ALPERN AT LARGE-I'm an unabashedly proud child of the middle class--I grew up less wealthy than my neighbors, but despite my parents' declarations of relative poverty I was also taught to learn what the horror of true poverty really was. I was empowered to know that my future was in my own hands, and that both striving for more but being grateful for what you had was the right balance. In other words, I was "middle class"--the American Middle Class.
Which makes the current inability of the middle class to afford even the most "reasonable" of luxuries a real crisis. Being middle class has always meant being careful to not spend without thinking, but things are particularly "barebones" compared to generations past as detailed in the following link, in that the middle class has insufficient access to the following:
The American Middle Class has insufficient access to Vacations, New Vehicles, Paying Off Debt, Emergency Savings, Retirement Savings, Medical Care, and Dental Work.
To some degree, these challenges are hardly new--but in light of current economic trends, and particularly in light of how many of those complaining about the welfare of the middle class are dismissed, distained, impugned and belittled...maybe it's time to ask if those decrying income inequality are actually CAUSING it.
Count me in as being OK with some folks being rich, and others poor, but like most Americans it's only fair to allow anyone the chance to move ahead...or at least not have to kill themselves with work in order to enjoy a reasonable quality of life. Two things prevent most Americans from moving ahead:
1) Not being paid enough to make ends meet.
2) One's pay not being able to go far enough to meet the ever-rising cost of basics...and even a few luxuries.
Furthermore, most Americans decry both extremes of laissez faire capitalism and top-down socialism...and aggravating the plight of the middle class is that both are now occurring (in abundance!) under rather pleasant and hard-to-detect guises.
One way to know that a political or business leader is lying to you and/or hiding the truth is if he/she screams wholeheartedly about social issues, civil rights, safety/security, terrorism, and tax unfairness while saying near to nothing about a lack of income mobility and rising income inequality, while your rent and utility bills skyrocket.
Oh, and haven't you heard? Inflation is down and joblessness is going down, so we're all doing "better"--and yet for some reason most Americans' spending isn't really up...hmmm. How did that happen?
Well, much of the answer lies in the growing dissatisfaction with both political parties, and both extremes--there's no balance to set the right debates, and in this one-party town of LA it's hard to have any sort of progress on the real issues. Balance as in Councilmember Bernard Parks' recent CityWatch article where he tries to find the right "Goldilocks" approach to raising the minimum wage.
Councilmember Parks suffers from his own "Goldilocks" problem--he's both brilliant as hell but arrogant as hell, and his ideas and actions have been both worthy of praise and scorn in the past...but he's right. Furthermore, for all those screaming for higher wages, a few questions are mandatory if that push is to succeed:
1) Does the city or county, or state, have the courage to give businesses fewer taxes to pay for the wage hikes? Otherwise, small businesses, which see very slim profit margins as things currently stand, will shutter up and their workers will have NO income. (Now is THIS the time you tune out of this CityWatch article, because you incorrectly think it's consistent with having no minimum wage hikes?)
2) Does the city, or county, or state, have the courage to acknowledge that supply/demand forces exist among low-income labor as much as they do among trained professionals, so that the empowering of employers and undocumented immigrants to break the law with illegal hiring and flooding the lower wage work force keeps wages down as much or more than any other factor?
(Or is THIS the time you tune out of this CityWatch article because you incorrectly think it promotes racism?)
3) Does the city, or county, or state, have the courage to acknowledge that utility, fuel, food and other costs of the basics are rising faster than any wage hike could ever keep up with, and that some environmental policies are more cost-effective than others?
(Or is THIS the time you tune out of this CityWatch article because you incorrectly think it discourages a clean environment and policies that help the economy as well?)
I've no problem--as do most Americans--in raising taxes when it's needed, but the knowledge that the middle class gets hit and hurt the most with these tax hikes suggests that not only the cause for taxes but the manner in which the taxes get spent must really get a really harsh, tough review.
So when my favorite cause--transportation--is up for yet another tax hike, shall we decry those questioning the timing, the need and how it's being spent?
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Measure R--our most recent transportation tax hike--was, in my opinion, a fine and transparent tax hike. Yet all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there are these heretofore-unknown forces adding costs to the approved projects (boing!), densification and development uber-advocates (boing!), "enlightened experts" advocating smackdowns to car commuters and single-family neighborhoods (boing! boing! boing!) who never were part of Measure R.
Meanwhile, our City sidewalks and streets and DASH shuttles go without proper operational upkeep and expansion...while everything from DWP to City workforce costs go up, up, UP! (And yes, if not directly, they are indirectly connected). This negatively impacts the middle class in a myriad of ways.
Certainly, Councilmember Mike Bonin (who really gets it with respect to "cred") has chosen to be part of the answer when he demands that developers of bars, restaurants and clubs follow through on promises they make in return for getting permits. If these promises go unfulfilled, the middle class neighbors absorb the greatest impact.
Councilmember Bonin also has decried development that has been labeled as "transit-oriented" or "affordable" but has been anything but--which is a sentiment that the City Council and Mayor, to their own discredit, have yet to enjoin. Currently developers are focusing on where the money is--in other words, the rich--and are hardly interested in creating middle-class housing.
Similarly, the evaluation by Mayor Garcetti, County Supervisors Knabe and Ridley-Thomas, Councilmember Bonin and others to delay opening of the Crenshaw/LAX light rail line until the recently-approved LAX/MetroRail connection station at 96th/Aviation is built to avoid unnecessarily duplication of work shows fiscal restraint and the need to create a cost-effective, affordable airport/rail link to serve the middle class.
But the more courageous--and I mean REALLY courageous, politically-incorrect-but-common-sense--measures are being avoided by our political and thought leaders (in no particular order):
1) Finding ways to rip down, or allow more access through, the fences that prevent children and families from accessing their local school fields and playgrounds (that the middle class paid for!) to play and exercise and congregate...while a promise for more parks goes unfulfilled.
2) Cutting down overpaid sectors of the public workforce--in particular, the DWP, which is overdue for a 10% haircut in the worst of ways--before any further fees/hikes go before the ratepayers (particularly to the middle class, which really can't afford them).
3) Redirecting public sector funds towards the creation of large water-importing pipes to redirect water from the Northwest and Midwest to a drought-ridden California, instead of jacking up the costs and driving down the access of water, food and a host of mandatory items for the middle class to survive.
4) Doing what it takes to making college affordable--in other words, more online courses and a few "come to Jesus" talks with those working in the "higher education industry" to accept a more sustainable pay structure and budgetary/tuition process acceptable to, and favorable for, the middle class.
5) Doing what it takes to making health care and dental work affordable--how DO we incentivize employers and health care/dental providers to get more middle-class health/dental needs met, and how DO we slash the cost of recently-cheap-but-now-unaffordable medications for the benefit of the middle-class?
6) Stop blathering about our "economic recovery", because it is dominated by jobs without benefits, and with low pay and insufficient hours. The ability to makes ends meet is still elusive for the majority of middle-class Americans, particularly Californians, who've got nothing left after the essentials to save for emergencies, retirement, or (gasp, the temerity to even suggest!) a vacation.
And to those so happy about how good things are on Wall Street? How are Wall Street's profits working for middle-class America, for Main Street?
So, yes, our income inequality issue is truly the main problem facing our city, county, state and nation...but sadly, it's almost certainly being aggravated the most (if not downright created) by those political leaders also publicly decrying it the most.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] He also does regular commentary on the Mark Isler Radio Show on AM 870, and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. (The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 28
Pub: Apr 3, 2015
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CityWatch Los Angeles
Politics. Perspective. Participation.
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