Who is part of the middle class and who is part of the working class?

The working class is a term that has been used frequently in the last year to help explain Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential victory over Hillary Clinton. Political analyst and pollsters around the country have attributed Trump’s victory to the voting behavior of the working class. The white segment of this political group has been identified by many experts to have been instrumental to Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. This political segment helped Donald Trump win crucial swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan by razor thin margins.

However, the term working class has never been consistently defined by pollsters, political analyst, or even sociologist. Furthermore, even individuals who self-identify as part of this group have varying definitions what it means to be a member of the working class. Others avoid the term working class altogether and instead prefer to self-identify as middle-class, although their income level and educational background would lead most people to classify them as working class.

According to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek survey conducted at Mall of America,

Both an amusement park worker earning $22,000 a year and a lawyer earning $200,000 a year considered themselves middle class. Although the amusement parker falls within the bottom 30% of American households and the lawyer fell in the top 6% of American households both defined themselves as “middle class” Americans.

The question becomes why people of widely varying income levels are self-identifying as middle class when they often do not meet the traditionally accepted definition of this social class. In the example provided by Bloomberg, the amusement park worker likely falls under the definition of working class and the lawyer likely falls under the definition of upper class, however both choose to identify as middle-class.

One possibility for individuals of widely varying income levels identifying as middle class is the class level of their families during childhood. Although the amusement park worker and the lawyer have widely different income levels today, they may have both grown up in families that self-identified as middle class. Thus, these individuals now also identify as members of the middle class out of respect for their parents and their upbringing. This pattern of behavior can be related to political party identification studies conducted between children and parents. Past studies have found that a person’s political party identification has a strong correlation with that of their parent’s, thus it is logical for a person’s social class identification to also be strongly influenced by that of their parents.

If a person grew up in the 1970s or 1980s there was a good chance that they lived in a middle-class family. According to the Pew Research Center nearly 60% of American families made an annual income that was around the national median during this period. This statistic can help explain why people of ages 35-50 (who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s) often self-identify as members of the middle class despite their varying income levels.

However since the 1970s the number of middle class families in the United States has steadily declined. And by 2015, middle class Americans were no longer the majority of the population, as the lower class and upper class had siphoned off a significant portion of this population segment.

According to the Pew Research Center,

The share of American adults living in middle-income households has fallen from 61% in 1971 to 50% in 2015. The share living in the upper-income tier rose from 14% to 21% over the same period. Meanwhile, the share in the lower-income tier increased from 25% to 29%.

Despite the fact that many members of the 1970s and 1980s middle class have joined other social classes today, their family loyalty and upbringing cause them to self-identify with the middle class. The Bloomberg survey conducted at the Mall of America can be better explained if we analyze it under this theory.  

Another potential reason individuals who qualify as “working class” choose to identify themselves as “middle class” is pride. Most individuals do not want to identify as “working class” as the term carries a negative stigma within society. People associate the “working class” with ideas such as: little or no college education, a low or negative net worth, an annual income close to poverty levels, an inability to purchase a family home, and jobs involving hard manual labor. Thus in order to protect their standing in their social circles and among their family members, working class families will choose to self-identify as middle class.

There are a variety of reasons people choose to identify as middle class when they are part of the working class or the upper class. On the surface it may seem like an insignificant detail as to who counts as the middle class, but there are hidden dangers to an ever-expanding definition of the middle class. As we saw in the 2016 election wide swaths of the white working class felt left behind by the forces of globalization and the new international economy. At the same time members of the upper class were praising the unprecedented wealth creation of the international economy and passionately stating the future was bright. Members of both these social classes often chose to identify as middle class. Thus pollsters and political analyst were constantly giving a mixed message to candidates and news outlets about what voters wanted. The confusion surrounding the desires of the American people caused white working-class voters in states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan to become disenfranchised with the democratic party’s message and gravitate towards Donald Trump.

So my question is, how will confusion about who is part of the middle class affect future elections and policies within the country?

What is in an identity, and what is left after “Whiteness” is gone?

My interest in critical whiteness studies, and working class whites in particular, stems largely from the fact that, where classifications are in order, my family would be classified as “working class whites.” This must have been true for my entire life, but I was not always aware of it. I was not always aware there were other class or race classifications, for that matter.

