The Two Americas

It seems that an increasing number of people adhere to the basic populist frame about the state of our economy:

On the other hand, most people still see themselves as "haves" which should blunt the appeal of populist remedies somewhat:

The fact that the trends are diverging is interesting and it's hard to know what to make of it. As you can read here household income is a strong predictor of whether or not you think of yourself as a "have" but there's also a large racial/ethnic component with middle income non-hispanic whites tending to see themselves as "haves" whereas middle income blacks and hispanics tend to see themselves as "have nots." It would be interesting to look at wealth in this regard (it seems like a better correlate of "have"-ness than income anyway) and see how much of the racial element survives independently of wealth effects.

Comments

McSame is shaping up to be a totally incompetent candidate on the economy. He seems clueless, and yes, even dumber than Bush at times, if that is possible.

I think on the economy McSame does not know much, and so he just allows himself to be the puppet of his advisors, like Phil Gramm. In fact, make no mistake, in spite of McSame's lame jokes about Gramm, if McSame were ever elected it would be Gramm dictating economic policy.

That's scary...we need to spit out the Republicans this year and get our economy back.

Posted by cm | July 12, 2008 3:24 PM

cm: thanks for adding to the blog conversation.

Many people say they're "haves" probably because they realize that some have it worse and/or they could be in a worse situation.

As for "middle income blacks and hispanics", part of that may be due to the fact that some feel powerless, but part of it is probably also due to the sleazy, divisive action the Democratic Party is known for.

P.S., a fun fact: in addition to being a "longtime troll" here, I also run a blog at my name's link.

Posted by TLB | July 12, 2008 3:42 PM

From what I can tell from the link, it looks like you were asked the second question regardless of your answer on the first. If you don't think America is divided into haves and haven-nots, you might have a little trouble deciding which one describes you, but I see "neither" or "don't know" only gets 10 percent. Not sure what to make of that.

Posted by too many steves | July 12, 2008 3:46 PM

It would be interesting to look at wealth in this regard (it seems like a better correlate of "have"-ness than income anyway) and see how much of the racial element survives independently of wealth effects.

It might also be that one of the things you can "have" is enforceable rights, and that some people believe--rightly or wrongly--that their rights are less enforceable than those of others. It would be interesting to see how the difference between have/have not tracks the difference in something like, "Do you trust the police?"

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 12, 2008 3:53 PM

As far as the first graph goes, I think I'm of the opinion that time makes more converts than reason on a question like that. So many people have been using that meme to advocate certain policy positions that people are beginning to believe it in spite of the evidence.

Posted by Jeff | July 12, 2008 3:59 PM

also due to the sleazy, divisive action the Democratic Party is known for.

Yeah, like supporting Civil Rights and opposing housing discrimination. Oh, and integrating the schools. The divisive bastards.

It's interesting to watch the netroots freak out over FISA* and totally ignore the bankruptcy bill. The bankruptcy bill is at least as far-reaching as FISA from a policy perspective, and it will probably have a direct impact on millions more Americans.

If i had to sum up Obama's policy approach, I'd say it's not really that populist. He's instead got this really midwestern fairness agenda, combined with a sense that the common good matters, and people will be responsive to it when they understand what's at stake. He really does bet on the decency and smarts of the American people.

There's a long streak of that kind of politics in a lot of the upper midwest. It reminds me of "Minnesota nice," which you saw play out in public policy in 2004 in Minnesota, when the flu shortage wasn't so mcuh of a problem there, because healthy people willingly gave up their injections to sick people, in large part because there was a coordinated campaign by health providers to really inform them.

When it comes to campaigning, it really seems like he's playing a "tit for tat" strategy--it's reciprocal altrusim in biology. The idea is when presented with a situaiton where you can get screwed, you start out doing the right thing expecting the other player to also do so. And if he doesn't, you then retaliate immediately and completely.

Obama really seems to take that kind of approach. That's his strategy, and he's committing to it. For all the bullshit about him being an elitist, his strategy more than any other depends on the American people being smart and seeing what's really going on. In contrast, McCain's strategy of focusing on the media to carry his water is completely elites-based, and depends on the American people being ignorant and uncurious.

