The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
How the middle class became the underclass
The Scribe
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
CNN Money Annalyn Censky, staff reporter, On Wednesday February 16, 2011, 4:30 pm EST
Are you better off than your parents?
Probably not if you're in the middle class.
Incomes for 90% of Americans have been stuck in neutral, and it's not just because of the Great Recession. Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for at least a generation, while the wealthiest tier has surged ahead at lighting speed.
In 1988, the income of an average American taxpayer was $33,400, adjusted for inflation. Fast forward 20 years, and not much had changed: The average income was still just $33,000 in 2008, according to IRS data.
Meanwhile, the richest 1% of Americans -- those making $380,000 or more -- have seen their incomes grow 33% over the last 20 years, leaving average Americans in the dust.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/How-the-middle-class-became-cnnm-2876148381.html
Why do you think this is not more of a political issue? What, if anything, should be done about it?
Are you better off than your parents?
Probably not if you're in the middle class.
Incomes for 90% of Americans have been stuck in neutral, and it's not just because of the Great Recession. Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for at least a generation, while the wealthiest tier has surged ahead at lighting speed.
In 1988, the income of an average American taxpayer was $33,400, adjusted for inflation. Fast forward 20 years, and not much had changed: The average income was still just $33,000 in 2008, according to IRS data.
Meanwhile, the richest 1% of Americans -- those making $380,000 or more -- have seen their incomes grow 33% over the last 20 years, leaving average Americans in the dust.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/How-the-middle-class-became-cnnm-2876148381.html
Why do you think this is not more of a political issue? What, if anything, should be done about it?
The Scribe on
0
Posts
You make the same relative money as your parents? So what, you have a nice cell phone! Your children likely have low likelihood of upward mobility? Well, at least your car has a CD player and A/C, those used to be luxuries!
Which is an odd viewpoint, but I've seen people with it.
Indeed. The middle class may not be doing so hot as they should be, but they're still doing a hell of a lot better than people who have to sleep in their cars.
The middle class is really important for what you are talking about though.
Those people sleeping in their cars you are concerned about? You want to move them up to the middle class. And when you do that, you want the middle class to be stable and sufficient enough to keep them there.
Unless you think all development made in the last 30 years was solely provided by the super wealthy?
But what jobs are left to provide people with a middle-class income? Manufacturing, and unions along with it, has been steadily eroded as a job provider for most people. The service sector can provide good incomes to a few people doing work as lawyers, accountants, etc, most people there are just stuck doing retail or working at restaurants, where they're stuck as a nonunion wage slave. Temp work is th fastest growing area, and wal-mart is the largest employer in the US. Corporations keep finding new inventive ways to get more productivity from fewer workers, and the middle-class is paying the price.
edit: the internet bubble kept us going for a while during the 90's, but that's pretty much gone as an easy jobs creator now that there's so much competition from other countries for IT work
If you are working on your masters degree at 27 you are going to be worse off than your parents because you are still a student, and they might have been in the labor force in a career job for six or seven years by this time.
Or if you are comparing yourself at 27 with your parents at 48 - well no kidding you don't have their lifestyle yet.
An interesting viewpoint to put forward on the internet discussion forum of a video game review website.
Would you be happier living in 1973 with the equivalent inflation adjusted income?
No internet, no computers, music on cumbersome records, no cell phones, no movies at home and only three television stations.
But the richest people will only be 100 times richer than you, rather than a 1000 times richer.
So that will be a comfort.
fyp
And it is a bit short-sighted to complain that you're not as well off as your parents when you have so many things they didn't. It's easy to complain about how much a car or house costs now as opposed to then; would you really want to live in a house that was built to 1960s standards? Or drive a car that doesn't have safety glass or seatbelts?
Growth is not a sustainable model, but the accumulation of generational wealth is. People would be much more comfortable and stable if instead of continuously fighting to out-do their parents' accomplishments, families focused on having fewer kids and raising them in multi-generational households. Costs of living are decreased, your support system is bolstered . . . so many benefits.
You mean I get to live in a world where ALL the pop-music of the day is actually good and from talented and diverse artists? I don't have computer auto-dialers calling me at all hours of the day trying to sell me shit I didn't ask for and will never want? Cars haven't become so safe that people think it's a good idea to text, drink coffee, smoke, read the news paper, and apply their makeup while behind the wheel? The concept of identity-theft includes actually stealing somebody's face? Nigerian princes actually have to meet me IN PERSON to give me their millions? where do I sign up?
racist.
Sure. America has a really crappy welfare state that mostly targets the old and the poor. It's a really bad safety net.
*Ding*
Though I'd throw out the anti-union part, personally (since I'd imagine at this point most of the middle class is white collar).