It took a while after realizing I came from the white working class, to realize my white privilege was contributing to a problem.  As Martha Mahoney frames it in “The Social Construction of Whiteness,”

whites have difficulty perceiving whiteness, both because of its cultural prevalence and because of its cultural dominance.

According to Mahoney, the privilege that comes from a white identity

requires reinforcement and maintenance, but protection against seeing the mechanisms that socially reproduce and maintain privilege is an important component of the privilege itself.

What does it mean to a white person when they say they identify as white? What would it look like for a white person to strip themselves of their whiteness? What identity would remain?

It seems, after having only begun exploration into what “whiteness” is, it is something of a social construction at the intersection of class and race.  Whiteness functions to exclude “the Other.” For many, whether they recognize its functions or not, “whiteness” is also an identity. Our society seems to expect everyone have an identity, which according to Merriam-Webster is the

sameness of essential or generic character in different instances.

When asked my racial identity, I say white. I do not really know what it means though, or more precisely, what it means to me. I do not feel tied by heritage or by culture to any European country, so plain old white seems to be what I am left with. 

If solving the problem of white privilege requires awakening whites to their identity rooted in whiteness, must there be something to fill the space in one’s identity after whiteness is gone? Identity seems so important that when someone is perceived to be lacking one, we go so far as to attribute it to mental illness.  Therefore, the space must necessarily be filled.  

Or, maybe identity alone is not so much the problem; maybe identity politics is the problem. In “The First White President”, Ta-Nehisi Coates states,

a narrative of long-neglected working-class black voters, injured by globalization and the financial crisis, forsaken by out-of-touch politicians... does not serve to cleanse the conscience of white people for having elected Donald Trump. Only the idea of a long-suffering white working class can do that.

In response to elites such as Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden defending their working class white friends' and families' votes, Coates states,

these claims of origin and fidelity are not merely elite defenses of an aggrieved class but also a sweeping dismissal of the concerns of those who don’t share kinship with white men.

Mahoney observed that,

in the logic of white privilege, making whites feel white equals racism.

This idea is also apparent in Coates’ criticism of whites feeling as though they need to defend those like them for being attacked on the basis of their white identity. Perhaps when politics makes whites feel white, whites are pushed to vote for the candidate they feel has their idealized interests in mind. In so doing, some who identify as white and feel attacked want to protect their identity's position of privilege, even if it comes at the expense of "the Other."

When politics are made to focus on identity, whites are inclined to recognize themselves as a group and to unite over common ground. When whites as a group are attacked, or are forced to see the “mechanisms that socially reproduce and maintain privilege,” they are compelled to bear down on their identity and support those with whom they identify and who appear to have the same privileges.

As of yet, solutions remain unclear. It seems the current social construction of “whiteness” ought to be dismantled and a new identity for whites put in its place. The new identity should be one that does not leave them feeling identity-less and does not privilege them over “the Other.” Perhaps a place to start is focusing less on identity politics and avoiding righteousness it can create.

Liberal economic policy, or why we have Trump

In 2018, people mostly fit into two groups: those who have no interest in "relitigating" 2016 and those who feel we still have much to learn. But if you vote Democrat and want to win in 2020, 2016's events are far from irrelevant. One major lesson to be learned: why did the white working class reject the Democratic ticket?

Focusing on the white working class is not to reject or minimize discussing other conditions that explain the election results. America is still a very racist and sexist country nearly two decades into the 21st Century. A primary challenger put Clinton's policies under the microscope, and many could never unsee her flaws. And to a vastly overstated degree, there was foreign influence in the election. It's impossible to quantity a single condition's influence on an election outcome.

Still, Donald Trump appealed to the white working class, a group that's been hurting for decades thanks to centrist liberal economic policy and conservatism in all forms. It didn't matter that Trump's form of populism was mere conservatism without any shame of its trademark racism and sexism. It also didn't matter that conservatism calls for lower wages, less safety regulations, longer hours, and less collective rights. A break from centrism and establishment politics led the white working class to embrace a candidate whose policies would likely make their lives worse. To many Americans, Trump's politics were the same old conservativism. To his voters, it was something different.

Rather than embrace something different, i.e. leftist economic populism, Democrats continue to punch left and alienate those critical of the centrist status quo.

