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logo    Is America Joining the Third World?


On June 29th, the Dallas Morning News published a column entitled Big D is becoming Big Divide. The gist of the piece, based on a Brookings Institution study, is that in Dallas and in many other metropolitan areas across the country, the middle class is shrinking and the numbers of low and high income residents are growing. The specific citations are, 50% of Dallas neighborhoods were considered middle class in 1970, whereas only 31% were in 2000.  In 2000, the median Dallas family income was $55,854, and the range considered middle income was between $44,583 and $67,024. Twenty percent of Dallas residents fell into that category; 39% fell into the lower income group (<$44,583) and 40% fell into the upper income group (>$67,024); whereas in 1970, the percentages were 27% middle income, 36% low income, and 36% upper income. The article cites Jason C. Booza, the study's lead author and a demographer, as saying that he sees a gloomy picture in these numbers. Gloomy indeed!

What neither Mr. Booza nor the journalist who wrote the article saw, however, is that nations that have small, shrinking, or missing middle classes are labeled 3rd world, and I recall reading in the Economist some months ago something to the effect that Europeans were beginning to view America as a incipient 3rd world nation.

America, to be sure, has a number of characteristics in common with the 3rd world: a government that governs primarily for the benefit of a privileged class (characterized by Calvin Coolidges, The business of America is business, whereas in other 3rd world countries it is often landowners); no, few, or inadequate social services for the poor, the infirm, the very young, and the aged; working classes that can not effectively collectively bargain; a huge foreign debt; and inordinate military expenditures. So destroying the middle class could very well be the straw that breaks the nation's back.

Some people are beginning to realize this, of course; unfortunately, this realization may be too late. The trend may be impossible to reverse.

Nevertheless, David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, writes that "If American politics could start with a clean slate, the main argument wouldn't be between liberalism and conservatism . . . . [But] would pit populist nationalism against progressive globalism." He describes the populist-nationalist as being "liberal on economics, conservative on values, and realist on foreign policy," as "ordinary, burden-bearing people who work hard and build communities, who are loyal to their fellow Americans. These people would be against pie in the sky wars, selling our ports to foreigners, would be for securing our borders, universal healthcare, and decent wages; would believe that we need to stand up to the big-money interests who value their own profits more than their own countrymen, who outsource jobs to China and India, who destroy unions and control Washington, and who want to take away social security and medicare."

Of course, the powerful in America would be against all of this, and since our electoral system is such that the powerful can buy our Congressmen with campaign contributions and other perks, there is little likelihood if any of it ever coming to pass. The Supreme Court's refusal to allow meaningful campaign finance reform pretty much assures it.

So I grieve for this nation. The beacon to the world that was lit in 1776 is becoming a black light.

What kind of event could stop this juggernaut? Only something cataclysmal. If we had successive years of severe hurricanes that virtually destroyed the Gulf coast, perhaps that might do it, for then the needs of people would become so overwhelming, the government would have to respond. Perhaps a world-wide depression caused by the collapse of the dollar's exchange value might do it. The absolute collapse of the American healthcare system might do it. If foreign lenders should call in their loans and refuse to continue funding the American deficit, that might do it. But I see no ordinary event, such as an election, that could ever pull it off. (7/5/2006)