Pollster sounds alarm for middle class

Report suggests opportunities for progressives amidst alarming trends.

by Ish Theilheimer

Pollster Frank Graves has confirmed what you probably have already sensed. The Canadian shrinking middle class is pessimistic about its prospects. Most Canadians believe a wealthy few are in charge. And young Canadians are increasingly progressive in their views but disenfranchised politically by conservatives politicians who intend just that.

Graves does an annual review and forecast for his firm, EKOS Research, based on current and historical polling. This year's report is uncharacteristically passionate for a pollster, most of whom try to sound neutral when reporting their research results. Graves, however, cannot contain his sense of alarm.

"The American and Canadian dreams of a better future extracted from hard work and ingenuity are fading and being replaced with a grimmer sense that not only are we not doing better than our parents, but that the next generation will confront a starkly darker future," he writes.

"Whatever meagre profits do emanate from stagnant western economies are increasingly appropriated by a tiny cadre of über rich who don’t really participate in the mainstream of society. The fraying of the progress ethic should be of grave concern to all of us."

His alarm raises dire warnings about what might happen if progressives cannot reverse current trends and policies that are making us all so anxious and insecure.  But the causes of his alarm offer much opportunity and fodder for progressive leaders.

Graves reports on a middle class shrinking so quickly as to relegate our economy to some kind of banana republic status.

Compared with ten years ago,  more Canadians ago see their long-term personal financial outlook as worse, and fewer see the outlook as better. One third (34 percent) say they're worse off than the generation 25 years ago, and 57 percent say they'll be worse still in 25 years. Middle-class families have fallen behind, 70 percent believe. Ten years ago, two-thirds (67 percent) of Canadians identified as “middle class”; now, fewer than half (48 percent) do.

Income inequality tops the list of issues Canadians feel deserve more focus (31 percent), offering support for the focus on inequality taken by the NDP-affiliated Broadbent Institute. Only nine percent mentioned fiscal issues as important. A third of Canadians say income inequality — the sense they can't get ahead — is going to affect work ethic and demoralize workers.

A tantalizing surprise in Graves' findings is that, contrary to the self-serving advice of many media opinionators, Canadians are becoming more politically progressive. Just 23 percent describe themselves as small-C conservatives, with 51 as small-L liberals. Older Canadians, however, have a political and economic lock on power and are unlikely to let go, he says.

"Twenty years ago, younger and older voters were roughly similarly sized portions of the electorate (13 and 15 percent, respectively)," but now there are half again as many older ones. "As the older cohort grew relative to younger voters, the young vote started to tune out. In the 1990s, voting rates among youth plummeted approximately 15 percentage points, while seniors' voting rates remained steady. Today, seniors out-perform youth on Election Day by a margin of nearly two-to-one. Effectively, a younger voter has about one-third to one-quarter the impact today that they did twenty years ago."

Although seniors formerly split politically left and right, now, Graves reports "dramatic convergence around the Conservatives”, and their agenda based, for these exact reasons, on "security, safety, respect for authority, and family values." As a result, he fears a "gerontocracy which reflects the exaggerated and imagined fears of older Canada precisely at the time when we urgently need the more optimistic and innovative outlooks of the relatively scarcer younger portion of our society."

Graves' research merely confirms what's in everyone's guts, that the old ethic of "work hard, play by the rules and get ahead" doesn't seem to work anymore. Canadians, he reports, are keenly aware that the game is tilted toward a wealthy elite — and that if they are young, the tilt is more like a cliff. It also points to opportunity. Progressives must organize and mobilize around the disenfranchisement and anxiety that is more widespread today than in generations.

Canadians are not conservative, Graves tells us (the big-C Cons got less than 40 percent in the last election, even with possible vote suppression tactics in play). They're frustrated with how politics is marketed and distrustful of politicians. And, as he writes, youth feel boxed out, so they're tuning out.

Progressives need to find new ideas and new ways to open up politics to excite youth so that they tune in against and share their ideas and their energy. Three issues that might fire up youth’s passions are equality, decriminalization, and lots of good jobs. The pollster can sound the alarm, but it’s up to activists to see the advantages and seize them.

© Copyright 2013 Ish Theilheimer, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca