Recent data from the MetLife Mature Market Institute bears out the opposite, showing that Young, Middle and Older Boomers who grew up during disparate “eras” and are now at different stages in their lives. MetLife proposes that they should be treated as separate demographic groups.

According to Sandra Timmermann, Ed.D., director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute, “Middle Boomers, now 52 to 58 years old and 29 million strong, are very much a generation of the 60s. They identify with the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination and the women’s movement, identifying the war as the event that most influenced them in their youth.

“They are distinguished most by a change in culture through political and social activism. But, like the proverbial often neglected ‘middle child,’ they have rarely been noted as having an identity of their own, although they are different in many ways from the Oldest and Youngest Boomers.”

Looking at it from a business and financial standpoint, Middle Boomers are generally looking forward to retirement, have a high net worth ($100,000 or more, excluding their home value) and are currently in their peak earning years.

More than half (54%) say they are behind on their retirement savings goals and that many who have delayed retirement have been affected by the economy. Most will rely on Social Security for their retirement income (42% of it, on average).

A majority own their own homes, which are worth an average of $273,000, and have an average of six financial products. A third of the Middle Boomers expect to receive an inheritance from their parents in the amount of $181,000, slightly less than the Oldest Boomers and behind the Youngest Boomers who expect $208,000.

Other specifics for the Middle Boomers:

Turning age 50 was no big deal for the majority of Middle Boomers

Middle Boomers are more concerned about family, financial security, personal well-being and wellness.71% of this group are married or in domestic partnerships. 12% are divorced or separated, 4% are widowed and 13% have never been married.

Middle Boomers report they are healthy with more than half (56%) saying their health is very good to excellent. Moving forward, 26% of those who are healthy say their biggest retirement concern will be affordable health care.

Two-thirds of the Middle Boomers report having at least one parent still living, and half still have children living at home. About half also have grandchildren.
72% have been providing financial assistance and support to their children and grandchildren, averaging about $38,000 over the past five years. 14% are providing care to older parents.

http://InstantLife.InsuranceQuotes4Consumers.com

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#1 – Science Journal Project

The first final project that science teachers can assign is a semester or year long science journal project. For this project students will keep a journal for the specified period. They will be required to make a minimum number of entries and they will be required to hit a minimum page count. Teachers can assign subjects for the students to write on each week or they can allow students to pick their own topics.

#2 – Process Report

The second final project that middle school science teachers can assign is a process report. This project will require students to select a science process and to develop a thesis statement around it. The thesis statement can predict a relationship between the process and other factors or it can examine the application of this process. Since this is a final project the page count will be between eight and ten pages.

#3 – Science Fair Projects

A science fair project always makes a good final project option. These projects can be used to evaluate how well students have mastered the scientific method, as well as be used to determine the ability of the student to problem solve and to think critically. This is a great option for 6th through 8th grade students.

#4 – Teach a Class

Another project that can be assigned is a “Teach a Class” project. For this project each student or group of students will be asked to teach a science class. They will be given a topic and instructions on how to develop a lesson plan. Students will then need to develop an informational lecture, a guided learning activity, an independent learning activity and they will be required to evaluate their students’ work.

#5 – Science Demonstrations

A science demonstration is another way to test the science skill proficiency of a student. Since this is a final project option the demonstration will need to include background information on the process or concept that is being demonstrated. Students will also need to write up a report on their concept that includes the steps for the demonstration.

#6 – Comprehensive Examination

One of the quickest ways to evaluate how your students have progressed over the school year is to give a comprehensive exam. A comprehensive exam will cover all of the concepts that were studied during the semester or the year. These exams can be made up of multiple questions, short answers and essay questions. You can also create an exam that includes only one essay question.

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One factor is because these parents do not have the need to worry about their child’s safety, because the child studies at home. Another factor is that the parents themselves can closely monitor the academic progress of their child, as often times, they are the child’s instructors. Today, the most popular form of home schooling is the online academy or online middle school.

The way an online academy is structured is basically the same as the way a traditional middle school is. The main difference is that online middle schools offer different approach to achieving a middle school diploma. It uses a unique, flexible approach that is computer based and focused on experiential learning, correspondence and self study. Those who run online middle schools believe and are convinced that each student has the right and privilege to complete middle school, but not all students are able to graduate under the traditional school setting.

An online middle school is technically the same as any traditional middle school, except it offers a unique and flexible approach to earning middle school credit using computer-based courses, correspondence, independent study, and experiential credit-based options. The administrators of online middle schools believe that each student has the right and privilege to finish middle school, but not all pupils are capable of achieving this in the traditional middle school setting.

A lot of critics have dismissed the benefits of studying in an online academy, and have argued that studying in an online middle school deprives your child of total growth and development. They have pointed out that studying online will not allow your child to develop good social skills because when studying online, the student is isolated from other students, and is not given the opportunity to interact with peers. This may be true to a certain extent, but not completely.

Is the online academy really a good option? Yes. These online schools have benefits that are not available in a traditional school. An online academy allows you to customize your child’s educational plan while he works on achieving his diploma. He can work at his own pace and complete courses at his own pace because of the flexibility of schedules only an online middle school can offer.

