Category Archives: Jack Metzgar

Equal Opportunity Is Not Enough

Posted on September 18, 2017 by

We middle-class professionals are a crafty bunch, especially our intellectual elite.  One of our cagiest moves recently involves our expressions of concern about increasing income and wealth inequality in the U.S.  While eloquently expressing how guilty we feel about our … Continue reading →

Posted in Contributors, Issues, Jack Metzgar, The Working Class and the Economy | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Fear of Hygge and Working-Class Social Capital

Posted on June 19, 2017 by

One of the contenders for the Oxford Dictionaries’ “word of the year” in 2016 is the Danish word hygge (pronounced hoo-guh).  As defined by Oxford, it denotes “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment … Continue reading →

Posted in Contributors, Issues, Jack Metzgar, Working-Class Culture | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The Working Class at the Oscars

Posted on April 10, 2017 by

A scene in Denzel Washington’s movie of Fences is not in August Wilson’s original play, and it illustrates how a spate of Oscar-nominated films this year uncharacteristically reveal basic insights into working-class ways of living a life. Troy Maxson is … Continue reading →

Posted in Class and the Media, Contributors, Issues, Jack Metzgar, Understanding Class | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Every Part of Us Has Parts

Posted on January 16, 2017 by

One of my first awakenings to the cultural divide between working-class and middle-class ways of seeing and being in the world was John Helmer’s 1974 book The Deadly Simple Mechanics of Society.   Focused on a critique of American sociology, the … Continue reading →

Posted in Class at the Intersections, Contributors, Issues, Jack Metzgar, Understanding Class | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Engaging the Unreachables

Posted on November 21, 2016 by

Those of us from white working-class families with people we know and love who voted for Trump have a special heartache over this year’s election.  Why do so many good people have such deplorable politics?  I mostly took a pass … Continue reading →

Posted in Contributors, Issues, Jack Metzgar, Working-Class Politics | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

White Trash, Hillbillies, and Middle-Class Stereotypes

Posted on September 19, 2016 by

During election years white people who do not have bachelor’s degrees (the increasingly common definition of “the working class”) become both a somewhat exotic who-knew-they-were-here-and-in-such-large-numbers object of discussion and a target for freewheeling social psychologizing. Thus, it is more than … Continue reading →

Posted in Class and the Media, Contributors, Issues, Jack Metzgar, Understanding Class, Working-Class Culture | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Chasing Tax Cheats to Create Jobs: Why Don’t We Do That?

Posted on August 1, 2016 by

I’m guessing that tax collectors have never been a popular group, but we need thousands more of them, probably about 50,000 more. Why? Because something like $400 billion in business and personal taxes go uncollected each year, and with more … Continue reading →

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