R.I.P. The middle class, US. 1933-1980?

Nothing dramatic happened over the weekend to prompt this entry, but I figured after my last two posts, I would detail the results of 30+ years of rightward drift in our government. For decades prior, the US had a vibrant (economically speaking) mass of people who were neither rich nor poor, and they were known to all as "the middle class" because of it. Living standards in the US improved greatly in the 20th century, mainly as a result of the accumulation of wealth by this middle class, spurred on by governmental spending on their behalf. (The remaining improvement can be seen in governmental spending for the "poorer" classes striving to enter the middle class. Think about rural electrification as an example of those efforts.) And it is easy to see why, as the distribution of wealth in this country began to resemble the old statistical standby, the bell curve. Better living for the middle of that curve meant better living for the vast majority of the country's populace. (Before that, wealth was much more highly concentrated at the leading edge of the curve, as the richest 10% owned far more than their 10% share of the wealth.)
As most historians and sociologists will tell you, though, the development of the concept of a "class" depends on more than just numbers in a chart or the shape of a graph. To have a fully realized class, the members of that class must share common goals or values, and by looking at what those were can we truly see that the middle class has indeed died. So what were "middle class values"? More pointedly, how did they spend their new found wealth (which is probably the best indicator, in a society where autonomy and individualism are prized)? I don't think any of these are all that controversial, so I'll simply list the kinds of things which the middle class seemed to value, admittedly based on nothing more than my own personal observations, and in no particular order:
1) home ownership
2) college education for their kids, if any
3) family vacations; time spent together with the family as a unit
4) purchase of other significant material possessions (cars, TVs)
5) stable retirement income, with more left over for children's inheritance
6) "nuclear" family structure
7) upward mobility, both in career and society--the idea that one can improve one's lot in life through hard work
There may be more, but I think those are the most widely shared values or aspirations held by the American middle class of the 20th century. The amazing thing in retrospect is that they held these values, and many were eventually able to achieve them, based on a single income! This last point is the most relevant when determining that the middle class actually died a long time ago, not in this last decade or some point more recent. People very quickly got used to having more than one income per family, because they rationalized their state by the values by which they still wished to live. If one income wasn't enough to do the kinds of things "middle class" people do, the middle class "allowed itself" to be defined differently--now analysts (and maybe more importantly, politicians) looked at "family income", rather than individual income, to see where the "middle class" lay on the graph, neatly obfuscating the fact that middle class incomes were failing to keep up with the cost of their value system, even though productivity measures shot through the roof over the course of the century.
And that was the big lie. The middle class had to double the number of incomes just to maintain its value system at the same level! Since most people were kept so busy working (Americans have always had the least number of vacation days per capita among all the industrialized nations, although Canada, it seems, has dipped below them currently, although most businesses in the US do not pay for holidays, so this chart is a little forgiving of the reality), and the erosion of buying power was so gradual, many people probably felt that they were simply adjusting to a "new normal"--a phrase we are once again hearing, and to which I will turn shortly. The Republican Party, though, whether through actual manipulation of the mechanism of wealth generation by its richer members, or simply through happenstance (I leave it to others to decide what they think!), grasped quite quickly that this ugly decline could be put to "good" (actually "evil", but I digress) use in the political realm by 1980.
Reagan's constant scapegoating, whether of the government itself (which is the only actor powerful enough to correct the decline via regulation, or wealthy enough to offset it via direct stimulus), or of demonized subgroups of the poorer classes (e.g., the mythical "welfare queen" who drove a Cadillac) led many middle class people to join in their own throat-slitting by electing Republicans, who as we have seen, have no interest in actually helping any groups but the rich and powerful. And for the last 30+ years, we have seen the resulting and rapid decay of the middle class, to the point where now even 2 incomes can't provide for the middle class "dreams" of yesteryear.
Occasionally on Daily Kos an argument over what constitutes "the middle class" erupts whereby some misguided people argue that $250K is really middle class in some parts of the country. (No, really!) Where they have gone wrong is in thinking that the middle class can still afford its values; and since in their parts of the world owning a house, paying for college, etc. can cost that much money, that the "middle class" can actually be defined to include people making 6 times the median personal income (which is well into the top 5% of income, if not much higher--this chart stops counting at $100K, which is already higher than 93.76% of incomes!) The reality is that the middle class long ago became unable to afford its own values--any of them--and the "new normal" we are hearing about now is the sound of the failure of the 2 income family to be able to afford them either. Only the rich are middle class now, it seems--and this has happened even before we lose what last shreds of a welfare system we still have. Wealth has once again been relegated to the top, as we have completed the dismantling of the redistribution of wealth the New Deal era accomplished. Indeed, we've gone so far in that direction that we're now worse off along those lines than at any time in the 20th century, and possibly at any time in our entire history. (Apparently, we only started measuring wealth distribution in the early 20th C; I can not locate a chart with complete historical data. I would be surprised if wealth was more highly concentrated at the top at any previous time than it was in pre-crash 1929, but it is possible.)
But
Ooooh, there's a scary black man in the White House!
or (and this is from a real patron in my library)
Does TMZ.com (no, I'm not linking to them!) have any articles about Marc Anthony and JLo getting back together?
or (a common retort from so-called centrists, even Democratic ones, referring to those of us complaining that Congress and the President are not helping)
Aww, you didn't get your pony? Stop whining and grow up!
*sigh*