Given that the American people overwhelmingly saw through the Iraq war (a majority never supported the invasion--it only went to a majority supporting it after we'd gone in. And that majority quickly crashed after WMDs were revealed to be a lie, and as Murta put it by 2005, the American people were WAY ahead of the press and DC. They still are.), I think Obama's "trust the American people to be decent and smart" is going to win.

Then again, if the media keeps flat-out lying for McCain, it does get much harder.

Posted by anonymous | July 12, 2008 4:19 PM

In my case, though I feel like a "have," I'm noticing that more and more people in my circle of friends and acquaintances, and even my extended family, are among the "have nots." If there are a lot like me, the worsening polarization could push people toward calling for more social justice even if they themselves feel OK.

Posted by BarryG | July 12, 2008 4:20 PM

I'm in "have" camp, but my neighbors are Huguenots, er, "have-nots." Funny thing is, they pull down combined income three times mine and live hand-to-mouth. One of my best friends earns twice my income and also struggles to make ends meet. Another earns easily five times my annual income, with the same sad outcome.

Years of working as a free-lancer have taught me to squirrel away something like a year's worth of funds in case work slows. My friends and neighbors live at their maximum credit limits. They want to have nicer stuff and have it now.

Whatever floats your boat, I say.

Nevertheless, when the Dems take over the national government, jack up taxes, block domestic oil drilling keeping gas prices high, raise fuel and energy prices -- none of that will affect me too much. Since I invoice in euros, at least I stand to earn more for the same amount of work for a while as the dollar continues to languish.

But I feel bad for my friends and neighbors whose living standards will have to come down to afford all the higher costs and taxes.

Posted by MarkG | July 12, 2008 4:40 PM

Years of working as a free-lancer have taught me to squirrel away something like a year's worth of funds in case work slows. My friends and neighbors live at their maximum credit limits. They want to have nicer stuff and have it now.

Good for you, MarkG. It's about time those sinful, irresponsible, wicked neighbors of yours got the punishment they deserved. Wise v. foolish virgins and all that.

Posted by James Gary | July 12, 2008 4:56 PM

Some things the Dems have pushed were certainly beneficial. However, oddly enough, today's Dems seem to be more appropriate for places like the Balkans or worse, with a largely white leadership trying to provoke racial animus against another group with a largely white leadership. I know it's so difficult to find Dems gratuitously playing the race card in order to stifle debate and obtain political power, but just for you I'll clear the rest of my day so I can come up with another example or million. What's the megabyte limit on your email server?

Posted by TLB | July 12, 2008 5:04 PM

It's about time those sinful, irresponsible, wicked neighbors of yours got the punishment they deserved.

Funny how you're reading a value judgment into what I said. I chose my own drop-out, ascetic lifestyle and it suits me fine, but it's not for everyone. It's no more my business to tell them how to live than it is theirs to tell me how to live.

I know from experience that I don't sleep well deep in debt or under high expectations for "pecuniary emulation." So I opt out.

I'm not the first to observe that folks have a difficult time scaling down spending habits that they've been practicing for years.

And a little gratuitous Dem bashing is surely in order, since that party has worn the pants in the federal relationship since aught-six: They've overseen the mortgage meltdown, fuel and food price inflation, and are helping to usher in more economic pain for everyone. With geniuses like Chuckie Schumer causing bank runs, what else would you expect?

Posted by MarkG | July 12, 2008 5:13 PM

I think it would be interesting to know what the people who think America isn't divided into "haves" and "have-nots" think about it. I'm not sure I would say "yes" to that question, and I'm pretty darn liberal: it seems too simplistic. At the top, you've got a very small group of super-rich people making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and at the bottom you've got people who are very poor and can't make ends meet, but there's a huge range between those extremes. Obviously people in the real upper-middle-class (something like $75-$100k, not the lower six figures who euphemistically call themselves "upper-middle class") aren't "have-nots" but it seems odd to lump them in the same category as Harvard's hedge fund managers as "haves". Certainly their interests aren't the same.

Posted by Elliot Reed | July 12, 2008 5:20 PM

I'm confused. I have lots and lots of money, but not so much as my neighbor, who has a private helicopter and gold-plated toilets in all his bathrooms. Am I rich?

Posted by James Gary | July 12, 2008 5:38 PM

It perhaps might be more pertinent to enquire as to where people think they are heading than as to where they think they are.

If I have a big 401k in a rising stock market with lots of stock options, a gold-plated medical plan, and a low rate mortgage I am going to feel quite differently than if I am Dilbert at risk of being outsourced having my benefits slashed and facing difficulty with the mortgage.

