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December 15, 2011

Class Warfare Collapse: Americans Not Divided By Class

Newsflash from Gallup: Fewer and fewer Americans see the country as divided between haves and have nots:

Americans are now less likely to see U.S. society as divided into the “haves” and “have nots” than they were in 2008, returning to their views prior to that point. A clear majority, 58%, say they do not think of America in this way, after Americans were divided 49% to 49% in the summer of 2008.

If true, that would mean that the Occupy protest movement would sputter and die no matter how much media attention was devoted to it.  It would mean that a “new populist” political campaign would fail to lift the President’s popularity in the polls.  It could even mean that all the oceans of leftie punditry predicated on the notion that it is the 1930s all over again and time for a new and even bigger New Deal was just so much hot air.

Can’t be true.  Spin me a tighter cocoon, please.

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  • Gene

    Like our host, I have no clear idea what will follow the blue social model in America, but it is clear that one or two generations of young (or youngish) Americans are going to be smacked upside the head, hard and repeatedly, by reality. It is my hope that these Americans, shorn of the comforting lies built into unsustainable entitlement systems and left with well-developed [nonsense] detectors, will form a vanguard of creative change that will lead us out of this wilderness.

  • Luke Lea

    And according to Gallup in 1989 the same poll found 71% thought of America as being divided into haves and have-nots, vs. 26% who thought it was “incorrect to think” of America that way.

    Why the big difference between then and now? Is the distribution of income growing more or less equal in America? Are people more sensitive to the charge of “incorrect thinking”?

  • a nissen

    Try arithmetic. Even though not most people’s best subject, I doubt a majority of them would be calling 99% vs. !% a “split.”

    Consider also that “populism” has taken hold in the past when and more people find themselves in the same boat.

  • Kris

    Come now, Herr Professor, surely I don’t have to lecture you about false consciousness. The proletariat, bless their dense little heads, must simply be educated regarding the true state of affairs (by the media, OWS, and the Great Communicator in the White House, whose success in this endeavor is beyond compare).

  • http://aconservativeteacher.blogspot.com A Conservative Teacher

    Maybe so, but Obama is going to try his hardest to do what leftists always do- divide and conquer. He’s going to make government officials and lobbyists richer (already done, government salaries and benefits and job security have skyrocketed and so have lobbyists), while the rest of us get poorer, all while blaming others. It’s not a new trick- tyrants have been doing it for years. The key question is, will the American people fall for this sort of garbage.

  • Bart Hall (Kansas, USA)

    Said Obama, “We have to spread the wealth around.”

    Said Bart, “The best way to do that is to have a product or service people with money are willing to pay for.”

    The HAVES are my customers. Of course I like them!

  • Luke Lea

    @ a nissen – “I doubt a majority of them would be calling 99% vs. !% a “split.”

    Especially if the 1% is out of sight in another part of town.

    (Though actually I think it’s the top .01 of 1% — the 10,000 wealthiest families in America — who are the real source of the problem: They bankroll both political parties and control the political agenda.)

  • Jacksonian Libertarian

    Your cocoon is already strong enough, you are trapped in the leftist American University Propaganda zone, and the little conservative thought that leaks through to you comes from us here on Via Meadia. LOL
    Some day you might break free and become a BUTTERFLY! LOL
    Be the BUTTERFLY! Ho, Ho, Ho!

  • Corlyss

    @ Luke
    The same study that produced the 1% of the 1% debunked the notion that they “control” the political agenda.

    Americans always plan eventually to be in the 1%. It’s denizens are not so fixed as one would think. In 1975 Bill Gates was a Harvard drop out. In 2005 he was the richest man in the world. That’s what makes America great. Not that any kid could grow up to be president, but that any kid could grow up to become the next Bill Gates.