When it comes to class, everyone wants to be in the middle.
The rich are upper-middle-class. The poor are lower-middle-class. The average are somewhere in between.
More than 90 percent of Americans believe they belong to the middle class.
Is Joe Biden’s new charge to take care of them all?
“I know the economic health of working families has eroded,” the vice president-elect said in a recent statement, “and we intend to turn that around.”
Biden will be heading the White House Task Force on Working Families to measure the economic health of working- and middle-class families.
“Is the number of these families growing?” Biden asked.
There is no way to know.
Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center asked 2,413 Americans to identify their rung on the socioeconomic ladder: 53 percent said they were “middle class,” 19 percent described themselves as “upper middle class,” and another 19 percent identified themselves as “lower middle class.”
Only 6 percent were so lacking in self-esteem as to label themselves “lower class.” And only 2 percent felt superior enough to declare themselves “upper class.”
Apparently, it’s not about the money.
Four in 10 survey respondents with incomes below $20,000 and one-third of those with incomes above $150,000 identified themselves as middle-class in the Pew report.
If almost everyone in America is middle-class, what is the middle of this big, fat middle?
The median household income in the U.S. was $50,233 in 2007, according to the Census Bureau. So if you are making this amount of money, you can safely call yourself middle-class.
Half of America lives in a household that makes less. And most of the other half live in a household that makes less than $150,000.
It’s only a select few who make considerably more than that. And many of them will say they are middle-class, too, perhaps just to keep the in-laws away.
To be truly middle-class, you have to have poor friends who resent you and rich friends who regard you with pity. Doctors and lawyers often consider themselves middle-class. So does Joe the Plumber.
Middle-class folks often have college degrees but not from an Ivy League school.
They frequently fly coach, wear clothes from the Gap, watch flat-panel TVs, eat at Outback Steakhouse and go to a Disney resort at least once in their conspicuously consumptive lives.
The primary way for most middle-class people to do all this has been to borrow against the inflated value of their homes. This is one reason why the middle class is said to be vanishing or eroding.
Biden’s role will be to find a way to get more money into the hands of these people so they can become free-spending agents again and reignite the economy.
This will be tough, considering the decline of credit, the rise of unemployment and the destruction of retirement accounts.
Reminds me of the time VP Dick Cheney led a task force on developing America’s energy policy. Or when VP Al Gore was supposed to reinvent the government. Or when VP Dan Quayle famously promised: “The future will be better tomorrow.”
Al Lewis: 201-938-5266 or al.lewis@dowjones.com
