Guess What's Destroying the Middle Class?

[Kriegsspiel]

Having survived the great depression and WWII, my Grandparents were grateful to own a two bedroom one bath home in the 1950’s.  When they were able to afford a window A/C unit and a color TV with remote in the late 1960’s they thought they were really living large. But during this whole time of prosperity they never forgot the hardships of their youth. They lived below their means as a way of life. The window A/C unit was only run for a short time during the evenings right before bed or on Sunday’s right before the Sunday meal; Texas heat. All meals were homemade and going out to eat was a treat reserved for very special occasions. They managed to live, for them, a very comfortable life on the combined salaries of a “road worker”? and “cafeteria lady”?. Their true happiness came from taking care and pride in what they did own, and of course, their relationship with friends and family.  I miss them both!

I really admire stories like this, but that kind of simple lifestyle just cannot fly in today's age of 24/7 narcissistic media psychomanipulation.  Continual human happiness is contingent on what you and other people own and have; unhappiness is when you don't have something that others do.  This is biological.  You'll never eradicate it, but like Spock, it must be managed, controlled and nipped in the bud.  That's not fun compared to giving in.

My grandparents arrived in this country from Germany tired, disheveled, and hungry, with the clothes on their backs, a photo of them in Munich, $20 in their pockets. That's the last time we let them vacation by themselves.

[MachineGhost]

Well, considering that Machine Ghost hasn't been around much for the last 3 weeks, the explanation seems simple.

I was doing my bit to save this sinking Mothership and implementing my organic-heirloom-sub-irrigation-container-garden.  It all happened on the spur of a moment.

[MachineGhost]

Somebody please shoot a hole in that one for me because it's a depressing thought.

It's called a Citizen's Dividend.  It is post-capitalism or post-scarcity.  It is either that or Fallout.  I choose to be optimistic.

[MachineGhost]

Having watched my Dad waste away in a nursing home eating up his life savings until he died and now watching my mother start down the same road I can't help but wonder what is really so bad about dying of a heart attack? Seriously. My Dad used to tell me over and over again a story about a friend of his who died of a heart attack while watching television and drinking a cup of coffee and he was still holding the cup of coffee in his hand without spilling a drop when his wife found him. Is there a better way to die than that?

Heart attacks and strokes aren't always also sudden, there can be prolonged suffering as you go through the agonizing process of dying.  It's not like in the movies where you get shot and boom your dead; nature is far more cruel and sadistic than that.  So I think we really just don't want to die without any suffering or pain (or not die at all in my case), but the system is so against that right now since it's still stuck in Milton Friedman's wet dream.

[MachineGhost]

What is "The American Dream," anyway? If ERE represents abandoning it, then it must really suck.

In what way is ERE a race to the bottom? If anything, ERE grants you the luxury of being able to spend a lot of money on true quality that will last rather than spin your wheels endlessly skimping to buy crap that needs to be replaced soon because it's all you can afford in the moment.

In my view, the American Dream represents upward mobility from one socio-economic class to another with all the baubles it allows.  Of course ERE abandons it.  That's how ERE works!  You always have to give up something to get something else when you're not rich.  So I'm arguing this is contrary to traditional success in the true sense of the meaning.  You can't tell me with a straight face that you've given up nothing adopting ERE; that would just be delusional.  You have given up the pursuit and acquirement of materialistic success so you can spend it on subjective, invisible experiences.  Since we judge everyone and ourselves by appearances (it is biological status checking/affirmation), there are costs to doing so.  This isn't an argument about which is better, though.  But I would argue that true success is both aspects, not one or the other.

[Pointedstick]

Can you explain how upward mobility from one socio-economic class to another requires visibly consuming and spending large amounts of money on unnecessary and temporal luxuries and social signaling devices that quickly grow old? Because that's precisely what I've given up by pursuing ERE.

[MachineGhost]

Can you explain how upward mobility from one socio-economic class to another requires visibly consuming and spending large amounts of money on unnecessary and temporal luxuries and social signaling devices that quickly grow old? Because that's precisely what I've given up by pursuing ERE.

