One of my favorite films is the 1946 film “It’s A Wonderful Life.” For those who may be unfamiliar with it, the story is about George Bailey, a man who longs to leave his small town (Bedford Falls) and explore the world. But every time he tries to go, something stops him. He becomes the executive director of a building and loan company that provides interest on the savings of hard-working townspeople while using their money to build much-needed decent housing for working class families.
At one point, when things look bleak (particularly due to the mean acts of Henry Potter, the bank president and richest man in town), George decides to commit suicide so his family can collect his life insurance. But an angel comes and shows George what Bedford Falls would have been like if he had not been born.
George sees the main street of his bucolic, wholesome Bedford Falls turned into a red light district complete with noisy bars, neon lights and gambling joints. When George lived there, people walked calmly along the tree-lined boulevard, but now, without George, the street is filled with bar patrons and police wagons filled with drunks and prostitutes. Without the building and loan company, lower income families who need decent housing and stable families live in shacks and frequent bars.
George realizes that instead of helping others in need, the town has adopted Henry Potter’s values of avarice and selfishness. Potter, who owns the town, offers shoddy housing, facilitates activities that appeal to people’s base interests and drains the town of its shared community values. Fittingly, the town has even been renamed Pottersville.
Sometimes, I wonder if, in recent years, our society hasn’t adopted Potter’s values, too, and changed from Bedford Falls into Pottersville. In that time period, many Americans struggling to become middle class have slipped backwards. Like the people in the fictional Bedford Falls, they just want to earn a living wage, dwell in a decent house, educate their children and live in safe neighborhoods. Yet, today, those basic desires are beyond their reach.
In the past half-century, a new under class has been created. These are people who once worked in manufacturing jobs with union wages, benefits and pensions, but now work in service jobs with no benefits or pensions. In order to survive, both adults in the family must work, which increases the cost of child care or creates latchkey children. These are people who understand that education is the way out of poverty, but simply can’t afford it — either for themselves or their children.
Of course, their children could get student loans and be buried in a mountain of debt that negatively impacts their ability to get credit and buy a house. At one time, affordable tract houses dotted the suburbs. Today, developers make far more money building houses for the affluent than they do for lower middle-class families. As a result, there is a shortage of affordable, decent housing for new families or those who live on the margins of the middle class. Many couples, overwhelmed by debt and unable to afford decent housing, simply give up and divorce (which causes even more poverty: single parent households are poorer than two-parent ones), turn to drug use and become homeless.
How did we get here? One cause is that, as a society, we decided to slash taxes for the affluent and deregulate corporations. We saw the result in rapacious and unethical business practices in the financial industry. We experienced a deep recession that hit hardest the most vulnerable. While corporate profits have reached record levels, many companies have slashed benefits, eliminated pensions and treated workers like commodities rather than people.
Economic change certainly is not the only cause of the decline of families. However, it is a cause that has been overlooked by too many people. A Bedford Falls-type society cherishes families rather than neglecting them. It sees — rather than ignores — poor families. It is a well-ordered society where the greed of the Potters is reined in, communities thrive and the working poor can find the American dream.
Richard Davis is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of BYU.