Mythmaking and Poverty

Media historians describe American film and the television series as a form of mythmaking driven by the contemporary issues facing the nation. As cultural tales, they provide examples of cautionary stories that address Americans’ prevailing concerns. For example, in the period 1940-1960 the science-fiction genre of film and television burst into prominence as a direct result of the atomic bomb. This new weapon’s immense destructive power, able to wipeout entire cities, brought science and its abilities to construct such advanced devices to the film industry’s attention. In Japan, the film industry birthed Godzilla, a creature formed in the wake of an atomic explosion. In the 1953 film War of the Worlds, the atomic bomb was used to demonstrate the invading Martians’ might as the nuclear blast proved ineffective.

The same remains true today but the fears pushing the mythmaking process are caused by economic worries and income inequality. Two popular television shows that relied on the theme of consistent income inequality are The Wire and Breaking Bad. While both series appear to focus on the American drug war, the engine driving both shows is income inequality.

The Wire began its five season run on cable television’s Home Box Office network in June 2002, and quickly gained notoriety among critics for its superbly written and acted characters. Taking an unflinching look at the drug industries money-trail and influence in the city of Baltimore, its stories touch on politics, labor, education, and print media. The series’ characters provided a believable level of ethnic diversity, while its positioning on HBO shielded the show’s writers from the censorship hoisted onto broadcast television. By placing the violence in context, the show allowed viewers to sympathize with both victim and killer. All these elements combined to produce a gritty inner-city police drama that makes a damning statement about income inequality, the poor’s forced participation in the underground drug economy that is the only form of work available to them, and the violence that accompanies both components.

Show creator David Simon populated The Wire’s dystopian world with characters whose personal stories resonated with the public. It brought viewers too genteel to have ever visited an inner-city ghetto into abandoned and condemned tenements where the children living within served as surrogate parents to even younger children by slinging drugs on street corners to buy food and clothes. In contrast to the very poor, the political elite search for the means to more power and money. Whether it is the labor union president trying to save his workers’ jobs, or the smartest, fiercest, and gayest stickup man, all the characters are driven by income inequality. It is a world, in short, where a six-year-old boy can go from playing in the streets one moment, and shooting the very same stickup man in the back of the head the next.

The show’s writers held no punches when portraying its police characters as flawed human beings who alternately create serial killers in order to acquire more work hours and resources for fellow officers, while also creating fake snitches to make a few extra bucks. Police officials eat unhealthily, drink heavily, and curse creatively, in response to pressure from above demanding lower crime statistics. While The Wire falls into the genre of a crime drama, only one police character fires a weapon throughout the entire series, on three separate occasions, and each time in error.

Gunplay is an episodic constant, but overwhelmingly and depressingly, a child usually holds the weapon. It is through these children that the show argued for social change, as the viewer watched a tug-of-war between the police, educators, parents, and drug bosses, for the hearts and minds of the majority black adolescents. Bombarded on all sides by conflicting information, the characters evolve survival strategies to navigate the dangers of an inner-city ghetto, passing the information on to the next generation in a perpetual loop of ingrained poverty.

The simple solution provided by show writers is the legalization or relaxed regulation of the drug trade, but this is a bandage approach for the much deeper wound of income inequality. A problem that flows across the barriers of age, race, and gender, with impunity, it remains a constant worry for large portions of the nation’s population. The Wire invited viewers to take a front row seat while it imagined the slow decline of an American city in the grip of two economies, one of which is illegal.

In contrast to the ethnic diversity found on The Wire, a majority of the characters on Breaking Bad are middle-class whites, perhaps foreshadowed by the protagonist’s name, Walter White, performed admirably by Bryon Cranston. Hispanic performers serve alternate roles such as assassins, kingpins, bodyguards, drug dealers, and Drug Enforcement Agency underlings. The show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, placed the crime drama in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which may provide a reliable excuse for the lack of diversity.

