{"id":20818,"date":"2015-02-17T05:30:55","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T10:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=20818"},"modified":"2015-02-16T22:22:25","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T03:22:25","slug":"whatever-happened-to-the-working-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/02\/whatever-happened-to-the-working-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Whatever happened to the working class?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

When I was in college, I worked on a construction crew, and it did me a lot of good.\u00a0 I developed a lot of respect for the guys I worked with, who worked with their backs and their hands with skills that were far beyond me.\u00a0 Politicians used to talk quite a bit about \u201cthe working class,\u201d also known as \u201cblue collar workers.\u201d\u00a0 But no more.\u00a0 Even liberal democrats are pushing policies that are supposed to help \u201cthe middle class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the problem may be that the working class considers itself middle class.\u00a0 And with good reason:\u00a0 A factory or construction worker may well own his own home, have a car or two, and have other accoutrements once associated with the middle, college-educated class.\u00a0 Such are the wonders of the modern economy.\u00a0 And yet, unemployment, the decline of American industry, stagnant wages, and other economic woes are hitting blue collar workers hard.\u00a0 But hardly anybody is speaking for them or about them anymore.<\/p>\n

\n

From Andrew J. Cherlin, The missing working class \u2013 The Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Lost in the debate over the middle-class tax policies that President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address is the puzzling disappearance from our political language of a once-common term: working class. Suddenly, no one in politics seems willing to use those words, as if calling someone working class were an insult. Their absence makes it harder to discuss measures that might help the large and beleaguered group that this descriptor still fits.<\/p>\n

In his State of the Union addresses, Obama has used the term middle class 28 times. But he has never said \u201cworking class\u201d except in 2011, when he described Vice President Biden, who was seated behind him, as \u201ca working-class kid from Scranton.\u201d In last month\u2019s address, the president argued that his proposals would benefit \u201cevery middle-class and low-income family with young children\u201d \u2014 as if there were no one in between. But in fact millions of families fall between the college-educated middle class and the poor. They tend to be headed by people who have a diploma but not a bachelor\u2019s degree: In 2014, among all families with children under age 18, 54 percent were headed by an adult who had the first but not the second.<\/p>\n

A generation or two ago, those in this category supported their families by taking the industrial jobs that were plentiful, or by marrying someone who did. Today\u2019s working class, in contrast, competes for the diminishing number of blue-collar jobs that haven\u2019t yet been automated or outsourced. To lump these people together with the college-educated is to create a group that is so broad as to be meaningless.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . .<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in college, I worked on a construction crew, and it did me a lot of good.\u00a0 I developed a lot of respect for the guys I worked with, who worked with their backs and their hands with skills that were far beyond me.\u00a0 Politicians used to talk quite a bit about \u201cthe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13,36],"tags":[2036,3638],"class_list":["post-20818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-economics","category-politics","tag-social-class","tag-working-class"],"yoast_head":"\nWhatever happened to the working class?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When I was in college, I worked on a construction crew, and it did me a lot of good.\u00a0 I developed a lot of respect for the guys I worked with, who worked\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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