On Topic: The middle class is moving down, sort of

When I tell people how much I got paid my first year as a high school teacher, which admittedly was a few years ago, most of them don't believe me.

One colleague here at The Gazette whose husband teaches accused me of lying.

I won't tell you how malnourished that twice-a-month paycheck was for fear of losing what little credibility I might have left, but believe me, it indeed was mournful.

When I landed an editor's slot for a start-up magazine a couple years later, at slightly above twice the pay — but mind you, still pathetic — my significant other at the time gasped, Daisy Buchanan-like, 'We're rich!'

And, I thought at the time, she meant that in all sincerity.

I remembered this about a month ago when 'Marketplace,' the business-for-consumers radio program on NPR, aired a brief recounting of responses from listens who had been asked whether they believed they're sufficiently compensated for the work they do.

You won't be surprised that just about all those who answered said no, of course not. (One especially angry listener wrote to 'Marketplace's' website to denounce 'greedy' billionaires, then made the leap to declare that 'we are so doomed as a species.')

But what was more significant (if maybe not as entertaining), the radio presenter noted how a number of respondents gave specific reasons why they deserved more. One said that as a mental health provider for children, she earned less than $1,500 a month and talked about being physically assaulted by those she helps.

Another reported, as a hospital night-shift floor nurse, to being kicked in the face and punched by 'delirious patients,' exposed to 'way too many pathogens' and generally being sleep-deprived. The nurse didn't state how much she or he makes, but clearly how could it be even remotely enough for that kind of service and its resulting abuse?

But is anyone ever satisfied with how much money they're paid? If we don't make lots of cash, how can we aim to purchase our slice of the American dream, something we've been taught since childhood we desire?

Yet, if that's our collective goal, fewer of us are succeeding. A Pew Research Center report released earlier this month contends the vaunted middle class — that supposed breakwater of the national economy and touchstone for all politicians — no longer makes up the majority of Americans.

A three-person household that brings in $41,900 to $125,000, as of 2014, now constitute less than a majority — 49.9 percent — of the American population. In 1971, that figure as 61 percent.

You can download that report at http://smgs.us/3k5x.

Among the usual suspects noted by Pew for this occurrence are stagnant wages and climbing costs. The rich are climbing up and the poor are, well, getting poorer.

The Pew folk do offer some mildly good news, however. More people — in certain groups — are ascending rather than descending. Twenty-seven percent of Americans 65 years or older, for example, now are 'upper class.'

Blacks and married couples without children also have moved up financially.

The so-called lower class, unfortunately, drifted from 25 percent of the U.S. adult population in 1971 to 29 percent in 2014, Pew researchers say.

So maybe when many of us claim we're not being enough, some have good reason.

• Michael Chevy Castranova is enterprise and Sunday business editor of The Gazette. (319) 398-5873; michaelchevy.castranova@thegazette.com