Andrea Moed

The Great Society sadly did not work. Or rather, it worked well enough to raise expectations, which were then unfulfilled, which caused Americans to blame their poorer, more-recently-included-in-the-social-contract neighbors for the scarcity they were feeling. The U.S. needs new ways of setting social agendas.

“the very term middle class has become a meaningless catchall for a disparate range of lived financial experiences. No wonder so much policy and rhetoric geared toward this group fails to stick. Who are these policies actually for? And what theoretical problems do they aim to address? Those of the third-generation college-educated social worker, whose parents helped her with a down payment on a house? Or those of the first-gen woman with student loans who holds the same job and lives in a rental apartment? Technically they earn the same wage and both likely see themselves as middle class, but they have extremely different lives because only one is a member of the comfort class.”