Middle Class Is Disappearing, at Least From Vocabulary of Possible 2016 Contenders
By AMY CHOZICK

Hillary Rodham Clinton calls them “everyday Americans.” Scott Walker prefers “hard-working taxpayers.” Rand Paul says he speaks for “people who work for the people who own businesses.” Bernie Sanders talks about “ordinary Americans.”

The once ubiquitous term “middle class” has gone conspicuously missing from the 2016 campaign trail, as candidates and their strategists grasp for new terms for an unsettled economic era. The phrase, long synonymous with the American dream, now evokes anxiety, an uncertain future and a lifestyle that is increasingly out of reach.

The move away from “middle class” is the rhetorical result of a critical shift: After three decades of income gains favoring the highest earners and job growth being concentrated at the bottom of the pay scale, the middle has for millions of families become a precarious place to be.

A social stratum that once signified a secure, aspirational lifestyle, with a house in the suburbs, children set to attend college, retirement savings in the bank and, maybe, an occasional trip to Disneyland now connotes fears about falling behind, sociologists, economists and political scientists say.

That unease spilled out during conversations with voters in focus groups convened by Democratic pollsters in recent months.

“The cultural consensus around what it means to be ‘middle class’ — and that has very much been part of the national identity in the United States — is beginning to shift,” said Sarah Elwood, a professor at the University of Washington and an author of a paper about class identity that one Clinton adviser had studied.

Rising costs mean many families whose incomes fall in the middle of the national distribution can no longer afford the trappings of what was once associated with a middle-class lifestyle. That has made the term, political scientists say, lose its resonance.

“We have no collective language for talking about that condition,” Dr. Elwood said.

The result is a presidential campaign in which every candidate desperately wants to appeal to middle-class Americans — broadly defined as working-age households with annual incomes of $35,000 to $100,000 — but does not know how to address them. That has led to some linguistic maneuvering.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, has said what makes America unique are the “millions and millions of people who aren’t rich.” Mr. Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is seeking the Democratic nomination, has talked about “working families” and “people working full time.” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican, has made “hard-working men and women across America” the focus of his message.

“It used to be ‘middle class’ represented everyone, actually or in their aspirations, but now it doesn’t feel as attainable,” said David Madland, the managing director of economic policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the Clinton campaign. “You see politicians and others grasping for the right word to talk about a majority of Americans.”

Candidates realize they cannot win election without widespread appeal among the 51 percent of Americans who, according to Gallup, identify as middle or upper-middle class. That compares with an average of 60 percent who identified the same way in polls conducted from 2000 through 2008.

But sociologists say such surveys obscure how Americans feel about the characterization — and how much the middle class has shrunk. They call the new economy an “hourglass,” with a concentration of wealth at the top, low-paying service jobs at the bottom and “a spectacular loss of median-wage jobs in the middle,” said William Julius Wilson, a sociologist and Harvard professor.

In surveys, more Americans still choose ‘middle class’ when asked which category they belong to, because they do not want to identify as rich or poor and because no new phrase exists to describe middle-income earners who view their social class as vulnerable. Working class, once associated with manufacturing jobs, now mostly connotes low-paying service jobs.

“People are looking for some way to say, ‘I recognize I’m a little below the middle,’ ” said Dennis Gilbert, a professor of sociology at Hamilton College who has published books on American class structure.

Before presidential campaigns tested replacement terms, academics started to adopt phrases like the “near poor” or “the sandwich generation.” After the Great Depression, “submerged middle class” became popular to describe families who could rise if aided by the New Deal.

“What do you call people who don’t have good jobs but who aren’t poor?” said Andrew J. Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Labor’s Love Lost,” about the rise and fall of working families.

The words may be endangered, but the idyllic image of the American middle class that took hold after World War II and became the backbone of everything from selling appliances to pitching presidential candidates still looms large on the campaign trail. When candidates talk about the middle class, they increasingly use the words as a nostalgic term, a reminder about what the American economy has been and what it could again become — with the right president, of course.

