Part two on principles: Who is Joe Six-Pack and is he really a beer-swilling yahoo?

The more sophisticated and urban among us roll their eyes at the politicians'  patronizing populism ploys (stop the Ps! Shades of Spiro Agnew). I understand what Palin and Biden intend when they cozy up to the common folk, but it is a misrepresentation of the middle class. The middle class is not a collection of rednecks loaded up on beer buying power tools at Home Depot, or big-haired Louises working at the local diner winking and chewing gum. The middle class is diverse, made up of teachers, preachers, plumbers, engineers, poets, accountants, economists, small business owners, builders, farmers, lawyers, truck drivers, artists, florists, electricians, real estate salespeople, clerks, counselors, industrial workers, programmers, mechanics, physicists, biologists and all sorts of people that may or may not drink beer or sling hash.  

Why is it when we speak of the middle class, especially pols and and pundits, we insinuate stereotypes and create caricatures? And why is there an assumption of lower intelligence, lack of sophisitication and ignorance of social events? From my experience I've seen varying levels of intelligence, from genius to not very bright; varying levels of sophistication from well-rounded experience to local close-mindedness; varying levels of knowledge from well-learned and educated to ignorant of all but a special few interests. My past experience working as a therapist in private facilities dealing mostly with middle-class and upper-middle class clients, and some who would qualify as "rich", put me before a variety of personality-types, races and socio-economic backgrounds from all regions of the country - north, south, east, west. There were many commonalities, and many differences. The commonalities were human traits, and the differences had mostly to do with culture, intelligence, education, beliefs and upbringing. Put together they don't create Joe-Six-Pack or Winking Louise.

What they make up is a wonderful diversity capable of making free choices regarding their lives, or of understanding, for the most part, the basics of how our society is formed. The people I saw were having life problems but they had no mental conditions which would incapacitate their ability to choose, so once their problems were treated, what  I saw and experienced by gettting to know them on a deeper, personal level was representative of the nation's middle class.

I was the type therapist who used a common-sense, down-to-earth approach and people responded by using the safety of the situation to open up. Again, Joe Six-Pack and Winking Louise are terribly misleading. Plus, we all, at least most, have daily experience with people classified in the middle-class which shows us the true picture of diversity

Yet, there seems to be in the media a stereotype of the middle-class, usually as working-class slugs who have no idea what is going on and who need the paternalistic help of government. When their voice is represented it's a heterogeneous voice of the stereotype, which is nothing like the diverse voices in reality. This misleading characterization is offensive and is the main reason why government control of the economy and social engineering will fail. There is no way for a relatively small group of planners to calculate the needs and wants of the diverse many. Even if all the diverse people making up the middle-class wanted the government to plan and distribute fairly, it can't be done unless the government was able to thwart all free choices that are possible for people to make.

If people have free choices at all, and this is what Nozick maintains, they will choose in ways that even after the fair distribution will create inequalities in holdings, because the skills and attractions of some people will be in more demand than others. Thus government would have to constantly act to maintain equality to the point of absurdity. An example would be a skilled surgeon whose services are sought in critical situations would be given amounts of everyone's equal distibution so that his wealth would be greater than others -- this activity would run throughout the economy for goods and services and the government would be constantly preventing people from over-using and paying extra for some services, or constantly confiscating the excess received for some services (or goods).

It doesn't take long to see the futility and craziness of such government activity and to long for free markets, free choices and equality of pursuit rather equality of results.

The middle-class is not a controllable monolithic group whereby rational calculation can create just distribution and predictable behavior. It's a dynamic, ever-changing collection of individuals with individual needs and desires, varying degrees of intelligence, skills, knowledge and ambition. Middle-class is an economic category, nothing else, and why politicians think they have some greater knowledge as to how best to live just because they were elected to represent us is so far beyond my understanding as to be mind-blowing. In many, many cases, the people of the middle-class are far more intelligent and knowledgable than politicians. It's truly amazing where we find ourselves.