Pretty much nailed the description of this class (with an almost alarming degree of specificity), and while you mentioned it in the piece I think one of the most important delineators of the UMC vs. everyone below them on the social ladder is that they're basically pretty happy with how America works and have a strong sense that most things are okay. That sensibility just does not exist for most people farther down the income quartiles, and a lot of modern politics is a reaction to lacking a sense of stability and certainty in a positive future.
Yeah, this is a discussion I think we all need to keep having, because IMO it always went a LOT deeper than mere superficial descriptors like “PMC”, “email jobs”, and “elite overproduction”.
One of the interesting dynamics is that I’m not entirely sure if this class’s window has passed (IE it was mostly spent on the Obama era and we’re going to be outnumbered in general elections going forward), OR if we’re just seeing a temporary lull before things REALLY get going (IE when all of our parents and bosses start dying off, leaving the jobs, houses, and wealth we’ve been coveting finally at our full disposal).
NPRs marketplace has talked about the inheritance boom that's coming and how much people have not thought about what will happen when there's that big of a wealth transfer. I think it's hard to say since it won't be distributed across an equal curve.
That boom will be split into people whose boomer parents die suddenly, at relatively low-cost, versus the ones whose parents cling to a life-savings draining life in a senior assisted living facility and later a nursing home.
Some people will be inheriting the house bought in 1980 for $45,000 that's worth $800,000 now. Others will discover that dad burned most of his retirement on vacations and then on healthcare and nursing home bills.
Never underestimate the medical/eldercare industry's ability to extort people's resources prior to death. I tell everyone to assume their parents will spend a LOT of money just staying alive in their final years, don't expect there to be much left over. YMMV of course, it doesn't happen that way for everyone.
Call it extortion if you will but decent elder care is labor-intensive and thus expensive. I don’t think that it is particularly unjust that seniors’ resources, if they have them, be spent to pay for their care, rather than accumulated to give to their middle-aged children.
Trumpism is the last jealous dying gasp of the old, enabled by electorally dubious woke politics temporarily alienating enough of the young for a couple of elections. The opposition is old people and grifters—brittle with numbered days.
The Long Century of Millennial Grey has only just begun
Perhaps. But I could ALSO see the Millennial PMC succumbing to a new proletarian coalition that is ejected from the ruins of MAGA and the AI jobpocalypse at high velocity, and keeps us relegated to the role of a privileged but outnumbered rump.
I agree with the grouping, but I think this group, in particular, IS feeling economic tension. The drip-drip-drip of high prices is making the comfort they've attained--which, unlike the wealthy, they do appreciate--feel like it's riding on a knife's edge. I think they can see that the "pad" in their budgets that gives them security and some measured luxury is at risk of being nibbled away by higher food, housing, health, and energy costs. I also think their college learnings are helping them see that the destabilization of the US's world position and positive initiatives under this administration could make their future affluence more doubtful.
gonna drop a huge “citation needed” on all of this.
if these jobs are net negatives to the overall economy, why are big companies paying for them? that makes it sound like make-work corporate welfare for upwardly-mobile middle class Americans. why would they do that?
> if these jobs are net negatives to the overall economy, why are big companies paying for them?
Partially to comply with ever larger regulation created by PMC’s at various levels of government. Partially because companies that are owned by “too big to fail” institutions don’t need to care about efficiency.
I never get tired of analyzing this question. I agree with you, some of these jobs are “necessary” but some are clearly not. I think a big component of the explanation is that the “PMC vs Capital” distinction goes all the way to the CEO’s office. The CEO *likes* having a PMC army around him or her. And the Capitalist owner doesn’t like it, but also isn’t 100% sure how many of these people are “necessary” and is making *enough* money that he can’t be bothered to figure it out.
You just nailed it. They get to recommend the optimization, automation, workforce reductions, etc. that secure their own jobs. They get to recommend the cost savings that come from outsourcing the IT department to some firm in India. They get to bend the lower-tier office workers and employees over the barrel and then rub acid in the wound by telling everyone how happy they should be to be doing twice the work for the same pay because corporate decided to lay off 40% of production employees to "tighten the belt."
Yeah, they still value the American dream, since it's (mostly) paid out for them. Their concern is how it's being hollowed out, but they think we can have the good times back again.
One interesting phenomenon (particularly in the Midwest) is that this “state school UMC” you’ve described seems to be increasingly limited to *flagship* state school grads. Big class polarization occurring within the state school category itself between the flagships and the rest.
I agree, and yet I know many people who went to regional schools (UW Oshkosh and Eau Claire, for example), and they're totally fine, same bucket as me, who went to Madison. I do think there's a much larger percentage of the people who went to those smaller schools who ended up being downwardly mobile. Their college time was kind of a waste, they didn't use it to get a foot in the door of this life.
Unfortunately, I think the upward mobility offered by the upper Midwest satellite state schools is dwindling regardless of one’s raw ability or social class, both relative to prior generations and relative to UMN, UWM, etc. Flagships more competitive/desirable than ever, crucially among white upper-middle class parents who wouldn’t otherwise prize academics/rankings that highly
Yup. UT Austin. I do kind of sneer when someone says they sent went to "The University of Texas" and then it comes out that the went to UT Dallas or something. I can't help it! It's like a reflex.
University of Nevada reno. Pretty good description of where I would d up tho my life path was pretty unorthodox --casino showroom waiter, restaurant t manager, dropout bornagain hippie farmer, rock wall Contractor. NOw retired with an electric car and a pickup and a paid for home, labeled the right wing of the local hippies at one point😎🌈
I generally agree, but it was definitely still true for me (I’m in my late 40s). I went to a regional state school in Illinois, paid something like $12,000 in *total* tuition for a bachelors degree, and now have a great job.