The 67-year-old Mrs. Clinton regularly walks down memory lane with stories about her middle-class upbringing in the suburbs of Chicago, invoking an era when parents who were not rich could raise a child who would become a senator, a secretary of state and a potential president.

In addition to her signature phrase, “everyday Americans,” Mrs. Clinton often says: “We need to make the middle class mean something again.” The line, her campaign said, was informed by the growing school of thought that in 2015, “middle class” makes a majority of voters more anxious than optimistic.

“In the 1960s, ‘middle class’ felt like it fit your lifestyle,” said Felicia Wong, the president and chief executive of the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank with ties to Mrs. Clinton’s economic team.

Even if families fall in the middle in income distribution, they cannot afford many of the necessities, much less the luxuries, traditionally associated with being middle class, Ms. Wong said.

Household incomes for the middle class have been stagnant, while the costs of middle-class security — which economists define as child care, higher education, health care, housing and retirement — increased by more than $10,000 from 2000 to 2012, according to a Center for American Progress report, “Middle-Class Squeeze.”

“If you’re technically in the 50th percentile in income distribution but you can’t afford to send your kids to college or take a vacation, are you middle class or not?” Ms. Wong said.

But skeptics say that “everyday Americans” and the other phrases candidates use to fill the void are overly vague and upbeat and obscure a bleak reality.

“If you had a candidate running around talking about the ‘submerged middle class,’ voters would run the other way,” said Frank Levy, an economist and professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The phrases can be awkward, too, or slow to catch on. Mrs. Clinton has a mantra: “Everyday Americans need a champion.” But when she visited a high school in Las Vegas last week to talk about immigration, she found the students had welcomed her with a handmade sign with her campaign slogan. They had botched the punctuation — and a bit of the meaning, though perhaps it still resonated. “Everyday, Americans need a champion,” it read.

選戰不再提起 美中產階級消失

希拉蕊稱他們為「普通美國人」。渥克比較喜歡用「勤奮的納稅人」。保羅自稱為「企業主的員工」代言。桑德斯談的是「平凡的美國人」。

紐約時報報導，「中產階級」一詞曾經無所不在，如今卻在2016總統大選消失無蹤。面對動盪的經濟時期，候選人和策士努力尋找新詞因應。過去和「美國夢」是同義詞的中產階級，現在勾起的是焦慮、不確定的未來、愈來愈遙不可及的生活方式。

2011年，牛津英文字典宣布的年度字彙是「squeezed middle」，意指「窘迫的中產階級」。認為這個字彙充分表現當時經濟景況的嚴峻及一般人的主要感受。

紐時指出，過去卅年收入在金字塔頂端的美國人繼續荷包滿滿，增加的工作則集中低薪職缺。中產階級從「窘迫」到「消失」還不到四年。

廣義來說，中產階級指的是年收入在三萬五千到十萬美元（約台幣一百一十萬至三百一十萬元）的工作年齡家戶，在市郊有房子，子女準備念大學，銀行戶頭有退休儲蓄，偶爾可以來趟闔家迪士尼之旅。

但在生活花費高漲後，收入仍為在中段區間的家戶，再也無法享受昔日中產階級生活方式，「中產階級」一詞也就無法引起共鳴。

威斯康辛大學政治系教授艾伍德說：「我們還沒有描述此情況的共同語彙」。這也是為何問鼎白宮大位的政治人物，一方面努力討好中產階級，又必須另覓詞語來稱呼這群人。

蓋洛普民調顯示，百分之五十一美國人自認屬於中產或中上階級。2000至2008年時，平均數據為百分之六十。

哈佛大學社會學教授威爾森批評，民調業者還在用中產階級一詞提問，卻未注意到新經濟的沙漏特質：財富集中在金字塔頂端，增加的職缺多屬低薪的服務業。

漢米爾頓學院社會系教授吉伯特表示：「人們正在尋找表達自己略為低於中產階級的說法」。學界已經開始用「近貧」、「三明治世代」等來形容。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/us/politics/as-middle-class-fades-so-does-use-of-term-on-campaign-trail.html

2015-05-13．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯張佑生