare myself part of the sub basement middle class...

The Haves and Have Nots

The leading factoid in The Atlantic's "Primary Sources" reveals that more and more Americans are Doubting the Dream.

Americans doubt that they live in a land of equal economic opportunity, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. It reports that Americans are nearly twice as likely as they were 20 years ago to describe the country as divided between haves and have-nots. This change is particularly significant, the authors argue, since Americans have traditionally “turned a deaf ear” to narratives of class warfare, seeing individuals— not society—as responsible for their economic fate.

It used to be that middle class meant comfortable. In 1988, 68 percent of middle class Americans counted themselves among the haves. Today, that number has dipped to less than half, resting at 43 percent. But as the article points out, it's a poll on self-perception. The middle class hasn't shrunk as much as their ego has. What is more interesting to me is to ask why the categorical shift?

You can read the Pew report here.