Lmao, as a '92 millennial who grew up in pre-gentrified Madison, Wisconsin's "bad" (bad for Madison, anyway) neighborhoods, then somehow became one of these people, I feel both at once called out and hilariously finger-pointy towards everyone else who is being called out. I used to hate people like this who went to UW. Now I am People Like This, except I went to a state school in Indiana instead. Somewhere on YouTube there are still videos of me in high school wearing a leather jacket and protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I was 19 for the Capitol protests. Now I'm in my mid-30s and desperately wanting All This to stop, of course, for the safety of our democracy and its inhabitants, but also because I just want to make sure the kid I gave birth to, worry if she's got too much screentime and HFCS, and g e n t l e p a r e n t to a fault has a good, stable life. Wild what kids do to us.
The voting block of 30,0000 student plus state schools (UW-seattle, Madison, Champaign Urbana, Austin, Atlanta, San Diego, Raleigh, etc) are the single most influential political class in America. They're prudent, and with the proper messaging would probably donate $500 to a candidate who wasn't a complete joke -- they have discretionary buying power after a couple decades of compounding good choices and do authentically care about America
But yeah, they're really really overlooked. Prob because the reporters and campaign staffers (who are sort of definitionally not financially prudent or self sufficient) literally don't know them and can't empathize
Yeah, I was thinking about this today because my Fortune 100 company in a boring/traditional industry is stuffed full of these types and yet I see them reflected so little in the media. The media seems to assume that everyone is downwardly mobile whereas I know from the data that that’s not actually true, plus I interact daily with so many people for whom that’s not true.
Though when I recently chatted with a couple coworkers about how they felt their lives were going, they both essentially said the same thing - they personally were doing great, financially comfortable, were not happy about the way the world / US is going. I do actually live in a coastal city though, but work with lots of state schoolers, as well as remote folks in the Midwest.
I saw a Cracked video last year where a TV writer was talking about how everyone is on the edge because nothing is guaranteed. I was thinking not that's *your* industry. TV writing is swinging from gig to gig and not knowing where you'll land. I do not work like that. But because that's how things work in Hollywood, it's presumed that's how everybody's job works.
Pretty much nailed it. Im a generation ahead but thats pretty much my team too. The one thing is that even though its looks easy this is the duck in the water crew. Cruising along on the surface, paddling like hell underneath. These people are working hard and nothing is guaranteed. PE has seen to that.
And yes they are pretty happy with how America works becasue they are the ones making it work.
Thank you for pointing this out, I was thinking the same thing. This describes my sisters' lives pretty well, and they are working extremely hard and pretty stressed out a lot of the time. Maybe because they are in HCOL areas instead of the Midwest, but those houses in good school districts are EXPENSIVE. Both parents have to work fairly demanding "email jobs" and travel for work. All those select sports teams for the kids are expensive, and also require travel. The Whole Foods parking lot is a nightmare, food is really expensive, Grandma is getting older and they're going to have to pay for her care....etc etc etc.
This is interesting. I saw a thread on X yesterday listing all the MAGA people in the White House and high up in the Trump/Vance world who are Californians. . . which is something I've noticed too and have written about over the years.
Californians are a big part of the "elite Right", and the reason for that is, in part, because there is no "State School UMC" in California. 225k-250k simply isn't enough, for one thing. True UMC in California is either small business owner (often radically rightwing) or 2nd-3rd-generation pensioned government workers/union/academia (insanely leftwing). Your parents and maybe even grandparents had pensions and full retirements, second careers after early retirement--hence the vacation house in Tahoe or Carmel.
Not a whole lot of middle ground or space available here for very intelligent, very energetic strivers. And neither side of the CA UMC thinks America is fine.
My guess as to why State School UMC as you illustrate in this piece is often overlooked in American politics is because it doesn't exist in quite the same way on either of the coasts. And part of the radical MAGA energy comes from something like a conviction that moderate UMC will soon cease to exist everywhere, as it has in California. It will become harder to be UMC without becoming some kind of radical, either way.
Idk whether or not that is actually the case, but I'm pretty sure that's what the UMC here believes.
My family and friends here in SoCal do have a similar dynamic, the salary numbers are just higher to account for the price of housing. My wife and I are in healthcare IT so not tech, but “tech adjacent.”
The “state school UMC” exists in CA, it’s just either relegated to very boring suburbs further out from major urban areas , which has a lot of work from home tech commuters. It probably feels less relevant as it's overshadowed by uber wealthy and government so massive and complex it’s hard for any one group to make an impact in it.
What about the tech and defense industries in California though? Lots of large companies, with salaries such that a dual income couple could easily clear $500k/yr. It's attractive enough that many Midwestern state school grads will move for these jobs.
Yes, tech; that’s true. Not sure about defense—I probably just don’t live close enough to those areas. My uninformed sense is that tech doesn’t employ quite enough people to make up for the loss of UMC avenues in other industries here, but I could be wrong.
UMC, Millennial flavor. I'd add: these are mostly dual-income households, and they have some ambivalence about that. One or both parents can see themselves as a SAH, but it's never gonna happen if they want to keep paying the mortgage AND saving for retirement.
What do you think we're talking about in terms of income, broad strokes? I'd say household income around $200-$250k for the group you describe at least in the Midwestern burb of a decent-sized city. I think you maybe undersell a little bit the latent anxiety still present in this class. They know that losing one of the adult's income in the household would put them in a pretty tight, if not poverty-stricken, spot. They resent how much they have to spend on daycare. They think it's insane that a new car costs $40k+. The new roof goes on a payment plan.
Totally agree that daycare sucks up a massive percentage of their income and that cars are expensive.
In terms of income, I think you're probably right, but my views on these layers of society are more cultural than income-based. There wad a discussion a while back if an adjunct professor who made $40k was "working class" and I fell squarely on the side that said "absolutely not." I think someone can be a member of the UMC without having the income to back it up through various other signals.