Broadcast on American Movie Classics beginning in 2008, Breaking Bad also had a five-season run that ended in 2013. It won a multitude of awards for writing and acting, and became a national phenomenon that spurred real-to-life copycat behaviors akin to that of the movie Scarface. Airing on the heels of the economy’s collapse, Gilligan situated Walter White in a majority of Americans worst nightmare. He is a late middle-aged high school chemistry teacher, who works part-time at a car wash in order to provide for his pregnant wife and cerebral palsy inflicted teenage son. To complete his Job-like misery, White is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

Gilligan presented his viewers with a story that required virtually little need to employ suspension of disbelief because the situation plays out daily in American life. White looks beyond his death to how it will affect his family’s future. His health insurance plan is woefully inadequate, and the cancer treatments needed to keep him alive will sap his family’s savings, leaving them deeply in debt long after his death. In a nation that measures personal success in fiduciary terms, White is an utter failure, and by extension, so is the family.

The need to provide for his family beyond death drives White into the same underground drug economy of The Wire, where he temporarily serves as a methamphetamine producer, before adding distribution to his resume. Viewers followed a bungling White naively stumbling into the local drug scene with a product far superior to the competitors, because he believed the fast cash promised his family long-term financial security. However, as White’s success brings in literally barrelfuls of cash, the power that accompanies financial prosperity seduces him into overreaching for more, placing him at odds with friends and family members.

Aaron Paul brilliantly portrays Jesse Pinkman, White’s frequently reluctant, morally conflicted, and physically abused partner and former pupil. Treated with disdain by White, who unapologetically manipulates Pinkman and those closest to him, Jesse empathizes with the victims left in the wake of his partner’s destruction. Searching for stability, Pinkman’s first major purchase is his aunt’s home from unwitting parents who have written off their son as a loser, but are tricked into selling at a grievously below market price. He provides the Yin to White’s Yang, literally tossing away bricks of cash in newspaper delivery fashion to the residents of Albuquerque, while his partner opts to hoard his stash in the ground.

By the series’ end, White is feared and reviled by the wife and son he cherishes, banished from the family as a bad memory to be outlived and forgotten. Gone is the once-adored chemistry teacher who endured bullying by his boss at the carwash, replaced by a calculating murderer who is willing to place children in harm’s way in order to reach his own goals. The delusion remains to the last, as he admits to enjoying the work, and being good at it, just prior to his shooting death, despite all the destruction surrounding him.

The trope of income equality and its accompanying fears are constants that American scriptwriters depend upon to spark the viewer’s imagination and create a successful cautionary myth. The Wire and Breaking Bad presented the drug trade as both the problem and solution to climbing the economic ladder. The former questioned the need for an underground drug economy by comparing it to prohibition, supporting drug legalization, and preferring treatment to incarceration. The latter unabashedly condemns the drug trade and condemns all it touches to shame, degradation, and death.

However, remove the plot device of an unjust economy and the myth falls apart for lack of context. The desperate fear of hunger and security become irrelevant in a world that focuses on helping the weakest, instead of glorifying the wealthy as models of success. What does it say about our culture that the most common American fear is also its favorite film and television plot device? Will future generations look back on both shows in confusion because the trope no longer makes sense? Just as science destroyed the creationism myth, perhaps the day will arrive when local and federal government efforts to eradicate poverty prove successful, and another plot device will fall by the wayside.

Five Reasons the Average American Cannot Become President of the United States

Beginning in primary school American students learn about the inclusive nature of democracy, which promises that regardless of sex, creed, or religion, any United States citizen can become President. But how true is this teaching? Let us concede for the moment that an individual meets all the legal requirements to seek the nation’s top office. What are the other factors that allow citizens to attain the presidency? Utilizing the 18 presidents elected during the 20^th and 21^st centuries as guidelines, each one shared the same distinctions in the areas of gender, education, college affiliation, political party, and government service. So, could the average American realistically become President of the United States? Here are five reasons that you will never sit in the Oval Office’s big chair:

1. Political Party

Though touted as inclusive, American democracy only offers the voter two party choices – Democratic or Republican. While many political parties vie for presidential power, only these two parties successfully ran candidates that reached the White House, with 11 for the Republican Party and 7 for the Democratic Party. This means that until a different party usurps power from these two groups, the candidate must be either a Republican or Democrat, or there is zero chance of winning.

