Playing the roles a republic demands

Krissy Clark starts a feature on Marketplace Radio by trying to define the middle class. She runs into difficulties, but that's OK. The rest of the feature is about the need for the middle class and the history of it. And that is interesting.

According to Michael Lind in his book Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States the founding fathers recognized that for democracy to work America needed a lot of people with enough economic independence and security who were "capable playing various roles that society in a republic demands, whether as a voter or as a juror." Meaning: a middle class.

But back in the 1790s a middle class was hard to come by. So one was created out of farmers through public policy -- public education and free land through the Homestead Act.

That lasted to about 1900 when farmers shifted to factory work. But low-wage workers wouldn't have the same stake in a stable society as land-owners. The middle class was dissolving. It took 30 years to figure out how to turn factory workers into the middle class. It was done through gov't backed mortgages, Social Security, the New Deal, the GI Bill, and laws pushed by unions.

But manufacturing jobs are disappearing. The middle class is shrinking again. How to replace it? That is the big question of the campaign. Obama champions education. Romney trumpets entrepreneurialism. Lind says neither is enough. So the question is how to turn workers in personal service jobs like elder care, child care, janitor, and restaurant server -- jobs that can't be outsourced -- into the new middle class?

I wonder, though, whether many of the 1% don't want a middle class because they don't want democracy.