Sorry for not replying earlier, I just got back from shotgunning a couple of uppity nigras for whistling at a white woman on their way to a polling booth. What were we talking about again?
tl;dw: Incomes have stagnated for the last two or three decades. Costs have increased for gas, house owning and in particular health care and education. This is why Americans are endebted as fuck and meanwhile income of the top percentages have increased. The closer the top the bigger the increase (percentage wise).
And this is only income, this does not take into account all the money they hide away in tax havens via corporate profits, stock ownership etc.
So should there be an expectation of growth? Well if the wealth of society grows it is not unreasonable to expect that everybody get a piece of that cake no? Rather than the ones with the biggest slice taking some of the cake you already had.
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
The only homes I can reasonably afford in my area were built in the 60s and 70s, so I guess I don't really have a choice :P
Let's take the average middle class knowledge worker, a class that includes myself. Someone well educated and talented in their field had a much better chance of rising in their profession.
Even during the down times, it was the golden age for people with college degrees. That was the generation where the wisdom that having a college degree means having a good job was formed.
If you were working class, a high paying factory job was a reasonable goal and not a dream. It meant security, and the union that came with it meant that down turns usually meant short-term layoffs, which you could supplement with a part-time job and unemployment. You still had a job to return to when things got better.
Hell, even someone interested in books, art or history - the humanities majors of the world - had a good chance of being successful. Colleges were expanding and demand was high for professors, and the media industries paid well and were booming. And if things didn't work out, the fallback position was a factory job and not penury in the service industry.
All of the above owned their own homes. Even apartments and houses in New York City were cheap enough that working class immigrants could afford one.
And while I'd miss the internet, iPod and HD TV, it's not like it was an entertainment desert. Radio, TV, books, vinyl records and movie screens all still do the job.
Only on your primary residence. Interest on personal loans (like auto loans) is not deductible.
I own a couple houses from the 50s, a house from the 10s (the 1910s I mean) and one that's pretty new. And, yes, I would much rather own an old house (with an asbestos inspection) than the cheap shit contractors throw together now out of 2x4s. One of my 50s houses came with a fridge from the 60s that still works, too.
New houses are built like garbage.
Just to nitpick. I agree that in general we have cool shit our parents didn't.
4 houses, for example O_o
Not in the sense of buying cars, no.
Interest on credit cards, personal loans and the like are not tax deductible. There are socially targeted interest deductions. The only two I know of are for student loans and home mortgages. There was talk of making an interest deduction for debt on medical care but nothing ever came of it.
Business loan interest is fully tax deductible, though. Investors can also qualify for interest deductions.
Well, I only do well thanks to my parents being well off and giving me (and my siblings) a whole lot of support. They got me into buying/renovating/renting out houses in the first place, and I couldn't have started without their financial help. That's totally on top of them raising me and their help with my education and all that.
At the same time, the wealthy abuse the shit out of the business exemptions. Thanks to the lawyers and accountants of the world, there's a lot of blurring of personal and business finances going on.
Oh yeah, you can't deduct the interest on a CC unless it's a business card. So that Rolls-Royce is totally a business expense, it's my company car! That gas too, gotta get to work somehow! I don't know many companies that don't abuse the shit out of it. Even the execs here do, they go out to dinner all the time with other doctors and their families.
In 1970 11% of the population had a bachelor's degree.
Today 28% of the population has a bachelor's degree.
Tell me knowledge worker, would you have been able to get your education without college loans? Because school was a little trickier to finance back then.
Presuming that you would have been able to get to were you want to be, even though it was rarer and trickier, and then touting how cool it would be to be in that smaller inner circle, lacks a certain rigor.
I don't think it's that the value of a bachelor's degree went down, exactly. It's just that the number of good jobs that really need a bachelor's degree has not kept pace with the huge increase in college graduates. Having a college degree used to be a proof that you were one of the intellectual elites who deserved a well-paying job. Now it's just expected as a bare minimum for most jobs, even ones that could be done easily by most high school graduates.
Frankly I enjoy living in a more educated society.
Don't get me wrong, I wish the economic growth had been more evenly distributed over the past three decades, but wishing that you lived in 1970 instead of 2010 is beyond absurd to me.
No you're right, it'd be crazy to want to live in the 70s as opposed to today. I mean, you're still making the same money but have less amenities; why would you want to? Because the pop music was better? I mean, okay, listen to the 70s music today.
I don't know what qualifies middle class or lower class, but I have to choose between living not raising my child in a not horrible and terrifying area where you shouldn't go outside after 8pm or cut nearly every expense not required for life. My grandparents had kids young and my grandfather worked his ass off to make sure they could get by. Their tables were boxes covered in sheets, but their cheap ass apartment wasn't in a neighbourhood that would put them in danger.
If I am middle class, I certainly don't feel middle class.
Is the internet powered by economic disparity? Cause that's the only way this argument makes sense.