2. Gender

During the 2008 presidential race, much was made of Sarah Palin’s insertion onto the Republican ticket as Vice-presidential candidate. She joined Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic Vice-presidential candidate, as the only two females ever to reach that level for the two major parties. Sadly, the data on our list of candidates reveals that the presidency remains in the male dominion. Hillary Clinton presents a strong viable 2016 candidate for the Democratic Party, and she may well break the cycle for women. However, until a woman gains the presidency, the data reveals that being female means exclusion.

3. Education

Primary school attendance is required in the United States unless parents opt to provide their own form of schooling, and all of the last 18 presidents graduated from high school. College, however, is an expensive investment, and tuition continues to climb at an alarming rate. On our list of presidents, only Harry Truman did not attend college and graduate. According to the data, a successful presidential candidate possesses a high school diploma, at minimum, and without a college diploma, the chances of success drop to only 5%.

4. College Affiliation

The number of higher education institutions in the United States is vast, but a fraction hold the distinctions of providing its alumnus with both a degree and a pedigree. U.S. News and World Report lists the top National Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges in America each year, and five universities consistently jostle for the top spots: Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia Universities. On our list of presidents, fourteen graduated from a school ranked in the top 20 of U.S. News’s list, with Harvard and Yale Universities dominating the other three schools. This means that 78% of the presidents elected in the 20^th and 21^st centuries graduated from a small sliver of the gargantuan number of colleges accessible to Americans. There is still hope for a candidate who attended a school outside the top twenty, as Warren Harding (Ohio Central College), Lyndon Johnson (Southwest Texas State Teachers College), and Ronald Reagan (Eureka College) attended colleges considered small by contemporary standards. However, a presidential candidate taking this route only achieves success 18% of the time.

5. A Powerful Position at the State or Federal Level

Along with gender and education, holding a powerful political office at the state or federal level is a commonality shared by all eighteen presidents elected in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The number one power position held prior to attaining the presidency is divided between two offices, with each providing six presidents. The only position at the state level from which presidents ascend is that of Governor, while at the federal level Vice-presidential candidates are the clear favorites. U.S. Senators occupy the next most popular spot with three presidents. The final three positions are one-offs from the federal level that include Secretary of War, Secretary of Commerce, and Supreme Military Commander. In short, the data reveals that the successful presidential candidate must be a veteran of some form of government.

Based on the shared characteristics of our previous eighteen presidents, the average American stands a 5% to 22% chance of reaching the nation’s highest office provided the candidate campaigns from a power position at the state or federal level. American democracy’s most egregious omission is the absence of female representation at the presidential level. By the gender standards of the 20^th and 21^st century’s presidents, half of the American population is denied fair representation. Perhaps even more alarming is the hold on presidential power by a small sliver of higher-education institutions, and the social ideologies, some shared, that influences future leaders. Furthermore, the cost of an education at a top twenty school is $46,000 annually and economically unfeasible for the majority of Americans. So, the next time you hear someone say that any U.S. citizen can become President of the United States, speak truth to the lie and set them straight.

Education and Political Power

The definition of American democracy in its simplest form is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and it worked for the nation’s earliest political leaders. Consisting of men who worked the land, they were familiar with the wants and needs of their constituents, and took the matter of government service as a serious duty. The legislative calendar reflected the times as politicians scheduled session breaks to coincide with the planting or harvesting of crops. Times, however, have changed and a popular complaint today is that our leaders are out of touch with the populace, and place corporate welfare above the well-being of the people. The overwhelming cause for this disconnect is education, or more precisely, which college a politician attends.