Now, why should you consider enrolling your kid in an online middle school? Because while earning his middle school diploma, you can customize his educational plans while using the latest technology. Your child can also complete his designated courses at his own pace, due to the scheduling flexibility of online academies.

See how great an online middle school is? Don’t wait too long, enroll your child in an online academy and take advantage of its benefits.

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– John Maynard Keynes, 1945(1) –

Keynes was far ahead of his time.

Maybe, too far. The crash of 2008-2009 proved that “the economic problem” is still in the front seat. It drives us; we do not drive it.

Will the emerging world of scarcities of absolute necessities — food, air, water — force the change Keynes sought? To date, there has been precious little that is economical about economics. But nature may be preparing revolutionary changes — for the better world Keynes spoke of if those changes are consciously appreciated and managed, for a worse one if unconsciously left to money’s “invisible hand.”

The 2008-9 crisis was a golden opportunity for men to begin to control the economy — instead of it controlling them. The Bush and Obama administrations, by throwing money at the problem, let that opportunity slip away.

Thus, although nature’s coming changes could help the middle class, we will take the more pessimistic but plausible route and assume men will fail to learn — that money will stay in the driver’s seat. What then?

The decline and fall of the middle class would destroy the American way of life, notably its form of government. Contrary to popular belief, that government is not a democracy but a “polity.”

Aristotle wrote that a polity is a hybrid government of democracy and oligarchy based on a large middle class. He believed the polity is the “best” government because the middle class moderates other classes that are incapable of trusting each other.

After noting the crucial importance of the “man in the middle” as a neutral, reasonable arbitrator, Aristotle concluded: “The better, and the more equitable the mixture in a ‘polity’, the more durable it will be.”

As for what could spoil an equitable mixture, he warned that the biggest menace came not from the poor or the middle class, but from the wealthy who seek to convert a polity into an aristocracy:

“[Forgetting the claims of equity], they not only give more power to the well-to-do, but they also deceive the people [by fobbing them off with sham rights]. Illusory benefits must always produce real evils in the long run; and the encroachments made by the rich [under cover of such devices] are more destructive to a constitution than those of the people.”(2)

That avarice and those illusory benefits — above all, so-called “rights” that are given as gifts, thereby retaining and reinforcing the power of the giver — are fueling the economic decay of the middle class and the weakening of its reconciler role.

That decay is the reason why the American polity is starting to unravel. That decay is also why The Great American Illusion, Polity = Democracy, is being exposed for the first time in over 200 years of existence. Finally, that decay is the origin of the loss of legitimacy plaguing not only governments but also families, businesses, schools, and neighborhoods.

The Founding Fathers never said they were building a polity, an oligarchy/democracy hybrid. Not once. They knew the word “polity”; Alexander Hamilton and James Madison used it.(3) However, they only employed “polity” in its generic sense, as a synonym for “political system.”

To that deafening silence I will add a curious footnote. The Founding Fathers referred to Montesquieu as the “oracle” of the philosophy that guided them in constructing the United States Constitution, so that the “legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be separate and distinct.”(4)

Well, according to Montesquieu, the ancient Greeks “called that type of constitution a ‘police’”; he then made this footnote: “See Aristotle, Politics, Book IV, Chapter VIII.”(5) In that chapter, Aristotle analyzed the polity, or oligarchy/democracy hybrid.

It is impossible to argue, then, that the Founding Fathers did not know about a polity or hybrid oligarchy/democracy. It was right in front of them.

Why were the Founding Fathers unwilling to use the word “police/polity,” either in the sense of the separation of powers (Montesquieu) or as a hybrid of oligarchy/democracy (Aristotle)?

Why did they not simply declare openly what they were doing: creating a polity? That is to say, create what Madison characterized in a note to himself this way: “The most difficult of all political arrangements is that of so adjusting the claims of the two classes [i.e., 'the class with, and the class without property'] as to give security to each, and to promote the welfare of all.”(6)

Answer: on the one hand, such a declaration would have openly admitted that the system they were building had a major oligarchic component. That admission would have been unacceptable to many Americans who had just fought the war of independence and who were sharply divided over whether to adopt or reject the constitution proposed by the Founding Fathers.

Indeed, the opponents of the constitution vociferously claimed it would favor the oligarchy. To counter that criticism, Madison put up a brilliant, expedient defense: he, too, vigorously attacked any “pretended oligarchy.”

What, according to Madison, would prevent the proposed constitution from favoring any particular class? “I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and, above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America — a spirit which nourished freedom, and in return is nourished by it.”(7)

Madison’s remark gives the impression that he was a fervent supporter of democracy. However, that was decidedly not the case. The confidence that Madison placed in “the vigilant and manly spirit” of Americans was diametrically opposed to what he asserted in an earlier article:

“In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”(8)

On the other hand, then, Madison did not favor a democracy. The American oligarchy would not have accepted it.

Neither an oligarchy nor a democracy, then. And certainly not a “polity.”

Enter the “republic.” “Republic” was the word the Founding Fathers substituted for “polity.”

In going undetected for over 200 years, the switch was one of the greatest political maneuvers of all times.

