On the American Middle Class

A comprehensive report on the American middle class

Yesterday again, I said you said me, I just called to say I love you, and so on. It is their voice and everyone's voice; The Graduate, American Beauty and Desperate Housewives are their images and popular stories in other countries. New Yorker, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, etc. Is it their reading materials, or a model of their influence on the world; Windows, Google and Word are their tools, and they are also popular working methods in the world. Even their restaurants, such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Starbucks, have become a worldwide fashion life. A stratum formed on the basis of 1620 Mayflower Convention is not only the main body of their country, but also the most influential person in the world. Why?

Middle class past events

Initially, Virginia-Americans in the "colonial period" could each give 300 mu of land (black 180 mu). In this regard, historian Tang Degang said: "Americans are born middle class." /kloc-Whitman, a poet in the 0 th and 9 th centuries, said: "The middle class is the most valuable class in any society."

Start with freedom.

In detail, they are the products of the historical changes of American free economy in the19th century. This historic change has changed rural and urban life, reformed the old mode of production and alienated the middle class from the old world. As Max Weber pointed out, in rural Europe, producers came into being before the market. There, farmers occupy the land and tie themselves to it according to the ancient tradition. Even the power of law cannot turn them into rural entrepreneurs in the American sense. In the United States, the market was formed before rural producers. The middle class came into being before and outside the city. One of the most fundamental and historic differences between European and American social structures is the peasant group living on a small piece of land and the scattered, independent and free peasants who operate on a large scale. This difference is very important for understanding the characteristics of the American middle class. In Europe, the middle class was formed in the center of the town, while in the United States, the free peasants scattered in the empty rural space formed a large number of independent old middle classes-they were never farmers and nobles in the European sense.

American farmers have no historical burdens and traditional shackles. Their lifestyle is absolutely individualistic. Because they don't have the feudal fetters of Europe, they are the most keen social groups to publicize the capitalist mode of production and lifestyle. In the early19th century, about 4/5 people engaged in professional activities were private small business owners in American towns. They are engaged in various economic activities: commerce, lending, speculation, transportation, housing construction and manual labor. Between the two poles of society-for example, the successful wealthy businessmen of Boston manufacturing company and the employees who sell their labor in docks, factory workshops and carriage shops, there are a large group of small craftsmen and businessmen who live in the cracks, create a bigger market for farmers and expand their own market in the countryside, thus becoming a hotbed for the development of the old American middle class, and pinning their ideals and expectations on them. They formed a self-balanced middle-class capitalist society. In this social center, there is no authority, and its social members are fully concerned about formulating a series of laws and regulations to protect property.

A change of insecurity

By the end of 1 9th century, the United States had developed into a big industrial country and a big exporter of agricultural products (from 1869 to 1899, the national population increased by almost three times, agricultural production increased by1times, and the total output of manufacturing industry increased by six times), and the American society gradually grew into a society with large production and high consumption. These data show that most small business owners in the United States have lost their assets by the middle of the 20th century and turned to work for people who only account for 2% or 3% of the population and own 40% or 50% of the United States. Among these people, a (new) middle class has emerged, that is, white-collar workers who live on salaries and provide services with knowledge and technology. America has become a country of employees. For most people, it is impossible to own assets; In the labor market, they are recognized by people not because they own assets, but because of their income, power and reputation.

The concentration of assets deprived the old middle class of the foundation of personal freedom and the means of self-reliance, and changed their life planning and psychology. The industrialization mechanism has created many white-collar workers, and the new middle class depends on them. The economic prosperity of the United States after World War II (from 1945 to 1960, the gross national product of the United States doubled) made the white-collar class expand rapidly. As daniel bell said in the introduction of "The Coming of Post-industrial Society", "The development of service economy focusing on office work, education and management will naturally transfer the labor force to the white-collar class. By 1956, the number of white-collar workers in American occupational structure surpassed that of blue-collar workers for the first time in the history of industrial civilization. Since then, this proportion has been steadily expanding. By 1970, the ratio of white-collar workers to blue-collar workers exceeded 5:4. " The white-collar workers who have evolved into the middle class are no longer manipulating "assets" or "things" but "people" and "symbols". Their specialty is dealing with paperwork, money and people. They are experts in dealing with interpersonal relationships, business and technical relations. They don't rely on "things", but on "wisdom" and the social machine of people who create "things" through organization and coordination. Most of the new middle class get benefits by selling services in the labor market instead of buying and selling assets, and get direct income from occupations instead of assets. Therefore, the new middle class is people who work for other people's assets. This is the main difference between the old and new middle classes, and also the main difference between the petty-bourgeois entrepreneur society and the industrial and post-industrial society with new professional structure. If the old middle class, as a free petty bourgeoisie, struggled for a lifetime to become a part of the big asset structure, then the new middle class relied on big assets to gain a sense of professional security from the beginning.