Yet, in both instances, I might call myself a "have."

As the saying goes. In the 1980's, a liberal was a conservative who had not yet been mugged. In the 2000's, a conservative is a liberal who has not yet been screwed by a medical insurer.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | July 12, 2008 5:38 PM

There are a lot of HAVEs that have maxed out their credit cards etc and borrowed on a over-priced over-hyped house

and guess what, they are still "haves"- they just screwed up

Phil Gram was correct, a nation of whiners - the bottom 20% don't work, the bottom 40% pay NO tax and the most foolish of the haves bitch because the houses they were sure were going to go up 20% went down 25%

we are now letting the hysterics and media whores (Chuck Schumer!) drive downward hype until the election, then God (oh Osama) will turn everything around

Posted by Jozef | July 12, 2008 5:45 PM

Matt,

Unhappy with the poll results, you want to change the questions.

Why don't you just write up a column and post the "results" that you want to see, and then tell everyone that it is factual?

The problem, simply, is that you don't understand Americans - how or why they think the way they do. And you may never get it.

Pride, effort, and accomplishment towards goals is what Americans weigh heavy in their minds. And that is reflected in such polling questions.

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Posted by Movie Guy | July 12, 2008 6:27 PM

one way to reconcile these to graphs is to assume that people aren't always so honest about their own personal affairs. some public opinion experts regard surveys where folks are asked about the economy at large as reflective of their personal situations. the thinking is that in individualistic cultures people feel shame in saying that they're "have-nots." epi's talking past each other explains how this works in greater detail: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/book_talking_past_each_other . this finding is in line with the state of the economy and how the first graph's results change but the second's doesn't.

Posted by matt | July 12, 2008 6:42 PM

not so much as my neighbor, who has a private helicopter and gold-plated toilets in all his bathrooms. Am I rich?

You should see the guy with the gold-plated toilet in his helicopter.

Weekend shift paid trolls are definitely 'have-nots', though.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 12, 2008 7:17 PM

It should probably be recalled that polling people on whether they feel there are 'haves' and 'have nots' says nothing about whether there 'are' or 'aren't', or the concentration of wealth in the society, or whether or not people are aware of the distribution of or concentration of wealth in the country.

Posted by El Cid | July 12, 2008 7:29 PM

The way I read this, there really isn't enough variation in the bottom graph to say with any safety that it documents a meaningful change in the number of self-identified haves/have nots (haves not?) Of course, everyone knows the world is divided between people who believe the world can be divided between two types of people and people who don't. It's hard to tell on what basis people will accept or reject a particular heuristic device for divvying up the social pie, and self identified have nots may not be any more likely to promote such a view as self-identified haves (data that would be interesting, by the way-which way are "haves" and "have nots" voting?)

The top graph is interesting, and assuming it's an accurate representation of public opinion, probably represents a real (positive, from my point of view) increase of acceptance among people that there are contingent factors outside of personal merit that have profound effects on life outcomes. Think of it as a reduction of conservative influence that correlates relatively well with the increased political support for the democratic party that has occurred during the same period. That makes sense, right? If we are actually seeing an increase in support for a progressive agenda in this country, and a part of that progressive agenda involves acknowledging an economic gap between rich and poor, then the top graph functions as a proxy measurement of the waxing influence of that agenda.

But I dunno. How good is the data, really, and how useful are questions that revolve around such vague concepts as "haveness" and "have-notness"? Seems real slippery to me.

Posted by Gerontion | July 12, 2008 7:44 PM

To El Cid:

But it may say something about the viability of economic populism.

My view is that the US, as a nation, has simply become too wealthy, both objectively, and in relation to the rest of the world, to sustain a lively economic populist agenda. The Democrats (esp. Shrum, and John Edwards) have been trying to bring back the New Deal for years, but economic resentment just doesn't bite deeply enough anymore to trump the *cultural* populism that the Republicans peddle. I'm not saying that economic issues don't matter, but they're not perceived through this populist frame.

Obama's campaign seems to be trying to solve this problem by relying instead on a "radical centrist" frame -- he's a sensible problem-solver instead of an ideologue. I think that better grasps the nature of the Democratic coalition right now.