As a STEM PhD student making $46k, I feel this on a personal level, and I concur. It's worth pointing out though that you can make a distinction between "social class" and "economic class." I have a high social class but low economic class. For most people, these two class types align and thus it's common to conflate them.
Interesting. For your defining characteristic -- feeling like the system basically works, I'll probably be fine -- that doesn't come cheap. I get frustrated at cultural arguments that leave out the money. Whenever I see someone in the greater trad cinematic universe advocating for a parent staying home to homeschool or w/e, I wish I could demand they disclose how much the working spouse makes, whether they're saving for education/retirement, and if the house they live in was paid for by them and for how much. Money backs up so many lifestyle choices and cultural entrees, but we tend to elide the financial requirements/sacrifice, either because we think the social markers are much more important, or just because we're all a little bashful about talking household budgets.
Your $46k/year professor is interesting. I guess that's a good example of the common observation that the US has never had a successful politics of class. Like damn, we can't find common cause with each other because some of us shop at Sam's Club and some of us shop at Trader Joe's?
I'm reading "Middlemarch" right now and there are a few characters whose cultural tastes outpace their income. Because of their names, they're able to purchase nice things on credit but eventually the bills come due. We've democratized the availability of credit to float a lifestyle, which if you're making $46k/year and eating at Erewhon, you're probably doing, but eventually it comes out in the wash.
I’m a stay at home / homeschooling Mom from an UMC/state school household. I think this was easier for us as Gen X’ers, honestly. We bought our first home in LCOL Toledo (shouted out in the article) when we were both working.
Our eldest son had some health challenges that made us prioritize my staying home to help him with therapies / medical things etc.
We did not have any student loans debt left when we had kids. We lived below means and paid them off the first 2 years married. We continue to live below means even to this day. I have not gone to back to work and it’s been 20 years now.
We do save a lot for retirement. I think around $80K/year? Our parents helped with college and wedding costs but we both also paid for a portion of these ourselves and we cash flowed the advanced degrees. Our parents did not help us with house payments. Our house will be paid off within 10 years unless we decide to move again which we are considering.
Agree here - many of these people do NOT feel like they are basically fine. Many are extremely stressed. They worry about their jobs, with AI. They worry about what kind of future will exist for their kids. They worry what will happen if one of them gets laid off. Etc.
“Montessori toys, merino wool clothes, and guides on how to correctly discipline their kids without causing long-term trauma.”
How do you know my life so well?! This entire essay is my entire family to a tee, wow. I don’t feel “called out” though — this essay feels like a love letter to the State School UMC.
I would even venture to say the State School UMC is a product of the culture and values, including land grant universities, that shaped the Midwest. Temperance, hard work, egalitarianism, education, ties to the land. It’s a good place.
I literally got sucked into gentle parenting for a year, which was this alleged mysterious way to “make your kids behave without yelling at them.” It didn’t work and then I just went back to yelling at them when they deserved it.
People mean a lot of different things when they say gentle parenting. I find most people mean permissive parenting and that produces terrible kids. We need a different word for authoritative parenting who also do not smack and spank their kids.
This seems right to me, as a state school UMC myself. My theory for why so little is written about this group is that they’re the assumed audience of most middle-and-high brow content, especially written content. Thus there’s a lot written from inside this perspective, but little that takes an outside perspective
Wow you got my husband and I down to a tee. But I'll have you know, I do not have a Peleton, I have a Schwinn IC4.
It is weird seeing articles and political muckrakers all going on about how nobody can afford to anything and folk are starving when it's like, everyone I know (all in this demo of course) is doing pretty ok.
I am also very bugged when I hear about unafordability because I've been getting raises and saving and buying. I understand there are other people for whom that is not the case, but that's why we need to specify that not everyone is struggling.
It’s weird seeing posts like this, going to work and hearing about people’s Disneyland and Hawaii vacations, and at the same time, feeling a sick apprehension in the pit of my stomach opening any social media app wincing for the “EVICTION PLEASE HELP” posts, crowdfunded overdose funerals, etc. it’s so jarring being stuck between two different worlds , but I can tell you it didn’t used to be like this for a lot of people I know.
I came from a very working class background so I see the crowdfunding for rent to avoid eviction and crowdfunding funerals or cancers kinds of posts too.
With a BS and PhD in STEM subjects, I would have been one of These People had I not developed a severe mental illness at the age of 30. As it is, I have never had more than a 2x poverty existence, and now, at the age of 67, I have essentially no savings. This situation has caused social problems as well; I fit in with neither the uneducated poor nor the educated upper middle class. My friends tend to be people like myself: educated but with mental health issues, so that they never really "made it. " In spite of all of this, I have no regrets; my life has been interesting, and I have a deep and rich inner life.
I am a part of this class, and the thing you are missing:
They have these things because of generational wealth, almost exclusively.
At some point, wealthy parents did one or more of the following:
A) Helped them pay off student debt or pay it down significantly.
B) Paid for all or a portion of their wedding (especially so that they got access to naming some names on the guest list)
C) transferred ownership of a working used car in decent shape to them
D) Helped or even made the full down payment on their house (or even had some more elaborate scheme, where they bought the house with retirement savings and the family ‘pays rent’ to their parents)
E) Loaned them money to start a business
F) Fronted an emergency loan to cover an unexpected major expense like a car accident or surprise medical bill
G) Helped pay for childcare or provided it directly (e.g. their retired moms watched the kids when they went to work— they paid that down payment for something local to be close to their grandkids after all).
The people without parents that can do a few of the above are the top of the lower middle class who can’t afford to buy a home, delayed having kids or chose not to have them because they couldn’t afford them, are still paying off student debt in their mid 40s, have two used cars that are not hybrids.
They are the reason their state school friends are basically left of center— their college friends all know exactly what has been paid for by generational wealth transfer, especially if they own a home.
These not-quite-uppers live in the same suburbs— but they rent, and do not get vacations, and they maybe only have one kid. They are the people who Did All The Right Things and still do not enjoy what would have been a middle class lifestyle 30 years ago.
