Posted by One of the more interesting sites in my commute to work everyday from the suburbs to downtown Pittsburgh is passing through Wilkinsburg. Like other parts of Pittsburgh, it is a study in contrasts. There are parts of it that are certainly depressed; the store-fronts are rundown or closed. The houses are boarded up and dilapidated. Then you can see attempts to renovate, to bring in new housing blocks and raise the standard of living.
In looking at the depressed areas, however, I’m struck by how quickly our standards of acceptable living can change. I’m willing to bet that around 30 years ago, these houses and the families that inhabited them were considered solidly middle-class. I’ll bet most of them worked in the steel mills where workers earned a decent wage. When the mills closed and many of those middle-class families left, the communities suffered. Some areas have never recovered though Pittsburgh as a whole is once again pretty strong (most livable city in the US; 27th most livable in the world according to the Economist).
I think I grew up middle/upper-middle class. We didn’t live as well as my friends in Fox Chapel or Upper St Clair. But by and large I got a nice present for my birthday or Eid and there was always food on the table. I had a bike and my parents got me a basketball hoop for my 10th birthday; the best present I’ve ever received.
Today, parents throw huge birthday parties at catered restaurants because they’re are too busy earning money, which they then spend on huge birthday parties thrown at catered restaurants seeing as how they don’t have/can’t/won’t take the time to plan a party due to their being so busy earning money. These aren’t necessarily upper-class folks; they’re mostly middle/upper-middle class by the old definitions.
I think it says something that the economic changes of the past quarter-century have so skewed our perception of a decent, middle-class city life. Don’t get me wrong. People should have to work hard. Life shouldn’t be a hand-out. But the brass-ring has moved quite far out of the reach of ordinary Americans.