Imagine for a second that the Democratic Party abandoned its hubris and embraced true leftist ideologies. Imagine even the most exaggerated caricature of a white working class voter: racist, uneducated, and conservative. Would this person choose party loyalty over higher wages? Greater job security? A greater social safety net that is vital for a future where automation will replace many jobs? Free healthcare and a longer, healthier life? All the above?

Republicans have not had to deal with true leftist ideology in decades and are wholly unprepared to combat the rising popularity of leftist politics. How many more years do Republicans have to call Obama a socialist before we realize that they have no idea what leftist politics actually look like? And if they don't know what true leftist politics are, how can they defend against them?

In sum, Democrats need to adopt the economic populism of the Sanders wing. Centrism is unpopular, but proper promotion of leftist politics will ensure the entire working class votes Democrat. At a certain point, a party's message must be more than 1990s economics and less racism and homophobia.

The role of whiteness in the State of Jefferson separatist movement

I've been following the phenomenon that is the State of Jefferson movement for a number of years, with many posts over at Legal Ruralism, including here, here and here.  Now, High Country News has run a feature on the movement, "A Separatist State of Mind," in which journalist Tay Wiles goes inside the "movement."

The story is somewhat focused on the economic complaints of State of Jefferson advocates, including the fact that many young people have left the region because they cannot find work.  Indeed, the one young woman featured in the story, Kayla Brown, bargained with her husband to stay in Redding for five years when he had been looking for work out of state; she was gambling that they could make the proposed State of Jefferson secession happen within that time, a shift she thinks will bring more and better jobs. No, however, that five-year stint is nearly up, and the now expanded family (two young children) is again considering leaving the state, for better economic opportunities in Idaho.

Older State of Jefferson agitators mentioned the economy directly or indirectly, including in relation to the population loss the region has experienced.  Here's one excerpt about Mark Baird, the leader of the State of Jefferson movement:

Baird believes the best way to improve the economic prospects is through opening more land to mining and timber. This, he says, would revive the extractive economies that have declined across the region in recent decades, in part due to federal environmental policies but also in response to market trends.

Later, we learn this about Baird:

Baird also bristled at the decline in security and economics around him. “Crime in my county is going through the ceiling,” he said during a Jefferson town hall in Williams. “We have no police protection whatsoever between midnight and 7 a.m. because my sheriff can’t afford people.” Baird and others have indeed seen crime rates increase. In Siskiyou County, for example, the Public Policy Institute of California found that between 2015 and 2016 the overall crime rate went up 14 percent between 2015 to 2016. The county’s timber production, once an economic engine, has declined dramatically since the 1970s. The town of Montague, a small community not far from Yreka where Baird once patrolled as a deputy sheriff, was vibrant in his youth, with five gas stations and three grocery stores. “Now it is a crackhead wasteland.”

Discerning readers will have observed that Baird has linked the economic decline of the place he loves with crime.  Crime, of course, is often a "dog whistle" for race.  I note that Siskyou County's population is 84.7% white and right at 10% Hispanic or Latino of any any race.  I wonder what its racial make up was a few decades ago.

I also wonder if Wiles is intending to signal the whiteness of would-be Jefferson in a couple of ways.  First, her opening vignette mentions Civil War enactments and Kayla Brown's involvement in them, including this quote from her:

Brown, who is 27 and sprightly, with a blonde ponytail and blue eyes, was holding court on 19th century American history and the run-up to the Civil War.  A lot of Californians “actually sympathized with the Confederates,” she said.

Note also the description of Brown's Aryan features.  A gratuitous detail?  A signal?  Elsewhere Wiles writes:

The region is largely rural and white (though the Latino population has risen in recent years and there are several Native American tribes), and its politics are mostly red (only four counties went for Hillary Clinton in 2016). 

This leaves me wondering:  Is the State of Jefferson movement a racist movement?  Is the question answered by this information, which comes late in the story:

Jeffersonians say the sanctuary state concept is an affront to the rule of law. In one newsletter, they also described it as a financial threat to rural counties, which earn much-needed income renting jail space to ICE. “California continues to exuberantly boast its progressive bad policies, laws and regulations in a celebratory manner while the rest of the state feels dark, helpless and abandoned,” a Jefferson newsletter from last October said.

