Episode 91: It's Time to Retire the Term "Middle Class"
\u201cBuilding a wall won't save America's crumbling middle class,\u201d Elizabeth Warren tells us. \u201cSanders healthcare will raise taxes on the middle class,\u201d a CNN headline reads. \u201cThere\u2019 war on the middle class,\u201d a Boston Globe editorial laments. \xa0 \xa0 The term \u201cmiddle class\u201d is used so much by pundits and politicians, it could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo card. After all, who\u2019s opposed to strengthening, widening, and protecting the \u201cmiddle class\u201d? Like \u201cdemocracy,\u201d \u201cfreedom,\u201d and \u201chuman rights\u201d, \u201cmiddle class\u201d is an unimpeachable, unassailable label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective morality. \xa0 But the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded, and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn\u2019t about concrete, material positive rights of good housing and economic security\u2013\u2013it\u2019s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than anything, it's a way for politicians to gesture towards populism without the messiness of mentioning\u2013\u2013much less centering\u2013\u2013the poor and poverty. \xa0 This week we are joined by Jane McAlevey, a union organizer, scholar and Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley\u2019s Labor Center.