Where the Middle Class Shops

On State Street in downtown Chicago this week, a man trudged through the slush outside a soon-to-be-shuttered Sears, wearing a yellow signboard that read, “Store Closing Sale/Everything Must Go.” Across the street, inside a thriving Target store, shoppers thronged the checkout lanes. A block north, women were digging fistfuls of coupons out of their purses to buy discounted housewares and winter boots on clearance at Macy’s.

Which of these scenes is a metaphor for the American middle class? A front-page article in the Times this week chose Sears, pointing to its decision to close the State Street flagship in its hometown after thirteen years. The article also cited J. C. Penney, which is abandoning thirty-three stores and laying off two thousand employees, and Loehmann’s, the discounter on the verge of extinction, as signs that the average shopper can no longer support middle-market businesses. Corporations are giving up on the middle class, the article argued, instead catering to the wealthiest five per cent, which can afford three-thousand-dollar refrigerators and seventy-dollar steak dinners. “The post-recession reality is that the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls even further away,” the article said.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com