For most Americans, the cost of college plays a significant role when choosing a school. Higher education is an investment that serves to expand the student’s mind, while also teaching the social skills necessary to make friendships that may last a lifetime. With each new addition to the social network, new opportunities become available for the student, and if seeking a graduate degree, the social network matures to include a smaller network of exceptional friends. However, for some students cost is not a factor, and the choice becomes influenced by a university’s prestige and reputation for providing the student with both a degree and a pedigree. The friendships made while attending one of the nation’s top schools offer exponential benefits to the student via access to social elites, while the school’s reputation bestows an often-undeserved gravitas on its alumni.

Education matters, but to reach the truly preeminent position of presidential, judicial, and senatorial power requires attendance at one of the nation’s top twenty universities. To explore the relationship between education and political power, this analysis divided American higher educational schools into three tier levels using data provided by U.S. News and World Report rankings of National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges. The top twenty schools on both lists formed the Tier 1 schools, while schools ranked from 21 to 50 were included in Tier 2 schools. Tier 3 schools included any institution ranked below fifty.

To attend a Tier 1 school in 2014 costs an individual $43k annually with an average student enrollment of 15k in national universities that drops to an average of 2k for liberal arts colleges. A steep price to pay for a smaller class size, the cost of an undergraduate degree from an elite school is $172k and it continues to rise. The students encounter elite private clubs and rub elbows with the next generation of socioeconomic giants, and possibly future powerful contacts.

Further, these contacts make the exorbitant school costs at this level such a worthwhile investment. Narrow the focus to the nation’s top five universities – Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia Universities – and the fiscal benefits of attending one of these institutions becomes apparent with an alumnus that boasts 116 billionaires, according to The Atlantic. Harvard alone counts almost 3000 graduates as worth more than $30 million each. Academically, these schools are staffed with scholars whose studies drive the narrative for the nation’s future. However, the elite atmosphere that insulates these institutions also limits their students and faculties exposure to America’s cultural soup and the economic realities confronting the nation’s denizens. As a result, the scholarship from Tier 1 schools is often focused through a very narrow socioeconomic prism of understanding.

The difference in cost between a Tier 1 school and Tier 2 school is small, with the student on the hook for an average of $39k annually at a national university, and a $42k average annual price tag for attendance at a liberal arts college. Annual average enrollments climbed to 24k at national universities, but maintained the same 2k average found at Tier 1 schools. The increased enrollment signals that Tier 2 national university schools appear more accessible to a larger portion of the American populace, providing greater diversity for its student body, and broader access to opportunities for cultivating economic contacts. The mirror-like averages for Tier 1 and Tier 2 liberal arts schools infers that the colleges in this group also provide a measure of exclusiveness to degree-holding students, thus boosting the perceived value of alumni membership. Ideas, too, flow copiously from the scholars at these universities, bringing with them the possibility of providing the fame necessary to make the leap to teach at a Tier 1 school.

Tier 3 schools are populated by the remaining higher education institutions, with an average annual cost of $22.8k for the student. This is the tier group available to the majority of American families, admitting students based on a sliding scale of costs in relation to their economic conditions. The quality of academic output from scholars at this level also varies too much to generalize because its members are in the process of career expansion or decline. The substance of a degree earned from a member school depends on the student’s willingness to study diligently in the search for knowledge. While Tier 3 contains the vast majority of American colleges, it is the least represented group within the halls of presidential, judicial, and senatorial power.

