Barbara Ehrenreich: The Nouveau Poor Have Reached Numbers Too Large to Ignore

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



The Nouveau Poor Have Reached Numbers Too Large to Ignore

By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com. Posted January 13, 2009.

As the poor and the formerly middle-class become the new American majority, will they finally have enough status to get their needs met?



Ever on the lookout for the bright side of hard times, I am tempted to delete “class inequality” from my worry list. Less than a year ago, it was the one of the biggest economic threats on the horizon, with even hard line conservative pundits grousing that wealth was flowing uphill at an alarming rate, leaving the middle class stuck with stagnating incomes while the new super-rich ascended to the heavens in their personal jets. Then the whole top-heavy structure of American capitalism began to totter, and –poof!—inequality all but vanished from the public discourse. A financial columnist in the Chicago Sun Times has just announced that the recession is a “great leveler,” serving to “democratize the agony,” as we all tumble into “the Nouveau Poor…”

The media have been pelting us with heart-wrenching stories about the neo-suffering of the Nouveau Poor, or at least the Formerly Super-rich among them: Foreclosures in Greenwich CT! A collapsing market for cosmetic surgery! Sales of Gulfstream jets declining! Niemen Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue on the ropes! We read of desperate measures, like having to cut back the personal trainer to two hours a week. Parties have been canceled; dinner guests have been offered, gasp, baked potatoes and chili. The New York Times relates the story of a New Jersey teenager whose parents were forced to cut her $100 a week allowance and private Pilates classes. In one of the most pathetic tales of all, New Yorker Alexandra Penney relates how she lost her life savings to Bernie Madoff and is now faced with having to lay off her three-day- a-week maid, Yolanda. “I wear a classic clean white shirt every day of the week. I have about 40 white shirts. They make me feel fresh and ready to face whatever battles I may be fighting …” she wrote, but without Yolanda, “How am I going to iron those shirts so I can still feel like a poor civilized person?”

But hard times are no more likely to abolish class inequality than Obama’s inauguration is likely to eradicate racism. No one actually knows yet whether inequality has increased or decreased during the last year of recession, but the historical precedents are not promising. The economists I’ve talked to -- like Biden’s top economic advisor, Jared Bernstein -- insist that recessions are particularly unkind to the poor and the middle class. Canadian economist Armine Yalnizyan says, “Income polarization always gets worse during recessions.” It makes sense. If the stock market has shrunk your assets of $500 million to a mere $250 million, you may have to pass on a third or fourth vacation home. But if you’ve just lost an $8 an hour job, you’re looking at no home at all. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/119360/the_nouveau_poor_have_reached_numbers_too_large_to_ignore/

[fasttense]

1. The poor and soon to be starving are demanding a right to life.

"For those who think “welfare” sounds too radical, we could just call it a “right to life” program, only one in which the objects of concern have already been born."

Economic help for the Nouveau Poor a right to life issue.

[juno jones]

2. Ehrenreich is a muckraker in the old sense of the term

A champion of the poor and workers who isn't afraid to roll up her sleeves and enter our world to get her story.