Luxury and simplicity coexist.

As a social group, they will not pose a threat to anyone; As individuals in society, they pursue an independent lifestyle; But as social people, they have changed the social structure, social values and social psychology of the United States and influenced American culture.

Being constantly created, they and richer people woke up from the old school life and began to read peanut comics and playboy. Elvis Presley 1954 released its first album, Disneyland 1955 opened, and McDonald's opened at the same time. 1959, the first Barbie appeared, and the world followed in their footsteps.

When Ronald Reagan came to power, he made them proud, made America richer and completely disintegrated the other pole of the world. As a result, hippies soon became history, and yuppies flocked to them. Starbucks opened in Howard Schultz became their meeting place. Dressed up, they talked about Cezanne and Van Gogh on the way to Starbucks. They prefer famous brands and marble, cover the sofa in the living room with silk, and their homes are full of high-grade art replicas. They advocate the unofficial French cultural power of society, and they prove their existence and value through elegant and beautiful appearance-they continue the meticulous, elegant, decent, dignified, rich, luxurious, high-pressure, gorgeous, noble, extravagant and so on of the old middle class; At the same time, it is more inclined to show the truth, nature, warmth, simplicity, simplicity, frankness, comfort, craftsmanship, uniqueness, sensibility and sincerity of different temperament and spirit. The information age in the 1990s made the American economy stronger, turning the 10 year of the world into the 10 year of the United States, and making them imitators of people living outside the United States.

The birthmark of a class

Compared with the same class in Europe and Japan, the characteristics of the American middle class are the most obvious: whether it is reading habits, behavioral characteristics or life requirements, they seem to be "conceptualized"-which makes the world know them better. They are not the black sheep in life, but in their own history, with a pure attitude and positive spirit, they gradually made America a "dream" country.

Hollywood

What would America be like without Hollywood?

From Gone with the Wind to American Beauty, from The Graduate to Rain Man, from Forrest Gump to A Beautiful Mind, it is Hollywood that makes the world remember American culture-it is the world's largest film production base, and it is also a loyal recorder of the American middle class and an exporter of American spirit-until today, Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, 2000. Moreover, it has close ties with the financial giants on Wall Street, and constantly promotes a large number of classic women in the eyes of the middle class, such as Audrey Hepburn, Fei Liwen, Elizabeth Taylor and Julia Roberts, as well as idol men in Vanity Fair, such as Marlon Brando, sean connery, Parker and Nicolas Cage, and everything related to them: love, divorce, residence, cosmetics, pets and manners. They even become a global public topic, chattering endlessly in social occasions. Therefore, the image of the American middle class is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. They proposed romantically, they were full of fun at friends' parties, they were brave and kind, and they all left a classic Hollywood-style or sad or comedy happy ending at the end.

Puritans, * * and party leader William Hayes turned movies into a means and tool to celebrate the lifestyle and achievements of the American middle class. According to Hayes, this film has become a traveling businessman. "Commodities follow the movie. Wherever American movies go, we will be able to sell more American goods. " . In a sense, the history of Hollywood is undoubtedly "the spiritual history of the American middle class".

New york people.

Harold Ross first saw new york in 19 13, when he was 2 1 year old and was a journalist. He is a big-boned westerner with drooping lips, rude behavior and plain appearance. Ross didn't leave any impression on the metropolis of new york, until five years later, when he came to new york as the editor-in-chief, the metropolis finally accepted him.