FOOTNOTES

(1) “First Annual Report of The Arts Council” (1945-1946).
(2) Aristotle, “The Politics of Aristotle,” translated and edited by Ernest Barker, Oxford University Press, New York, 1962, p. 186. (Book IV, Chapter XII). Translator’s brackets.
(3) “Federalist Papers” 17 and 52.
(4) “Federalist Paper 47.”
(5) Montesquieu, “De L’Esprit des lois,”in “Oeuvres completes II,” Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, Gallimard, Paris, 1994. p. 411. (Book XI, Chapter XI).
(6) James Madison, “Note 1 in Convention of 1787, August 7th,” in Ralph Ketcham, “The Anti-Federalist Papers and The Constitutional Convention Debates,” Penguin Books, New York, 1986, p. 151.
(7) “Federalist Paper 57.”
(8) “Federalist Paper 55.”

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– Arthur Rimbaud(1) –

We were taught in good faith that the American middle class is rock-solid, ever expanding. Indeed, security and growth characterized that class for over two centuries.

But times have changed. Official data show that beginning in the 1970s, the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class smaller. A new horizon is emerging, of which only one thing is certain: it certainly is not the one about which we were so certain.

Assuming that two tendencies of capitalism — centralization of enterprise and the specialization of labor — continue to erode the middle class, what does the future hold? Hammers, saws, and drills: please consider the following fates as tools in a toolbox, to be used as appropriate.

(1) Writing in the 1830s, Tocqueville envisioned this “1984″-Big Brother scenario:

“I can imagine the new traits with which despotism could reproduce itself in the world:

I see an immense crowd of men all alike and equal who turn around themselves ceaselessly, in order to acquire small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill up their souls. Each one, marginalized, is a stranger to the destiny of all the others . . ., and although he may still have a family, it can be said that he has no country.

Above all of them is an immense, titular power, which designates itself to be the sole provider of their joys and to look after their fate. That power is absolute, detailed, regular, attentive, and soft . . .
It provides for its citizens’ security, anticipates and takes care of their needs, facilitates their pleasures, takes in hand their major affairs, directs their industry, regulates their successions, divides their inheritances. Can it not take away entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?

Thus, with each day that passes, the titular power renders less useful and rarer the work of an independent arbitrator . . . It never tyrannizes, but it bothers, it upsets, it snuffs out, it creates problems, and it reduces in the end each nation to being a herd of timid and hardworking animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”(2)

Paralysis, stagnation, drift: Tocqueville’s prediction in many ways foreshadowed President Jimmy Carter’s famous — or infamous — “Malaise Speech” of July 15, 1979.

Tocqueville’s despotic anti-utopia implies the following development: class moderation will be taken over by the government. Here the state does not wither away; it is the middle class that withers away. The class which heretofore was politically indispensable, is disposed of. Other than serving as Mandarin bureaucrats in the state apparatus, the middle class would cease to exist meaningfully.

(2) Growing scarcities of natural resources could create unprecedented international strife. To meet the demands of warfare, the demand for higher levels of education and training, particularly scientific, would rise dramatically. Those colossal outlays would benefit the middle class.

A case study of this fate may already exist: Los Alamos, New Mexico.

(3) The transformation of services into commodities is only one instance of the commingling of what heretofore were separate and distinct economic sectors and functions. The mixture of public and private domains, of productive and unproductive labor, of economic surplus and non-surplus financed activities, has only just begun:

Pubic versus private seems obvious enough (for the moment). Let us look at Adam Smith’s classic idea of “productive” versus “unproductive” labor:

“There is one sort of labour which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed: there is another which has no such effect. The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive the latter, unproductive labour.

Thus the labour of a [manufacturing worker] adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his master’s profit. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing . . .”(3)

Smith characterized as “unproductive labour” soldiers and other “servants of the public . . . maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people.” He also cited what we today consider to be middle class, service sector employees: “churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc.”(4)

But if such people perform unproductive labor, where does the value come from to pay for them? Answer: the surplus created by the productive work of other people. Smith on surplus value:

“[W]hen by the improvement and cultivation of land the labour of one family can provide food for two, the labour of half the society becomes sufficient to provide food for the whole. The other half, therefore, . . . can be employed in providing other things, or in satisfying the other wants and fancies of mankind . . .

The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach . . . Those, therefore, who have the command of more food than they themselves can consume, are always willing to exchange the surplus, or, what is the same thing, the price of it, for gratifications of this other kind. What is over and above satisfying the limited desire is given for the amusement of those desires which cannot be satisfied, but seem to be altogether endless.”(5)

The inherent problem of distinguishing productive and unproductive labor (notably services) is compounded when the question of surplus versus non-surplus-financed activities is introduced:

The post office, for example, should furnish a clear-cut, elementary case of (i) unproductive labor performed in (ii) the public sector paid for by (iii) the economic surplus. However, the French post office mixes existing options, i.e., it is publicly and privately owned, and performs private-sector functions such as banking.

I believe the French post office is ahead of its time, that we are witnessing the emergence of the counterpart in economics to the All-Directions politics practiced by politicians as diverse as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Barack Obama. Indeed, the former may be driving the latter.

