Monday, 11 May

Students turned in the Fiscal Policy Posters by giving a one to three sentence statement about the topic and conclusion of their poster.

Students received a grade print out; students are to bring the print out, signed by a parent to next class.

Students were reminded about the resume requirement for graduation; resumes should be turned in with an attached rubric next class.

Students were given the following assignment:

You have been investigating United States Fiscal Policy. Politicians like those written about below will be guiding fiscal policy in the near future. Do you agree with the arguments presented in this article, namely that being “Middle Class” is a dream American’s must give up? Does the research you did for your poster suggest a possible answer different from the conclusions suggested in this article? Do the posters of any of your class mates suggest a different answer?

In a well organized paragraph that begins with a clear thesis statement use your poster the posters of other students, and your knowledge to argue for or against the idea that the middle class is no longer a reasonable goal for most Americans. Due next class.

As Middle Class Fades, So Does Use of Term on Campaign Trail

By AMY CHOZICKMAY 11, 2015 http://nyti.ms/1Ff0hXa

Hillary Rodham Clinton calls them “everyday Americans.” Scott Walker prefers “hardworking taxpayers.” Rand Paul says he speaks for “people who work for the people who own businesses.” Bernie Sanders talks about “ordinary Americans.”

The once ubiquitous term “middle class” has gone conspicuously missing from the 2016 campaign trail, as candidates and their strategists grasp for new terms for an unsettled economic era. The phrase, long synonymous with the American dream, now evokes anxiety, an uncertain future and a lifestyle that is increasingly out of reach.

The move away from “middle class” is the rhetorical result of a critical shift: After three decades of income gains favoring the highest earners and job growth being concentrated at the bottom of the pay scale, the middle has for millions of families become a precarious place to be.

A social stratum that once signified a secure, aspirational lifestyle, with a house in the suburbs, children set to attend college, retirement savings in the bank and, maybe, an occasional trip to Disneyland now connotes fears about falling behind, sociologists, economists and political scientists say.

That unease spilled out during conversations with voters in focus groups convened by Democratic pollsters in recent months.

“The cultural consensus around what it mean to be ‘middle class’ — and that has very much been part of the national identity in the United States — is beginning to shift,’’ said Sarah Elwood, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and an author of a paper about class identity that one Clinton adviser had studied.

Rising costs mean many families whose incomes fall in the middle of the national distribution can no longer afford the trappings of what was once associated with a middle-class lifestyle. That has made the term, political scientists say, lose its resonance.

“We have no collective language for talking about that condition,” Dr. Elwood said.

The result is a presidential campaign in which every candidate desperately wants to appeal to middle-class Americans — broadly defined as working-age households with annual incomes of $35,000 to $100,000 — but does not know how to address them. That has led to some linguistic maneuvering.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, has said what makes America unique are the “millions and millions of people who aren’t rich.” Mr. Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is seeking the Democratic nomination, has talked about “working families” and “people working full time.” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican, has made “hardworking men and women across America” the focus of his message.

“It used to be ‘middle class’ represented everyone, actually or in their aspirations, but now it doesn’t feel as attainable,” said David Madland, managing director of economic policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the Clinton campaign. “You see politicians and others grasping for the right word to talk about a majority of Americans.”

Candidates realize they cannot win election without widespread appeal among the 51 percent of Americans who, according to Gallup, identify as middle or upper-middle class. That compares with an average of 60 percent who identified the same way in polls conducted from 2000 through 2008.

But sociologists say such surveys obscure how Americans feel about the characterization — and how much the middle class has shrunk. They call the new economy an “hourglass” with a concentration of wealth at the top and low-paying service jobs at the bottom and “a spectacular loss of median-wage jobs in the middle,” said William Julius Wilson, a sociologist and Harvard professor.

In surveys, more Americans still choose ‘middle class’ when asked which category they belong to, because they do not want to identify as rich or poor and because no new phrase exists to describe middle-income earners who view their social class as vulnerable. Working class, once associated with manufacturing jobs, now mostly connotes low-paying service jobs.

“People are looking for some way to say, ‘I recognize I’m a little below the middle,’” said Dennis Gilbert, a professor of sociology at Hamilton College who has published books on American class structure.

Before presidential campaigns tested replacement terms, academics started to adopt phrases like the “near poor” or “the sandwich generation.’’ Afterthe Great Depression, “submerged middle class” became popular to describe families who could rise if aided by the New Deal.

“What do you call people who don’t have good jobs but who aren’t poor?” said Andrew J. Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Labor’s Love Lost,” about the rise and fall of working families.

The words may be endangered, but the idyllic image of the American middle class that took hold after World War II and became the backbone of everything from selling appliances to pitching presidential candidates still looms large on the campaign trail. When candidates talk about the middle class, they increasingly use the words as a nostalgic term, a reminder about what the American economy has been and what it could again become — with the right president, of course.

The 67-year-old Mrs. Clinton regularly walks down memory lane with stories about her middle-class upbringing in the suburbs of Chicago, invoking an era when parents who were not rich could raise a child who would become a senator, a secretary of state and a potential president.

In addition to her signature phrase, “everyday Americans,” Mrs. Clinton often says: “We need to make the middle class mean something again.” The line, her campaign said, was informed by the growing school of thought that in 2015, “middle class” makes a majority of voters more anxious than optimistic..

“In the 1960s, ‘middle class’ felt like it fit your lifestyle,” said Felicia Wong, the president and chief executive of the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank with ties to Mrs. Clinton’s economic team.

Even if families fall in the middle in income distribution, they cannot afford many of the necessities, much less the luxuries, traditionally associated with being middle class, Ms. Wong said.

Household incomes for the middle class have been stagnant, while the costs of middle-class security — which economists define as child care, higher education, health care, housing and retirement — increased by more than $10,000 from 2000 to 2012, according to a Center for American Progress report, “Middle-Class Squeeze.”

“If you’re technically in the 50^th percentile in income distribution but you can’t afford to send your kids to college or take a vacation, are you middle class or not?” Ms. Wong said.

But skeptics say that “everyday Americans” and the other phrases candidates use to fill the void are overly vague and upbeat and obscure a bleak reality.

“If you had a candidate running around talking about the ‘submerged middle class,’ voters would run the other way,” said Frank Levy, an economist and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The phrases can be awkward, too, or slow to catch on. Mrs. Clinton has a mantra: “Everyday Americans need a champion.” But when she visited a high school in Las Vegas last week to talk about immigration, she found the students had welcomed her with a handmade sign with her campaign slogan. They had botched the punctuation — and a bit of the meaning, though perhaps it still resonated. “Everyday, Americans need a champion,’’ it read.