That's the perception, anyway. We have Ronald Reagan and 28 years of Republican class warfare to thank for that.
Read a great article in Salon about how the problems are affecting the poor and how little anyone is saying about it:
According to both Bernstein and Hederman, those at the bottom usually receive less attention in times of economic crisis. They are a politically insignificant group compared to the broad American middle class, and expressing support in policy terms for the poor, who are often seen as lazy recipients of the un-American handout, can be risky for a politician in a close election. “The poor have been pretty invisible on the political stage,” Bernstein says. “It’s usually only in boom times that we look at those issues closely, and people debate if there are policy failures or they are just lazy bums.”
More at:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/13/bottom_of_Bush_econ/It's another side effect of the great Republican con-game. Just like how people don't like the idea of raising taxes on the rich, because they want to think that they'll be rich some day, people don't like to hear politicians talk about helping the poor, because no one wants to think of themselves as "poor"--even if they are! So "helping the poor" ends up being heard as "taxing MY hard earned money to help some lazy-ass welfare queen," but "strengthening the middle class" is something we can all get behind, because, hey, even if I drive a $60K car and have a condo at the beach (plus my 3000 sq. ft. suburban home), of course I'm middle class, and I need help, too! (I don't have any of the above, but I know people who do. I also know a single parent w/2 kids making $30K a year who would also consider herself middle class, even though she has no health care and might be eligible for food stamps.)
In the Great Depression, with 25% plus unemployment, losing your job was all it took to send you from middle class straight to the soup lines and living in a Hooverville shack. And everyone knew it. So "helping the poor" sounded great, because any of us might be in that boat, at any time. Now, with all the stuff that easy credit bought us, plus the (increasingly false) sense of security from the social safety net that's been developed (and largely decimated) since that time, the path from middle class to destitute can be a bit slower. But in our minds they are now *worlds* away. That old, bent over homeless lady, or that young single mother turning tricks to buy food for her kids--THAT could never be US... or so we think. So politicians can get us to vote ourselves to hell by promising good times for those whom we'd like to think we are like (why shouldn't the rich, and the rest of us, "get to keep more of our own money," like Bush said in a debate against Al Gore?), and they can torpedo their own campaigns if they let us think they will help those who, somehow, don't *deserve* it. Its Protestant work ethic rugged individualistic libertarianism combined with a sociopathic need to demonize the "other" as less than us, less than human, undeserving of help, compassion or a different economic system that doesn't create a great unwashed mass of "have-nots".
Perhaps, the turmoil ahead will awaken some to the lies they've been sold. Gang of Four may have said it best:
Blinkered
Paralyzed
Flat on my back
They said our world is built with endeavor
That every man is for himself
Wealth is for the one that wants it
Paradise--If you can earn it!
History’s the reason
I’m washed up
Blinkered
Paralyzed
Flat on my back
My ambitions come to nothing
What I wanted now seems just a waste of time
I can’t make out what has gone wrong
I was good at what I did
The crows come home to roost and I’m the dupe!