The American Middle Class: A Cultural HistoryLawrence R.Samuel. New York: Routledge, 2014.

Abstract

The Middle Class: A Cultural History Lawrence R. Samuel. New York: Routledge, 2014.Anyone who follows headlines knows that the middle class is in serious trouble. And it's been that way for a long, long time.According to Lawrence R. Samuel, the heyday of America's middle class was the era of the happy homemakers and contented consumers, from the late 1940s to mid-1960s. Ironically, catastrophic forces made its prosperity possible. First came the Great Depression, when almost no one had enough money, and then the Second World War, when there was work for everyone. And what jobs they were, including mid-level management and skilled labor with high union-scale wages. Then add to that mix the legacy of five Democratic presidential administrations that practiced progressive taxing. As a net result, the disparity between the wealth of the highest and lowest classes had been reduced, and the disparity between the highest and lowest wage/salary earners had been flattened. The new middle-class affluence fueled the baby boom: a returning war veteran could earn enough money on his salary alone to support a large family.Raised to think of the United States as a classless, democratic society, Americans are uncomfortable with the very notion of class. But think about it they did. In 1949, Life magazine's influential photographic essay American Community divided citizens into distinct classes based on the status of their home, neighborhood, occupation, and source of income. Most readers saw themselves in the middle-a tendency that continues to this day.Samuel's book surveys what the last half century, one decade at a time, has had to say about the middle class in popular newspapers, magazines, and books. The book has a lot of doom and gloom to consider. In the 1960s, arguments over civil rights, the Vietnam War, and equal rights for women fractured the harmony within the middle class. In the 1970s, inflation plus recession, known as stagflation, reduced purchasing power. In the 1980s, tax breaks for the rich, known as trickle-down economics, moved wealth away from the middle class. In the 1990s, the necessity for moonlighting and the two-career family weakened home life. And in the millennium, the perfect storm of lost jobs, collapsed home values, and shrunken retirement funds eroded the already declining confidence of the middle class.Amazingly throughout this half century, three key points have remained constant. …