The Middle Class Squeeze

There are plenty of studies tracking the rise of income and wealth inequality in America and its effects. The overall picture: the wealthiest 10% are now taking more than half the country's income; the wealthy are investing in their children's education and the achievement gap is expanding; it is getting harder to start with little, work hard and rise through income brackets. Poverty levels are dramatic, but the newer phenomenon is the middle class squeeze: as the super-rich get super-richer, pressure keeps increasing on the middle class.

An obvious example: college tuition has reached insane levels. Colleges have had to give out more and more financial aid to keep attracting top students in all income brackets - and to help cover it, have raised tuition steeply for those paying in full, which still includes the middle class. States with budget problems have hiked out-of-state tuition at state schools. Tuition, room and board over all undergraduate institutions rose nearly 120% between 1992 and 2007. Of course, student loan dollar volumes have skyrocketed, as have defaults. In the land of free market capitalism, this is a dramatically distorted market (and rightly so; a meritocracy needs to offer access to quality education even to its poorest). The middle class can no longer foot its college bills. Note Starbucks' recent move to fund employees' college aspirations - a model of corporate social responsibility.

Healthcare reform also aims, admirably, to give greater access to the poor. But the reform doesn't fix the deep distortions in the "market" that are so entrenched in America. A slew of reasons (including employers and insurers acting as opaque intermediaries between the buyers and the sellers of healthcare) has resulted in prices that are 3, 5, 20 times higher than in any other country, dramatically fluctuating and uncertain, and sometimes as negotiable as the price of a rug in a Turkish bazaar. The middle class insured healthcare purchaser with a policy that covers some of the cost but not all (in a totally unpredictable fashion), can easily lose half a month's salary by going to the emergency room to have a dislocated finger checked for breaks. Or it could be, randomly, a whole month's salary, or only 10%, or nothing at all - no way of knowing. Here, the middle class is getting hammered.

The middle class can also be unlucky enough to be hit with legal fees, for a divorce, a random mistake in traffic or in business, an unreasonable neighbor. These are so steep they can be crippling. Of course in many professions it is mandatory to pay for insurance against malpractice lawsuits.

These are all market distortions (most of which have been created, incredibly, in the name of the free market) that are killing the middle class. They are huge problems that must be looked at, problem by problem, piece by piece, and fixed. Not de-regulated, re-regulated.

In the context of widening inequality, these distortions are toxic. Again and again I am reminded of Michael Young's 1958 prediction in The Rise of the Meritocracy: that the meritocratic, educated elite would work to guarantee a better future for itself and its offspring, leading ultimately to a squeezed middle class-turned angry mob. The clock is ticking.