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Re: Hillary's Candid View of the Electorate

Posted by salaamallah@hotmail.com on Sun Mar 18 09:09:58 2007, in response to Re: Hillary's Candid View of the Electorate, posted by Train Dude on Sun Mar 18 01:06:00 2007.

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ONTARIO Ca
- It's a simple question, not unlike one Joe McCarthy
himself might have asked.
Are you now or have you ever been part of the middle class?
"This is one of those questions I love," said Wally Knox, the
founder and director of the Institute for the Middle Class.
"If you ask an American what class he's in, literally 90
percent of them will say they're part of the middle class."
By definition, that's not possible, and it was one of the
issues being discussed Friday at Ontario Convention Center as
part of the Southern California Association of Governments'
10th annual economic conference.
The day's topic - "The Middle Class on Life Support" - was
addressed by a dozen different speakers from business,
government, academia and the media.
The general conclusion was that there are some things that can
be done and some things that can't. Lamenting the loss of
manufacturing jobs won't accomplish anything, but battling for
better job training and more affordable housing might
accomplish something.
"The middle class has been feeling a lot of angst," said Anil
Puri, dean of business and economics at Cal State Fullerton.
"High health care costs, high transportation costs
high education costs and high housing costs, all at a time
when globalization has taken away many high-paying jobs.
"The middle class is worse off despite six years or pretty
continuous economic growth."
It was left to Puri to come up with a
definition. Ninety percent might consider themselves middle
class, but the reality is far lower.
Historically, middle class has meant those having a household
income of between 80percent and 120 percent of the median.
Nationally, that means incomes between $35,200 and $52,800.
In California, it works out to a range of $40,000 to $65,000.
"People who are part of the middle class cannot actually
afford the middle class lifestyle," Puri said. "The American
dream - owning a home, having two cars, sending the kids to
college."
A wider view that would include a lower middle class and an
upper middle class would expand the range from about $15,000
on the low end to $100,000 at the top. That would encompass
about 75 percent to
80 percent of the population.
"This is an issue that is long overdue for us to be focusing
on," said Mark Pisano, executive director of SCAG. "We need to
find an industry that will replace manufacturing as the core
area that built our middle class."
Larry Kosmont, director of the Kosmont-
Rose Institute, said California needs to find
a way to lower the cost of doing business in the state.
He suggested finding a way to fast-track projects and to
direct the coming funds from infrastructure bonds to projects
that will engender the most private investment.
"We have something of a perfect convergence of issues,"
Kosmont said. "The employment scene is changing, housing is
unaffordable for most people and people who can afford homes
are having to decide between longer commutes or smaller,
denser dwellings."
Kosmont pointed out that for all the talk about globalization,
California is losing more jobs each year to Texas than to
China and India combined.
"Governments ignore competitiveness at their own peril," he
said.
Regional economist John Husing, who served as host of the
conference, spoke of the widening gap between the well-off and
the not-so-well-off.
"We are clearly having some difficulty with the center of our
economic system," Husing said. "The 269,000 families in the
Southland who make $200,000 or more - the top 3 percent - have
about the same total income as the bottom 3.9 million
people."

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