{"text":[[{"start":5.2,"text":"By any definition, I have lived the American dream. My paternal grandparents grew up in mountain villages outside Trabzon in Turkey without indoor plumbing. My maternal grandfather was a Swedish orphan and his wife, my grandmother, was the ninth child of a Lancashire coal miner."}],[{"start":10.23,"text":"And yet, because my mother grew up in the US and my father immigrated there at a time when the American dream was still alive and well, I now have the good fortune to work with, and write for, some of the best-educated and most privileged people on earth."}],[{"start":37.92,"text":"The American dream has been the driving belief system of my country. If we Americans think we can do better than our parents, we are willing to put up with almost anything — grotesque wealth inequality, a non-existent social safety net and even the increasing awareness that our country is turning into a banana republic with a power-mad would-be autocrat at the helm. No wonder corruption has become a key issue in the upcoming midterm elections."}],[{"start":64.09,"text":"But I think class is an even bigger one. It is the backdrop for everything from the Republicans’ economic nationalism to the Democrats’ focus on the cost of living crisis and concentrated corporate power, and for specific state initiatives like the California billionaire tax that will be voted on in early November."}],[{"start":81.36,"text":"The idea of getting the country’s richest 100 people to pay for healthcare for the poorest isn’t just a batty idea supported by millennial socialists. Last week, Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, declared wealth inequality a “danger to society” and called for a national wealth and inheritance tax as high as 100 per cent in some cases."}],[{"start":103.13,"text":"Kirby is now being pilloried by conservatives. But they should be careful. Siding with billionaires may not work well politically given that the latest Pew figures show that over 60 per cent of Americans now consider themselves working class, up six points from two years ago."}],[{"start":118.085,"text":"Appealing to working people has brought the Republicans electoral success in recent years. Donald Trump’s inflationary wars (both trade and hot) have undermined that appeal to some extent. Democrats are finding that economic populism is more salient than identity politics. And so, both parties are now locked in an internal, existential struggle between leadership, key donors (who want neither tariffs nor tax rises), and political reality, as they try to play the class card."}],[{"start":146.777,"text":"Doing so successfully requires a proper understanding of how class works in America, a topic both nebulous yet all encompassing."}],[{"start":154.48,"text":"Some people self-define as “working class” because they don’t have a college education or work with their hands (this is the model former Maine Democratic Senate candidate and oysterman Graham Platner tried to leverage before he was tainted with allegations of sexual assault, which he denies)."}],[{"start":169.963,"text":"Others do so because of economic insecurity. This brings a lot of under- or unemployed, AI-threatened white-collar workers into the tent given that healthcare and retirement schemes are connected to employment in the US. Half of college graduates and upper-income adults now consider themselves part of the “working class”."}],[{"start":188.88,"text":"More Republicans than Democrats also self-define this way, which says a lot about how the left has become associated with wealth. Overall, more white people than Black people call themselves working class, which reaffirms the idea central to behavioural economics that a loss (in this case, of relative economic status) is more painful than a gain is pleasurable."}],[{"start":209.12,"text":"Unions would like anyone who lives off a pay cheque to identify as working class (hence the United Auto Workers organising adjunct professors), underscoring that wealth rather than income may be the real class divider in America. Pew numbers show the median wealth of upper-income households is 49 times that of lower-income ones today, as opposed to 31 times in 2022. Those top households drive inflation in key areas like housing and education."}],[{"start":235.954,"text":"It’s clear that the idea of class is politically salient. Republicans have tried to emphasise things like re-industrialisation as well as not taxing tips as solutions to the challenges of the working class. Democrats are talking up corporate power, labour protections and aid for working people."}],[{"start":252.607,"text":"But the mobility challenge — Harvard professor Raj Chetty’s landmark work found that 90 per cent of children earned more than their parents if born in the 1940s, versus 50 per cent if born in the 1980s — will require solutions from both sides of the aisle. It is tied to both the need for higher GDP growth (a whopping 6 per cent a year to right the ship) and better distribution of that growth."}],[{"start":275.84,"text":"Ultimately, says Jennifer Harris, the head of the Hewlett Foundation’s economy and society initiative, which funds economic research and advocacy on both the left and the right, being “working-class may be less about an income level than a creed or a set of ideas about what democracy needs in America right now.” It needs to work, for starters (the midterms and any White House refusal to accept the results will tell us much on that score)."}],[{"start":300.581,"text":"What’s more, democracy and mobility are deeply intertwined. Research shows that belief in a better future is connected to satisfaction with the political system. And having a voice in politics depends on economic opportunity. The American dream does not come cheap."}],[{"start":316.08,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1793084055_4431.mp3"}