In the 20^th and 21^st century, all but four of eighteen American presidents attended Tier 1 schools. The remaining four presidents hailed from Tier 3 schools or possessed no college education, while two members made sweeping changes to the national dialogue about poverty and identity. Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and advanced the ideology of a Great Society and the War on Poverty that resulted in government supported food assistance and education programs. Without Johnson’s support for black Americans, there is no President Obama. Ronald Reagan, the penultimate presidential hero for modern Republicans, redefined the definition of poverty leading to a reduction in welfare recipients, while arguing for lower taxes on the wealthy that he promised would “trickle down” to the rest of society. Neither, however, attended a Tier 1 school.

The percentage of Supreme Court Justices hailing from a Tier 1 school is 66%, and shows only a moderate fall from that of the presidential numbers. With thirty-seven of the fifty-six justices appointed in the 20^th and 21^st century coming from Tier 1 schools, this percentage pales in relation to the current number of sitting Supreme Court Justices, with 100% representation. The impact the judicial branch of the government has on its citizens is mighty. Collectively they are the custodians of interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, and the institution’s power was on full display when it expanded the definition of free speech in politics, resulting in a flood of money for campaigning purposes.

Because of the vast numbers of Senators voted into office during the 20^th and 21^st century, information for this analysis was limited to a fifty year period beginning with the current
Senate members of the 113^th Congress and continuing in decade length intervals to include the 108^th, 103^rd, 98^th, and 93^rd Classes. In the Senate, there was a greater level of diversity among Senators and their school tier group representation, with almost 47% of its members identifying as Tier 1 school alumni. However, the tilt in numbers remains firmly in the direction of Tier 1 alumni, with Tier 3 school representation hovering at 45% throughout the period. While these numbers point to a greater degree of influence sharing between the tier groups, much of a Senator’s power resides in committee memberships.

Using information from the 113^th Congress, power sharing at the committee level appears relatively even between Tier 1 and Tier 3 schools with the exception of three committees – Committee on Rules and Administration, Committee on the Budget, and Committee on the Judiciary. The Committee on Rules and Administration operates to provide credentials and qualifications for Senate members, but it also oversees federal elections for President and Congress. The Tier 1 representation for this committee stands at 57%, or eleven members, while Tier 3 representation was 37%, or seven members. With the power to decide elections, the current trend means a small cadre of schools possesses the ability to influence election outcomes through entrenched ideologies that emanate from these institutions.

The Senate Budget Committee, in a sense, holds the purse strings of the federal government, deciding the general economic plan for the nation’s spending, while also overseeing the Congressional Budget Office, which monitors the federal debt. This committee contained the highest Tier 1 membership of any committee, as it contained 14 senators, or 64%. Senators from Tier 3 schools numbered seven for 32%, a dismally small percentage of members to represent the viewpoint of the average American, particularly in matters of spending. A committee populated by members who earn more in a year that many Americans earn in a lifetime, yet they still claim to understand the harsh economic conditions that embrace the nation’s poorest people.

The final committee with an overwhelming number of Tier 1 schooled senators is the Committee on the Judiciary. Tasked with oversight of amendments to the U.S. Constitution, it also controls the selection process for new federal and Supreme Court justice nominees. With such far-reaching influence over the laws of the land, the decisions made by committee members directly impact the rights of all Americans. Tier 1 representation on this committee is 61%, or eleven senators, while Tier 3 members only number six, or 33%, a paltry accounting from a government organization that purports to be defenders of justice. It is a vision of justice imagined through the narrow filter of the most expensive, socially exclusive higher education institutions, and only slightly ameliorated by the diversity of six Tier 3 senators.

Each senate committee possesses its own form of power. The Rules and Administration Committee influences the election process, the Budget Committee holds sway over the spending of federal monies, and the Judiciary Committee controls the lawmakers and lawmaking processes. However, is it wise to trust these vast powers and the ideology driving them when only a narrow band of schools, the nation’s top twenty institutions, informs their world view? Further, what does the data mean for the average American?