My grandparents were poor and an albatross financially on my parents. My parents were lower middle class; but they did pay my college tuition (while I paid my living expenses) so I had no college debt and my husband had very small amount that we paid off quickly after marrying.
Yup; they wanted a large guest list for the wedding so we said they could pick up the food tab for the 100 extra people they wanted there.
We had beater cars but my Dad’s best friend is a master mechanic. So they ran.
The rest of the list is all No’s. After the wedding we have not been helped by either of our parents. My MIL said she *would* watch our kids to keep them out of daycare, but that if that was just so we could have a bigger house and more stuff, she would resent not just being able to be a Grandma by having to provide every day care for the kids. We decided not to ask her to do this and I stayed home.
Good analysis that I can relate to as a dusty provincial who went to an allegedly elite private college. One thing I wonder about: Whatever is meant by 'coastal elites,' unless we specify people with extreme levels of wealth and power--and not just bien pensant professionals who happened to go to Yale and live in Greater NYC--there's a great deal of permeability and even interchangeability between people who popularly get called that and the median professional-class grad of a school like Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana (some of whom, of course, also very much become elites on the coast). It seems like I most often hear the phrase 'coastal elites' used to describe the wealth-building professional class as a whole, and while I clearly don't live on the coast, similar charges would get made against me by many people around me if they knew all the relevant details about me. Anyway, I know you specified what you meant, and I take the analysis on its own terms, but it's interesting to consider where the boundaries do and do not get drawn between this cohort and 'coastal elites.' Maybe fodder for future posts
I agree that there's a lot of fuzzy space on the lower and upper bounds of this cohort. For example, someone folks point out that regional schools that aren't technically *the* flagship state school school (UW system vs Madison itself) can still output graduates into this category. In the other end, you can be a UPenn graduate and not be an elite.
My criteria for elite-elite elites are not monetary, but cultural. There are people who don't necessarily make a lot of money, but due to their positions in academia, media, and the arts have an outsized influence on the intellectual and media environment.
Yup! Came here to say this. And those of us non-elites who attended Ivy League schools certainly felt our position socially while we were on campus.
I’d also wonder whether some of this is specific to geography. If you live in and immediately around New York City, for instance, you have to be objectively pretty rich to have the life you describe.
As a formerly non-coastal elite, I agree: there is nothing special about the eliteness of coastal privates. Just a higher probability of entering certain caste networks.
Boston, NYC, Baltimore, Philly, Newark, D.C., San Diego, L.A., San Fran, Portland, Seattle.
There's a whole lot of wealth and influence from those cities, much of it tends to benefit the DNC, and they're all within 60 miles of the coast. (Philly is 60 miles from the Atlantic ocean)
Seems like what you describe here is the cohort of Americans that are experiencing upward mobility and the exact demographic we should be designing our systems for. Families, stable jobs, financially independent, responsible, compassionate, etc. I would all guess these types are comfortably in the top 10% of US household income ($200k and above). That could easily be two mid-forties teachers with 15+ years of service in a public school district.
I live in one of these towns and would say there are far more non-blue than you would think.
This is giving "We Have Never Been Woke" Musa Al Gharbi vibes. My only disagreement would be that this description misses that some important number of this class feel nothing short of revulsion towards certain ideas: Pro-life - even if they're pro-life themselves, white men being outspoken about being white/male - even if they love to celebrate any other shade, women, Judeo-Christianity - even if they love to celebrate Islam. The irony is totally lost on them). The intellectual depth of understanding why they believe so strongly in certain ideas is extremely shallow. Not everyone in this class, but definitely not an inconsequential amount, I think.
“Messy hodgepodge” is a defining feature of the political idea sets of nearly every group in American politics. Americans typically don’t have “ideological constraint”—that is, holding one left-associated idea does not consistently predict holding other left-associated ideas “you would think it would make sense for them to hold.” (The same holds true for right-associated ideas.)
The source is one of the most-cited papers in American political science, “The nature of belief systems in mass publics” by Philip Converse.
Signed, a graduate of the flagship campus of a state university in the Great Plains.
“The intellectual depth of understanding why they believe so strongly in certain ideas is extremely shallow.”
Boom. At risk of sounding pretentious, I do think a lot of them have the opinions they have because social media tells them to. Look, all these other people are saying it, which means it’s popular, which means it’s good.
They eschew "dangerous" or controversial political opinions, favoring vague touchy-feely stuff that would sound good coming out of the mouth of a vapid HR lady.
Many of them are in professional environments where going along to get along is mandatory, and that bleeds over into their private/public life because they rely on their network of connections to keep getting their feet in the door for new job opportunities.
Not just that. Many of these people have "secure" jobs as long as they don't get canceled. Thus they have to live in constant fear that something they say will get interpreted as cancelworthy.
Pretty much nailed the description of this class (with an almost alarming degree of specificity), and while you mentioned it in the piece I think one of the most important delineators of the UMC vs. everyone below them on the social ladder is that they're basically pretty happy with how America works and have a strong sense that most things are okay. That sensibility just does not exist for most people farther down the income quartiles, and a lot of modern politics is a reaction to lacking a sense of stability and certainty in a positive future.
I was alarmed at how close I was to the descriptions here
Of course, dude. Your name is Tyler, you're legally required to be in the mix here.
He literally called you out in the first paragraph.
Yeah, this is a discussion I think we all need to keep having, because IMO it always went a LOT deeper than mere superficial descriptors like “PMC”, “email jobs”, and “elite overproduction”.
One of the interesting dynamics is that I’m not entirely sure if this class’s window has passed (IE it was mostly spent on the Obama era and we’re going to be outnumbered in general elections going forward), OR if we’re just seeing a temporary lull before things REALLY get going (IE when all of our parents and bosses start dying off, leaving the jobs, houses, and wealth we’ve been coveting finally at our full disposal).