Commingling of sectors and functions can obscure vital differences, e.g., a middle class service sector employee is more readily confused with a production sector worker if each performs some functions of the other within the same, public/private, unproductive/productive organization.

With an All Directions government overseeing an All Directions economy, the potentially revolutionary repercussions of the middle class decline would be blurred, blunted.

That mixing and commingling are new cards in the deck of Western civilization. If Rimbaud, Tocqueville and Jimmy Carter are right, Marxists are not the only ones who may read them and weep.

FOOTNOTES

(1) Arthur Rimbaud, “Vies: I” in “Illuminations” in Arthur Rimbaud, “Oeuvres completes,” Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, Gallimard, Paris, 1994, p. 128.
(2) Alexis de Tocqueville, “De La Democratie en Amerique II,” in Alexis de Tocqueville, “Oeuvres,” Volume II, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, Gallimard, Paris, 1992, pp. 836-8.
(3) Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations,” Penguin Books, London, England, 1997, pp. 429-30.
(4) Ibid., pp. 430-1.
(5) Ibid., pp. 268-9.

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We agree. The middle class reconciles and moderates other classes.

Biden is in charge of a task force to get the middle class “up and running again.”

We agree that the middle class is weakening. One indicator: its share of the national income pie fell from 52.1% in 1975, to 46.0% in 2006.(1)

Jared Bernstein, executive director of the task force and Biden’s chief economist, notes on the White House website that at the end of the 2000-2007 productivity expansion of 19%, the middle class actually lost ground. The reason was the expansion mostly benefited the upper 1%.

This time, Bernstein assures us, things will be different: “The middle class won’t get left behind again.”

If he means in long-run terms, we disagree.

A punch is being telegraphed. Biden’s task force is preparing the ground for taxation and revenue policies to redistribute wealth away from the rich.

I do not say such policies would not help the middle class. Economist Thomas Piketty noted that, unlike the United States, inequality of revenues remained stable in France and “other nations” (unidentified) between the end of the 1970s and 1997, due to government income transfers.(2)

The problem is, those policies do not address the basic economic processes by which the rich got richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class smaller IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Yes, the middle class was weakened during the W. Bush administration. However, that erosion began before Bush.

The same United States government data that show the weakening of the middle class 1975-2006 also show that between 1992 and 2000, the Clinton presidency years, the poorest fifth of the American population’s share of the national income fell from 3.8% to 3.6%; the richest fifth’s share rose from 46.9% to 49.8% (the top 5%’s share rose from 18.6% to 22.1%); and the share of the middle class — the middle 60% of the population — fell from 49.4% to 46.7%.

Conclusion: neither Republicans nor Democrats stopped the decline of the middle class. That is because neither party addressed the two major economic causes of that decline:(3)

(1) The concentration and centralization of enterprise. The big get bigger, the small are either bought up or are ruined because they cannot compete.

(2) The specialization of labor. Under capitalism, tasks tend to be simplified and standardized. Consequently, higher levels of training and education needed for more complex tasks are eventually eroded, sapped. Those higher levels and complex tasks are the economic underpinning of the American middle class today.

Why?

Beaten down in the production sector, the middle class was saved by the spectacular growth of the service sector in the 1900s. For the past 30 years, however, services have been undergoing a transformation into commodities. That means services are now undergoing the same standardization and routinization characterizing commodity production in general.

How did the service sector stand apart for so long?

The historical origin of higher training/educational levels and the service sector middle class is the feudal guilds. The guilds were not capitalist; in fact, they were created in part to lock out the new urban working class created by capitalism. In 1776, Adam Smith portrayed in stark terms the fierce, anti-capitalism nature of the guilds in his discussion of how if a trade were too easily learned, the apprentice

“would have more competitors . . . The same increase in competition would reduce the profits of the masters as well as the wages of the workmen. The trades, the crafts, the mysteries, would all be losers. But the public would be a gainer, the work of all artificers coming in this way much cheaper to market.

It is to prevent this reduction of price, and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly occasion it, that all corporations [i.e., guilds] . . . have been established . . .

The inhabitants of a town, being collected into one place, can easily combine together.

The most insignificant trades carried on in towns have accordingly . . . been incorporated, and even where they have never been incorporated, yet the corporation spirit, the jealousy of strangers, the aversion to take apprentices, or to communicate the secret of their trade, generally prevail in them, and often teach them, by voluntary associations and agreements, to prevent that free competition which they cannot prohibit by bye-laws.”(4)

It is not easy to distinguish the production sector — long dominated by capitalism — from the service sector and its mercantile, feudal heritage and residues. Consider the following report on a modern-day dilemma:

“Is cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat, lettuce and ketchup inside a bun a manufacturing job, like assembling automobiles?

That question is posed in the new Economic Report of The President, a thick annual compendium of observations and statistics on the health of the U.S. economy . . .

Putting jobs at McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food enterprises in the same category as those at industrial companies like General Motors and Eastman Kodak might seem like a stretch . . .

But the presidential report points out that the current system for classifying jobs ‘is not straightforward.’ . . .

