Middle Class

The editorial "Invisible lives" (April 11) makes me think the editor placed his/her middle class values on these young adults. The young adults caught up in the Lamont Davis trial have chosen a different path. They live in the "now." They are having babies at a young age, enjoying the joys of parenthood, maybe the high of drugs and alcohol. They have decided not to have an education, find a job, commute, try to please a boss for 40-plus years, pay a mortgage for 30 years, save for retirement.

Question: What is the most guaranteed applause line in American politics today? Answer: Anything that allegedly benefits that fine group of Americans known as the middle class. Want proof? Well, just about every other sentence uttered at the Democratic National Convention paid homage to this esteemed socioeconomic group. Ditto for the GOP in Tampa, where speaker after speaker spoke of the virtues of the middle-income worker. From a political perspective, the drumbeat makes sense.

KEVIN Phillips, the Republican Democrats love most to quote, has outlined a sour yet savvy political analysis that bodes ill for both major parties but reserves its harshest judgment for President Clinton.A prolific writer and political analyst -- his most recent book is "Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans and the Decline of Middle Class Prosperity" -- Mr. Phillips told a Comstock Club audience in Sacramento last week that Mr. Clinton seems to have blown a historic opportunity to acknowledge and reward an enraged and economically failing middle class.

EVEN WITH the "new economy," it's the same old story for middle-class Americans.As the end of the decade nears, the U.S. economy remains strong: We have a robust real estate market, the greatest-ever bull market for stocks and a near-record run of continuous growth.Unfortunately, this makes for a bitter backdrop for those in the middle, who yet again appear to have lost ground to time, inflation -- and to the millionaire next door.For instance:Between 1973 and last year, a span of 25 years, the inflation-adjusted wages of the middle-class American dropped 12 percent.

To hear Democratic candidates Bill Clinton and Bob Kerrey go on about The Middle Class, you'd think every collar in the country was white. This is not only factually misleading, it's also the stuff of shortsighted politics.True, large majorities of Americans, when pressed by pollsters to label themselves, do proclaim themselves members of the vast middle, as if there were no one else out there but a handful of fat cats on the top and an underclass below.The truth is that a huge number of credit-carded, mortgage-paying, suburban blue-collar workers think of themselves as both middle-class and working people.

I was 14 when New York City had its fiscal crisis and went to Washington, as supplicants do, expecting to be bailed out in 1975. And when Jerry Ford initially said no, the New York Daily News supplied a headline I'll never forget: "Ford to City: Drop Dead."Seventeen years later, the country has sunk to a self-pity worthy of 1975 New York, and it's time for another president to give us a new headline, one you should see but won't. How about "Bush (or Clinton) to Middle Class: Drop Dead?"Exit polls tell us this year's middle class voter is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

Can you remember a time you didn't have the foggiest notion about a 401K retirement plan and you weren't entirely aware of the fact that as interest rates climb bond prices fall? Wall Street types, of course, always knew this and more. But there was a time not all that long ago when most members of the middle class were blissfully ignorant of such investment nuances.Joseph Nocera remembers that time and how it started to change some three decades ago. In "A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class," he delivers in spirited prose the hows and whys of America's financial coming of age.This fine book recounts the economic and regulatory forces as well as the individuals who turned us from investment neophytes to small-time market players.

WASHINGTON -- For the last few years, the American economy has been on a real bender.Consumer spending, fueled by mounting personal debt and a soaring stock market, has set off an economic boom that has boosted job prospects and incomes across the board.Like any night out on the town, however, all good things must eventually come to an end. This time, the negative personal savings rate, the spiraling trade deficit, and the threat of a sudden drop in the stock market may spoil the party.The big question facing middle-class Americans is: when we wake up to smell the coffee, what will we have to show for the 1990s?

The author, who lives in Ventura County, Calif., requested anonymity in order to spare her family further humiliation.THE YEAR just ended was the year my children did not go to the circus, or the museum, or the movies, or McDonald's. The year their only "new" clothes came from charity. The year my toddler cried from hunger all day because he was tired of the only food I could offer: oatmeal. The year I asked my church on four occasions to give meals to my children. This was the year I lost 25 pounds without even trying.