House of Eratosthenes

As you look over the State of the Union address, one weird thing keeps jumping out at you: “a rising, thriving middle class.” The democrats talk a lot about this, and they always have. Their comments seem to indicate that the middle class is something that has to be “grown,” and that this growing is essentially the same as the thriving. That would be at odds with my best guesses, since I’m initially inclined to think a “thriving middle class” would be one on which its members enjoy a higher standard of living, and a “growing middle class” would be one including more people.

This seems so important to the ideas they’re trying to offer. Why don’t they get more specific about what they mean?

Of course, I know what they mean. They mean dependency class. You’re “middle class” in the sense that you’re never going to have too much money, but you don’t have anything to worry about because democrat politicians are going to make all your problems go away at someone else’s expense. “Growing” would mean more people are in that class, thus beholden to democrats. That’s the goal.

“Thrive” seems, to me, to be a point-of-view thing. The politician wants the class to thrive, so that he can get votes. Quantity has a lot to do with that, of course, since it’s all about votes. But it also involves other things. To someone who’s actually part of the class, there’s a delivery to be made, in that the politician will make life extra-safe and fleece lots of money from rich people, to make these problems go away, so “thrive” there would have to do with the standard of living for those who are in this middle, dependency class, living at the expense of others. Taking it all into account, thriving would be something done by this implied contract: The middle class swells, and the people within it don’t want to leave the class or vote for any Republicans, because they’ve got it made. That would be the thriving.

But this isn’t what Americans talk about when they use the word “thrive.” Americans want to thrive by making and keeping money, period. The point to this would be to open up options, and achieve independence. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our politicians used the word “independence” as often as they use the phrase “thriving middle class”? But if you make enough money that you can open up options and achieve independence, you’d no longer be middle class, certainly not part of the middle class they have in mind.

Here’s where the “not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties” paradigm crashes. There is a real difference of opinion here, a partisan difference of opinion, about the classless society. People move among the classes, pretty much all the time. For those in the lower classes who become middle class, it often involves heartbreak because there are family ties that have to be severed, or at least constricted. Some children are raised to become whelps, dependent on society and maybe addicted to substances, and they have to say “No, I don’t want to live like this, give me a call mom after you’ve cleaned yourself up.” That takes balls. Other people live out their lives in the middle class, giving up their own hopes of ever rising above it, so they can save and send their kids to school, and maybe then the next generation can become upper class. That takes balls too. But real Americans do not dream of a life that depends on the largess of politicians, because politicians do not create wealth, they remove it from others and redistribute it. Americans are more honest than that, at least, real Americans are more honest than that.

It is truly bizarre that the President uses this phrase “thriving middle class” so prominently in His State of the Union speeches, and other speeches, and is never pressed to resolve the apparent contradiction, or even to offer a more precise description of what He means. I doubt that it would go over too well if He came out and said “…because heck, we all know none of you middle class people are never going to work your way out of it, and My friends and I don’t want you to.” Even as it is, this is not unifying talk, because to the half of America who did not vote for the President, it comes off as the sheerest sort of nonsense. “Thriving middle class.” If it thrives too much, then of course it’s not middle class anymore.

[…] What President Obama means by a ‘thriving middle class’. […]
- Linkdump « Rhymes With Cars & Girls | 02/15/2013 @ 08:15
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- House of Eratosthenes | 02/18/2013 @ 09:01

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The Middle ClassWednesday, February 13th, 2013

The Middle Class
Wednesday, February 13th, 2013