{"id":5850,"date":"2011-06-02T12:16:03","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T19:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=5850"},"modified":"2011-06-02T12:16:03","modified_gmt":"2011-06-02T19:16:03","slug":"a-middle-class-shrug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/02\/a-middle-class-shrug\/","title":{"rendered":"A middle-class shrug?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks back (thanks to alert blog readers) we read about the notable “shrug”<\/a> of “Mad Men” ad-man and restauranteur Jerry Della Femina. And surely Della Femina fits the typical profile of a Randian shrugger (i.e. he’s self-made and rich).<\/p>\n

But what about the rest of the world? A lot of us here have already shrugged in various ways. We’ve left “respectable” jobs to move into the backwoods. Some have given up entirely on “official paperwork.” We’ve done our best to keep a low profile and make a low economic impact. But face it, when we dropped out most of us didn’t have all that far to drop. How many of us were of country club level? How many of us closed down or abandoned successful businesses to go our own way? How much of a difference to the world did our shrugs make?<\/p>\n

Shrugging made a difference to those of us who did it, and that’s all that really matters. But nobody’s going to write about our economic disappearance in Forbes<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Our high-school counselors may have told us we had “potential,” but very likely they added in the same breath that we already weren’t “living up to it.” When I was 27, a mentor told me he wanted to see me become the highest-paid female executive in the San Francisco Bay Area. But I had read Atlas Shrugged<\/i> eight years earlier. I had already realized, at 24 or 25, that I so detested dealing with government requirements that I’d never hire an employee and never build a business. By the time I was 30, I had moved (as one of my relentlessly overachieving acquaintances sniffed) from the California fast lane to a mosquito-infested swamp in the middle of nowhere. I was happily downwardly mobile thereafter.<\/p>\n

Sure, a few of us went from white collar to whatever we are now. And some of us are still wearing those pearly business garments. I don’t presume to speak for all. But mostly, whether we shrugged or not, we were and are small potatoes.<\/p>\n

There’s another shrugger, though, who’s not written up in Forbes<\/i> but probably should be: the person from the upper middle class — particularly the successful entrepreneur or executive — who just isn’t willing to take it any more.<\/p>\n

Granted, we hear about the “middle-class squeeze.” We hear about college-educated former white-collar hopefuls now flipping burgers because that’s all that’s available to them. We hear about the changing economics of specific professional groups. Doctors, for instance. Under the pressures of Obamacare they’re giving up their independent practices in droves to become salaried employees (and switching from Republican to Democrat<\/a> in the process, unsurprisingly). Even lawyers, who ought to be doing well in this climate of overregulation, are having a hard time getting careers going<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These are all signs of the mess we’re in. No doubt about it. But none of those people are (yet!) conscious shruggers.<\/p>\n

How many successful business people, I wonder, are just quietly saying, “Enough’s enough” and turning their back on the achievements for which they strove so mightly? Achievements that — however much pride they ought to invoke — have paled in a world where both mega-rich and poor — at the instigation and with the collusion of governments — leech off the productivity of poor Mr. or Ms Middle?<\/p>\n

True, a single entrepreneur who closes a business, or decides not to grow the business any more, isn’t a much bigger potato than the rest of us. True, a single formerly prosperous person who no longer hires gardeners or caterers, buys as many cars, or no longer shops for as much stuff, doesn’t make a lot of difference in the world. But in the aggregate — as the middle-class goes, so goes the country. And clearly those upper-middle types who provide so many of the jobs have an outsized impact when they quit being victimized.<\/p>\n

How many are starting to say, “No more”? Not because they’re forced to by the depression, but because the endless struggle against regulations, taxes, and ever-changing rules simply isn’t worth it to them any longer?<\/p>\n

Are you seeing evidence of middle-class shrugging? I am. Early stages, but it’s most definitely happening.<\/p>\n

(More on this, and an example of one such shrugger next time I blog, which I hope will be Friday. But I’m getting a bit behind on deadlines and preps for this weekend’s Mother Earth News Fair<\/a>. So might be early next week.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks back (thanks to alert blog readers) we read about the notable “shrug” of “Mad Men” ad-man and restauranteur Jerry Della Femina. And surely Della Femina fits the typical profile of a Randian shrugger (i.e. he’s self-made and rich). But what about the rest of the world? A lot of us here have already shrugged in various ways. We’ve left “respectable” jobs to move into the backwoods. Some have given up entirely on “official paperwork.” We’ve done our best to keep a low profile and make a low economic impact. But face it, when we dropped out most…<\/p>\n

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