Is it always racist to oppose immigration?  Current political rhetoric in academia suggests that it is.

It is also interesting to know that would-be Jefferson counties are balancing their budgets by housing detained persons for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  Read more on that and related practices here and here.

This related paragraph from a NYT Magazine story about rural Oregon (also part of the would-be State of Jefferson) and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge seizure, two years on, also seems relevant to the race question:

The history of Oregon is filled with stories of violent and racist groups. Communes, cults, alternative religious communities, militias: The state has been home to nearly 300 of them since 1856, including the Christian Identity movement, Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations and the Roy Masters’ Foundation of Human Understanding. African-Americans were legally barred from residence in Oregon until 1926; the state, according to some historians, was essentially founded as a kind of white utopia.

Interestingly, the author of the NYT Magazine story, who grew up in the area when her parents moved there seeking an alternative life style, then commented:

No one in my family, three generations of Oregonians, had ever heard about that.

Not sure what to make of that comment; not sure what the author is getting at regarding the relevance of her family's lack of knowledge.  Is it exculpating or ????

This comment on an earlier Legal Ruralism post about the would-be State of Jefferson takes up the issue of racial demographics of the region: 

Your post made me think about how race is (or is not) addressed by the State of Jefferson supporters and what the racial demographics of this proposed state would be. While California as a whole currently has the largest minority population in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California), this would not be the case for Jefferson. Currently, it looks like if Jefferson managed to succeed, it would be made up of the Oregon counties of Coos (90% White), Douglas (90%) and Lake (86% White) as well as the California counties of Humboldt (82% White), Trinity (89% White), Shasta (87% White), Lassen (70% White), Mendocino (82% White), Lake (84% White), Tehama (85% White), Plumas (91% White), Glenn (78% White), Butte (83% White), Colusa (68% White), Sierra (92% White), Sutter (65% White), Yuba (69% White), Nevada (92% White), Placer (84% White)and El Dorado (87% White)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state). So, while the supporters of the State of Jefferson do not currently feel represented in the California or Oregon governments, if they were successful in succeeding, their state would likely severely underrepresent the people of color who lived there.

I look forward to hearing others' thoughts on whether this story--or more precisely the State of Jefferson movement--is fundamentally about race (and therefore racial bias?) or not.

On depictions of working class and poor whites in the arts

I have had an occasional series called "Literary Ruralisms" over at Legal Ruralism for many years, and a depiction of "poor white trash" in a movie I watched last night made me think we need a similar feature here at Working Class Whites and the Law.  (We will spend two class periods near the semester on depictions of poor and working class whites in literature and film).  The film I saw this weekend was "Lean on Me," based loosely on the true story of Joe Clark, a maverick educator who became principal of East Paterson High School in New Jersey in the 1980s.  Clark is credited with turning the school around--from a 38% pass rate on state achievement tests to one competitive with the rest of the state. 

The film is definitely controversial and politically incorrect by today's standards--it was made in 1989 and so is nearly three decades old.  Among other things, Clark frequently uses the word "nigger" to refer to African American students, including when addressing them.  I kept thinking that the film would likely look much different if made today, even though it arguably depicts a true story and this is presumably how Clark dealt with other African Americans.

In a final assembly before the students are to take the state tests--after Clark has been working for months to reverse the trends at East Paterson--Clark (played brilliantly by Morgan Freeman, I might add!) says:

You are a bunch of niggers and spics and poor white trash.  

Then, referring specifically to the whites there, Clark says, addressing the African American and Latinx students:

They're just like the rest of you. They've got no place to go.

This is part and parcel of a pep talk aimed at getting the students to bristle at how others see them and to take pride in themselves.

That assembly is the first time I noticed white students present at the school at all (except in the opening scene in 1967, when it was a primarily white school) because all of the action between Clark and his students centers around African American and Latinx students.  But I thought it a good thing that the poor whites were acknowledged at this juncture, along with their presumptively dead end life prospects.  The rhetoric I hear today so often suggests that white-skin privilege is going to carry even low-income, low-education whites wherever they wish to go.  In reality, their prospects are often as poor as those of their Black, Latinx, and other minority counterparts.

