I have read Hell’s Angels, and while Hunter S. is always interesting, I wouldn’t really trust him to get his facts straight on anything except Nixon or college football. Blue collar work and trades are not necessarily what you’d call “middle class” in terms of performativity. You can have money, but middle class is about that idyllic myth being pushed. You can always have people living outside of the myth, but the Hell’s Angels lifestyle on the road is not for the 99% of people who are cultured to need the suburban 9-5er. Adorno writes extensively about the Culture Industry and being endlessly cheated out of promises that the (entertainment) media sells us, like as previously mentioned, sitcoms showing what a family ought to look like and their means. Also, fuck Reagan.
Yeah I think you meant to hit my comment here. I didn’t say it wasn’t a “pretty good life.” We’re sort of making points past each other at this point, but the gist is that 1. Dagwood is correct, you could get a decent house on minimum wage etc., however 2. I believe the notion of the middle class is a myth pushed to keep us struggling to work harder and to flatten diversity for ideological reasons (see my first comment).