‘When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a “service” or is it combining inputs to “manufacture” a product?’ the report asks.

‘Sometimes, seeming subtle differences can determine whether an industry is classified as manufacturing. For example, mixing water and concentrate to produce soft drinks is classified as manufacturing. However, if that activity is performed at a snack bar, it is considered a service.’

The report notes that the Census Bureau’s North American Industry Classification System defines manufacturing as covering enterprises that are ‘engaged in the mechanical, physical or chemical transformation of materials, substances or components into new products.’

Classifications matter, the report says, because among other things, they can affect which businesses receive tax relief . . .”(5)

Taxation and revenue policies transferring wealth from the rich, then, can soften but will not solve the decline of the middle class. Major reforms in our political system are needed first; otherwise, what can be done politically can be undone politically.

Stated differently, he that giveth can also taketh away — and probably will.

But if taxation and revenue policies cannot save the middle class, what will?

FOOTNOTES

(1) United States Census Bureau, “Historical Income Tables — Households. Table H-2: Share of Aggregate Income Received by Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Households, All Races: 1967 to 2006,” Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements. Go to Census Bureau: income/histinc/h02ar.html.
(2) Thomas Piketty, “L’economie des inegalites,” La Decouverte, Paris, France, 1997, p. 22.
(3) For a discussion of both tendencies, see my article, “Is The American Middle Class Dying?”
(4) Adam Smith, “The Wealth Of Nations,” Penguin Books, London, England, 1997, pp. 227, 229-30. For an excellent study of the feudal guilds, see P. Boissonnade, “Life And Work In Medieval Europe,” translated by Eileen Power, Dorset Press, New York, 1987, pp. 202, 219, 221, 307-8.
(5) David Cay Johnston, “Should burger-flipping be a heavy industry?,” International Herald Tribune, February 21/22, 2004.

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Biden created a task force “to get the middle class — the backbone of this country — up and running again.”

Why is the middle class the “backbone” of America?

Since ancient Greece, the middle class has performed the indispensable role of moderating upper and lower classes. Concerning that role, Aristotle’s 2,000-year-old perceptions prevail today throughout the Western world:

Aristotle wrote that neither the rich nor the poor would “tolerate a system under which either ruled in its turn: they have too little confidence in one another. A neutral arbitrator always gives the best ground for confidence; and ‘the man in the middle’ is such an arbitrator.”

Why should the man in the middle be trusted?

Answer: the middle class “forms the mean,” and “moderation and the mean are always best.” Being moderate, those who occupy the middle “are the most ready to listen to reason.”(1)

Because the middle class is the “best” class, it follows that “first, the best form of political society is one where power is vested in the middle class, and secondly that good government is attainable in those states where there is a large middle class . . .”(2)

Aristotle called that best political system a “polity” or “mixture of democracy and oligarchy . . . incline[d] more towards democracy . . .”(3)

Not only is the polity the best political system, it is also inherently stable:

“There is no risk, in such a case, of the rich uniting with the poor to oppose the middle class: neither will ever be willing to be the subject to the other; and if they try to find a constitution which is more in their common interest than the ‘polity’ is, they will fail to find one.”(4)

Today, America’s polity(5) is the major arena in which its middle class moderates other classes.

The mere mention of class moderation, however, raises a serious problem:

To many Americans, “class analysis” sounds off-key, a wrong note, Marxist, un-American. In reality, nothing is more American than class analysis, and it predates Karl Marx. In 1788, James Madison, fourth American President and a major architect of the United States Constitution, published an essay presenting his class analysis of society:

“A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government . . ., an attachment to different leaders . . . or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good . . .

But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property [sic]. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society . . . A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views.

The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government.”(6)

“The principal task”: no stronger words could possibly show that the regulation of class conflict was vital for Madison. Did he and his colleagues succeed? In 1835, Tocqueville summed up the Founding Fathers’ creation this way: “It is a reconciler government . . .”(7)

In saying he wants the middle class to be up and running “again,” Biden implies America’s middle class is down but not out. True or false?

Answer: yes and no.

Aristotle gave indirectly two quantifiable terms for identifying a weakened middle class: where “the number of the members of the middle class outweighs that of both the other classes — and even where it only outweighs that of one of the others — a ‘polity’ can be permanently established.”(8)

The first barrier fell in America in the 1980s. The United States Government published a summary of the national annual revenue by households, 1967 to 1999. Households were divided into three groups: (1) less than $24,999; (2) from $25,000 to $74,999; and (3) $75,000 and higher. If “middle class” is defined as group (2), the data show that between 1980 and 1990, that class declined from 51.7% to 49.7% of total households.

The turning point may have been the proverbial year 1984, when group (2) comprised 50.0% of all households. In 1985, the figure was 49.6%. It never again reached 50%.(9)

As for Aristotle’s second benchmark, if the 2% rate of decline per decade continues, the middle class will slip below the 33.3% level in about 70 years.

But do we need to wait that long to see what would happen if the decline is not stopped? Jared Bernstein, executive director of Biden’s task force and Biden’s chief economist, correctly notes on the White House website that at the end of the 2000-2007 expansion in productivity of 19%, the middle class actually lost ground, and that there were more Americans living in poverty. The reason was the expansion mostly benefited the upper 1%.