I've been writing recently about the relative invisibility of white poverty and I've concluded that keeping poor and working class whites hidden and acting as if they share white privilege on par with more affluent whites may be psychologically soothing for affluent whites, but turning a blind eye to  the problems of that community does nothing to solve those problems.  Indeed, phenomena like deaths of despair suggest our general state of denial is only aggravating them.   

On the shortage of (white?) folks willing to do "lower-rung American jobs"

In my dozen years studying law and rural livelihoods and with my most recent focus on the white working class (whether rural or not), I have often stumbled onto this question:  Why is there a shortage of working class whites willing to do working class labor--or, more precisely, the sort of work long associated with the working class, whatever color?  Is there literally a shortage of working class whites?  Whites without skills to facilitate their engagement in the higher end labor market?  or have the folks we've traditionally thought of as the white working class simply decided they are no longer willing to do such work?  Have they had enough?  Opted out of the labor market altogether?  Gone soft?  We know their numbers are shrinking because they are dying from what we now call deaths of despair?  Read more here and here. 

Incidentally, there was an apparent link noted between work and these deaths--having a job was a protective factor, that is--when the media first began to report on this phenomenon, but I've heard nothing of it lately. Indeed, I've seen contrary suggestions--like the one here--that the work that working class folks do often leaves them in pain, which in turn leaves them addicted to opioids.  Further, this recent analysis from the New York Times refutes the notion that requiring people to work makes the healthier.  It was prompted by the Trump administration's recent announcement that it may impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. 

I come to this question as one raised in a white working-class family where work was everything--not just your livelihood, but your reputation.  Work was what kept families like mine from being condemned as "white trash."  It's what made us the "worthy poor "rather than the "unworthy poor" or--more precisely--the settled working class as opposed to the "hard living" working class.  (Read more about these distinctions here).  My family literally never took a vacation, and I recall my father working literally seven days a week.  He was a deeply, deeply flawed individual, but/and he was nothing if not industrious.  To this day, I am dogged by the work ethic with which I was raised.  This means, among other things, that I struggle with guilt when I engage in leisure activities.  It's also a big factor--but not the only one--underlying my drive to achieve.  Maybe I'm not really that ambitious; I just can't stop working.

With that background, I read Chico Harlan's fascinating--and to me, depressing--story in the Washington Post on New Year's Day:  "U.S. Companies See Opportunity in Exodus from Storm-Ravaged Puerto Rico."  There's lots in this story to preoccupy a ruralist like me, and I wrote a post about it over at Legal Ruralism.  But for purposes of thinking about the white working class, I want to use this story to start a conversation about the demise/fate/disappearance--not sure what word to use--of the white working class.  This is a question that I expect to be a recurring theme this semester in our White Working Class and the Law Seminar, so let's get it on the table early on. 

The story is about how a turkey processing plant in Huron, South Dakota, is recruiting folks from Puerto Rico to come work there because in this town of about 12,000, the employer struggles to recruit an adequate workforce to fill its 1000 jobs.  Take this sentence for starters:

By some counts, nearly 2,000 Puerto Ricans were leaving every day, and in that exodus, some mainland U.S. companies were starting to see an opportunity of their own — a new answer in their ever-evolving struggle to find workers who would perform lower-rung American jobs.  (emphasis added)

Huron was 87% white and about 10% Hispanic or Latino in the 2010 Census.   Based on the Washington Post story, I'm guessing the Latinx influx came in the 2000s, after Dakota Provisions, the industrial turkey processor, opened its doors there.

Working class whites--among others--used to perform "lower-rung American jobs," and they clearly still do to some extent.  But this is not the first mention I've read in the media and in scholarly papers suggesting that whites are no longer willing to do the sort of work they used to do.  (Lots of posts over at Legal Ruralism talk about this phenomenon, mostly in the context of agricultural labor shortages and the need for comprehensive immigration reform).  Because low-skilled whites--and by some accounts, also low-skilled blacks--are no longer willing to do distasteful, back-breaking work, there is a shortage of such labor.  (Here's a story suggesting that employers favor immigrant labor over both black and white workers).  This is one of the reasons we have become so reliant on immigrant labor, as this Washington Post story suggests.  Indeed, get a load of this paragraph about the character of the work force at the turkey processing plant in South Dakota :

Only a handful seemed to be local. The people hanging the birds were from Burma. Some of the people trimming the breasts were from Puerto Rico. Deeper in the factory, cutting skin, removing organs, there were people from Cuba and Guatemala and Vietnam. More than a dozen were from Chuuk, an island chain in Micronesia.

