Middle class at a crossroads, not for the first time
Friday, September 21, 2012 - 13:00 Zachary Hollcraft/Middle Class Photo Project "To me, nothing epitomizes the middle class like a white picket fence. We bought this house last year, and it came complete with the fence." There've been, by our very rough count, something like a zillion sound bites through the course of this campaign and we've still got a month and a half to go. The candidates have been talking about anything and everything they think will resonate with voters, including heavy use of a phrase that might affect the broadest chunk of Americans: "The middle class." So, um, who exactly is that? There's no government definition. Economists generally agree it's households who earn about $40-120,000 a year. But that's a big range, and that's just the numbers. When you close your eyes and picture a typical middle class American, what do you see? We went out on the streets of cities across the country to ask people to define middle class, and no matter where we went, they agreed ...
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America's middle class at a crossroad -- not for the first time
Friday, September 21, 2012 - 13:00 There've been, by our very rough count, something like a zillion sound bites through the course of this campaign and we've still got a month and a half to go. The candidates have been talking about anything and everything they think will resonate with voters, including heavy use of a phrase that might affect the broadest chunk of Americans: "The middle class." So, um, who exactly is that? There's no government definition. Economists generally agree it's households who earn about $40-120,000 a year. But that's a big range, and that's just the numbers. When you close your eyes and picture a typical middle class American, what do you see? We went out on the streets of cities across the country to ask people to define middle class, and no matter where we went, they agreed on a lot of the basics. You need a decent job. You own a home... maybe a barbecue in the backyard. But start filling in the details, and things get tricky. Like, that decent job? ...
ability
acceptance
act
america
american
americans
angeles
baker
barack obama
brown
business
champion
charlotte
clark
cleveland
convention
creation
definition
democracy
democratic
detestation
distribution
economists
education
election
emmeline
entrepreneurialism
firefighter
flipboard
foundation
franklin
gop
government
homestead
independence
krissy
latin
lind
los
majority
marketplace
marvelous
michael
middle
mitt romney
national
necessity
office
opportunity
paine
parlance
police
policy
population
president
questions
reference
republican
robin
roosevelt
ross
securities
service
similarities
slacker
states
syndication
technology
thomas
type
united
vision
yes
zillion