We're here for another couple decades whether other people like it or not.
NPRs marketplace has talked about the inheritance boom that's coming and how much people have not thought about what will happen when there's that big of a wealth transfer. I think it's hard to say since it won't be distributed across an equal curve.
That boom will be split into people whose boomer parents die suddenly, at relatively low-cost, versus the ones whose parents cling to a life-savings draining life in a senior assisted living facility and later a nursing home.
Some people will be inheriting the house bought in 1980 for $45,000 that's worth $800,000 now. Others will discover that dad burned most of his retirement on vacations and then on healthcare and nursing home bills.
Never underestimate the medical/eldercare industry's ability to extort people's resources prior to death. I tell everyone to assume their parents will spend a LOT of money just staying alive in their final years, don't expect there to be much left over. YMMV of course, it doesn't happen that way for everyone.
Call it extortion if you will but decent elder care is labor-intensive and thus expensive. I don’t think that it is particularly unjust that seniors’ resources, if they have them, be spent to pay for their care, rather than accumulated to give to their middle-aged children.
I will inherit some money, a lot of good housekeeping magazines, and maybe a dog if I am lucky.
Trumpism is the last jealous dying gasp of the old, enabled by electorally dubious woke politics temporarily alienating enough of the young for a couple of elections. The opposition is old people and grifters—brittle with numbered days.
The Long Century of Millennial Grey has only just begun
Perhaps. But I could ALSO see the Millennial PMC succumbing to a new proletarian coalition that is ejected from the ruins of MAGA and the AI jobpocalypse at high velocity, and keeps us relegated to the role of a privileged but outnumbered rump.
That’s a great book title
I agree with the grouping, but I think this group, in particular, IS feeling economic tension. The drip-drip-drip of high prices is making the comfort they've attained--which, unlike the wealthy, they do appreciate--feel like it's riding on a knife's edge. I think they can see that the "pad" in their budgets that gives them security and some measured luxury is at risk of being nibbled away by higher food, housing, health, and energy costs. I also think their college learnings are helping them see that the destabilization of the US's world position and positive initiatives under this administration could make their future affluence more doubtful.
The bigger problem is that there is a, largely accurate, sense that this classes' stability is purchased at the expense of everyone else's.
I mean this class has high paying PMC bullsh*t jobs that are probably negatively productive to the overall economy.
gonna drop a huge “citation needed” on all of this.
if these jobs are net negatives to the overall economy, why are big companies paying for them? that makes it sound like make-work corporate welfare for upwardly-mobile middle class Americans. why would they do that?
> if these jobs are net negatives to the overall economy, why are big companies paying for them?
Partially to comply with ever larger regulation created by PMC’s at various levels of government. Partially because companies that are owned by “too big to fail” institutions don’t need to care about efficiency.
The financially leveraged economy is built on usury. That’s where they work.
I never get tired of analyzing this question. I agree with you, some of these jobs are “necessary” but some are clearly not. I think a big component of the explanation is that the “PMC vs Capital” distinction goes all the way to the CEO’s office. The CEO *likes* having a PMC army around him or her. And the Capitalist owner doesn’t like it, but also isn’t 100% sure how many of these people are “necessary” and is making *enough* money that he can’t be bothered to figure it out.
You just nailed it. They get to recommend the optimization, automation, workforce reductions, etc. that secure their own jobs. They get to recommend the cost savings that come from outsourcing the IT department to some firm in India. They get to bend the lower-tier office workers and employees over the barrel and then rub acid in the wound by telling everyone how happy they should be to be doing twice the work for the same pay because corporate decided to lay off 40% of production employees to "tighten the belt."
And then when you object to your job being outsourced, they call you a racist and make you unhirable most places.
Yeah, they still value the American dream, since it's (mostly) paid out for them. Their concern is how it's being hollowed out, but they think we can have the good times back again.
Specificity comes at the cost of accuracy. The more specific the description of the person, the more of a generalization the category becomes.
Not saying that as a blanket condemnation of the theory but it should be borne in mind.
One interesting phenomenon (particularly in the Midwest) is that this “state school UMC” you’ve described seems to be increasingly limited to *flagship* state school grads. Big class polarization occurring within the state school category itself between the flagships and the rest.
I agree, and yet I know many people who went to regional schools (UW Oshkosh and Eau Claire, for example), and they're totally fine, same bucket as me, who went to Madison. I do think there's a much larger percentage of the people who went to those smaller schools who ended up being downwardly mobile. Their college time was kind of a waste, they didn't use it to get a foot in the door of this life.
Unfortunately, I think the upward mobility offered by the upper Midwest satellite state schools is dwindling regardless of one’s raw ability or social class, both relative to prior generations and relative to UMN, UWM, etc. Flagships more competitive/desirable than ever, crucially among white upper-middle class parents who wouldn’t otherwise prize academics/rankings that highly
Oshkosh and Eau Claire aren't open enrollment schools fir kids of the working class. Especially Eau Claire are somewhat public liberal arts schools...
I used to think that, but I went to Madison so long ago that if I told you my tuition you'd outrage-kill me. It's the economics for most people.
Yup. UT Austin. I do kind of sneer when someone says they sent went to "The University of Texas" and then it comes out that the went to UT Dallas or something. I can't help it! It's like a reflex.
University of Nevada reno. Pretty good description of where I would d up tho my life path was pretty unorthodox --casino showroom waiter, restaurant t manager, dropout bornagain hippie farmer, rock wall Contractor. NOw retired with an electric car and a pickup and a paid for home, labeled the right wing of the local hippies at one point😎🌈
Love me the burner redneck hippie chuds that cluster on either side of Tahoe. Some of the most American Californians i know!