It doesn't require it, but any social validation and affirmation certainly does.... especially if you're in a highly visible industry like the entertainment industry which is predicated on the tenuous support of teeny boppin' consumers.  Not everyone can be a Sam Walton wearing Sears Kenmore jeans and drive an ugly, beatup pickup truck and still feel like a billion bucks.

[MachineGhost]

Although, now I'm really curious why you actually left SF.  SF isn't yet as expensive as Manhattan, Tokyo, London, etc. so there is a still a window of opportunity to snag choice real estate with views of the bay before prices price everyone out of the market but the upper class.  Why would anyone not want to have that both in terms of lifestyle pleasure and a real estate investment?  I imagine the same thought process works in NYC though it's certainly more superficial/old/money/bullshit allure given the lack of naturaistlic views other than the tree tops covering Central Park.  I don't think wanting the best living environment and investment value in one is the same thing as materialistic conspicious consumption that gets bitchslapped around here.

In other words, you gave up on being one of the mass affluent which is the net worth/income level where the American Dream still exists (for now).  Why?  From what I've read, people are paid absolutely ridiculous levels of income to live in these areas that isn't commensurate with their level of social value output in other places.  So it's "easy" to tap into and get access to all that "easy" money if you want it bad enough (or happen to be ridiculously attractive, major bonus if you can also act! ).

I'm all for Early Retirement; its the Extreme that I'm not understanding.  What exactly is the allure of downsizing to a trailer in flyover country compared to upsizing to beachfront property, etc.?

[Pointedstick]

You seem to be fixated on appearance, MG. I'm not. I couldn't care less about "social validation and affirmation", being a member of the "mass affluent," whatever that means, or living the "American Dream," as though climbing the social ladder has any value to me.

San Francisco is a vile pit of a city. The living environment is awful. It is ugly and polluted; a typical concrete urban jungle. Large parts of it are overrun by aggressive homeless bums, drug dealers, prostitutes, and their pimps. Some people walk around naked or wearing bondage gear. Driving in the city is a hair-raising experience. Taxes are high; SF imposes a city capital gains tax for example. You cannot get ammunition shipped to an address in the city. Housing is ridiculously expensive in any of the neighborhoods that are decent to live in, and the last thing I wanted to do was tie up the vast majority of my net worth in real estate, especially real estate with an annual property tax bill of $10,000 or more. The monthly cost would have been $4,000 or more for the next 30 years. I would wind up paying close to a million dollars in interest. The houses are cramped, creaking and primitive, with ancient infrastructure, no insulation, and no meaningful land speak of that you can do anything useful on. Crime is high; two of my co-workers who live there have each had their cars broken into no fewer than four times apiece in the past couple of years, in supposedly safe neighborhoods.

Families have mostly fled due to the aforementioned issues, so the public schools are terrible. It is a miserable place to raise children unless you have the money to put them in an expensive mostly-Asian enclave private school where they will develop an inferiority complex if they are not complete geniuses who are heading toward young adulthood mental breakdowns to due to excessive parental pressure.

Not to mention that I would have had a one-hour-each-way commute to work, which I would be tied to for 30 years due to the mortgage on an expensive piece of property.

No thanks.

Instead, I gave all of that up and now I live in a nice established neighborhood in a cozy 1,200 square foot house with good schools nearby. I can see a mountain from my kitchen window and hot air balloons in the sky every morning. My neighbors all speak fluent English. There are four relatively mild seasons. Utility costs are very low and I have no sewer bill because I have a septic tank. I can walk to almost everything I want: grocery stores, banks, ATMs, restaurants, a park, a post office, a UPS store, a hardware store, a CVS, things like that. Internet is actually faster than it was living in the bay area, and for less money too. My property has enough room that I will probably be able to grow an enormous amount of food on it. I honestly don't feel like I gave up anything to live here. It is a wonderful lower-stress life with more freedom and friendlier people from a culture closer to my own. No amount of money can buy this in San Francisco. Deciding to live there permanently would have been insanity from my perspective. My only regret is that I bought a house whose structure is wood rather than masonry, and on a slab rather than a crawlspace.

[Tyler]

In other words, you gave up on being one of the mass affluent which is the net worth/income level where the American Dream still exists (for now).  Why? 

