Focus on the Incredible Shrinking Middle Class
If you live in the Los Angeles area and your household income falls between $15,000 and $50,000, you could become a dinosaur, says Steve Talley, producer of tonight’s segment of “By the Year 2000” on KCET Channel 28.
“Dinosaur” is the word Talley uses to describe some members of Los Angeles’ vanishing middle class. Although employment in the Los Angeles area has increased in the last 10 years, statistics show that the new jobs are concentrated in either high- or low-income brackets without much in between. Many technical jobs with middle-income salaries are getting squeezed out as local companies go out of business or lose ground to foreign competitors.
The dinosaurs are the subject of “The Waning Class,” the first segment in “By the Year 2000’s” monthlong focus on Los Angeles’ class structure. The programs, which air at 9 p.m. on Fridays, will explore various aspects of downward mobility and the increasing polarization of rich and poor.
(Tonight’s segment also introduces former news anchor Joe Benti as the series’ new co-host with Val Zavala. Benti currently produces and broadcasts daily commentaries on KJOI-FM radio.)
“The interesting thing is, no matter who I talked to, no matter where they stood politically, they all agreed that the world of Ozzie and Harriet--the middle-class life as we define it--really is dead,” Talley said. “It’s not that you will never be able to have what they had, it’s that you and your spouse will have to be doctors to afford what Ozzie used to afford on one paycheck.”
Talley added that this nationwide problem is seen in the extreme in Southern California because the cost of living, especially housing, has inflated faster here. “Everbody acknowledges that the decline of the middle class has to do with more than income,” he said. “It’s not just the money, it’s what that money will buy.”
“The Waning Class” focuses on local resident John Rementeria, who lost his $30,000-a-year job when his Orange County company closed because it could not compete with Japan-based companies. After losing his house and his family, Rementeria was forced to enter a job training program that would leave him qualified for a much lower-paying job.
The segment also includes taped interviews with economists Goetz Wolff of the Los Angeles Economic Round Table and Larry Arnn of the Claremont Institute, discussing the chasm between high- and low-income homes and possible solutions to the problem.
Next week’s segment, “A Class By Itself,” continues the exploration with a profile of L.A.’s upper echelon, increasingly segregated from the rest of the city by gated communities and private schools. The April 20 installment looks at the city’s “have-nots,” the underclass, and the social structure that keeps them locked in poverty.
On April 27, KCET returns to the disappearing middle-class with an hourlong “Year 2000” focusing on the have- and have-not schism among middle-income families.