I wouldn't know. I moved to Hawaii fifty years ago and never looked back lol
I generally agree, but it was definitely still true for me (I’m in my late 40s). I went to a regional state school in Illinois, paid something like $12,000 in *total* tuition for a bachelors degree, and now have a great job.
This is totally wrong. We got a dog BEFORE buying a house.
I am deeply sorry
Lmao, as a '92 millennial who grew up in pre-gentrified Madison, Wisconsin's "bad" (bad for Madison, anyway) neighborhoods, then somehow became one of these people, I feel both at once called out and hilariously finger-pointy towards everyone else who is being called out. I used to hate people like this who went to UW. Now I am People Like This, except I went to a state school in Indiana instead. Somewhere on YouTube there are still videos of me in high school wearing a leather jacket and protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I was 19 for the Capitol protests. Now I'm in my mid-30s and desperately wanting All This to stop, of course, for the safety of our democracy and its inhabitants, but also because I just want to make sure the kid I gave birth to, worry if she's got too much screentime and HFCS, and g e n t l e p a r e n t to a fault has a good, stable life. Wild what kids do to us.
I wish I could like this twice for Madison alone. ❤️
The voting block of 30,0000 student plus state schools (UW-seattle, Madison, Champaign Urbana, Austin, Atlanta, San Diego, Raleigh, etc) are the single most influential political class in America. They're prudent, and with the proper messaging would probably donate $500 to a candidate who wasn't a complete joke -- they have discretionary buying power after a couple decades of compounding good choices and do authentically care about America
But yeah, they're really really overlooked. Prob because the reporters and campaign staffers (who are sort of definitionally not financially prudent or self sufficient) literally don't know them and can't empathize
Yes!
Yeah, I was thinking about this today because my Fortune 100 company in a boring/traditional industry is stuffed full of these types and yet I see them reflected so little in the media. The media seems to assume that everyone is downwardly mobile whereas I know from the data that that’s not actually true, plus I interact daily with so many people for whom that’s not true.
Though when I recently chatted with a couple coworkers about how they felt their lives were going, they both essentially said the same thing - they personally were doing great, financially comfortable, were not happy about the way the world / US is going. I do actually live in a coastal city though, but work with lots of state schoolers, as well as remote folks in the Midwest.
I saw a Cracked video last year where a TV writer was talking about how everyone is on the edge because nothing is guaranteed. I was thinking not that's *your* industry. TV writing is swinging from gig to gig and not knowing where you'll land. I do not work like that. But because that's how things work in Hollywood, it's presumed that's how everybody's job works.
Pretty much nailed it. Im a generation ahead but thats pretty much my team too. The one thing is that even though its looks easy this is the duck in the water crew. Cruising along on the surface, paddling like hell underneath. These people are working hard and nothing is guaranteed. PE has seen to that.
And yes they are pretty happy with how America works becasue they are the ones making it work.
Thank you for pointing this out, I was thinking the same thing. This describes my sisters' lives pretty well, and they are working extremely hard and pretty stressed out a lot of the time. Maybe because they are in HCOL areas instead of the Midwest, but those houses in good school districts are EXPENSIVE. Both parents have to work fairly demanding "email jobs" and travel for work. All those select sports teams for the kids are expensive, and also require travel. The Whole Foods parking lot is a nightmare, food is really expensive, Grandma is getting older and they're going to have to pay for her care....etc etc etc.
This is interesting. I saw a thread on X yesterday listing all the MAGA people in the White House and high up in the Trump/Vance world who are Californians. . . which is something I've noticed too and have written about over the years.
Californians are a big part of the "elite Right", and the reason for that is, in part, because there is no "State School UMC" in California. 225k-250k simply isn't enough, for one thing. True UMC in California is either small business owner (often radically rightwing) or 2nd-3rd-generation pensioned government workers/union/academia (insanely leftwing). Your parents and maybe even grandparents had pensions and full retirements, second careers after early retirement--hence the vacation house in Tahoe or Carmel.
Not a whole lot of middle ground or space available here for very intelligent, very energetic strivers. And neither side of the CA UMC thinks America is fine.
My guess as to why State School UMC as you illustrate in this piece is often overlooked in American politics is because it doesn't exist in quite the same way on either of the coasts. And part of the radical MAGA energy comes from something like a conviction that moderate UMC will soon cease to exist everywhere, as it has in California. It will become harder to be UMC without becoming some kind of radical, either way.
Idk whether or not that is actually the case, but I'm pretty sure that's what the UMC here believes.
That's interesting; I totally agree that the coasts have a different dynamic.
My family and friends here in SoCal do have a similar dynamic, the salary numbers are just higher to account for the price of housing. My wife and I are in healthcare IT so not tech, but “tech adjacent.”
The “state school UMC” exists in CA, it’s just either relegated to very boring suburbs further out from major urban areas , which has a lot of work from home tech commuters. It probably feels less relevant as it's overshadowed by uber wealthy and government so massive and complex it’s hard for any one group to make an impact in it.
What about the tech and defense industries in California though? Lots of large companies, with salaries such that a dual income couple could easily clear $500k/yr. It's attractive enough that many Midwestern state school grads will move for these jobs.
Yes, tech; that’s true. Not sure about defense—I probably just don’t live close enough to those areas. My uninformed sense is that tech doesn’t employ quite enough people to make up for the loss of UMC avenues in other industries here, but I could be wrong.
Defense is coming back though it’s a lot of newer players like Anduril.
That's good to hear
With housing prices in CA, that math often no longer works out to be attractive enough to make a move unless that's what you already wanted.
UMC, Millennial flavor. I'd add: these are mostly dual-income households, and they have some ambivalence about that. One or both parents can see themselves as a SAH, but it's never gonna happen if they want to keep paying the mortgage AND saving for retirement.