Those developoments pose questions:

Does the billion-dollar grabfest of public money in 2008-2009 by the oligarchic constituent of our polity signal a major turning point?

Indeed, is our polity — Aristotle’s democracy/oligarchy hybrid — already a thing of the past? Do we now have an oligarchy with only a hollow, ornamental shell of democracy?

Can the middle class continue to reconcile other classes? That is the question not just for Biden’s task force but also for America.

FOOTNOTES

(1) Aristotle, “The Politics of Aristotle,” translated and edited by Ernest Barker, Oxford University Press, New York, 1962, pp. 181, 186. (Book IV, Chapters XI, XII).
(2) Ibid., p. 182. (Book IV, Chapter XI).
(3) Ibid., p. 174. (Book IV, Chapter VIII).
(4) Ibid., p. 185. (Book IV, Chapter XII).
(5) For reasons to be explored in another article, it is taboo today to call a polity a polity, except in the generic sense of polity as a synonym of “political system.” To my knowledge, that taboo has never been broken. Rather, the hybrid democracy/oligarchy polity must be called a “democracy,” “representative democracy,” or a “republican” form of government.
(6) James Madison, “Federalist Paper Number 10,” in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, “The Federalist Papers,” New American Library, New York, New York, 1999, pp. 46-7.
(7) Alexis de Tocqueville, “De La Democratie en Amerique I,” in Alexis de Tocqueville, “Oeuvres,” Volume II, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, Gallimard, Paris, 1992, p. 460. Apology to French purists: Internet format prohibits special characters.
(8) Aristotle, op.cit., p. 185. (Book IV, Chapter 12).
(9) United States Bureau of The Census, “Current Population Reports, Series P60-209, Money Income in the United States: 1999,” Table B-2. Households by Total Money Income, Race, and Hispanic Origin of Householder: 1967 to 1999, Appendix B, B-3, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 2000.

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The first three of five fates:(1)

(1) A quiet, despotic state takes over the role of class reconciliation performed by the middle class. Other than working as bureaucrats, a meaningful middle class does not exist.

(2) A new era begins of international armed conflict over scarce natural resources. Huge outlays for higher levels of education and training — the bases of the middle class — are made to meet the demands of warfare.

(3) The commingling of public and private sectors, unproductive and productive labor, and surplus and non-surplus-financed sectors, obscures the decline of the middle class, thereby blunting the potentially revolutionary consequences of that decline.

The last two of the five fates:

(4) Modernism with its unbridled faith in science and progress could reassert itself.

Past scientific and technological innovations, notably automobiles and trains, gave an unforeseen impetus to entire economies at critical moments, perhaps saving not only the middle class but also capitalism itself. In the future, other scientific/technological inventions could have a profound impact on the middle class decline.

The amazing, transforming power of science/technology on economics is poignantly illustrated by what Adam Smith in 1776 deigned to be a classic example of “unproductive labour” — unproductive because it “adds to the value of nothing”: the “tune of the musician.”(2)

Today, over two centuries later, as a result of science and technology, the unproductive tune has changed tunes:

“The music industry is one of the largest in the United States, employing hundreds of thousands of people. Album sales alone bring in $30 billion a year, and this figure doesn’t even account for concert ticket sales, the thousands of bands playing Friday nights at saloons all over North America . . . Americans spend more money on music than on sex or prescription drugs.”(3)

The transformation of unproductive into productive work is accountable to no one. We may be to tomorrow’s scientific/technological inventions what our shadows on the ground are to us today. Discoveries in stem cell research, in nanotechnology, of life unlike our own on another planet, of nuclear fusion: all could be sources of presently-imponderable economic developments which could help the middle class.

To begin to imagine what future scientific/technological developments could have in store: show Adam Smith a laptop computer or a portable telephone. Ask him what he thinks . . .

(5) A fate already alluded to: taxation and revenue policies, as well as other reforms and adjustments, could create important changes in capitalist societies. Such changes in, not of, those societies could delay the decline of the middle class.

Those are the five fates. In addition, there is a destiny:

The difference between “fate” and “destiny”: fate is what happens to you. Destiny is what you make happen to fate.

Given our prevailing values, the following destiny is presently implausible:

That destiny is a fundamental change in the nature of economic or “exchange” value.

Adam Smith observed a crucial difference between “use” and “exchange” value:

“The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.”(4)

Use value and exchange value in certain vital areas are becoming less separate and distinct. Smith’s observation of water as having no exchange value is rapidly becoming as obsolete as his notion of the musician’s tune. In 2007, the United Nations released its fourth Global Environment Outlook. Among its conclusions: “Available freshwater resources are declining; by 2024, 1.8 billion people will live in countries with absolute water scarcity . . .”(5) To those who think water problems cannot happen in America, all I can say is, think again:

“ATLANTA. For more than five months, the lake that provides drinking water to almost five million people here has been draining away in a withering drought . . .

Scientists have warned of impending disaster.

And life, for the most part, has gone on just as before.

