Senator Ted Cruz, his wife Heidi, and their two daughters Catherine, 4, left, and Caroline, 6, right, wave on stage after he announced his campaign for president, on March 23 in Lynchburg, Va.Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press
Midway through a fiery speech in Virginia this week, during which he became the first major politician to formally announce his candidacy for President of the United States, Texas Senator Ted Cruz broke into a series of "imagine if" proposals – a cornucopia of right-wing hypotheticals that together outlined what a Cruz-controlled White House might look like. Among them was a proposal to abolish the Internal Revenue Service entirely, and instead lift the burden on "families struggling to make ends meet" by allowing them to file their taxes "on a postcard."
In all likelihood, the chances that Mr. Cruz will one day wipe out the revenue arm of the federal government are essentially nil. But one of the few things on which Mr. Cruz and even the most liberal of Democrats can probably agree is that the number of families struggling to make ends meet in the United States is rising in almost every part of the country.
A new report, released last week by the Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent non-profit organization, measured the percentage of households in every state that fall into the broad category of "middle-class." For the purposes of the study, the researchers defined middle-class as any household that makes between 67 and 200 per cent of a state's median income.
The results are stark. Between 2000 and 2013, the percentage of middle-class households shrunk in every single state in the union. The shrinking percentage came even as the median income in most states, when adjusted for inflation, actually declined.
In some states, the decline was relatively modest. In Wyoming, for example, the percentage of middle-class households dropped from 51.5 per cent in 2000 to 51.2 in 2013 (and the median income in that state rose during the same period).
In other states, the decline was much more significant. In Wisconsin, the percentage dropped from 54.6 per cent in 2000 to 48.9 per cent in 2013. During the same period, the inflation-adjusted median income in that state dropped from $60,344 to $51,146. A number of states, including Ohio, Georgia and Nevada, saw a similar mix of steep declines in both median income and percentage of middle-class households.
In its totality, the research shows not only a nationwide contraction of the middle class, but also hints at a host of maladies afflicting different states – from those hit hard by the subprime mortgage crisis, such as Nevada, to those that suffered from long-standing industries in decline (Michigan saw one of the biggest drops in inflation-adjusted median income during the 13-year period).
The survey also measured the percentage of households in each state spending 30 per cent or more of their income on housing – the federal cutoff for housing affordability. That percentage has also gone up in almost every state in the country since 2000, the highest levels being in California and New York, where more than 40 per cent of households are at or above the federal affordability cutoff.
As the rhetoric cycle of the presidential election kicks off in earnest (the election itself is still 600 or so days away), the plight of the middle class is likely to become a defining theme. But how the various candidates will address it is likely to vary wildly.
A growing number of public-opinion surveys show more Americans are aware of and concerned about growing income inequality across the U.S. – indeed, there appears to be fairly broad support for helping the poorest Americans by increasing the minimum wage, for example.
But when it comes to other measures – specifically, the extent to which the government should intervene to close the gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else – opinion is much more polarized, with Democrats far more likely than Republicans to support greater intervention.
As such, candidates from both parties will likely have very different narratives to explain why in many parts of the country, virtually all the income gains since the end of the Great Recession have wound up in the hands of the wealthiest 1 per cent – and what, if anything, to do about that.
But until then, as the only major candidate officially in the running, Mr. Cruz's proposal to abolish the IRS is the only idea on the table. It is a safe bet that other candidate will soon offer slightly less radical solutions.