How conservative and liberal elites fail to understand the poor

The upper class sure has a lot to say about the way people in lower classes live...

The norms of elites don’t work for everyone.
(Image credit: (Si Huynh/Illustration Works/Corbis))

What's driving the decline in working-class families, marriages, and communities? The debate rages on.

But here's one really big problem: the debate's largely being carried out by upper-class commentators — yours truly very much included. So let's pause for a moment to think about the way the actual values and actual ways of living amongst less fortunate Americans defy and confound the expectations of liberal and conservative elites alike.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.