What do you think we're talking about in terms of income, broad strokes? I'd say household income around $200-$250k for the group you describe at least in the Midwestern burb of a decent-sized city. I think you maybe undersell a little bit the latent anxiety still present in this class. They know that losing one of the adult's income in the household would put them in a pretty tight, if not poverty-stricken, spot. They resent how much they have to spend on daycare. They think it's insane that a new car costs $40k+. The new roof goes on a payment plan.
Totally agree that daycare sucks up a massive percentage of their income and that cars are expensive.
In terms of income, I think you're probably right, but my views on these layers of society are more cultural than income-based. There wad a discussion a while back if an adjunct professor who made $40k was "working class" and I fell squarely on the side that said "absolutely not." I think someone can be a member of the UMC without having the income to back it up through various other signals.
As a STEM PhD student making $46k, I feel this on a personal level, and I concur. It's worth pointing out though that you can make a distinction between "social class" and "economic class." I have a high social class but low economic class. For most people, these two class types align and thus it's common to conflate them.
Interesting. For your defining characteristic -- feeling like the system basically works, I'll probably be fine -- that doesn't come cheap. I get frustrated at cultural arguments that leave out the money. Whenever I see someone in the greater trad cinematic universe advocating for a parent staying home to homeschool or w/e, I wish I could demand they disclose how much the working spouse makes, whether they're saving for education/retirement, and if the house they live in was paid for by them and for how much. Money backs up so many lifestyle choices and cultural entrees, but we tend to elide the financial requirements/sacrifice, either because we think the social markers are much more important, or just because we're all a little bashful about talking household budgets.
Your $46k/year professor is interesting. I guess that's a good example of the common observation that the US has never had a successful politics of class. Like damn, we can't find common cause with each other because some of us shop at Sam's Club and some of us shop at Trader Joe's?
I'm reading "Middlemarch" right now and there are a few characters whose cultural tastes outpace their income. Because of their names, they're able to purchase nice things on credit but eventually the bills come due. We've democratized the availability of credit to float a lifestyle, which if you're making $46k/year and eating at Erewhon, you're probably doing, but eventually it comes out in the wash.
I’m a stay at home / homeschooling Mom from an UMC/state school household. I think this was easier for us as Gen X’ers, honestly. We bought our first home in LCOL Toledo (shouted out in the article) when we were both working.
Our eldest son had some health challenges that made us prioritize my staying home to help him with therapies / medical things etc.
We did not have any student loans debt left when we had kids. We lived below means and paid them off the first 2 years married. We continue to live below means even to this day. I have not gone to back to work and it’s been 20 years now.
We do save a lot for retirement. I think around $80K/year? Our parents helped with college and wedding costs but we both also paid for a portion of these ourselves and we cash flowed the advanced degrees. Our parents did not help us with house payments. Our house will be paid off within 10 years unless we decide to move again which we are considering.
Agree here - many of these people do NOT feel like they are basically fine. Many are extremely stressed. They worry about their jobs, with AI. They worry about what kind of future will exist for their kids. They worry what will happen if one of them gets laid off. Etc.
“Montessori toys, merino wool clothes, and guides on how to correctly discipline their kids without causing long-term trauma.”
How do you know my life so well?! This entire essay is my entire family to a tee, wow. I don’t feel “called out” though — this essay feels like a love letter to the State School UMC.
I would even venture to say the State School UMC is a product of the culture and values, including land grant universities, that shaped the Midwest. Temperance, hard work, egalitarianism, education, ties to the land. It’s a good place.
Because it's my life too!
I literally got sucked into gentle parenting for a year, which was this alleged mysterious way to “make your kids behave without yelling at them.” It didn’t work and then I just went back to yelling at them when they deserved it.
People mean a lot of different things when they say gentle parenting. I find most people mean permissive parenting and that produces terrible kids. We need a different word for authoritative parenting who also do not smack and spank their kids.
This seems right to me, as a state school UMC myself. My theory for why so little is written about this group is that they’re the assumed audience of most middle-and-high brow content, especially written content. Thus there’s a lot written from inside this perspective, but little that takes an outside perspective
That's an interesting insight, thanks
Wow you got my husband and I down to a tee. But I'll have you know, I do not have a Peleton, I have a Schwinn IC4.
It is weird seeing articles and political muckrakers all going on about how nobody can afford to anything and folk are starving when it's like, everyone I know (all in this demo of course) is doing pretty ok.
I am also very bugged when I hear about unafordability because I've been getting raises and saving and buying. I understand there are other people for whom that is not the case, but that's why we need to specify that not everyone is struggling.
It’s weird seeing posts like this, going to work and hearing about people’s Disneyland and Hawaii vacations, and at the same time, feeling a sick apprehension in the pit of my stomach opening any social media app wincing for the “EVICTION PLEASE HELP” posts, crowdfunded overdose funerals, etc. it’s so jarring being stuck between two different worlds , but I can tell you it didn’t used to be like this for a lot of people I know.
I came from a very working class background so I see the crowdfunding for rent to avoid eviction and crowdfunding funerals or cancers kinds of posts too.
With a BS and PhD in STEM subjects, I would have been one of These People had I not developed a severe mental illness at the age of 30. As it is, I have never had more than a 2x poverty existence, and now, at the age of 67, I have essentially no savings. This situation has caused social problems as well; I fit in with neither the uneducated poor nor the educated upper middle class. My friends tend to be people like myself: educated but with mental health issues, so that they never really "made it. " In spite of all of this, I have no regrets; my life has been interesting, and I have a deep and rich inner life.
I am a part of this class, and the thing you are missing:
They have these things because of generational wealth, almost exclusively.
At some point, wealthy parents did one or more of the following:
A) Helped them pay off student debt or pay it down significantly.
B) Paid for all or a portion of their wedding (especially so that they got access to naming some names on the guest list)
C) transferred ownership of a working used car in decent shape to them
D) Helped or even made the full down payment on their house (or even had some more elaborate scheme, where they bought the house with retirement savings and the family ‘pays rent’ to their parents)
E) Loaned them money to start a business
F) Fronted an emergency loan to cover an unexpected major expense like a car accident or surprise medical bill
G) Helped pay for childcare or provided it directly (e.g. their retired moms watched the kids when they went to work— they paid that down payment for something local to be close to their grandkids after all).