First, unless the average American can afford to invest $368k on education, joining the Supreme Court is virtually impossible, and gaining the presidency becomes a remote possibility. If the percentages were expressed in terms of a successful cancer recovery diagnoses, the average American’s chance of living would be 22% (President) or 23% (Supreme Court), both low enough to begin planning a funeral, unless, of course, cost was no issue for the patient. The only president who served in the last two centuries without a college education was Harry Truman, an anomaly the current statistical trend indicates will not recur anytime soon.

Second, data from the 113^th Senate class points to greater opportunities for power sharing, however, to achieve a seat on an influential committee requires the same heavy education investment as that of a President or Supreme Court Justice. The large presence of Tier 1 schooled senators on the Judiciary Committee may influence its preference for choosing like-minded Supreme Court Justices. Anyone familiar with the high court’s nomination process recognizes the penchant toward selecting candidates that conform, while differences in social or economic ideology provide ammunition to attack and dismiss those whose views fall outside mainstream beliefs.

Finally, the accusation leveled by the Occupy Movement, that American political leadership favors the 1% of society, appears valid. The overwhelming representation of Tier 1 schools among the nation’s political elites reinforces an ideology poorly influenced by the economic and social diversity encountered by the average American. These conditions create a self-sustaining ideological loop that equates elitism with intelligence, resulting in political support by Tier 1 educated leadership for policies that appear foreign to its citizens.

A nation that once enjoyed fair representation by its peers, who provided a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, has devolved into a system that instead is of the elites, by the elites, and for the elites. With the rising cost of college tuition, it is a system built to accommodate success, unless you are an average American.

 

In what American social class do you or your family reside: the wealthy, middle class, working class, or poor?

In what American social class do you or your family reside: the wealthy, middle class, working class, or poor? I posed this question to a classroom of San Diego State University students taking an introductory course on American history from the Civil War to the present. This was my third semester working as a teaching assistant, and experience taught me that students understood history concepts best when explained by connecting them to real life experience. At this point in the course, we were discussing the social upheavals that buffeted American society from 1900-1930, particularly in the labor movement, and paved the way for President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies.

To make the polling as shameless as possible, I instructed students to close their eyes and raise their right hand above their heads if they were members of the wealthy class. If they identified as members of the middle class, students were told to raise just their left hands, and if they considered themselves part of the working class to raise both hands. Finally, I instructed those who identified as poor to not raise their hands.

As I counted the students, noting the number in each category, the majority identified themselves as being in the middle class. A smattering of students polled from the wealthy and working class, while one brave soul claimed a place among the poor. The results, however, did not conform to the statistics provided by SDSU administration that showed the majority of its students came from San Diego’s working class. To explore this statistical anomaly, I placed a student at a white board that listed the four social class groupings, while the class provided suggestions for the identifying characteristics of each social class.

Students began with a debate about the fiscal boundaries of each social class before moving on to define the economic factors important to all Americans. While on the surface determining the components that characterize an individual’s social class appeared simple, students struggled with this concept because Americans rarely think about class differences, with most simply believing they fit within the middle class. To really flesh out this problem, I asked the class to think about the major economic factors they will probably face while growing older. What services, I asked, will you need in day-to-day life, and which resources do you consider indulgent?

That simple question brought an avalanche of ideas forward and the class settled on eight factors that delineated each social class from the other: housing, transportation, healthcare, salary, savings/stock ownership, credit, profession, and the access and affordability of a college education for both adults and their offspring. Using these boundaries, the students’ produced a table (see below) that they believed reasonably defined each American social class.