Posted by Ted | July 12, 2008 7:53 PM

It would be interesting to look at wealth in this regard (it seems like a better correlate of "have"-ness than income anyway) and see how much of the racial element survives independently of wealth effects.

I'm not sure Matt's concern is justified here- wouldn't wealth correlate more closely with race than does family income? Surely more racial minorities have broken through to having middle- and upper-class incomes than have amassed considerable wealth.

It was only a few generations ago, after all, that minorites were all but prohibited from entering the professions and there was nothing like the (small) wealthy class of minority entertainers, athletes and politicians / civic leaders that exists today.

What I think better explains the racial element is that people in America recognize that there is more to being a "have" than bucks-- like what neighborhood you tend to have grown up in or have relatives and friends in, and how the system and the media treat you. When race and sex still correlate with barriers to success and advancement, it's kind of hard to not see things like this as elements of being a "have" (a word which is certainly a common-sense, non-scientific description, if there ever was one).

Posted by Swan | July 12, 2008 8:06 PM

"The Democrats (esp. Shrum, and John Edwards) have been trying to bring back the New Deal for years, but economic resentment just doesn't bite deeply enough anymore to trump the *cultural* populism that the Republicans peddle."

So, let's see. Here's the list of Democratic nominees who have proposed major expansions of social insurance programs over the past 40 years:

1) Bill Clinton in 1992

That seemed to work electorally pretty well.

And we had two candidates in the '08 Dem primaries advocating for universal healthcare, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. Combined they got more votes than Barack Obama did, but trust-fund scumbags like Matt Yglesias decided that folks without a trust-fund can needlessly die, and it's OK by them.

Had either of those two primary candidates ended up being the nominee, I think it's pretty obvious that they'd have bettered whatever mark Obama gets this November.

Again, expanding social insurance seems to play pretty well at the ballot box. Trust-fund scumbags like Yglesias just don't like the ballot box very much.

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"Obama's campaign seems to be trying to solve this problem by relying instead on a "radical centrist" frame -- he's a sensible problem-solver instead of an ideologue. I think that better grasps the nature of the Democratic coalition right now."

It worked great the last time we tried it with Jimmy Carter in 1976, didn't it? Destroyed the Democratic brand for a generation and brought about the Reagan revolution. That's the kind of change Obama admires, right?

Posted by Petey | July 12, 2008 8:08 PM

"Trust-fund scumbags like Yglesias just don't like the ballot box very much."

Which is probably why Yglesias wrote that he'd prefer a monarchy.

It's so much easier to spend your trust-fund on servants that way...

Posted by Petey | July 12, 2008 8:12 PM

Ted: There is indeed no reason to assume that either opinions about or facts about concentrations of wealth speak directly to issues of what will win elections.

It's also difficult to speak to the viability of the very hard to define "economic populist" approach of candidates at the national scale when the sample size is so vanishingly small, and the definition of "economic populist" has reached the astoundingly timid.

I don't know if it counts, though, as "economic populism" to point out the reality that Republicans have run as extremist ideologues on crazy, harmful economic delusions which hurt the vast majority of Americans over a gain for the tiniest and uppermost minority -- and then causes such destabilization as it risks the economic fortunes of even many of the uppermost.

The question of 'how' becomes as important to the question of "economic populism" -- which apart from stylistic question seems to indicate "economic sanity" -- as whether or not to adopt it.

John Edwards as an individual candidate may not have demonstrated the success of his style of economic sanity for his own campaign, but given that much of his agenda was taken up to varying degrees by the other two candidates at a time when the Democratic candidates all seemed much more attractive to voters than the Republican brand -- I would tend to avoid the brutish "ECONOMIC POPULISM: YES OR NO" approach to trying to re-introduce economic sanity after 30 years of insane Republican ideologizing.

Posted by El Cid | July 12, 2008 8:35 PM

I'm not sure Matt's concern is justified here- wouldn't wealth correlate more closely with race than does family income?

I know I have a lot of stalkers / critics out there who like to parse my theories to think up cockamamie schemes for how those theories and conclusions allegedly don't make sense, instead of reading them to discover what I actually meant, so let me clarify:

If having a lot of money makes you feel like a have (as Matt seems to be guessing) then looking at wealth is going to give us more white people in the group of peple who have enough money to feel like a "have" (than would looking only at the income statistic), not less, because lots of white people have Scrooge McDuck-like piles of money sitting around-- not lots of blacks.

