Sigh. The Pew-WSJ pissfest misses the point: it's the VOLATILITY, stupid.

Sure, I make  more than my (upper middle-class) father did. But he supported seven kids on one income, and I'm struggling to take care of two kids.

And he never had to worry about the economic asteroids that I and every other American breadwinner outside the Hedgehog bracket worry about every day, to wit:

--will my company suddenly go into a tailspin and cause me to lose my job, hence have to pay COBRA rates for health insurance for my kids, hence consider moving out of the area and (potentially) becoming a distressed real estate seller in a down RE market?

-- Will I have to dip into my 401k?

-- If I can't afford to live in Scarsdale/Newton/MenloPark/HighlandPark/Bloomfield Hills, then can I afford private schools for my kids?

--how can I take advantage of market volatility when I lack enough in liquid assets to diversify adequately and ride out losses in one or more asset classes?

Bottom line: the massive risk-shifting that's occurred in the last 25 years means that households now bear the brunt of extraordinary amounts of volatility and market exposure. Yuppies without kids have no problem handling that risk/exposure-- if a 25 year-old buck goes without health insurance for a year (or more), big deal; if he loses his job and has to pick up his bike and sell his Honda to move across country, no hardship there. Ditto for the executive class that can afford to put their kids in private schools and for whom the job market is always rigged to favor the same small circle of insiders.

But for WORKING FAMILIES, it's another story altogether. The vast majority of Americans are not mobile, cannot afford to ignore the quality of the schools and school districts, and cannot easily and seamlessly surf the waves of volatility churned up by our brave new Market-Is-All-Ye-Know-On-Earth globalized economy.

It's the volatility, stupid.

The implications of the above, which our idiot political class still cannot get through its addled media-obsessed brain, are that we must sever this asinine, crushing link between employment and access to health insurance, and fix our broken relationship with Mexico that is cutting the legs out from under working-class wages and the ethos of social provision in blue-collar neighborhoods.

One more blindingly obvious point ignored by the Pew-WSJ pissfesters: Americans today don't SAVE. Our bread-and-circus economy depends on millions of households spending wildly on cheap asian-made crap that they don't need and can't afford. What our craven workingman's party, the one that's determined to preserve tax breaks enabling billionaire contributors to pay lower effective rates than their housecleaners, can't seem to grasp is that the junk mortgages and pseudo-cheap consumer credit do not make for stable communities, strong families and a healthy working class.

Nearly all the private sector jobs created since 9/11 have been inone sector: care to guess which? Would that be the sector sustained by a tidal wave of fed-engineered liquidity, aka the real estate bubble? Is it really a sign of health when ordinary Americans decide not to learn trades or otherwise engage themselves in useful economic activity and instead scramble to figure out how to flip houses?

Could we please have a debate on economics that focuses squarely on how we build healthy, strong families and strong communities, ones where people are asssured of access to quality, affordable health insurance and good schools and decent public services?

And could the party of the workingman finally start acting like, you know, the party of the working families?

tep, I'm with you.  But the problem politicians face in making the problems you've outlined into real issues are that human beings are notoriously short-sighted.  Yes, that guy or gal with three kids and the low to mid level service sector job with a giant corporation--an assistant manager at WallMart, say--faces a deeply uncertain future, but right now, today, he/she's got a brand spanking new neo-Victorian mansion in the exurbs (made of chip board, but for now it looks great), a 4-runner in the driveway, health insurance, and young kids in public schools that seem a okay.  

Go to people like that with the message, "Your life is built on quicksand!" and they'll feel inclined to run you out of the room.  Nobody likes a party pooper.

Aeromonas, you paint a vivid picture of exactly what's going on. But the truth of it is that the American economy IS built on quicksand now. In fact, it's manifestly insane. The Reagans and the Bushes (and, to some extent, I hate to admit, Clinton) sold Americans on the fairy tale that we could remain an economic superpower while putting ourselves and our g-g-grandkids into hock with China, while allowing our transportation and educational infrastructures to rot, while allowing the social safety net to fray, and while hewing to this weird idea that manufacturing stuff on our own soil was just SO mid-20th century. You couldn't DESIGN a better scenario for wrecking an economic superpower.

It's even worse than that. The source of all human wealth is the planet. I check up on my portfolio regularly, and I check the markets almost daily. But in the back of my mind I know that no matter how good the market might look today, we're just one fishery collapse, pandemic, nuclear catastrophe or molten ice cap away from the day when the importance of  the price of oil pales in comparison to the availability of food, shelter and potable water.

Quicksand, indeed. It may not be fun to talk about, but polling shows that most Americans know we're on the wrong track. If our current and prospective leaders don't have the courage to talk about it NOW, then when?

"It's the volatiltiy stupid."  Well said tep.

aeromonas - one more example, one which doesn't invalidate your point but puts a different spin on it: most Americans say they're happy with their health insurance, and the stats indicate that _at any given moment_, only a small minority of Americans lacks health insurance. But if you look at the % of the population that's been without insurance at any point _over a longer period_, say 2 years, you see that s.t. like a third or more of the population is dodging bullets, or maybe I should say hoping that the fire next time doesn't singe them.

I've no idea how to address this in an effective political manner. Perhaps the best way to raise the issue for an Americn public that relies on hope as if it were oxygen is to emphasize the upside from fixing this mess-- relieving the burden on businesses and working families, liberating lots of pissed-away investment for more productive uses than fielding armies of call-center morons employed solely to deny people benefits, saving the US auto industry, etc etc.

What is clear is that our tacit policy of shifting risk onto the shoulders of those least able to bear it will only put the working classes further and further behind. I should think that would be a central concern of our political class, devising solutions for which ought to be the key test of a candidate's seriousness and fitness for office.

Sully - I'm not sure that our superpower status is in jeopardy, though if the Chinese decide to cash the check we'll be in a pickle. The real threat is to the American ethos of social provision, mobility and opportunities for people without the credentials and higher education needed to thrive in an economy dominated by hyper-volatile markets and the information flows that fuel those markets. In other words, the risk is not that we'll be eclipsed as a nation but that our social model and political ethos will move closer to something like Brazil's or Mexico's. Not so much democratic as _oligarchic_, with the key oligarchs being the moneyfiddlers on both coasts.

The Dems' unbelievable cave-in to the Hedgehogs on the 15% tax issue is perfect evidence of this slide toward oligarchy. Another example: What the hell happened to our party that our former POTUS candidate and current Nobel Peace Prize winner decides to push his political agenda by aligning himself with a group of some of the most cynical and cutthroat investors on the planet?

Maybe I'm exaggerating, but smells like creeping oligarchy to me. It's happening all over the world; no surprise that the most advanced economy in the world isn't immune from it either.