Ross's ambition is to record the cultural history of a great city, her Broadway, jazz and the places where intellectuals come and go. His interest in humor suddenly reached the essence of the urban middle class, and a group of humorous writers and cartoonists gathered under his banner. He wanted to create an urban culture through humor and art, and he said to his employees, "Don't quit! This is not a magazine, this is a sport! " Indeed, humorous writing style has become a sport. The New Yorker has cultivated generations of enterprising middle-class intellectuals-a more stable circle around it than many countries, and 70% of its subscribers have subscribed to the magazine for more than 10 years. This is an elite cultural magazine full of New England interest, and has always maintained a proud and disdainful attitude towards ignorant Philistines. For example, politically, although it advocates democracy and popularization, culturally, it believes that truly noble art must be aristocratic, that is, only a few leisure classes have the knowledge and time to appreciate it, and the general public is only qualified to appreciate low-level popular art: movies, television, popular novels, comics and so on.

Originally accused of imitating PUNCH's The New Yorker. Envy for the culture from Paris: the article "New Yorker Style" by columnist Adam Gopnik. It is he who looks at Paris through the eyes of new york people. "It has the most beautiful but ordinary civilization in the world: coffee rooms, small restaurants, parks, lemons on trays, boulevards dotted with leaves and shadows …" Paris and Manhattan, the former are cities full of museums and parks, while the latter are commercial centers full of skyscrapers. He said that the so-called French civilization is actually a collection of small shops and a symbol of the middle class.

Finally, The New Yorker has formed the aesthetic taste of the American middle class that keeps pace with the times. It has always rejected experimental, rough or destructive artists, and those works from the edge of society have also been excluded. However, it provides a home for those carefully crafted, complacent, wordy and boring works. The New Yorker provides a unique quality for American middle class culture. It delights them, teaches them and always respects their knowledge, but never condescends to cater to them.

Latte townlet

In the forties and fifties of last century, a group of intellectuals who advertised "voluntary separation from the middle class" came to Greenwich Village. "Going to the suburbs" became the slogan, so the land price of Greenwich Village rose in the 1960 s, and the coffee houses crowded with poets, artists and novelists quickly gave way to shopping malls, fashion shops, advertising design companies and car clubs. The land price raised by the real estate agent soon pushed the artists living in poverty out of the block. When Bohemia was replaced by another group of Bohemians, the cultural faces of the middle class gradually became more and more similar. Around American metropolises, more and more suburban towns are filled with milk and coffee. The middle class soon turned its pursuit of intellectuals into something for its own appetite. They want symbols and more comfortable enjoyment.

In the suburbs, housing builders are constantly copying the model of Greenwich Village and selling new lifestyles to the middle class. William J. Levitt appeared on the cover of Time magazine in the summer of 1950. He took the lead in building a large number of neat houses in the suburbs. In front of a row of houses with the same structure, the billboard reads: "The house builder Levitt sells a new way of life." In the 1960s, Levitt's newly-built houses were not only equipped with washing machines and televisions, but also stipulated in the contract that outdoor laundry, fencing and regular lawn mowing were prohibited.

Jacobs undoubtedly played a role in adding fuel to the flames. Greenwich's lifestyle poetically depicts suburban life. Grocery store owners, fruit shop vendors and laundry owners have lost their filth and snobbery: they are hardworking and noisy, they are clean, and they are harmonious and warm. Developers soon let the suburbs have German-style pedestrian streets, handicrafts shops made by Indians, Italian coffee shops, Victorian bedrooms and the Swedish government. Of course there will be missionaries, human rights groups, environmental protection organizations, agricultural activities and so on.

A "Village Voice" about Greenwich Village is published every Tuesday night. As usual, there was a long queue at the newsstand near the eighth street subway line 6 in downtown Manhattan. These readers who queued to buy the Voice of the Country turned directly to the rental advertising column. They believe that if they see the rental information on it the next morning, all the houses will have their own owners.

Similar villages have appeared around major cities in the United States. Robert Moses is the leader of suburban expansion. His highway plan will control the time for the city to reach the suburbs in a shorter time. Highway czar is connected with the towns of New York State through bridges, tunnels and highways in new york City, so that the owner can drive to the park or Long Island he founded. Wherever the expressway goes, the land price in the suburbs advertised as milk coffee town is rising and blooming everywhere.

