An acquaintance recently introduced to me, slumped at my local tap on Division, in broken English: "It's harder when you're from nobody."

I was a couple whiskeys in, natch, so I thought I was hearing things. I asked him what he meant, and Arabic words dribbled in through his own drunk, he tried to explain about his nephew, who lived with him on the far Southwest Side, in a nice townhouse, shared by two families. The kid went to high school and graduated with above average grades, but couldn't get a good job, and now the parents were very old, and the kid was in a race to get his, before he'd have to assume his parents' care.

Half the family worked at a gas station they owned. It wasn't quite enough, and although the kid was in college to get his B.S., there probably wouldn't be a "real job," waiting. IT, making $10.50 an hour.

"Bullshit."

"Bullshit?"

In his neighborhood, he said, he saw kids with half his nephew's ability going to better colleges, getting hooked up with good jobs, taking all the time in the world to get advanced degrees because the family could afford it. These kids, they came from somebody.

"He worries a lot for his parents, because they're old and he wants to see them be happy finally, you know."

He slumped in pity for his nephew, but shrugged, too.

"When you come from nobody, it's a lot harder, but anyway."

He shrugged again, as if to say, "We own a gas station and we feed ourselves, so it can't be that bad."

But I knew what that slump-before-the-shrug meant, I could read it. That slump meant the hollow in the chest, the churning fear in the pit of the stomach. Everything is so much different when you come from nobody, dreading every turn, terrified of fate. The children of immigrants, usually, come from nobody. Kids of the working poor come from nobody. Broken homes, thrown out, raised in shelters and cars—following jobs from town to town, army brats, they come from nobody.

And all around, those who come from somebody sail right through. Well, maybe not sail, but there is peace of mind there that the rest of us envy — or worse, don't even realize exists.

There's been a shift, a shift the last 60 years — blink of an eye — and now you can't come from nobody and expect to go anywhere. It's shocking how the shift has seeped into every part of our national fabric. Today on Capitol Hill, be-joweled, over-fed pols are debating whether to cut even further the taxes on idle wealth — capital gains and dividend — and eliminate the estate tax, which was central to the spirit of the original progressive income tax. There was a time — and we have a right to remember — when a single job and homeownership was not only just-barely, but true security and peace-of-mind.

Today in Washington they've so degraded homeownership that they're considering repealing our ability to deduct mortgage interest payments, possibly one of the most essential elements of the decision to buy a home. There's no place low enough for regular guys, gas station attendants, enlisted men, childcare workers.

Jobs are worth less. Hard work is worth less. The family is worth less. We are worthless, who come from nobody.

I think, probably, we'd all do well to remember that in fact democracy is all about class.

But it isn't just about wealth, and we know that well in the city where they "don't want nobody nobody sent." These classes are the have-nots, and the haves have a legacy, have letters of recommendation, have a Rolodex.

You're from nobody, we're told, so everything must be harder. Bills scarier. Options scarce. Comfort, peace, non-existent.

Of course, we don't cry and mewl and puke. That comes with not being bored entitled. And as I've said, that's America, that's Chicago: it can be combative.

What is great, what survives, is the tap on Division Street.