Fear of Falling, Chapter 1

This book is apparently about the attitudes of the "professional middle class" (comfortable middle class people who have nice office jobs, but not so much wealth as to truly have substantial individual influence in their communities).  She starts by recounting the ways that Good Respectable People talk about the aesthetics and lifestyles of the lower classes.  She's writing in 1989 but she could be talking about post-2016 hand-wringing over lower-income whites who voted for Trump.  From there she skips back a few decades, to the 50's, in order to chronicle the post-WWII journey to 1989.  She visits the sociology textbooks of the 50's, and I'm surprised by the condescension towards the poor.  Not because I'm surprised that people hold such attitudes (duh), but because I can't believe they'd write them so explicitly in textbooks.  I thought they were supposed to say those things indirectly.  Well, I guess some things really do change.

She describes 1950's pundits simultaneously celebrating the wealth of post-war America and also bemoaning materialism and consumerism as tacky symptoms of "affluence."  Things I like about her critique:

1. She notes the interesting shift from "wealth" to "affluence."  Critiquing wealth means you might go after the wealthy.  But affluence is a society-wide condition.  It's not so different from how the post-2016 critiques have focused on "working-class whites" while ignoring high-income Republicans who voted on the basis of tax policy.
2. She recognizes that post-WWII prosperity depended so much on the rest of the world being messed up and unable to compete.  Yes, the post-1950's economy in America is in part a product of choices by elites, but it's also in part an inevitable consequence of global competition.
3. She is ruthlessly economic in her critique of keeping middle-class women as housewives: It was a waste of educated minds.
4. She is also ruthlessly historical in noting that lower-class women never had the option of being housewives.  It was either something they did out of necessity (somebody had to care for the kids and do the in-home production of goods via sewing, scratch cooking, etc.) or didn't do out of necessity (they needed to work for money).  Choice had precious little to do with it.

I found it fascinating how elite commentary didn't "discover" poverty in America until the 1960's.  I need to read more about that.

Finally, she talks about patronizing attitudes towards the poor in 1960's commentary.  She notes that pundits regarded them as unworthy of trust with money.  Thing is, poverty is multi-faceted, and while I largely agree that most people can handle money, some people do make bad choices.  In fact, some choices are the products of poverty rather than the cause of poverty:  If you can't afford to buy reliable goods you buy unreliable goods and incur greater costs down the line.  If you keep facing emergencies that drain you, long-term plans are something you rationally avoid, because what's the point?

If poverty were all about unforced bad choices, the paternalists would be entirely right.  If poverty were all about forced bad choices, the libertarians would be entirely right.  And if poverty were about circumstances beyond the realm of choice, the leftists would be entirely right (or, um, left, I guess?).  But the real world is multi-faceted.  Still, the facets that she highlights here are important.

On to chapter 2, which addresses the 60's and counter-culture.