This is a pretty natural conclusion from the way I originally wrote it, so any claim one of you people, er, I mean stalkers, may make that it looked wrong in the first place (to salvage your pride or whatever) will not be entertained by me. If some other person wrote what I wrote, you'd understand it or figure it out, but if it's me you won't.

Posted by Swan | July 12, 2008 8:46 PM

Which is probably why Yglesias wrote that he'd prefer a monarchy.

Some sample monarchies: the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway.

They have a few things to offer, even to faux-populist dime grifters like Petey.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 12, 2008 9:05 PM

I for one would like to reassure this Swan person that I am not only completely uninterested in stalking or criticizing, but utterly uninterested whatsoever. I not only don't know who it is or what Swan writes, but I don't care what is being written in the slightest. Swan can relax at least to know that there is one fewer imagined obsessive on the hunt.

Posted by El Cid | July 12, 2008 9:19 PM

It's the usual story: The media manufacture or overhype a crisis to boost ratings, and people buy it in the abstract. But most can't actually see any evidence of it in their own lives, so they just assume that the "have-nots" must be someone else.

The racial differential can be explained in part by the fact that within each bracket the average income for blacks and Hispanics tends to be lower than for non-Hispanic whites (at least, I think so).

Posted by Brandon Berg | July 13, 2008 1:06 AM

Re: the bottom 40% pay NO tax

This pernicious GOP talking point beeds to buried six feet with a stake throiugh its heart. Everyone pays taxes (unless they are exteremly young or institutionalized). Sales taxes are taxes, excize taxes are taxes. The regressive FICA tax is certanly a tax.

Posted by JonF | July 13, 2008 8:33 AM

Am I rich?

If you stopped working today, could you maintain your current standard of living for the next two years? the next five years? the rest of your life?

if you answered yes to the rest of your life, you are filthy rich.
if you answered yes to five years, you are rich.
if you answered yes to two years, you are well off.

if you didn't answer yes, you're just another have-not, one or two catastrophe away from Homelessness and Poverty.

Did that answer your question?

Posted by Don Quijote | July 13, 2008 8:44 AM

JonF, but the bottom 40% are not net-tax payers.

Posted by scottynx | July 13, 2008 2:23 PM

Re: JonF, but the bottom 40% are not net-tax payers.

Define "net taxpayer". I don't think that's possible. Everyone gets some (actually a lot of) benefit out of the taxes we pay. Trouble is, how do you qautify that benefit? For most of what the Federal or state governments do there is no way to quantify the specific financial benefit to any given individual. Programs where the government writes a check with Pay To Order Of Joe Citizen are fairly rare.
So I repeat, almost all of us are taxpayers. End of story.

Posted by JonF | July 13, 2008 3:37 PM

My view is that the US, as a nation, has simply become too wealthy, both objectively, and in relation to the rest of the world, to sustain a lively economic populist agenda.

The converse is true. The US as a nation is so accustomed to being very wealthy, especially in relation to the rest of the world, that the nagging suspicion that we aren't as rich as we once were - especially in relation to the rest of the developed world - is hard to both admit and to tolerate. That cuts both, or rather *either*, way in politics. For people who prefer denial - for people who think it's all psychological (the Phill Graham School) economic populism doesn't work very well ('gloom and doom!'). For people who can no longer deny, it can work VERY well. Remember, Edwards' message wasn't that 'you are living in squalor and the gov. will help you'; it was: 'the system is rigged'. Big difference.

The fact that this message didn't prevail in the recent primary has less to do with the message itself than with the Dem Primary devolving into an Identity Fest.

Posted by jonnybutter | July 13, 2008 4:39 PM

JonF:
It's hard to quantity the benefit of government services, but it's easy to quantify the cost of them, which is what really matters for determining whether someone is a net taxpayer or net tax consumer.

Suppose you're running a lemonade stand on the edge of the desert and some guy dying of thirst crawls out of the desert and buys a big cup of lemonade for two dollars. If your cost is only one dollar, you've made a profit. Maybe it was really worth $10,000 to him. It doesn't matter--you still made a profit.

It's the same deal with government. From an accounting perspective, it doesn't matter how much someone benefits from government services--what matters is how much he pays and how much you spend providing the service to him.

Posted by Brandon Berg | July 13, 2008 10:54 PM