By September, with Lake Lanier forecast to dip into the dregs of its storage capacity in less than four months, the state imposed a ban on outdoor water use . . .

Between 1990 and 2000, water use in Georgia increased 30 percent. But the state has not yet come up with an estimate of how much water is available during periods of normal rainfall, much less a plan to handle the worst-case scenario: dry faucets.”(6)

Safe, plentiful drinking water is not the only water problem. The emerging scarcity is already creating surreptitious, mounting economic costs:

“Oswego, New York. Water levels in the Great Lakes are falling: Lake Ontario, for example, is about 7 inches . . . below where it was a year ago. And for every inch of water the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons or risk running aground . . .

As a result, more ships are needed, adding millions of dollars to shipping companies’ operating costs . . .

On average, 240 million tons of cargo travel across the Great Lakes every year. The U.S. fleet circulating in the Great Lakes has 63 ships, which have lost a total of 8,000 tons of cargo capacity for every inch of water the lakes have fallen below normal this year, said James Weakley, president of the carriers’ association. Those 8,000 tons, he said, correspond to enough iron ore to produce 6,000 cars or enough coal to provide electricity to the Detroit area for three hours, or enough stone to build 24 houses . . .

‘If the low levels in the Great Lakes are a result of global warming, I don’t know,’ said [Jonathan Daniels, director of the Oswego Port Authority]. ‘What I know is that we can’t control nature. All we do is hope for rain.’”(7)

Values underlying “exchange value” or economics have proven to be impervious to moral or rational command. Otherwise stated: we all know money talks — but does it have anything to say? You may think that high school teachers should be paid more, that football players should be paid less. You also know that “it” does not work that way.

Will “it” ever change?

FOOTNOTES

(1) For a fuller discussion, see Part III of this series.
(2) Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations,” Penguin Books, London, England, 1997, pp. 430, 431.
(3) Daniel Levitin, “This Is Your Brain On Music,” Dutton, London, England, 2006, p. 7.
(4) Adam Smith, op.cit., pp. 131-2.
(5) The report is available at unep.org/geo/geo4.
(6) Shaila Dewan and Brend Goodman, “A slow-motion response to drought in U.S. South,” International Herald Tribune, October 24, 2007.
(7) Fernanda Santos, “As Great Lakes shrink, a high price to pay,” International Herald Tribune, October 24, 2007.

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– Rene Char, “Feuillets d’Hypnos”(1)–

Tocqueville feared the emergence of a despotic state in America — an anti-utopia in which a quiet, titular state oversees a timid, hard-working population whose members are all alike and equal, fat, dumb, and happy.

In his much maligned “malaise” speech, President Carter struck the same cord when he spoke of the worship of self-indulgence and of “paralysis and stagnation and drift” gripping America.

The rising world of falling expectations; of open meetings of closed minds; of more church steeples and stop signs; of legal crimes; indeed, of a tyranny of laws: is it inevitable?

Economics do not exist in a vacuum. They always have a context, both factual and ideological. And it is human values that form the context in which “exchange” value or economics reside.

In what was the biggest selling, university economics textbook of all times, Paul Samuelson defined “economics” as “the study of how men and society CHOOSE, with or without the use of money, to employ SCARCE productive resources to produce various commodities over time and distribute them for consumption, now and in the future, among various people and groups in society.”(2)

Note carefully that Samuelson assumes having a choice about employing scarce resources. Obviously,

(i) Samuelson’s “scarce resources” were not absolutely scarce. They were scarce only at a certain price offered. If you wanted more of them, all you had to do was pay more for them.

(ii) Those scarce resources were not absolute necessities. Adam Smith and Paul Samuelson were writing in a time when water, air, food, and other absolute necessities were not absolutely scarce on a global scale; consequently, their reasoning made sense.

That situation is changing, however, and most likely irrevocably. Whenever and wherever absolute necessities such as water are absolutely scarce, there is no choice. If the United Nations is right, 1.8 billion people will experience a water calamity in less than 20 years.

The separation of “use” value and “exchange” value in such cases ends. The former invades, overwhelms the latter. The man with the last cup of water will not sell it at any price.

But what is a “necessity”? One of the weak points in classical economics has always been an operational definition of necessity, because necessity is to a large extent culturally determined. A necessity in America may not be a necessity in Haiti.

As water, food, and other absolute necessities become absolutely scarce, cultural determination will lose its power of definition, and economics will enter a new era unlike any other in human history.

(i) If Samuelson’s definition is retained, economics in the future will be “post-economics” relative to the economics taught today.

(ii) If his definition is rejected because “scarcity” becomes absolute scarcity, economics will be forced to become really, actually, truly, finally . . . economical.

John Adams’ recommendation to Thomas Jefferson, “as We are poor We ought to be Oeconomists,”(3) will assume its full value. And Rene Char’s plea quoted at the head of this article will be answered in the affirmative: economics will finally change, for better if consciously constituted and managed, for worse if unconsciously controlled and endured.

Could the emerging scarcity of absolute necessities constellate values so as to form a foundation for (i) a new economic sector?

