I admit I've been feeling oddly alienated lately at some of the talk of economic "progress" or lack of "progress" for lack of a better word.
And I'm not quite clear of the source of that alienation, so I'm just going to talk and explore that thought for a bit. Maybe something useful will come up.
A very good and recent diary on the rec list is discussing comments from Mr. Stockman, a budget director under Reagan. In the diary and in this article Mr. Stockman talks about the most recent jobs added to the economy, going so far as to discount most of them because they are what he terms "part time." And by "part time" he means they have a median pay range of $20,000 per year. Full time, or "bread winning" he notes is in the $50,000 a year range.
He and the MSNBC article suggests that $50,000 a year is the "annual median wage."
But that's wrong.
Here's the Cencus Bureau report -- the median HOUSEHOLD income is "50,221"
Household.
Not the median WAGE.
Not even close. Not so incidentally it's down by about $1000 from last year.
And for most of the states between the coasts, the median household income is well below that, ranging from 36,000 in Mississippi, 37,000 in West Virginia, 45,000 in Michigan, 48,000 in Iowa.
Household. Household income.
(As a side note, the states with the highest income inequality are New York, Texas, Connecticut, and Washington DC.)
So perhaps you can start to see why some dude getting up on National Television talking about why the jobs created don't count because most of them don't pay $50,000 a year might seem a bit alienating to large swaths of the country, and why calling a $20,000 a year job "part time" out of hand might seem a bit on the patronizing side.
A full time phlebotomist might feel his job is a respectable full time job, though the annual pay for that is between 25k and 32k.
I can agree on the core message, of course: wages are too low. But the delivery from a DC man feels out of touch and patronizing, and smacks of a coastal frame.
I can count on two hands the number of individuals I know who make over $50,000 a year.
So I guess I'm not willing to dismiss the jobs numbers so easily.
I look forward to a day when a SINGLE income is enough to be a HOUSEHOLD income for most people. But let's be honest. Such a day hasn't existed in 30 years or more.
And if Democrats wanted to do that, it could be done in one vote by raising the minimum wage to $16 an hour. Not a huge mystery.
I dunno.
The more these conversations go on, the more alienated I start to feel. That maybe this conversation IS about an exclusive middle class, rather than a broader middle class. When Senater Landeriu spoke during the Bernie Sanders Long Speech/Filibuster, she showed a chart of what she called the "Broader Middle Class" which she began at a household income of $50,000 per year, though her own state has a median household income of $42,000 per year...
It's kind of an odd sensation feeling one has a stake in a national conversation about the Middle Class only to start realizing that they're not talking about you. Or most of your friends. Or most of the people you know.
Mostly, I see this as a jobs problem.
We need to create jobs. Because there are no jobs. Get those jobs in here, big jobs little jobs, fast jobs, slow jobs, high tech jobs, jobs where you hit things with a rubber mallet...just get the JOBS here.
This isn't a time to be saying These Jobs don't count and These Jobs do. Phlebotomist, office manager, and hair stylist jobs don't count, but veterinarian and pharmacist jobs do. That's a load of crap.
Just bring the damn jobs. BRING THEM ALL!
If the issue is about wage, dramatically raise the minimum wage.
There. Problem solved.