I imagine my net worth today is far greater than nearly all of my high-income friends with jumbo mortgages in the Bay Area.  Rather than wasting it on simple baubles or burning through it for a house with a Bay View, I saved up to purchase the most valuable luxury item I could imagine -- Freedom.  With the freedom to never work again, and indentured debt servitude in my past, I feel like I'm living like a king. 

And trust me -- people do notice.  Managing envy in friends and family is one of my bigger concerns these days.  I'd actually prefer for most people to assume we're struggling a little than to know the full story of our finances.  People finance expensive houses and cars all the time, so that's not always an indicator of actual wealth.  But you can't fake not going to work every day. 

We ultimately left the Bay Area because we did the math.  If we moved to Texas we would be financially independent in less than two years.  For a similar lifestyle in the Bay Area, we'd need to continue working at the same pace an additional ten years.  As the ever-accelerating work culture was causing us great stress to our health, happiness, and relationship, staying didn't seem like a reasonable tradeoff.  A former boss once joked over lunch that if I liked the Bay Area, it would still be cheaper to buy a home in Texas and fly to California every single weekend to visit than it would be to buy a house on the Peninsula.  I ran the numbers, and he was right.  So we moved. 

Today we're ERE, with all the outward appearances of a normal middle-class couple who just happen to do a lot of gardening on weekday afternoons and are way less stressed out than most people.  That's the definition of the American Dream to me. 

[MachineGhost]

Very good replies, thanks!

It seems like a huge factor of what makes living in cities such as SF, LA and NYC overexpensive are the wealthy foreigners.  And even xxxxx-Americans don't really have that much ability to move to flyover country where they will no longer be part of a majority minority, but have to put up with the racism, prejudice and an alien culture.  So these Big Cities have a majority minority culture premium.  That's part of the deal.

But, one of the things I get the impression of people that live in these Big Cities is if you can afford to live in such places, you also easily have enough income to take advantage of the division of labor when it comes to restrictions, i.e. not being able to grow an organic vegetable garden (which I admit, I didn't think of!), hence you have startup Web v2.0 fresh organic produce delivery services popping up like FullCircle or whatever.  That's the epitome of capitalistic success on a number of levels, both consumer and producer.  Yet, if you move to flyover country to be able to have your own garden, you'll just switch from being a consumer to being a producer.  Either way, it'll cost you time or currency.  Which is better?

I think it really all comes down to how do you really want to spend your remaining time on Earth?  How soon will that Bay View fall victim to the ever present hedonistic tolerance and then all the other negatives of Big City living that you can't buy your way out of passively-aggressively accumulate until you just explode or emigrate?  That's exactly what white people seem to do, but I think the race & cultural factor plays a much larger role than anyone is willing to admit.  It may not be race per se (except to knuckleheads in the South) so much as cultural non-assimilation, but that's another subject.

P.S.  I was pretty sure PS was Asian, but now I think he's just a Tiny Tim!    Awww, dontcha just love him:

[align=center][/align]

[Pointedstick]

I think it's a very astute and correct observation that high tolerance for minorities attracts them to the big cities, creating a housing premium. I hadn't thought of that. However it's not so cut-and-dried that there's nowhere else for minorities to go. The South is full of black people, and many are leaving the Rust Belt cities and moving down south to take advantage of all the same advantages that white people want when they move to Texas or Indiana or whatever. Same with Hispanics and the southwest. Here in New Mexico self-identified hispanics make up 47% of the population (but 68% of residents also identify as "white," go figure), and that's not just a big city thing; there are suburban and rural hispanics everywhere. There are parts of Arizona, California, and Texas that are similar. I do think it's true that Asians of all kinds don't have any ethnically-distinct flyover country suburbs of their own. And you see them in absolutely massive numbers in the whole bay area.

I think you're also right about the micro-entrepreneurship that's prevalent in the big cities that allows people to buy their way out of some but not all of the annoyances of city living. But in the end, money is just time too, so I think your preference on this front comes down to your level of comfort with being dependent on others. When you invest your time in a vegetable garden, you have a more direct and less dependent relationship on other people than if you invest your time in working and invest the money from your work into patronizing a business that delivers fresh vegetables to you. In the end, I personally far prefer more independence, and note that all the people I know who love the big city are uncomfortable with independence to a certain degree, and take comfort in a sort of web of mutual interdependence that I find stifling. None of those people would be happy in a smaller city elsewhere, despite the lower cost of living.