A typical "milk coffee town", such as Burlington, Vermont, has become a liberal community, usually with a fresh and beautiful natural environment and a university town. There are hundreds of small towns like this in the United States, scattered like satellites in every corner of the city. The middle class buys houses here according to the maps provided by real estate developers. They are happy to enjoy the natural milk flavor and the coffee mixture with the quality of urban life.

The quiet countryside has not caused some emptiness in life. On the contrary, such a small town provides more consumer goods that can reflect the life taste of the rich people living here, such as elegant gay magazine curves and alternative music records. In Burlington, there will be frequent public square activities-various art seminars, yoga festivals, food festivals, kite festivals, rock concerts, environmental gatherings against development, etc.

Ford

There is often a paradox between human nature and lanes: people who pursue speed must respect traffic rules, and at the same time carefully give way to slow pedestrians. Americans always think that drivers are not as moral as pedestrians. The nobler they are, the less outstanding their cars are.

All this is caused by Ford. In such a short time, he made every middle-class family in the United States own more than one car-so people say that because of Ford, the middle class was born on the American highway. Their identity, whether they are farmers staying on the ranch or sweaty workers in the big industrial workshop, as long as they own a T-Ford and drive their families for a ride on the American Avenue at weekends.

Henry Ford instigated a revolution, which contributed more to the world than the struggle for power and profit in some countries. In Detroit, 19 14, Ford tried to establish an assembly line production model, considering cultivating consumers in view of the huge capacity of assembly line production. He chose to build a middle class from his side and cultivate a group of people who can afford to drive Ford cars. Ford announced that its workers were paid $5 a day. From 65438 to 0926, Henry Ford tried to work 40 hours a week.

Peter drucker preached Ford's revolutionary significance to the world: "The real revolution is not the Soviet Union's economic plan, but Henry Ford's mass production thought. In the 40 years since the first Model T car was manufactured, the revolution itself has brought changes to the social foundation, and its development speed, universality and influence are unprecedented in human history. No matter whether non-western countries launch the proletarian movement, the new nationalist movement or any other' ism' movement ... they are inspired by the violent impact of this revolution, not the revolution. "

No one is jealous of the Ford family. While accumulating wealth, they have undoubtedly created more middle classes and made them have a better quality of life.

British taste

In Dr Herman Tallow's home, his girlfriend spilled English magazines all over the living room. It is said that this can make a vulgar and boring surgeon look more elegant.

Making yourself look more like an English gentleman is a kind of certification for the American middle class without its own tradition. In the eyes of Americans, the inheritance and preservation of British heritage-a maid in a white apron or a butler in a striped vest-implies that this family has a longer spiritual history. The upper class can be seen everywhere: they like opera and classical ballet, and they like to send their offspring to preparatory boarding schools in single-sex schools; Go to Europe or the Middle East to see historical sites; Learn humanities instead of electronic engineering. ...

"English worship" is an essential element in the taste of high society, which comes from clothing, literature, allusions, etiquette, ceremonies and celebrations. The middle class worships Britain. In the artificial suburbs around Houston, the middle class lives in apartments with these British names: Nottingham Oak Manor; Afton Oak Manor; Inverness Forest Villa; Sherwood Forest Villa; Blaise manor; Meredith Manor. There is even a "clover manor" full of Irish flavor.

If you look for the personality of the middle-class house, you will find that there is a well room in his front yard-this is an integral part of the architectural style of New England; There will also be a lantern hanging on each side of the front door, which looks like an old-fashioned car light made of brass or black iron; A similar lamp is hung on the high white doorpost to illuminate the path in front of the door.

The pets on the lawn in front of these families must be Scottish hounds or Irish hounds. The most common name is "Sean"-the most common name for Irish men.

Mail-ordering goods from advertising catalogues full of mailboxes is one of the shopping methods that middle-class Americans are happy to choose. For the middle class eager for progress, the catalogue printed with "Mother England" is very attractive. Therefore, the flag of the Commonwealth appears in many directories. A company's catalogue reads, "We are unabashed admirers of Britain", and they associate Britain with wool-like products and artificial leather. Not only can you buy cavalry swords in this company, but you can also get a copy of Churchill's My Early Life. They also sell silver bookmarks with portraits of three great Englishmen: Shakespeare, Churchill and Sherlock Holmes. These catalogues aimed at the middle class are constantly creating British fashion: only those customers who imagine themselves as British descendants are entitled to enjoy British products with heraldic patterns.

