Breaking Bread

The midterms will likely come down to issues that live at the intersection of affordability and corruption. The question is whether the average American can afford to live there. The economic issues at the center of our current campaign go far beyond a single election. The promise of the middle class and the American dream has been broken as our economic bifurcation becomes as dramatic as our political divides. The path to getting a little more and a little more has been replaced by a road less traveled, where middle class Americans find themselves making do with a little less and a little less. “While by some measures, members of the middle class now earn more than those of prior generations, the Brookings Institution recently found that one-third of the American middle class still can’t afford essentials. And for the rest, the high costs of child care, housing, medical care and other necessities make their incomes feel paltry. So they are trimming, reining in the lives they once expected for themselves.” And the cutbacks are needed because of things that are out of people’s control, tariffs, wars, inflation, and medical costs (not to mention the potential threat of A.I. to the job market). What happens to the American dream when people are too stressed out to sleep? Alissa Quart in the NYT (Gift Article): What America Is Living Without. “What’s lost — good bread, regular haircuts, pets, food delivery, babysitters, fancy face creams — isn’t just stuff. It’s ambition. It’s the luxury of living a life without the constant hum of worry. It’s losing the idea of the future you had in the past. It’s nostalgia for a life that you imagined for yourself that will never come to fruition.” Even attempts at distracting the middle class with bread and circuses might not work anymore. Circus tickets are too expensive.