[Tyler]

I believe that the cultural preferences regarding city life are independent from antiquated north/south stereotypes. 

[img width=500]http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/wp-c ... ty_map.png[/img]

I think it really all comes down to how do you really want to spend your remaining time on Earth? 

I agree.  And in my experience, one's answer to this question may change over time.  A wise person plans ahead to allow for the eventual change. 

[MachineGhost]

That's a very interesting map, but it looks like it still follows the Mason-Dixon and Missouri Lines in regards to diversity more or less.  I'm actually pretty amazed the flyover country MidWest is still overwhelmingly white, but clearly the South is no longer.  With all the right-wing propaganda you can read nowadays, you would have thought "them damn foreigners" had invaded and colonized every nook and cranny of the good ol' US of A.

Anyway, it looks like I'm living in the least white county in the entire country.  Wow!  The white emigration over the past 26 years must have been massive.  The stats look as expected, but SF being the Asian epicenter is quite newish to me.

US Census 2010 Diversity Index

1. New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA CSA
51.7% Non-Hispanic White
21.7% Hispanic
15.3% Black
9.0% Asian and Pacific Islander
3.2% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.653

2. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside, CA CSA
44.9% Hispanic
33.6% Non-Hispanic White
12.3% Asian and Pacific Islander
6.6 Black
4.5% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.664

3. Chicago-Naperville-Michigan City, IL-IN-WI CSA
55.5% Non-Hispanic White
20.4% Hispanic
17.0% Black
5.5% Asian and Pacific Islander
2.4% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.618

4. Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia, DC-MD-VA-WV CSA
53.2% Non-Hispanic White
25.7% Black
10.6% Hispanic
7.6% Asian and Pacific Islander
3.3% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.633

5. Boston-Worcester-Manchester, MA-RI-NH CSA
77.7% Non-Hispanic White
8.9% Hispanic
5.4% Black
5.0% Asian and Pacific Islander
2.6% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.382

6. San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA CSA
43.0% Non-Hispanic White
24.1% Hispanic
22.8% Asian and Pacific Islander
6.2% Black
5.4% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.699

7. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX CSA
51.9% Non-Hispanic White
26.7% Hispanic
14.2% Black
5.2% Asian and Pacific Islander
2.8% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.636

8. Philadelphia-Camden-Vineland, PA-NJ-DE-MD CSA
65.4% Non-Hispanic White
19.1% Black
8.8% Hispanic
4.6% Asian and Pacific Islander
2.4% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.525

9. Houston-Baytown-Huntsville, TX CSA
40.0% Non-Hispanic White
35.1% Hispanic
16.8% Black
6.4% Asian and Pacific Islander
3.0% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.684

10. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Gainesville, GA-AL CSA
51.5% Non-Hispanic White
31.0% Black
10.7% Hispanic
4.6% Asian
2.4% Two or More Races
Diversity Index:.625

11. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL MSA
41.6% Hispanic
34.8% Non-Hispanic White
19.7% Black
2.5% Two or More Races
2.2% Asian and Pacific Islander
Diversity Index:.666

[dragoncar]

And even xxxxx-Americans don't really have that much ability to move to flyover country where they will no longer be part of a majority minority, but have to put up with the racism, prejudice and an alien culture.  So these Big Cities have a majority minority culture premium.  That's part of the deal.

Bingo for me.  When I consider housing in other regions (which is often), I also don't compare SF proper, but to a small town outside the normal commute distance from SF.  There are plenty of places within the SF sphere of influence where you can get a typical middle class American Dream house for very comparable amounts (not comparable to true flyover country, but comparable to metros like Houston, etc).  And the fact is I can work part time in this area (obtaining non linear increase in happiness) and still beat the pants off income in non-metro areas.

MG did you ever get specific as to where you live?  Sounds like CA.

PS what SF capital gains tax do you refer to?  Hopefully I don't need to pay back taxes!

[Pointedstick]

Oops, I was wrong, it's not a city capital gains tax, but rather a flat city income tax (1.5%), just like NYC has. So you're already paying it.

[Libertarian666]

Yup!  My vote for what's "destroying" the middle class:

1) Credit cards.

