Middle Class Lifeboat Blog

 As we continue tracking the state of the life for the middle class in America, it is becoming clear that the worse things get the brighter prospects look for the emergence of a saner, more secure and sustainable future. All the signs listed below are snatched from recent headlines. Click over to the Middle-Class Advocacy Institute for links to the full stories, as well as for articles on how “bad news” is bringing about signs that thanks to ordinary folks our country is beginning to head in a more sustainable and sane way of life.It’s vital that we see such news a “good” and not slip back into unworkable ways of living at the first hint that we might not have to. We do and we are! Now here’s the good news!

*  There’s a silver lining to the on-going rash of layoffs: more Americans are becoming free agents. As the article points out this is good news for both the economy and for individuals and families who are having more flexibility and control over their daily lives and future security.

* Six million consumers pare back on “extras” Americans are starting to ask “Do I really need this?”

* After doubling in size, new homes are now shrinking as owners think smaller is better. 

*Used car sales rise as consumers become more prudent, another sign that consumers are foregoing our unsustainable throw-away lifestyle.

*Americans are questioning the role of rich. Our belief that the wealthy are worthy is waning. Here’s a tellingquote from this thought-provoking  LA Times opinion piece “Americans consistently supported fiscal policies that undermined middle- and working-class interests partially because they saw themselves as rich-people-in-waiting: Given time, toil and the magic of compound interest, anyone could retire a millionaire. That mind-set has all but been eradicated by the damage sustained by the average worker’s nest egg, combined with the spectacle of bankers and financial engineers maintaining their lifestyles with multimillion-dollar bonuses while the submerged 99% struggle for oxygen.”

*We’re saving money by saving our favorite shoes and cobbling together shoe-repair savings. In yet another step away from our throw-away culture of the past, people are having their shoes repaired instead of trashing them for new ones.

*Laid off workers are building business plans instead of resumes. Weary of looking for work, some are creating their own. If they are starting businesses or self-employment in their local communities, this is a very promising sign for the emergence of a more sustainable locally -based economy.

*Even those with a regular income are reassessing their spending habits, perhaps for the long term. Extravagance is hitting its limits as belt tightening trickles upward. Such changes in mind set will allow us all more time to adjust to declining natural resources. If only we will.

* With a family facing foreclosure every 13 seconds, new controversial legislation may help. The House votes to let judges change the term limits on mortgages. This is the kind of legal flexibility is vital to being able to address the challenges we will face as our economy make the shift from overspending to living within the bounds of personal and natural resources.

* Residents ban companies from drawing or selling their water. A town in Maine has taken a stand and closed the tap on water privatization. We can’t live without water; it must remain a local resource available to all. More communities will need to take such a stand to secure their future.

“Global economic crisis is forcing small communities to become economically independent and self-sufficient …The localization is the preferred, if not the only, road to survival.”  Carolyn Baker Speaking Truth to Power

The plight of the middle class is finally in front and center with a national administration.  This week Obama  told the nation: It’s time for the rich to lighten the load on the middle class.

He will attempt to shift the tax burden for our flailing economy from the backs of the middle class to those who are not suffering as significantly as most. But while this may make one more mortgage or credit card payment possible, this is not going to save us from slipping into a society of rich and poor.

Obama is still speaking optimistically of how our nation will return to a growth economy that sounds like renewing the consuming and borrowing that led to this economic calamity.  With shrinking resources, this is not going to happen and as long as we in the middle class keep “waiting out” the current economic situation,  we and our families will sink right along with a dysfunctional  way of life.

But there are some very encouraging signs of late that indicate larger numbers of us are waking up to the fact that we’ve got to change the way we live. On our Middle Class Advocacy Institute website, for months we’ve posting updates of news reports on middle class peril and we’re seeing a  significant shift in the nature of the articles.

For some time reports have focused mainly on bad economic news across all sectors: jobs, daily life, housing, education, retirement, and so forth. Lately, however, you’ll see there’s a growing focus on the ways people are simplifying, adjusting their lives, and living more within their means.  Defying, so to speak, the siren call to shop, shop, shop, spend, spend, spend, and if necessary borrow to do it.

Many of the features are still cast in a downbeat light and posed as something people are having to do temporarily until “things get back to normal.” We must resist this take on the adjustments we’re making. 