Paul fussell said humorously, Imagine that you come to a middle-class family, and everything you see is fine, clean and tidy. There is a showcase made of walnut board against the wall, and dozens of Fang Gezi are separated from the outside world by transparent plexiglass. You have never seen such an arrangement: hundreds of needle hoops are crowded together. The hostess is happy to tell you that she is making a series of needle hoops. There are the Royal Wedding Band, the Teaching Crown Needle Band, and the ceramic band with pastoral scenery. Of course, all these collections come from mail-order catalogs.

In behavior, they advocate "British attitude" more. You can't find that the conservative middle class will choose to have sex in the afternoon. In his home decoration, there are often some lovely animals and warm pastoral scenery. You can't see the intense and ideological decoration like the oil paintings of the French Revolution. They are reserved, calm, slow and polite. On the road, there are usually only two kinds of people who like to drive fast: one is middle school students who want to impress the girls around them; One is an aristocratic life seeker who is insecure and worried about his position, but wants to find a romantic feeling from speed. In fact, the higher the status, the slower and more stable it is.

Go to new york, or Seattle.

Everything was brought by an 8-year-old boy. The man who lost his wife lives in a cabin by the sea in Seattle. He doesn't believe that there will be true love again, but the woman moved by his story is speeding on the highway from new york to Seattle at the moment. She heard the boy talking at midnight. She came for a city and a romantic love.

This is a warm city. The warmth and humidity in Seattle are reminiscent of coffee, seafood, blues and jazz. This city is not full of business atmosphere, because the headquarters of big companies such as Microsoft and Boeing are gathered here. On the contrary, it is the most intellectual and romantic city in America.

As a result, Seattle is like a dreamy suburb with a time difference of three hours in new york: a pier in the sun, a less noisy market, numerous professional bookstores between adjacent fish markets, shops selling postcards, and bars smelling of coffee. Bernard Levy, a French philosopher, said, "If I have to choose a city that can make me lose my way, and I can only choose one-it is Seattle." He was deeply impressed by many museums in this city. "What else can you say? I like the free and unconventional atmosphere in Seattle. "

In the middle-class love story, this American, who should be of Seattle descent, must cross the whole United States to new york along a line from west to east. Enjoy the perfect love in the Empire State Building.

Seattle and new york seem to be two sides of the middle class. On the one hand, they are free, casual, elegant and noble in spiritual life, on the other hand, they write secular desires, adventures and growth in material life. Since 1897, when five American municipalities merged, new york became the center of the world and reached its peak in the 1920s. The American "National" magazine wrote: "All over the country, people who are ambitious, eager for success, fantasizing about getting rich and being smart have turned their eyes to Manhattan Island. It is a well-known fact that people judge not only by what kind of people they want to be, but also by what kind of people they are. On this basis, that is to say, at least half of the nationals in the United States are from new york. " After the war, everything here was a symbol of rise and Excellence: pilots, trapeze artists, baseball home runs, jazz improvisation, Marilyn Monroe skirts and the stock market. Everything is rising, as if gravity had temporarily lost its function.

People who grew up in new york are more eager to live in a free, environmentally friendly and healthy city, such as Seattle. For the American middle class, the only thing that can cure, save and give them perfect love will be in the sunny west like Seattle. In many stories about the United States, middle-class families living in new york have been hurt, and they believe that they can be comforted in Seattle. So they continue to believe in love and strive for a perfect marriage.

However, the injuries suffered by middle-class families living in new york need to be treated all over the United States. For the American middle class, the only thing that can cure, save and give them perfect love will be in the sunny west like Seattle. Although they were injured in new york, they believed that they could be comforted in Seattle, so they continued to believe in love and strive for a perfect marriage.

The example of the United States

It is hard to imagine that a country that lacks primitive civilization and has been independent as a colony for less than 230 years is now the only superpower in the world, and the natural scientists, economists, philosophers and writers born in it have won most of the laurels in this world. Film actors, singers and athletes who grew up in it quickly became global idols. Everyone's trajectory is different, but one clue is clear: they were born in the ordinary, but they all inherited a national spirit. Whether in the ivory tower, stage or arena, they are building and maintaining the American spirit.