2) The car.

3) Large suburban tract housing.

4) Shopping malls.

You forgot the WMD: student loan debt.

[Tyler]

You forgot the WMD: student loan debt.

[img width=400]http://ace.mu.nu/Windows-Live-Writer/Ov ... _11s_2.jpg[/img]

[dragoncar]

Oops, I was wrong, it's not a city capital gains tax, but rather a flat city income tax (1.5%), just like NYC has. So you're already paying it.

Interesting I never heard of this because it's not really an income tax.  It's a payroll tax, and I certainly wasn't offered  1.5% less than my peers in other cities.

[Libertarian666]

"Average" now means that you have a cell phone and a computer. It means that every family has a car, and it means that to be employable in most anything with decent pay and upward mobility, you have to have a college degree. The standards of "average" ratchet up if you follow that "average" path. ... I think it's pretty obvious that average is harder now that it was before. What does this mean? I don't know. But it doesn't seem like a positive development for society in general.

One thing I've observed is that a good deal of middle-class debt goes to purchase the signals of the upper-class -- expensive homes, cars, college degrees, fancy clothes, smart watches, etc.  Well-meaning government has even exacerbated this problem by explicitly expanding credit for homes and degrees to "help" middle-class families.  But people have (once again) confused correlation and causation.  A large home, three cars, and a college degree does not make one upper-class.  In fact, the debt used to acquire them is an anchor against upward-mobility.  Social facades are expensive and unsustainable, and we're starting to see the cracks.

I totally agree with all this.  Too many people are trying to "keep up" to be happy.

But I still think I have to ask... take a 40-hour per week unskilled worker in 1965 and ask him to pay for rent in a modest apartment, get healthy food at the grocery store, pay for medical care, buy clothes, and get himself around town...

Is he better off, or is a guy doing the EXACT same thing in 2015 better off?

I honestly don't know for sure.  But if I had to put money on it, I'd say the guy in 1965.

Don't get me wrong, there's so much more nuance to throw on top of all this, including if you give him a family of 5 to support, but I have to wonder...

This is very politically incorrect, but I believe feminism has a lot to do with this issue, that is, the reason that you now need two incomes is because a lot of women have entered the labor force, but aren't doing anything terribly productive.

I'm not talking about you, WiseOne, or any of the other small fraction of women who are doing useful work. I'm talking about the paper-shuffling jobs that women primarily work in, including corporate, government and academic jobs where nothing is produced but more paper. It stands to reason that if about half of the population is doing things that don't actually need to be done, average productivity is going to be much lower, and you will need two jobs to make as much in real terms as you did with one job when there were half as many people doing about the same amount of useful work.

Ok, let the lambasting begin!

[Pointedstick]

It's not just women; a lot of men do that kind of useless make-work, too.

But I'm thinking of how most blue-collar work tends to be all-male, and nearly all of that stuff is "useful." The more educated and white-collar you get, the easier it is to disguise low productivity with a lot of corporate/academic/government bullshit and doublespeak.

If women eschew certain fields of work that are guaranteed to be very useful, and tend to gravitate more towards the fields where it's easier to be comfortably unproductive, then almost by definition, the averages would suggest that women as a blob would have less aggregate productivity even if every individual woman had an identical propensity towards unproductively as a man did. It also suggests that in this hypothetical situation, if all the men were automated out of their blue-collar jobs, the rates of unproductively would even out.

[rickb]

This is very politically incorrect, but I believe feminism has a lot to do with this issue, that is, the reason that you now need two incomes is because a lot of women have entered the labor force, but aren't doing anything terribly productive.

I'm not talking about you, WiseOne, or any of the other small fraction of women who are doing useful work. I'm talking about the paper-shuffling jobs that women primarily work in, including corporate, government and academic jobs where nothing is produced but more paper. It stands to reason that if about half of the population is doing things that don't actually need to be done, average productivity is going to be much lower, and you will need two jobs to make as much in real terms as you did with one job when there were half as many people doing about the same amount of useful work.

Ok, let the lambasting begin!

