I’ve seen the “White Underclass” in Chester and Montgomery County.

I believe that Chester County’s Drug Courts have been very successful in helping the mostly young white people that go through the system get out of addiction and back to the land of the living. But there is a never ending influx of new young people to replace those that graduated in the drug court system.

At the top 1% we are creating a permanent superwealthy class. Most of the 1% has businesses whose product is money that makes more money. At the same time our great middle class that built our roads, railroads and great manufacturing industries is falling into what could be a permanent underclass.

Young white people see their slightly older friends that went into debt to get college degree so they can work as a temp in a dead end job. So why bother with college. Many times they look for answers with drugs.

The only difference in drug use between more affluent all white communities in Chester and Montgomery Counties and in mostly black communities is the type of drugs used, the frequency of use and frequency of addiction is the same.

Things like Governor Corbett’s war on education will surely create more unemployed white drug addicts. The economy is turning around but we are still locked into a service economy where making money in an electronic “cloud” is the product. We don’t make usable stuff anymore. Our auto industry came back, but they are mostly assembly factories. Apple is supposed to be an American success story but the iPhone is made in China by slave labor.

In the 1960s we were almost assured that we would make a better life for ourselves than our parents did. The American Dream that we all believed in is stagnant.  Income inequality is probably the primary reason for it’s morbidity.  But as Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times income inequality may not be only reason the American Dream has gone away.

There are no answers to the problem here. But the first step in solving a problem is admitting that there is a problem.

“Persistent poverty is America’s great moral challenge, but it’s far more than that. 

As a practical matter, we can’t solve educational problems, health care costs, government spending or economic competitiveness so long as a chunk of our population is locked in an underclass. Historically, “underclass” has often been considered to be a euphemism for race, but increasingly it includes elements of the white working class as well.” 

FROM 

February 8, 2012 

The White Underclass 

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF