Posted on September 8, 2008
Biden: Republicans Have Failed to Address Middle Class Issues
Speaking to a crowd of about 1,200 in Langhorne, PA, Joe Biden railed against the Republican party for failing to address issues such as decreasing real wages, job losses, and the increasing cost of gas, groceries, health care, and education. He referred to the Bush administration as “eight years of failure.”
Biden said that if he and Barack Obama are elected, they will seek to give families an extra $1,000 in tax incentives.
Obama and Biden have recently made middle class issues central to his campaign. But according to DelawareOnline, working Americans’ reactions to Biden’s appeals have been mixed. Especially in heavily Catholic areas, Biden’s pro-choice stance has cost him supporters.
Will someone for the love of all that is holy, define what “middle-income” is.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to impossible to define middle income (unless you want to pick some arbitrary definition). This is because the middle (as in middle class) is more about lifestyle than a particular number. For example: a family income of $60,000 per year would be considered middle income in most geographic areas but a family can’t live a middle class lifestyle on that in New York city. Conversely, in an area like the NY metropolitan area, an income of $170,000 would put a family in the middle class, while it would put a family into the upper class in a small town in Mississippi.
… so this leaves us with a definition of middle class much like the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”