Seriously?  Here's a list of the 25 most common full time occupations for women: http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/most_common ... n.htm  Of these which would you classify as not useful?  I suspect you're thinking about secretaries and administrative assistants, and possibly receptionists and information clerks.  Anything else?  Let's throw in general office clerks as well.  This is a total of a little more than 17% of full time women working in the most common 25 occupations. Let's see.  83% of full time working women are doing jobs like teaching, nursing, supervising and managing other workers, accounting, etc etc while about 17% are perhaps arguably pushing paper around.  Which one of these would you call a "small fraction"?

Perhaps you've been watching a little too much Mad Men.  The world is not like that any more and hasn't been for 50 years.   

[Libertarian666]

This is very politically incorrect, but I believe feminism has a lot to do with this issue, that is, the reason that you now need two incomes is because a lot of women have entered the labor force, but aren't doing anything terribly productive.

I sort of agree, though I would not necessarily blame "feminism".  Cultural shifts are sort of like the path of a river.  It will shift over long periods of time, and it is difficult, IMO, to say what caused the shift.

Anyway, my view is that a number of things have happened over the years to counter the reduction in wages (and therefore on household income) that businesses naturally desire:

1. Spouse works outside the home
2. Tap home equity, which works because of falling interest rates
3. Consumer credit (unsecured debt)

I'm not sure what other sources of money are left to tap.  The pro-suffering people probably would prefer debtors prisons - think of all the business opportunities!

I'm not talking about you, WiseOne, or any of the other small fraction of women who are doing useful work. I'm talking about the paper-shuffling jobs that women primarily work in, including corporate, government and academic jobs where nothing is produced but more paper. It stands to reason that if about half of the population is doing things that don't actually need to be done, average productivity is going to be much lower, and you will need two jobs to make as much in real terms as you did with one job when there were half as many people doing about the same amount of useful work.

This efficiency argument is bunk, IMO.  I would think the people that actually do the hiring are in the best position to know what is efficient and useful and what is not.

The people who actually do the hiring, especially in large corporations, are subject to government regulations that they are likely to fall afoul of if they don't hire at least the "right" number of minorities and women. I know that in at least one big corporation that shall remain nameless, once a woman gets to a certain position in the hierarchy, it is almost impossible for her to lose her job regardless of how she performs. Of course HR won't say that is their policy, because that would sound unfair (:P) but that is the policy.

[Libertarian666]

This is very politically incorrect, but I believe feminism has a lot to do with this issue, that is, the reason that you now need two incomes is because a lot of women have entered the labor force, but aren't doing anything terribly productive.

I'm not talking about you, WiseOne, or any of the other small fraction of women who are doing useful work. I'm talking about the paper-shuffling jobs that women primarily work in, including corporate, government and academic jobs where nothing is produced but more paper. It stands to reason that if about half of the population is doing things that don't actually need to be done, average productivity is going to be much lower, and you will need two jobs to make as much in real terms as you did with one job when there were half as many people doing about the same amount of useful work.

Ok, let the lambasting begin!

Seriously?  Here's a list of the 25 most common full time occupations for women: http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/most_common ... n.htm  Of these which would you classify as not useful?  I suspect you're thinking about secretaries and administrative assistants, and possibly receptionists and information clerks.  Anything else?  Let's throw in general office clerks as well.  This is a total of a little more than 17% of full time women working in the most common 25 occupations. Let's see.  83% of full time working women are doing jobs like teaching, nursing, supervising and managing other workers, accounting, etc etc while about 17% are perhaps arguably pushing paper around.  Which one of these would you call a "small fraction"?

Perhaps you've been watching a little too much Mad Men.  The world is not like that any more and hasn't been for 50 years. 

All of those, other than nursing, are overhead. Some of them are needed due to excessive government regulation, but none of them produce anything.

Of course a lot of men do similar jobs, but a lot of men also do actual jobs that produce output. Very few women do.

[Pointedstick]

It's not just government that causes the rise in useless managerial/clerical work; the modern mega-corporation seemingly requires an extensive bureaucratic apparatus to function, and most of the people who make up this hierarchy are dead weight, producing no products and supporting the production of no products, but rather telling the actual producers and support personnel how to do their jobs and jerking them around.

But these jobs are hardly destroying the middle class. If anything, I'd say they're increasingly the bread and butter of the middle class, whose members have been socially conditioned to scorn blue-collar work but aren't bright enough for the high-paying industries.