This is consistent with stories like this one, and with my own academic work about Latinx immigration into rural destinations in the South.  It also reminds me of a tour I took of a massive dairy farm back in 2011 in Idaho's "Magic Valley," a field trip sponsored by the Rural Sociological Society's Annual Meeting in Boise.  One of the siblings who owned the farm (the woman who gave us the tour) talked about the unreliability of local white labor, and she blatantly implored that she needed "my Mexicans," though she acknowledged that the occasional Burmese refugee did good work, too. 

Is it possible that white folks are turning up their noses and turning away from this sort of labor because the work is getting crappier?  Is it possible that working in a poultry processing facility that processes 19,000 turkeys a day (as the one in South Dakota does) is harder, more demeaning labor than working at predecessor facilities that butchered and processed poultry?  Or is it that the white working class isn't made of the same tough stock it used to be?  And if today's white working class has just gotten lazier or more picky about what it it up for, what it is willing to do for a buck, then I'd like to know what forces have begotten that transition?  Poorer labor protections and fewer benefits?  Failure of working class wages to keep up with inflation?  A culture of laziness that has spread from those small factions of low-income whites who have been historically known as "white trash" into the ranks of the previously settled, respectable white working class.  (By the way, J.D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy suggests something akin to this latter explanation).  

Finally, what is the relationship between this phenomenon of whites effectively opting out of the labor force and the "deaths of despair," which have afflicted middle-aged, poorly educated white  folks to a greater degree than other demographic slices?  

These are among the questions I hope we'll get a better handle on answering during our semester.   To that end, here are some more resources.

The Wall Street Journal in September 2017 published this op-ed titled, "Bring Back the Work Ethic."

The Washington Post in August 2017 published this piece titled, "Rise of the machines" on how automation is replacing workers. It includes this provocative paragraph:

The line was intended for 12 workers, but two were no-shows. One had just been jailed for drug possession and violating probation. Three other spots were empty because the company hadn’t found anybody to do the work. That left six people on the line jumping from spot to spot, snapping parts into place and building metal containers by hand, too busy to look up as the forklift now came to a stop beside them.

And don't miss Terrence McCoy's compelling series on disability and work, which appeared over the course of last year in the Washington Post.  Here's just one entry from it, headlined, "I am a hard worker."  

Working class increasingly priced out of Denver and Colorado's Front Range

The Denver Post filed a major feature yesterday from Flagler, Colorado (population  561) under the headline, "Colorado Divide:  Why Some Coloradans Are Cashing Out of the Front Range and Seeking Their Happily-Ever-After."  Here's an excerpt from the lengthy story, which focuses as much on lifestyle differences as on those about cost of living.  Yet in its opening vignette, we get a sense of the dramatic cost differences between living in greater Denver and, in this case, the state's eastern plains:  

Gail and Dennis Hendricks set out on a quest to find their future, and its rules were simple: Head east, out of the city, and stop at every town along Interstate 70. 

It was in Flagler, about 120 miles from their home in Arvada, where they found the “adorable little community” they were searching for, a quaint and tiny town where “everybody’s lawns were mowed” and, more importantly, a place where they could afford to retire. The couple had only ever heard of Flagler from a TV weather report. 

The Hendrickses found a “Closed for lunch” sign on the door of the real estate office on Main Street, but as they waited outside, they met a friendly Flagler resident who told them that if they were looking for a rental, they ought to ask for Marie inside the beauty shop. They soon found Marie and quickly agreed to rent a two-bedroom house with hardwood floors and a front porch for $500 per month.

In Arvada, the Hendrickses were paying $1,100 per month for a one-bedroom apartment in a complex with more than 60 units. Rent had recently gone up by $300. Also, Gail fought traffic for an hour twice a day to work in Lakewood, where she was a technician for an eye doctor.

I wish the story had said more about the Hendricks' economic circumstances, like whether they were retiring on their Social Security or what other sources of income they might have. 

Cross-Posted to Legal Ruralism