Edward Mcclelland's RIP, The Middle Class

Improved Essays
With a culture preoccupied by the belief that material gain constitutes fulfillment within life, it is becoming increasingly common to view the act of living as the need to obtain wealth. This inane form of existence is a result of the capitalistic system in which our Western world is governed. An essay that effectively expounds the circumstances leading up to the current economic disparity among the classes is Edward McClelland’s, RIP, The Middle Class: 1946-2013. In the U.S. today, the need for a stable and remunerative job is one of the greatest concerns of an adult. McClelland’s essay manages to astutely explain this issue, why it occurred, and possible solutions. Due to a seemingly ever-expanding multiplicity of circumstances, however, the overall message of McClelland’s work is somewhat complex to succinctly elucidate. The article begins with multiple anecdotes that perfectly captures how simple, yet lucrative, middle class jobs were in the 1960s and 1970s. McClelland does this in order to establish the notion that the average standard of living was significantly better in the past than it is today. The author further declares that capitalism was viewed as the “paradise to which communism unsuccessfully aspired.” It took, however, a total of 40 years to truly discover that the economic growth was merely a coincidence, and that the middle class may be, as McClelland puts it, “a fluke.” The essayist believes that human history has dealt primarily with only two classes, the aristocrats, and the peasants. Now, America is beginning to fit the typical mold of class divisions due to the fact that the top one percent has accumulated 19% of America’s income, whilst the percentage of middle class households earning two-thirds to double the national medium has dropped 17% in the last 40 years. Through these series of facts and figures, McClelland articulates the issue which has occurred as a result of both ignorance and apathy. In order to ensure that the readers fully grasp how the issue arose, McClelland begins to discuss the policies of former U.S. presidents. Richard Nixon, being so prescient and insightful, attempted to ease the decline of the U.S. through the prevention of “foreign manufacturers from overrunning our markets” and the teaching of living within one’s limits. Nixon was unable to successfully implement this strategy due to the Watergate scandal, and the election of President Carter saw the complete destruction of any economic regulations. Deregulation remained a common theme for years to come as Carter deregulated airline, railroad, and trucking industries, and Bill Clinton prevented investment firms from being owned by commercial banks. As a result of all these governmental oversights, McClelland believes that the middle class is disintegrating, while the astronomically wealthy are becoming increasingly wealthier. Ultimately, the author ends his essay by contending …show more content…
According to Mike Cormack, author of Ideology, ideology is “a social process that links beliefs, a society’s self-image, the production of meaning, and the creation of individual identity.” It is essentially the process that connects both socioeconomics and an individual’s consciousness. The most prominent ideology that the essay addresses is capitalism. Firstly, McClelland begins by introducing the concept of capitalism as a “workers paradise” in the 1960s and 1970s. This introduction serves the purpose of establishing the social process that Cormack discusses. All the middle class U.S. workers were participants of a capitalistic system. Therefore, they all contributed to growth and proliferation of the ideology, making it a social process. McClelland goes on to write that “capitalism has been doing exactly what it was designed to do: concentrating wealth in the ownership class, while providing the mass of workers with just enough wages to feed, house, and clothe themselves.” This further relates to Cormack’s notion of ideology. The idea that one’s social system will bestow that person with the necessities for living is a belief. The workers believe that if they subscribe to the system, then they will be appropriately rewarded. Additionally, the concept that the ownership class makes a significantly more money than the working class creates a certain self-image and individual identity. In a capitalistic system, money is power. Therefore, the lower class is viewed as inferior to the rich elites. This feeling of inferiority instills a sense of alienation and insecurity within the working class, and a belief of supremacy within the ruling class. By elucidating how capitalism affects the United States, McClelland faultlessly encapsulated the concept of Cormack’s

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