William Marvel: The Disposable Class

Fifteen years ago, the Wall Street Journal reprinted an op-ed from City Journal that asked "Who Lost the Middle Class?" The author, Fred Siegel, called it "a question for historians of the not-too-distant future." He predicted that the United States, once known for its vibrant middle class, was bound for a future as socially stratified as Europe — or Brazil, which was then the West's handiest example of an hourglass economy, where people were largely confined to the extremes of wealth and poverty.

As an accelerated example of a process he believed was then well underway, Siegel offered the economic course of the metropolis of New York, which he called "the most unequal city in America." Since the mid-1960s, he noted, New York's political power brokers had driven manufacturing out to make room for business services, sometimes literally forcing them out through eminent domain, on specious claims of serving the common good. That social and economic manipulation impelled a steady stream of manufacturers and their employees to flee the city, leaving behind mainly the business class and those low-wage workers in the food service and hospitality industries.