"(Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents": Storm warning for the middle class

"(Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class"

by Nan Mooney

Beacon Press, 254 pp., $24.95

You there — that's right, you! — taking time to read a book review in the Sunday paper. You must still have some of that commodity they used to call "leisure," back in the 20th century. A quaint concept, kind of like that other one our parents' generation called "the American dream."

Well, savor it while you can, my friend, because change is in the wind, and with $4-a-gallon gas and skyrocketing grocery prices, it's going to blow in at gale force.

Seattle journalist Nan Mooney is coming in ahead of the storm with her new book on the erosion of the professional middle class. As "(Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents" demonstrates, the signs of a Katrina-size devastation of the American socioeconomic structure have been looming on the horizon for some time. If it hasn't already hit you personally, you can be sure it has affected some of your friends, your family and perhaps even your local book reviewer.

Think it can't happen to you? Read Mooney's book, listen to the scores of people she's interviewed, and then think again. "I'll be honest: This wasn't the life I'd expected," Mooney admits in her preface. She grew up in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood in Seattle, went on vacation once a year with her family, absorbed her parents' example of working hard and spending sensibly, and got a college education in the field she wanted to pursue her life's work in.

"But somehow in the course of doing everything right, something seems to have gone awry."

Mooney and others like her — the educators, journalists, graphic designers, publishers, artists, social workers and nonprofit employees; the well-educated who didn't opt for a guaranteed career track like medicine or corporate law — have been confronted with a stark new economic landscape. Mooney enumerates:

First, there's the cost of college. Tuition has gone up more than 30 percent in just the past five years. That means more and more people are forced to resort to student loans — the average undergraduate today carries $20,000 in student debt. But here's the rub: a college education doesn't guarantee a job anymore. Mooney cites a 2004 statistic indicating there were more unemployed college graduates than high-school dropouts. So how does an unemployed graduate pay back that student loan?

And speaking of jobs, there's a whole new corporate mind-set at work, in case you haven't noticed. Employer loyalty is an anachronism: layoffs, salary freezes, long hours and the ever-present threat of outsourcing overseas are commonplace. So is the growing practice of laying off white-collar workers, then hiring them back as consultants. At reduced salaries. With no benefits.

Health insurance, of course, is the Catch-22 of our day. It's inconceivable not to have it, but you end up paying so much, even for policies with high deductibles (characterized all too aptly as "catastrophic") that there's no money left to fork over for co-pays when you actually get sick.

Mooney talks about shelter. Whether you rent or buy, the price of keeping a roof over one's head has gone way, way up.

Take Seattle, for example. "Seattle, birthplace of Microsoft — and my hometown — has seen the income gap between richest and poorest climb 45 percent since 1980. ... City homes that in the '60s and '70s were owned by teachers, carpenters and mechanics now go to tech-boom beneficiaries for over a million dollars apiece. Median housing prices are around $430,000, requiring a household income of close to $100,000" to try to pull off in-city homeownership, Mooney writes.

And she points out this conundrum: "Though more of us may own homes, we actually own less of them." There's been a spike in household-related debt, with mortgages escalating from about 66 percent of disposable income in 2000, to 96 percent in 2005. Throw predatory lending practices into the mix for an untenable situation.

"(Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents" is an alarming and important book, which should bring readers out of ignorance, embarrassment or bewilderment and into harsh enlightenment. The only disappointment comes with a conclusion that tries to strike an optimistic note. Baloney. The next step must be well-organized rage.

Barbara Lloyd McMichael writes book reviews and clips coupons in Des Moines.