January 18, 2004

With one-fifth of Americans privileged with job security, high wages and strong skills, the remaining 80 per cent belong to a ‘new working class’ that lacks these privileges

DOES class count in USA today? You bet! Class, in America, was never so obvious as now. The nation that once prided itself in porous class-lines, is today — thanks to two decades of trillions of dollars national surplus of the 90s — a mighty gorge between the oofy wealthy and the scrappy poor.

The acid test?

Alcohol consumption among different ethnic blue-collar classes gives the picture of class. Remember the Irish and Italian immigrants during the Gilded Age of America? These guys provided cheap fodder for labour of death. Several thousands perished constructing sweeping highways, shovelling subways, laying railroads, building bridges, excavating the Hudson to lay New York’s Lincoln and Holland tunnels and erect the scaffolds to raise Manhattan’s skyscrapers. And those who survived hit the taverns each night as if there was no tomorrow!

While others — mostly Italian and French — worked as indentured servants to the American aristocracy, living as lowly domestics, toiling hand and foot inside palatial mansions and gargantuan gardens.

Not surprisingly then, their descendants today — a sizable number — statically show having inherited the legacy of perennial poverty that permeated their ancestors. And how so? The best indicator of class, according to a social scientist, is the consumption of alcohol.

Really?

“The Irish, followed by the Italians, are the heaviest consumers of liquor, while among the Jews only five per cent drink hard liquor, the rest are too busy becoming doctors and lawyers, and getting ahead in life.”

You rarely see rich Americans drink themselves silly. It’s considered politically incorrect to have more than one cocktail at a business social and should an unfortunate sod overdo, well...I am told he can lose his job if the boss happens to be around and witness the ‘disgrace’.

A big academic debate on social class versus income is raging here. “While niggling questions like income, your alma mater or knowing how to distinguish between the fish knife and the bread knife” might put you in the white privileged class, says a Cornell professor of sociology, “there are sociologists who argue that social class is in decline in regard to lifestyle, consumption factors and politics as coherent, meaningful groups.”

Whatever, with one-fifth of Americans privileged with job security, high wages and strong skills, the remaining 80 per cent belong to a “new working class” that lacks these privileges and minorities are “far more likely than white males to lack elite educational credentials and social capital.”

So, apart from looking smashing, how exactly do the leisured class kill their time and off-load some of their money? Unlike Pakistanis with money and style to spare, the WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) are not just party animals, whose only aim in life is to socialize and show off their good fortune, but give freely of their money to charities. Most prefer to make endowments to charities named after them, rather than leave it to their kids.

In Pakistan, people with old money as well as the nouveau riche border on selfish hedonism. They entertain regularly with the finest foods and wines that money can buy — and the watering hole is the bar, of course, where a swarm is always seen, tippling the best of spirits while the night wears off.

“That’s not correct,” a relative tells me on my recent trip to Pakistan. “People here are so charitable that you have no idea — individuals, private groups, organizations, housewives, career women — everyone is quietly helping the poor by giving out money, food, clothing — whatever they can manage.”

With the poverty line rising to 33 per cent, which means that every third Pakistani earns less than $2 a day, how do people survive? “Hungry mobs would have been out on the streets by now, looting and killing, were it not for the fact that they are being provided for through various charities,” says the relative who lists ways of how the rich of Islamabad adopt poor families and provide for their material needs. She and her sister often buy buns from the bakery and feed all the kids roaming around shopping places. “I’d rather that their small stomachs are filled than give them cash which is seized by their families or some mafia joint that puts these kids out on the streets.”

If it’s any consolation for Pakistan, the US today has, according to The New York Times, 34.6 million poor. “In one year (2003) alone, 1.7 million jobless went under the poverty line.” With a projected deficit of $5 trillion, it’s the poorest of the poor who will suffer the next coming decade: “the most fiscally irresponsible in our nation’s history.”

Fundraising still feeds many charities for the poor in the US.

The Cross Estate — a homeowner’s dream with over 35 rooms in the elegant turn-of-the-century country estate, magnificent formal gardens and landscaped grounds — provide the perfect backdrop for fundraising. Shopping boutiques, luncheon cafi and on-site parking pull hundreds of people to come visit. Proceeds from the $25 entrance fee sales benefit the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a local hospital in the town.

The property, featuring glorious views of surrounding hills and valleys, takes you back to the time — seven decades ago — when Julia Cross started the gardens. After her death in 1972, the 162 acre property was donated to the National Historic Museum.

Today, the Cross Estate and gardens remain a fine example of early 20th century American architecture and landscape design. More importantly, the fact that rich Americans like the Cross family leave millions behind in charity is praiseworthy. It’s an enduring tradition that has flourished with time.

In my limited knowledge, I do not know of anyone in Pakistan donating his or her home to a worthwhile charity after death. However, I’d love to be corrected on this score. While there are some family-run foundations that often smack of vested interests with funds really not filtering down to people who need them most, the money is guzzled by office expenses, salaries and Pajeros. Again, I could be wrong. Perhaps, there are some kindred souls out there whose sole motivation is helping the poor.

A young couple in the US opens up their mansion for months to raise funds for underprivileged children. Their home, called Georgian Heights, with Manhattan’s spectacular skyline in the distance, is swarmed by visitors who want to get a taste of “America’s Royalty” that frequented the stately and gentrified fashionable parties almost a 100 years ago, arriving in their motorized vehicles. “The women would have sported fancy long dresses and high pompadour hats, escorted by men with padded shoulders and perhaps a fedora hat,” our guide tells us as we tour the property.

It was once the home Kate Bennet, an heiress to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. “She might have heard news of the Titanic from a candlestick phone in this phone closet.”

Today, it is owned by Jean and Michael Strahan. Michael is the millionaire Super Bowl football star who has taken his team, the Giants, to victory. The result: he signed a seven-year $46-million contract.

With so much money around, Michael, 32, and his wife of four years have restored their 97-year-old, 22,000-square-foot, red-brick home into an extraordinary labour of love.

Moving out of their home and handing it over to a charity that opens it to the public as a show house at $25 a ticket is their way of paying back to the community. Last year alone it earned $500,000. The superstar is actively involved with the American Cancer Society, Children’s Miracle Network and Housing Enterprises for the Less Privileged.

“If I can give up my house when I’m not going to be in it and it helps people and raises a lot of money, let’s do it,” says Strahan, who grew up in Germany as the son of an army major. “Others, too, must do the same.”

Did I mention Michael Strahan is black?!

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