I'm not a big Schumer fan.

Michael Maiello — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:51:21 +0000

In reply to Has Obama Lost the Middle Class?

I'm not a big Schumer fan. Okay, I never like anybody. But I do think he has a point here and I think that he particularly has a point as a New York Senator because he represents people in a high tax state with high housing costs. The needs of the kind of people Schumer is talking about really haven't been addressed by Obama in a meaningful way.

Take, for example, health insurance. If you're in the $60-$100K a year range, chances are that all of the drama about health care reform didn't change your life much at all. Your premiums are what they were before reform became law. Your premiums will go up next year, like they did a year ago. Your deductible will go up next year, like it did a year ago. What your insurance covers will not be substantially different for most people in this income group. This is not to say that no good was achieved. Some things are better but they aren't readily apparent and they aren't the big things. We're not getting more care for less money than we were before and it was always clear that our non-catastrophic needs were not a focus of the debate. That said, if we get laid off or something we are in better shape now than we were.

And... um... speaking of laid off. We feel like since a lot of our colleagues got laid off that our wages are too low, our hours are too long and our jobs are too insecure. We also notice that the government went to great lengths to protect banking sector jobs and the jobs of one favored trade union but has left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. Just sayin'.

We're worried about our retirements, by the way, because most of us don't have pensions anymore. Those fixed annuity payments for life were replaced by retirement plans that are portable and flexible but that transfer risk to working people like us. When the transition was first made, companies eased the blow by generously matching worker donations to their 401(k) plans. This was extra deferred compensation that would help us meet our savings needs. We have to save 10-15% of our salaries to have a shot at adequate nest-eggs, and that's a lot for a worker to do with money needed here and now. After the 2001-02 crash, companies made less generous 401(k) matches. After 2008, a lot of them have been stopped altogether. So we're left the burden of supplying 100% of the savings and taking all the risk. Where's Obama on that?

Speaking of savings... how are we supposed to send our kids to college without burdening them with debt?

Finally, what about rising local taxes and rising fees for local services that are eating into the disposable incomes of middle Americans because of the huge budget deficits by states, municipalities and state agencies?

I know that all of these might seem like hollow complaints compared to the difficulties faced by so many Americans and so many people around the world. But I think it is fair to say that the attitude of our government towards people in Schumer's middle income group goes something like, "these people have their challenges, but are mostly well enough off and they don't merit any sort of extraordinary assistance." That's hard to get behind.

This is hardly a new

Michael Wolraich — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:03:28 +0000

In reply to Has Obama Lost the Middle Class?

This is hardly a new phenomon. Remember the "Reagan Democrats"? Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg coined the term in a classic 1984 study that documented the political evolution of Macomb County, Michigan, which had voted overwhelmingly for JFK in 1960 and even more overwhelmingly for Reagan in 1980. Greenberg concluded that the working class whites of Macomb Country resented Democrats' perceived concern for poor minority populations and felt that Reagan was more concerned with their own interests.

dagblog - Comments for "Has Obama Lost the Middle Class?"

I'm not a big Schumer fan.

This is hardly a new