The people without parents that can do a few of the above are the top of the lower middle class who can’t afford to buy a home, delayed having kids or chose not to have them because they couldn’t afford them, are still paying off student debt in their mid 40s, have two used cars that are not hybrids.
They are the reason their state school friends are basically left of center— their college friends all know exactly what has been paid for by generational wealth transfer, especially if they own a home.
These not-quite-uppers live in the same suburbs— but they rent, and do not get vacations, and they maybe only have one kid. They are the people who Did All The Right Things and still do not enjoy what would have been a middle class lifestyle 30 years ago.
A. Yes (but just paid for education instead of debt)
B. Yes
C. Yes (three times)
D. NO!
E. No
F. Yes
G. Yes
Five out of seven is darn good.
My grandparents were poor and an albatross financially on my parents. My parents were lower middle class; but they did pay my college tuition (while I paid my living expenses) so I had no college debt and my husband had very small amount that we paid off quickly after marrying.
Yup; they wanted a large guest list for the wedding so we said they could pick up the food tab for the 100 extra people they wanted there.
We had beater cars but my Dad’s best friend is a master mechanic. So they ran.
The rest of the list is all No’s. After the wedding we have not been helped by either of our parents. My MIL said she *would* watch our kids to keep them out of daycare, but that if that was just so we could have a bigger house and more stuff, she would resent not just being able to be a Grandma by having to provide every day care for the kids. We decided not to ask her to do this and I stayed home.
Good analysis that I can relate to as a dusty provincial who went to an allegedly elite private college. One thing I wonder about: Whatever is meant by 'coastal elites,' unless we specify people with extreme levels of wealth and power--and not just bien pensant professionals who happened to go to Yale and live in Greater NYC--there's a great deal of permeability and even interchangeability between people who popularly get called that and the median professional-class grad of a school like Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana (some of whom, of course, also very much become elites on the coast). It seems like I most often hear the phrase 'coastal elites' used to describe the wealth-building professional class as a whole, and while I clearly don't live on the coast, similar charges would get made against me by many people around me if they knew all the relevant details about me. Anyway, I know you specified what you meant, and I take the analysis on its own terms, but it's interesting to consider where the boundaries do and do not get drawn between this cohort and 'coastal elites.' Maybe fodder for future posts
Thank you!
I agree that there's a lot of fuzzy space on the lower and upper bounds of this cohort. For example, someone folks point out that regional schools that aren't technically *the* flagship state school school (UW system vs Madison itself) can still output graduates into this category. In the other end, you can be a UPenn graduate and not be an elite.
My criteria for elite-elite elites are not monetary, but cultural. There are people who don't necessarily make a lot of money, but due to their positions in academia, media, and the arts have an outsized influence on the intellectual and media environment.
Yup! Came here to say this. And those of us non-elites who attended Ivy League schools certainly felt our position socially while we were on campus.
I’d also wonder whether some of this is specific to geography. If you live in and immediately around New York City, for instance, you have to be objectively pretty rich to have the life you describe.
That's why you gotta live in Wisconsin!
As a formerly non-coastal elite, I agree: there is nothing special about the eliteness of coastal privates. Just a higher probability of entering certain caste networks.
Boston, NYC, Baltimore, Philly, Newark, D.C., San Diego, L.A., San Fran, Portland, Seattle.
There's a whole lot of wealth and influence from those cities, much of it tends to benefit the DNC, and they're all within 60 miles of the coast. (Philly is 60 miles from the Atlantic ocean)
Seems like what you describe here is the cohort of Americans that are experiencing upward mobility and the exact demographic we should be designing our systems for. Families, stable jobs, financially independent, responsible, compassionate, etc. I would all guess these types are comfortably in the top 10% of US household income ($200k and above). That could easily be two mid-forties teachers with 15+ years of service in a public school district.
I live in one of these towns and would say there are far more non-blue than you would think.
This is giving "We Have Never Been Woke" Musa Al Gharbi vibes. My only disagreement would be that this description misses that some important number of this class feel nothing short of revulsion towards certain ideas: Pro-life - even if they're pro-life themselves, white men being outspoken about being white/male - even if they love to celebrate any other shade, women, Judeo-Christianity - even if they love to celebrate Islam. The irony is totally lost on them). The intellectual depth of understanding why they believe so strongly in certain ideas is extremely shallow. Not everyone in this class, but definitely not an inconsequential amount, I think.
There is definitely a messy hodgepodge of ideas in this group
“Messy hodgepodge” is a defining feature of the political idea sets of nearly every group in American politics. Americans typically don’t have “ideological constraint”—that is, holding one left-associated idea does not consistently predict holding other left-associated ideas “you would think it would make sense for them to hold.” (The same holds true for right-associated ideas.)
The source is one of the most-cited papers in American political science, “The nature of belief systems in mass publics” by Philip Converse.
Signed, a graduate of the flagship campus of a state university in the Great Plains.
“The intellectual depth of understanding why they believe so strongly in certain ideas is extremely shallow.”
Boom. At risk of sounding pretentious, I do think a lot of them have the opinions they have because social media tells them to. Look, all these other people are saying it, which means it’s popular, which means it’s good.
They eschew "dangerous" or controversial political opinions, favoring vague touchy-feely stuff that would sound good coming out of the mouth of a vapid HR lady.
Many of them are in professional environments where going along to get along is mandatory, and that bleeds over into their private/public life because they rely on their network of connections to keep getting their feet in the door for new job opportunities.
Not just that. Many of these people have "secure" jobs as long as they don't get canceled. Thus they have to live in constant fear that something they say will get interpreted as cancelworthy.