Stop Punking the Middle Class

Pushing the claim that the middle class is in "crisis" only stalls the recovery and diverts attention from the disadvantaged groups really hurting in this economy.

Mike Konczal returned from vacation and promptly put up a post criticizing my take-down of Edward Luce's horrible Financial Times piece on "the crisis of the middle class".  It's become apparent to me over the past few years that I've been in D.C. that you can't refute a specific empirical question about the situation of the poor or middle class (e.g., is it in crisis? as in much worse off than in the past?) without being attacked on much broader grounds than you staked out and being called an opponent of these groups or an insensitive jerk.  I actually don't disagree with much that Mike writes "against" my "views".

What I do disagree with is the contention that the middle class is in crisis.  And I think that it's bad to believe (and assert for mass audiences) that that's true because it hurts consumer sentiment, prolonging high unemployment, and diverts attention from the truly disadvantaged who really are in crisis.  Mike can say that that pits me against the middle class (his post was titled, "Scott Winship versus the Middle Class"), but then let me ask Mike and others who would disagree with me a simple question:  Why do you think Americans are deluded about their economic conditions, since in June, 7 in 10 American adults said their "current household financial situation" is better than "most" Americans' (Q.25, disclosure: the poll was commissioned by my old employer)?  Why are you against the middle class?

Mike says that when I say some problem affects a tiny fraction of the population, that's like a hit man saying that he doesn't kill that many people as a fraction of the population--the "Marty Blank gambit" as he calls it.  But look, that's not an apt analogy.  If I were saying that we shouldn't give a rat's ass about the tiny share of the population that experiences a bankruptcy, that would be using the Marty Blank gambit.  I never said that, and I wouldn't.  But if you convince everyone in the middle class that they are just one bad break away from bankruptcy, then you shouldn't be surprised when they don't spend their money and the recovery continues to stall.  It's important to convey the facts correctly.  Mike is stalling the recovery!  Why are you against the middle class, Mike??

Finally, I think the best chart I've seen that puts all of this into perspective (which I made myself) is the following showing health insurance trends:

Anyone who wants the data can email me at scott@scottwinship.com.

And contrary to Mike's assertion, the fraction of under-insured has not increased.  You can read the conclusion of my dissertation if you want to see what the facts show.

I'll keep being concerned about the people who are in crisis, but I'm not going to buy in to the conventional wisdom among progressives that the middle class is in crisis.

*added note: Mike informs me that I missed the joke in his title, a Scott-Pilgrim-Versus-The-World nod.  I like to think I'm clever and witty, but clearly my lack of sleep from parenting a newborn has left me not so quick on the uptake...)

Originally published at The Empiricist Strikes Back