Marilyn Monroe: The Memory of the Country

Who can better represent the 65,438+0,950 people in the United States than Marilyn Monroe and the men around her-baseball emperor Ma Di Joe, writer arthur miller, film-winning actor You Monton and President John F. Kennedy?

In America, Monroe is not someone's. She was the lover of every American in the postwar 1950s. Her golden hair matched the richness and innocence of that era. Her red lips have become a symbol of Hollywood and American culture: sexy, fashionable and gaudy. Such middle-class girls continued to add footnotes in the following years. Elizabeth Taylor's black hair bears the venom of pagan Leng Yan and rebellion in the 1960 s; Sharon stone's blonde hair, on the other hand, has a sense of pleasure and coldness after 1980.

"Only diamonds are a woman's best friend." Sex and gold, in the era of American Pentium, glow with infinite brilliance. Marilyn may not be so greedy for money: "The media commented that I took nude photos for the 1949 calendar, and my mistake was nothing, because I urgently needed $50 to redeem my car from the pawnshop." The middle class accepts her frankness and her mediocrity. Finally, she mourned for her death: this girl, formerly known as Norma Jane, was a female worker in an airplane factory before entering Hollywood. At that time, she was depressed, autistic and quiet. The beauty said in 1950 s that she felt needed on the plane. She became the lover of every American in that era.

Michael Jordan: A Hero on Earth

Only those who can enter NBA league venues and shout for basketball will have rich income. The bottom earners can only cheer for their favorite teams in front of the TV. Michael Jordan is destined to be an American middle-class hero who loves sports.

On the basketball court, he is full of demeanor, and all his performances are well-behaved, aggressive and indisputable. Jordan is an idol by nature, his extraordinary skill transcends ideology, his charm transcends class, race and culture, and his dark and textured skin shows the brightest things in sports. Michael Jordan's family background made him grow up in a better environment than children in black areas. His sports career is smooth sailing, and he is destined to be a genius with excellent academic performance. His charity, perseverance and impeccable skills make him the best image ambassador in NBA.

Unlike Jordan, a middle-class image, dennis rodman, a contemporary superstar, has all the colors of black society. Everything about him is related to ideology: his steals before entering the NBA, his outspoken, the color of his hair, his troubles. He will be a rebellious hero in the eyes of some young people, while in the conservative middle class, he may treat the NBA as a Hollywood blockbuster with sympathy or forgiveness, and a dramatic decision needs people like Rodman. This sharp contrast is sometimes like tiger woods and champion Tai Sen or Mike Jason. No matter how much money the latter earns, they will never enter the upper-middle class in the United States.

Bill Clinton: Be an honest politician.

In the end, the American middle class forgave Clinton, just as they had tolerated many civilians. They are extremely disgusted with independent prosecutors Starr and starr report, who are similar to pornographic novels. As a Christian country, the United States will certainly not have much affection for a dishonest person and a person with bad behavior, especially their public figures. But they are sympathetic because some people use the social tools they have mastered to be too strict with Clinton. They remember all the loveliness of the civilian president. At this moment, like their newly grown children, he is regretting making a mistake. They seem to see the weakest part of the tragedy in Hollywood movies. They were in tears, and they easily forgave their president. Those who cling to the president are more like their enemies, the enemies of the United States.

The zipper door incident at the end of 1998 did not drive Clinton out of the White House, but it increased Clinton's audience on the way to speak around the world in the future. The young and peaceful president often smiles naively, so his autobiography covers the world book market. Clinton was born in a great era, which produced a number of outstanding presidents. These presidents are basically from the middle class. Ronald Reagan, whose influence is higher than George Washington, the father of our country, is a second-rate star of Hollywood movies in the United States. He used the Star Wars plan to completely defeat such a big country in the battlefield without smoke. Nixon, if there is no Watergate incident, should also be a strong stroke in American history. George W. Bush seems to be more like a spokesman for the new rich, but he gave the middle class a sense of security. Standing on the podium, the president leans forward, his eyes are urgent, but he often speaks casually, manipulating state power to the fullest. Like it or not, the world is following his logic.

Clinton is undoubtedly one of the cutest images of the American middle class. He initiated a new economic era. At the end of the last century, the once bleak "American Dream" shone again, and many immigrants who thought they had keys stepped into this situation one after another.