Ode to the struggling middle class

The LSE and MIT's Richard Sennett has a piece in Tuesday's Financial Times on those Middle-aged and stranded by the 'new economy'. For those familiar with his work, its the usual collection of anecdote and sweeping generalisations. Sennet claims that "wealth has stagnated for workers in the middle of the economy".

But I'm old enough to remember much the same observations ten and twenty years ago. And while there may be some basis for this claim in the United States, where real median incomes have languished for years, it is certainly not true in Britain - real wages have seen robust growth across the earnings spectrum, and net wealth has risen even more sharply - thanks largely to the housing boom.

Coincidentally, Sennett has a new book out this week from Yale University Press: The Culture of the New Capitalism. It is based on his Castle Lectures given at Yale University in 2004. Sennett clearly is not a happy man:

Sennett argues that, in banishing old ills, the new-economy model has created new social and emotional traumas. Only a certain kind of human being can prosper in unstable, fragmentary institutions: the culture of the new capitalism demands an ideal self oriented to the short term, focused on potential ability rather than accomplishment, willing to discount or abandon past experience. In a concluding section, Sennett examines a more durable form of self hood, and what practical initiatives could counter the pernicious effects of “reform.”

Only a certain kind of human being like, say, an econoblogger? For those eager to sip from this bitter cup, Yale have posted the book's introduction online (PDF).

I sometimes like his writing style, but to me his conclusions seem overblown. Do we really want to go back to the glorious 1970s or 1980s? They were hardly a middle class paradise.

Note: For now the piece is available freely online, but when it goes behind the FT firewall you can read long excerpts from it over at Mark Thoma's post. There is a nascent debate in Mark's post about whether globalisation means we must choose between protectionism or falling living standards. I'm undecided on this one, but hope to look into it in coming months.

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