Class Myth: “We’re taking back this country…!”

…from whom? the old? the sick? the poor?

I could be blunter, but that would be politically incorrect even as a form of criticism. Is that really the subtext of this expression? Or in the language of punditry rather than academe, who are the We that the “dog whistle” is calling? to taking what from whom?

I don’t know that the country was ever owned by anyone other than a group of folks who are mostly white and mostly male. So are We wanting to take it back from Ourselves?

Maybe, if We already own it, We’re wanting to take back something else. There isn’t much to take back from the sick, the poor, the old; all they have is pitiful remnants of entitlements left over when the people who really own the country are done taking what they can get. And even then they (the true owners) make the middle class pay for most of it.

Maybe We ought to take back the country from them. But that would involve raising somebody’s taxes. And that is one of the things they’re afraid of.

Then again, maybe all We want is to take back control of the country. That looks to be a close run thing, doesn’t it? But if We’re wanting to take back control from the poor, the old, the sick, what will We do with it? disadvantage them? Again, it’s slim pickins’. And as I’ve argued before, We – at least some of Us, the ones to whom this slogan is designed to appeal – are only going to be robbing Ourselves.

Maybe the goal is to take back the country from them, so they can’t tax Us so much, because We’re “taxed enough already.” Well, same answer: the other “them” are the true owners. There’s little or nothing to be had from the old, the sick, the poor. If you don’t consider the remnants “pitiful,” try living on them, and them alone. Not everybody gets poor. But only the lucky never get sick. And everybody gets old.

The confusions over the actual interests at stake in American political and economic life are so rich that it’s impossible to believe the big bourgeoisie really conceived, bought, and paid for them all. With some, all they had to do was amplify the emotional content of beliefs that were already very much, if by accident, in their interests.

We the dogs hear the whistle abundantly well. But wait…now I can hear it too. The We aren’t taking the country back from them, they’re taking it back from him!

Now I understand. Completely.

Do you hear it too?

Class Myth: Who’s Picking Whose Pockets?

Well, it’s actually happening – been happening for some time. The shrinking middle class was in the news last week. It just proves what I’ve been saying: certain current members of the middle class (but not the petit bourgeoisie) are more likely to become one of the working poor than one of the Few. What’s having your pockets picked by people who are already working and poor compared to that? You might want to find some pockets to pick. But then you’d find you’d voted against it, and now that you need it, you’re not entitled to it anymore.

What’s actually happening is illustrated by the graphic in the papers and on the web. The Few are pauperizing whomever they can. Those are the kinds of jobs they “create.” That’s in the news this week too. The people who take them are forced into the underclasses, while the Few absorb to themselves the extra income they used to make.

Your only defense is to have some skill, expertise, specialization, or talent the Few particularly need in order to make their business schemes work. Believe me, I barely qualify. I make a decent living just because I know how to write, even though I’m a better philosopher than I am a writer. They have no use for philosophy and I can’t make a cent in commerce or industry on that account.

Obviously a great many other skills rate higher in the market than writing. They take talent, education, knowledge, and experience to acquire or develop. Then you sell them to the Few, and if you’re lucky or good, you become one of them. There’s other ways of joining, but ask yourself whether any of them are open to you.

Then ask yourself what are the possible ways you could fall in the other direction.

It’s certainly true they can’t pick your pockets if you’re broke. Be glad to have pockets to pick. Or better, when you’ve become working poor, your pockets have already been picked – by the people who pauperized you. Then you get your paycheck and see they’ve been picked again.

It’s a rare man – Gandhi for instance – who pauperizes himself. (Though some do through negligence, criminality, etc.) Therefore if you’re poor, or your forebears were poor, somebody pauperized you or them. Somebody in whose interest it was to pay you less or provide worse benefits then you could legitimately expect. Those people do it because they get to keep the difference. It’s called “profit.”

So now is a good time to remember that the Job Creators only create jobs if the jobs are likely to generate a profit. To which it can certainly be added, that the fewer worker expectations the job has to meet, other things being equal, the more likely it will generate profit.

What’s all this compared to a few shiftless people getting the entitlements the working poor have to settle for when their legitimate expectations are not met? Moreover they’re only entitlements because some elements of society cannot bear to see people who, for example, need and deserve health care do without, and because their employers have already washed their hands of the responsibility.

If you wonder why raising the minimum wage is a good idea, imagine your paycheck if it were your wage. It’s funny to think that, if we did raise it, the dollar menu at McDonald’s might be two dollars. But at that price, McDonald’s volume might suffer. Never mind. They’ll find a price point at which the reduced volume generates the same profit.

Who eats off the dollar menu anyway?...

…you guessed it.

It’s OK, but no better than OK, to be young, working, and poor, so long as you have prospects. I’m talking about working adults who, say, have children whose health is endangered, but are not insured. Or who’ve worked all their lives, who have nothing to retire on, and who’ll just have to keep on working as long as they can.

Politicians can talk about the middle class, or what’s left of it. I’m talking about social justice. You’ll see the justice of it – if you happen to become the next victim of the tendencies of this economy.

So please, by all means vote your interests, even if that means taking counsel of your fears. You might want to vote with the Few because you hope – vainly and thus irrationally in all but a few cases – to become one of them. (Might they create a job for you? That’s another story.) You might want to vote against the underclasses because, equally irrationally, you’re afraid of them. I’ve tried to explain this strange phenomenon elsewhere.

But I’m asking you to vote with the working poor prudentially and therefore rationally.

The best thing about this line of argument is that you don’t have to be a bleeding heart to accept it. You don’t have to feel guilty about already having more than you need. You don’t have to feel sorry for the working poor to see the need for fairness, justice, and equality in the workplace. Just imagine yourself in their shoes, and think about how sorry you’d feel for yourself.