Steps like turning to home cooking instead of eating out, enjoying entertainment in our own homes and communities instead of traveling, planting food gardens in our yards, line drying our clothes, sharing households, swapping and trading services instead of shopping at the malls, each are the subject of a recent update on our site. They may seem like signs of bad times, but in fact, they are signs of what works. Signs of what healthy, sustainable local economies will look like in the future.

For over a decade at least, a wealth of experts familiar with climate change, peak oil and other indications of resource depletion underlying our current economic crises have been urging us to take steps just such as these, including making plans to rely more on marine transportation, another trend we just posted as an update on today.  Now what have advised for so long is happening.

Granted a sustainable economy that doesn’t entice us into living beyond our means while working longer hours, sometimes at multiple jobs is going to seem labor intensive, time-consuming and inconvenient. And for some time it will be. It is difficult to adopt a simpler life while having to juggle all the bills, complexities and responsibilities to stay afloat in a declining economy.

That is our plight for now. We must do double duty. Work at a job,  if we still have one, at the same time building a more locally based, self-sufficient life we can actually afford and  eventually enjoy. 

Taxing those who have far more than most will help greatly to speed up this shift, because as is already happening, they too will be called upon to start living more sustainably. That’s the subject of another recent update. This will keep the gap between the rich and the poor from growing, level the playing field, bring us together in a mission to find a new way to live.

So here several temptations we must resist: “waiting this out,” spending money we don’t have, borrowing to spend for things we don’t need, pretending none of this is happening, thinking this too shall pass, feeling sorry for ourselves that things aren’t the way they used to be, and thinking that the government will “fix” things.

Only we can fix things, not individually, but by coming together in our own local communities. Figuring out together how we can grow our own food locally, produce our own renewable energy, buying things we need locally, enjoying local entertainment, and providing services and products our friends and neighbors need.

Seems like an impossible, unpleasant task? Think again. To see how folks in your and other communities are doing just this and feeling good about their emerging lives, visit Transitions USA, read their stories, see if there’s a group in your area and if not, contact us for how you can get one started. 

We Need for National Policies for Middle-Class Health 
by Paul Edwards

 “The way to put money into the hands of working people is to make sure they have access to good jobs at good wages.”
                                                Robert Herbert, New York Times

In Sarah’s and my book Middle-Class Lifeboat we have written about the many things middle-class individuals and families can do to safeguard their own futures in today’s changing global economy, but there are many things we as individuals cannot do on our own to offset its threatening effects on our security.

In a democratic society such as ours, the role of government is to safeguard those aspects of life that no one individual or family can do alone. National government policies can play a large role in either easing or exacerbating the economic pressures felt by the middle class. They can also facilitate or complicate our ability to take the steps we need to take to protect ourselves.

Although the middle class includes the majority of the American population, there are other powerful national stakeholders and their interests do not always correspond with those of the middle class. We can’t assume government will automatically base public policy around our needs. Nor can we assume they will provide an infrastructure for adapting to today’s dramatically changing economic and environmental realities. We must define what needs to be done that only government can do and be sure that they do it by organizing for and voting in a government with policies that will support our future as a multi-cultural nation of predominately middle-class individuals and families.

If we don’t do this, signs are that we will become yet another nation composed mainly of a select few elite who are rich and a vast mass of struggling poor. Already, many middle-class families are struggling and the gap between rich and poor is growing astonishingly wider

Reversing the trends that are causing so many Americans to believe our nation is headed in the wrong direction will require us to act now with the spirit and inventiveness that created this nation and has preserved it again and again when tested in the heat of conflict and the chill of crisis. We urgently need innovation to spur sustainable quality job creation, a healthy workforce, a well-educated workforce, a secure workforce, committed leaders who will do what needs to be done and reliable, fair ways to pay for it.

Even in the face of today’s dramatic change, we can have a country where everyone has a fair chance to use his or her talents and earn a living. We can have a country where we can go to bed knowing that should we or a family member, become ill, care will be available. We can have a country where our children are prepared to take their place in a promising future.

In this spirit, we will be proposing a wide-range of National Policies for Sustaining a Healthy Middle Class. We need, and can have, jobs for today and jobs for tomorrow!

(c) Paul Edwards, 2008