The middle class is getting priced out of fun

If you want to see what’s happening to the US economy today, take a look at these three items:

Middle-class people can’t afford to go to Disneyland anymore:

For most of the park’s history, Disney was priced to welcome people across the income spectrum, embracing the motto “Everyone is a V.I.P.” In doing so, it created a shared American culture by providing the same experience to every guest. The family that pulled up in a new Cadillac stood in the same lines, ate the same food and rode the same rides as the family that arrived in a used Chevy. Back then, America’s large and thriving middle class was the focus of most companies’ efforts and firmly in the driver’s seat.

That middle class has so eroded in size and in purchasing power — and the wealth of our top earners has so exploded — that America’s most important market today is its affluent. As more companies tailor their offerings to the top, the experiences we once shared are increasingly differentiated by how much we have.

The middle class isn’t going to Vegas anymore.

SFO is looking to land another high-end lounge for people who pay up to $750 a year in credit card fees for special access.

Here’s what all of this means: The working class and the middle class has been so devastated by years of growing economic inequality, cos increases for basics, and tax cuts for the very rich that big businesses, the good capitalists that they are, no longer look to market affordable products. They aim more and more at the very high-end luxury market, the people who can afford hundreds or thousands of dollars extra to cut the line at the airport and at Disneyland, to pay $175 for dinner and $35 for a cocktail … and the rest of us get the dregs.

When Democrats get this (see: Zorhan Mamdani, AOC) they win. When they don’t, they lose.

Gov. Gav is having a grand time making fun of Donald Trump, but that’s not going to get him elected president.

Labor Day is a great time to celebrate the end of summer, go to barbecues, take a last long weekend trip … but this year, it’s also going to be a nationwide action to protest the anti-worker policies of the Trump Administration.

The May Day Strong Coalition is organizing events in more than 1,000 cities:

This year, it’s more than a barbecue — it’s a fight for our lives.

“On this Labor Day, more than ever before, we stand united in the fight to defend workers’ rights and safeguard the very democracy that empowers us all,” said Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council.

In San Francisco, people will gather at the 16th and Mission at 11am for a march to Dolores Park. You can find events all over the country here.

City Hall goes back to work after the August recess this week. The Government Audit and Oversight Committee will consider Thursday/4 an ordinance that would cut taxes for AT&T and other telecom companies by about $7 million a year—including a $1.6 million cut in the Homeless Gross Receipts Tax.

The telecoms and the city have been in litigation over this, and the deal appears to be: TPx Communications and AT&T will pay the city a $19 million settlement, which will cover the tax cuts for two years. After that, the immensely profitable and powerful companies will get tax cuts for the foreseeable future.

Not a huge amount of money, but as big companies keep trying to chip away at the taxes that have brought in money for affordable housing, it sets a bit of a precedent. That hearing starts at 10am.

Neighborhood groups and affordable housing organizations are already gearing up for the Thursday/11 Planning Commission meeting that will kick of a contentious battle over Mayor Daniel Lurie’s plan to increase density on the West Side and in neighborhoods like the Haight. The mayor and his allies say this will create more “family” housing; the neighborhood groups say there is little, very little affordable housing in the deal, and it will displace longtime community serving small businesses.

The politics of this could be fascinating—and potentially transformative. The progressives are, for the most part, solidly against the mayor’s plan, and are organizing around it. They will have a strong presence at the Planning Commission, arguing that increased density will not lead to more affordable prices for housing—and will lead to displacement.

The West Side voters who helped put Lurie in office, and who supported a conservative billionaire slate for the Democratic County Central Committee, are now poised to recall Sup. Joel Engardio—and while the Great Highway is the main issue in the news media, many of the recall supporters are also strongly opposed to the upzoning plan.

The battles over highrise office development in the 1970s and 1980s created a coalition of left-progressives and some more conservative neighborhood advocates, and that led to the passage of Prop. M in1986 and the election of Art Agnos as mayor in 1987.

Lurie won those voters by making crime and law-enforcement the central issue. Engardio won on the same issues.

But the central issues on voters’ minds could be shifting, away from crime and toward housing and development—and on those issues, a progressive/neighborhood coalition could play a powerful role in the next set of elections.

That Planning Commission hearing starts at noon.