KB of PD on American Middle-Class

Thursday, September 08, 2011, 8:49 AM     

By Kevin OBrien, The Plain Dealer

The Plain Dealer

When people refer to the "middle class" -- or any other "class" -- in America, the understanding should be that they're talking about something fluid and flexible.

Using the American connotation, the term "middle class" truthfully can apply only as a snapshot, and even then the picture is fuzzy, because the people in it are in constant motion.

For every Bill Gates climbing toward the top of the economic heap, there's some Carnegie or Vanderbilt headed back the other way.
Our system rewards industriousness, intelligence and good ideas. It doesn't give a fig for surnames.

Obviously, there's a downside to competition and churn. In competitions, not everyone comes in first. With churn, the possibility of falling exists alongside the possibility of rising.

But that's not death. That's life, adapting and evolving as better ideas come along. That's the car key putting the buggy whip on the shelf. All of society adjusts accordingly, but no one adjusts more than the person who can no longer earn a living making buggy whips.

If Ohioans are wise enough to vote "yes" on Issue 2, thereby upholding the law known as Senate Bill 5, state and local governments will be free to do some things in different ways that suit today's economic realities.

Some people now on the public payroll will have to find other uses for their talents. But none of them will be asked to do so the morning after the election.

And we'll have to come up with better ideas for running some public institutions with smaller staffs and leaner budgets. Other institutions eventually will go the way of the buggy whip. (Given the debt situation across the board, that's an inevitability, with or without Issue 2's passage.)

So, yes, significant changes lie ahead for public employees and their agencies.
But to even suggest that a "yes" vote on Issue 2 could, by itself, produce some material change in the composition of the "middle class" is to insult today's public employees by casting unfounded doubt on their ability, their industriousness and their willingness to support themselves.

The case against Issue 2 is emotional, and it cannot bear logical scrutiny.

When Ohioans vote in favor of Issue 2, they won't be voting to end fire or police protection, because they themselves will decide how best to allocate public resources. Nor will they be voting to abolish public education. And they certainly won't be voting to kill the "middle class," whatever it may be at this moment.