In a comment on my posting on the Tax Foundation's fuzzy "Tax Freedom Day" rhetoric, Scott Hodges of the Tax Foundation reiterated a point made over and over again in Tax Foundation materials--that they see "middle class" as defined by an "Ozzie and Harriet" values metric rather than an income distribution metric. I replied to that comment at length because I think the comment was as distortive as the other materials put out by the Tax Foundation and reflects a strong sense of elitism (and racism and genderism) to justify downward distribution of the tax burden.
Martha T. McCluskey, a professor of law at SUNY Buffalo, has recently written a short article entitled "How Equality Became Elitist: The Cultural Politicas of Economics from the Court to the 'Nanny Wars'", published in 2006 Seton Hall Law Review and available on SSRN at this link. The introduction to the article also can be seen as a commentary on the Tax Foundation's effort to redefine income class in terms of the culture wars. (Asterisks mark omitted language.)
"[F]ree-market" economic ideology is a key hidden player on the right-wing team in the "culture wars." In turn, the "culture wars" debate serves that free-market fundamentalism by deploying "morality" both to mask and to legitimate rising economic inequality and the upward redistribution of resources. ***
This righward political movement advanced through two prongs--neoconservativism and neoliberalism, both of which have aimed to undo policies particularly associated with 1960s egalitarian and democratic reform movements. Neoconservatism focuses on culture--restoring traditional ideas of "morality," "responsibility," and "community." Neoliberalism focuses on economics--restoring traditional laissez-faire policies of "market efficiency" and "competitiveness." ***
By fueling the "culture wars," the right helps deflect the problem of "class warfare" away from right-wing economic policies and onto egalitarian social policies.***[T]he idea of the "culture wars" helps shift blame for elitism *** away from conservative policies that widen both economic class divisions and "social" divisions based on race, gender, sexuality, disability, and religion.
McCluskey's analysis of the neoconservative/neoliberal overlap aptly captures the Tax Foundation's use of Ozzie and Harriet to characterize wealthier families and its derogatory allusion to Friends'-type single mothers to characterize the middle class. The language and choice of metaphor is intended to engender cultural stereotypes that will carry with them negative perceptions of worth and therefore justify the shifting of the tax burden away from the wealthy and down to the ordinary working American. As McCluskey notes, a result of this divisive approach to understanding the intricate interrelationship of class and culture is that the role of law in promoting markets is privilegegd, while the role of law in remedying subordination is marginalized. "[P]olicies promoting social equality get ridiculed as 'political correctness,' but policies promoting economic inequality get taken seriously as 'economic correctness' (in the pseudo-scientific guise of 'efficiency')."
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