Even more spectacular, could those scarcities constellate values so as to create (ii) a new source for the creation of wealth? Smith identified land, labor, and capital as “the three original sources of all revenue as well as of all exchangeable value. All other revenue is ultimately derived from some one or other of these.”(4)

The creation of either a new sector or a fourth source would have a momentous impact on the middle class.

Through it all, however, the long-term, cyclical decline of the middle class stays in place. As long as capitalism is capitalism, any new economic sector or a fourth source of exchange value, any extraordinary scientific or technological innovation, will ultimately undergo the same centralization of enterprise and division of labor with its accompanying routinization and standardization.

No matter how many reprieves and new leases on life are granted to the middle class over the centuries, then, the fundamental problem remains. Which is why the malaise President Carter described — the stupor Rimbaud and Tocqueville predicted — is not fully dissipated by any of the fates or the destiny cited above.

The only thing allowing for a definitive resolution of the middle class decline and fall is that the revolution in values creates a post-capitalist/post socialist economic system.

Unlike fate number five, we are speaking of changes of, not in, the capitalist system. Concentration and centralization of enterprise could end; the specialization of labor could stop. In particular, the relentless quest for higher rates of profit would terminate.

A new economic system should not be cavalierly dismissed as impossible. Karl Marx defined a “commodity” as “an object of human wants, a means of existence in the widest sense of the term.”(5) Adam Smith gave greater specificity to “widest sense”: the “necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.”(6)

There is a fundamental agreement, then, that the key to economics is ultimately what people value. It follows that a change in values could change the creation and maintenance of exchange value and the economic system in which is operates.

The emerging absolute scarcity of absolute necessities could force such a change. We cannot force men to be free. Men can be forced, however, to be economical. How they handle that outcome will ultimately determine whether or not mankind survives.

Samuelson noted that choices about resources are made both with and without money. Will the second, non-monetary option undergo a renaissance as water, food and other absolute necessities become scarce, or will the first option continue to dominate and dictate — with all the uncontrolled fury of a tornado, tsunami, or other natural disaster?

To those political and economic conservatives who will say that a new system, a new economic sector, or a new source for generating economic value are preposterous ideas, all I can say is, given the current prevailing values, you are correct.

However, this essay may be correct about something else: an All-Directions, Tocquevillian despotic state sitting atop an All-Directions economy: would not that be the Fourth Reich?

FOOTNOTES

(1) Rene Char, “Feuillets d’Hypnos,” Gallimard, Paris, 2007, p. 18.
(2) Paul A. Samuelson, “Economics: An Introductory Analysis,” fifth edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1961, p. 7. Capitalized words italicized by Samuelson.
(3) John Adams, “Adams to Jefferson, Grosvenor Square Nov. 1. 1785,” in Lester J. Cappon, Editor, “The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams,” The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2005, p. 88.
(4) Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations,” Penguin Books, London, England, 1997, pp. 155, 356.
(5) Karl Marx, “A Contribution to The Critique of Political Economy,” Edited by Maurice Dobb, S. W. Ryazanskaya, translator, International Publishers, New York, 1970, p. 27.
(6) Adam Smith, op.cit., p. 133.

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There are some things that you can do to resist the temptation to spend too much. First make a list of the most expensive items that you need to purchase. Check the internet and advertisements in your local newspaper. This is important especially when you are purchasing electronic products like lap tops, Ipods and digital recorders. The money that you save from these purchases can add up to hundreds of dollars. Recognize that every product that has a sales tag can be bought cheaper if you are willing to do your research.

The second tip is to watch for the best day of the week to purchase clothes and other items. Some stores have sales on certain days of the week. This is done to increase the number of parent?s and students who are coming into their store. As you shop for sales it may be worth returning on another day. Talk with your relative who works in a retail store. They may have a discount that they can use on your purchases. There could be an additional discount in addition to the sale that is going on in the store.

Third there are numerous websites where you can purchase books at a discount. Search Google for discount book websites. Purchasing books online is real convenient today. Books that you order usually arrive in 3 to 5 days. Still it is better to purchase books well before they are needed. If your son/daughter needs the book to write a report the book will be available to get started early. Also consider purchasing reference books so that your son/daughter will have books to look at when they do not understand a particular definition or subject.

A forth back to school saving tip involves purchasing shoes and sneakers at a reduced price. There are stores that sell hundreds of shoes. You need to keep an eye on the prices several times a week. Sometimes local stores want to move inventory so that they will lower their prices. Ask your child how often he/she talks with their peers about where they get the best sneaker discounts.

A fifth tip is to form a group of parents who can each purchase some items in bulk. Pencils and paper can be shared by parents. Create a supplies storage container where you will keep all of the items. This is one way that you can avoid purchasing too many items that you already have. Before you go shopping go to your storage draws and take an inventory of all of things you need. You will be amazed at how much you have in storage from last year,

Now that you?ve saved hundreds of dollar focus on your child?s education. Decide on something that you will do to make education fun this year. Load up your students book bags with good snacks. Even high school students need snacks because they can loose their energy during the day. Remember a healthy body will boost a student?s performance on tests. Make your back to school journey one that is full of good expectations. You can control your back to school spending and have a great new school year too.

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