CHAPTER 3
Why Does the Working Class Resent the Poor?
REMEMBER WHEN PRESIDENT OBAMA sold Obamacare by constantly stressing
that it delivered health care to 20 million people? To many in the working class, this made
it sound like just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor. And in
some cases that’s proved true: the poor got health insurance, while some Americans just a
tiny bit better off saw their premiums rise.^20
Progressives have lavished attention on the poor for over a century, devising social
programs targeting them. Because America is particularly testy about the kinds of taxes
that many European countries take for granted, these programs are not universal. Instead,
they are limited to those below a certain income level, which means they exclude those
just a notch above. This is a recipe for class conflict.
Is it any wonder the working class feels “totally forgotten,” to quote Annette Norris?* “I
raised three children on [$40,000 a year].... But we didn’t get any assistance because
we did not qualify.” Annette is not wrong, or alone: although about 30% of poor families
using center-based child care receive subsidies, subsidies are largely nonexistent for the
middle class.^21 My sister-in-law worked full time for Head Start, providing free child care
for poor women while earning so little that she almost couldn’t pay for her own. She
resented this, especially the fact that some of the kids’ moms did not work. One arrived
late one day to pick up her child, carrying shopping bags from the local mall. My sister-
in-law was livid.
J. D. Vance’s much-heralded Hillbilly Elegy captures this resentment.^22 Hard-living
families like that of his mother live alongside settled families like that of his biological
father. While the hard-living succumb to despair, drugs, or alcohol, settled families keep
to the straight and narrow, like my parents-in-law, who owned their home and sent both
sons to college. To accomplish that, they lived a life of rigorous thrift and self-discipline.
Vance’s book passes harsh judgment on his hard-living relatives and neighbors, which is
not uncommon among people from families who kept their nose clean through sheer
force of will.^23
Understanding working-class resentment of the poor needs to begin by looking at
everyday life for working-class Americans of all races. Their rigid, highly supervised jobs
often are boring, repetitive, or both, which makes the work psychologically challenging:
- Why Does the Working Class Resent the Poor?