Poor	Working Class	Middle Class	Wealthy
$11,000-single $15,000-couple $18,000-one child $22,000-two child	$23,000-single $28,000-couple $32,000-one child $38,000-two child	$46,323-single $67,348-couple	$1,000,000 +
Rent/Own home/apt	Rent/Own home/apt	Own home/multiple homes	Own multiple homes
Car/Public transportation	Car/Public transportation	Multiple vehicles	Multiple vehicles, ships, aircraft
High school education/some college	High school education/some college	BA/MA/PhD	BA/MA/PhD
Lives month-to-month on paycheck	Lives month-to-month on paycheck	Adequate paycheck	Ample economic growth
Dependent on credit cards or doesn’t own cc	Dependent on credit cards	Less dependent on CC	Use CC as convenience
No savings or stock ownership	Scant savings and some stock ownership	Monthly savings and stock ownership	Stock and corporate ownership
Limited access to healthcare	Limited access to healthcare	Access to healthcare	No limits on healthcare
Work more than one job	Work more than one job	One job or both working	Single job that utilizes work force
Cannot pay for child’s college education	Limited ability to fund child’s college education	Can pay for a child’s portion or complete college education	No barriers in paying child’s college education

Assigning class designation based on salary was the most sensible place to start because the data was readily available on government websites. I challenged students to find the data in less than five minutes, and pointed them to census.gov where they discovered the necessary figures. The paycheck remains a vital economic indicator for most Americans, and a deciding factor for where they will live, their means of transportation, and whether they will go to college. It determines the individual’s access to healthcare and credit, and the amount of savings, if any, for future retirement. More importantly, pay ascertains how much time and resources parents can spend on their children.

The prime domain for minimum wage laborers, the lowest paid workers often needed more than one job just to break even on a month-to-month basis, and depended on credit cards to afford vital services such as food, clothing, rent, and bills. With nothing left over at month’s end, savings are diminutive and limit educational opportunities. Unless employers provide healthcare plans, the poor’s access to medical aid is restricted to emergency hospital visits, or low cost community health centers that only deal with symptoms and not long-term solutions. Affordable housing eats up the largest portion of pay, and families often find themselves forced to live in gang controlled, crime infested neighborhoods. Faced with such a steep economic climb, families endured an overwhelming number of obstacles to escape generational poverty, the students decided.

To move into the working class required an almost doubling in pay based on economic figures, but it also opened up greater educational opportunities. Students posited that, although access to education improved, the other economic factors remained relatively stagnant, leaving the individual susceptible to employment downturns solved by increasing dependence on credit card or taking multiple jobs. Accruing savings was possible, but affordable college education for both the individual and offspring was only possible by accepting student loans. Housing opportunities also improved for members of this social class, lessening the incidents of crime and environmental pollution. The working class, students complained, was the most difficult to define and the least discussed by the nation’s politicians.

Advancement into the middle class required almost a doubling in salary relative to the working class, but students also decided that this group drew fiscal benefits from investing excess wages in stock markets. Access to higher education, and the professional connections derived from the experience, provided greater access to high-wage job markets, a benefit passed on to offspring through private schools and tutors. Credit card use among this well educated group was seen as more convenience driven than as a necessity, and members were able to pay the cost of college for offspring, both tuition and housing, without reliance on student loans. Without the negative effects of burdensome student loans weighing down on them, this group’s offspring were empowered with the advantages necessary to succeed on a generational basis.

The wealthy class, students decided, was the easiest to define because literally no obstacles, other than greed, constrained its members opportunities. Advanced education, fiscal abundance, and political adroitness provided this group with the power to manipulate legislative rules to influence beneficial tax and economic policies. Although President Barack Obama identified $200k as the low-end of the wealthy class, students decided that true financial freedom only occurred for those individuals earning a minimum of one million dollars annually. Wealth accumulation for this class ensues not only from the individual’s earnings, but also from the labor provided from the social classes below it.

Armed with this new understanding of contemporary socioeconomic class, I conducted another secret poll asking where my students believed they fit in the nation’s fabric. This time no one identified as wealthy, while the number identifying as middle class dropped dramatically, replaced by a rise in students claiming working-class and poor status. Class identification among my students brought home the reality of obstacles facing contemporary individuals to economic advancement, something readily apparent to American citizens living during the period from 1900-1930. Now, ask yourself, where do you fit in today’s American social class?