One hears quite a bit from time to time about the eroding middle class. \u00a0It\u2019s well-documented that the disparity in wealth in this country is growing, and that the top of the stack has a greater percentage of the money than ever before, but I\u2019m looking at it in a different way. \u00a0It\u2019s impossible not to, with the recent rash of cops killing minorities and stand-your-ground nutballs looking for a chance to shoot a brown person.<\/p>\n
PJ O\u2019Rourke spoke of the Whiffle Life, that idea that above a certain point a kid on drugs is going to get routed into a treatment path and sent to a clinic and maybe worst case reform school, rather than jail and a beatdown from the cops and juvie. And that makes plenty of sense when you look around you. \u00a0But then look at the kind of gentrification happening in San Francisco, where one formerly working-class area after another gets hipsterized and Googlefied and your nightclub has to close because the people in the new million-dollar condos don\u2019t like the racket and never mind who was there first.<\/p>\n
And the middle class\u2026well, that\u2019s not really a thing anymore, right? \u00a0Because everybody wants to claim they\u2019re middle class, but you there working in an office at a computer – you\u2019re on an hourly wage, right? And you get more or less whatever benefits they\u2019re willing to cough up, probably a choice of two HMOs if you\u2019re lucky, right? You fill out a time sheet just the same as if you were punching a clock? And you probably get two weeks vacation a year and can\u2019t work from home, can you? \u00a0Guess what: from a legal standpoint, you\u2019re indistinguishable from that union pipe fitter who probably has better benefits because of collective bargaining, but you don\u2019t need a union because you work inside at a table, right?<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t read Thomas Pikkety\u2019s\u00a0Capital in the Twenty-First Century<\/em>\u00a0yet. \u00a0The take-home message, as far as I\u2019m hearing, is that he asserts that capitalism inevitably leads to a flow of resources to the top of the pyramid, that the rich will only get richer and the rest will be left behind, and that the only reason this was interrupted in the 20th century was due to the impact of the world wars and the confiscatory levels of taxation needed to finance them (and the Keynesian spending to get out of recession in between and thereafter).<\/p>\n This comes around every so often. \u00a0Back in the day when Old Navy first launched, no less than\u00a0Time<\/em>\u00a0magazine was concerned that Gap Inc was splitting into its high end and low end brands (and that was before Banana Republic became what it is today). \u00a0John Edwards, before he knocked up his videographer, had gone to great lengths to push the theme of \u201cTwo Americas\u201d as the basis for his campaign. Naturally, Occupy Wall Street drew a line between the 1% and the 99% and it didn\u2019t get any less bright just because the movement collapsed into its own dysfunction.<\/p>\n But the split comes round in different ways out here. \u00a0Sure, there\u2019s the private transit system every major company now employs to move its workers back and forth from the Mission to 650 and back (which keeps drivers on duty for fifteen hours while only paying them for eight). But there\u2019s also the revelation that the split in iOS\/Android ownership tracks with economic status pretty smoothly. \u00a0And that in turn leads me to look at things like Google or Facebook services where everything is free at the point of use, as long as you\u2019re willing to be data-mined. \u00a0You\u2019re paying, just not in cash on the barrelhead – and if you can pay the money up front, you don\u2019t have to have a cellphone contract or an email provider harvesting your data.<\/p>\n Really, the only way to measure class in this country is by the spectrum of diminishing consequences. \u00a0I said years ago that the definition of a charmed life was freedom from the consequences of your actions, and in the grand scheme of things, that\u2019s about it. \u00a0Debt? Ignorable, written off, repackaged. Crime? \u00a0Do a few months in tennis prison or else just catch probation, maybe wear an ankle bracelet. White male? You can do anything. \u00a0Black? \u00a0Better not get pulled over. \u00a0Woman? \u00a0Better not want to be a gamer or a sports fan.<\/p>\n And the most annoying thing of all, the very worst thing, is that now you don\u2019t even have to grow up. If you want trampolines and treehouses at work, they\u2019ll build that for you. \u00a0They\u2019ll drive you to and from and bring your meals to you. \u00a0You can even keep saying girls are icky and passing notes and pulling hair if you like. \u00a0As long as you chose a sufficiently lucrative field, you can pretend like it\u2019s still third grade and that fifty years of society never happened and get paid $200K a year for the privilege. \u00a0The American Dream is a luxury good but adulthood is a lifestyle option.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worse than it used to be. There are plenty of reasons why. Social networking made it possible for sociopaths to link up and validate their opinions (e.g. Reddit and 4chan). Obama backlash gave voice to all manner of racists with the thinnest veneer of politics smeared over their demands for birth certificates. A whole generation grew up with endless positive affirmation and helicopter parenting and freedom from setback. \u00a0And strange and straitened economic circumstances created conditions where unemployment could sit at excessive levels for historic lengths of time while bailed-out investors shot money out of a firehose at any and every stupid idea imaginable.<\/p>\n Twenty-five years ago, in a college education class, the Japanese education model was decried as a system where all through high school, you work like mad, you take extra courses, you attend cram school in the evening, you barely leave your room, because you must get into one of the correct six universities no matter the cost\u2026and once you get there, you switch to glide because you made it into The System and will be all right from now on. \u00a0A quarter-century later, it\u2019s hard not to think of that as you walk around Stanford. \u00a0If you want a motto for the current tech boom, the current state of American society, the current level of cultural maturity, make it this: Stay seventeen forever.<\/em><\/p>\n Or you could declare that we live in a society, and you have to accept that there are other people, and live accordingly. \u00a0And if you don\u2019t? \u00a0Nobody\u2019s too old to be spanked. \u00a0And we as a society need to call out these adultolescents\u2026and reach for the paddle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One hears quite a bit from time to time about the eroding middle class. \u00a0It\u2019s well-documented that the disparity in wealth in this country is growing, and that the top of the stack has a greater percentage of the money than ever before, but I\u2019m looking at it in a different way. \u00a0It\u2019s impossible not … <\/p>\n