"As psychologists will tell you, fear of loss is more powerful than the prospect of gain. The struggling middle classes look down more anxiously than they look up, particularly in recession and sluggish recovery. Polls show they dislike high income inequalities but are lukewarm about redistribution. They worry that they are unlikely to benefit and may even lose from it; and worse still, those below them will be pulled up sufficiently to threaten their status. This is exactly the mindset in the US, where individualist values are more deeply embedded. Americans accepted tax cuts for the rich with equanimity. Better to let the rich keep their money, they calculated, than to have it benefit economic and social inferiors."
From here.
Over the last decade, the elite strategy to reinforce indebtedness with stagnant wages, targeted inflation, and cheap credit has destroyed the middle classes' ability to mobilize and look up. Sadly, for much of the middle class in America, this phenomenon is both economic and racial—or more to the point, when it isn't economic, it becomes racial.
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