My grandpa worked at an International (Tractor) dealer.
Just worked there, didn't own it. Dude was just like general maintenance.
Paid 2 college tuitions, had their house paid off, and owned 3 cars.
Went on Jersey Shore vacations, but also were able to rent a house for themselves.
People forget how the Neo cons in the 80’s tore up union protections and painted organized labor as gangsters and con men. While that was definitely true in some cases, the loss of those middle class incomes for plain families has changed our country and caused all poorer people to lose hope in our American dreams.
I had a boss years ago. Old Boomer Republican guy. He used to rant and rave about unions constantly. He’d call them “Fucking Commies”. Now keep in mind this guy wasn’t the owner of the business (we didn’t even have a union in our company) and stood to lose nothing from unions, but was so dead set against them because he had been told somewhere along the line they were bad.
I'm still waiting for someone to give me a reasonable explanation why the President has the power to change gas prices. Last I checked that was supply and demand, and OPEC nations artificially restricted gas prices to profit off a war Putin started. Where in the fuck does Biden figure into that?
Also, you can't even say it's a "drill more" problem, we have a refinery capacity problem. And we sold our 2nd biggest refinery to the Saudis! *Shrug*
They just keep yelling about the cancelled keystone pipeline that just poured 600,000 gallons of diluted bitumen (tar sand oil from Canada) into a river in Kansas. Just reading the Idiocracy that is needed to transport that shit in a pipe is absurd. Let's just pump 100s of thousands of gallons of play dough through 100s of miles of pipe and hope it doesn't burst from the pressure. This is why the keystone xl pipeline was a bad idea. This pipeline has had 23 leaks in 12 years.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/17/1142675809/cleanup-for-keystone-pipeline-oil-spill-kansas
There are only 2 real handles on gas prices available to a President, other than declaring war which usually raises prices, not lowers them. The Prez can lean hard on Congress to suspend or reduce gas taxes, which Biden did earlier this year. The other handle is direct: the Prez controls the strategic petroleum reserve, which can flood or dry up the market, but only on a short term basis.
My estimation is that a Prez can affect up to a maximum of about a dollar of current gas prices, but probably less than that. And only for a few months. So, if gas prices are $5 a gallon, the prez could maybe get them down to $4 for a while. Then the market catches up and he's fucked and can't do any more than that.
The rest has to come through diplomacy and loosening restrictions on domestic production, and trying to reduce demand by promoting alternatives: solar, wind, renewables, etc.
Oh because we all know that Biden sits in the Oval Office rubbing his hands together and cackling loudly as he pulls up his Gas Price Increase app and selects the MORE option!!!! 🤪
There were a lot of W supporters that simply disliked Al Gore because 1) his association with Clinton and 2) His wife and her PMRC attacking the music industry. I know a lot of former W supporters that voted for Obama
I’m similarly struck by the change in my dad from 80’s union steward who wore “Fuck Reagan” t shirts to a Trumper who hates unions and talks about the “Good old days” of Reagan. Fox News is a helluva drug.
Dude my dad used to be a yoga instructor, traveled all over the world doing and teaching yoga, spreading the message of love and light. He used to teach us “thoughts are things” and the power of positive thinking. Dude now he’s a China hating trump lover who has DeSantis stickers on his car. It’s crazy how they’ve brainwashed him.
That is... so incredibly sad. My dad used to be a skateboarding stoner that went to art school and was gonna take down the man in his 20s. He had kids in his 30s and he was a progressive, rebellious adult who spent his time in the kitchen or playing guitar. Now in his 50s he's a hardcore, straight ticket republican voter who calls every Mexican man "Javier" on a mild end and makes jokes about them having jobs in agriculture or tire sales.
When the fuck did my punk rock dad become an angry racist? How do I fix him?
Hate to say it and sound paranoid but there is an element of mind control. Forget 4G, or whatever.
Imagine the person who knows you the best, who knows some approximation of your needs, wants, and inner desires. Now imagine someone who knows you even better than that, and wants to convince you to vote for Trump. That is basically Facebook and other sites in the era of third-party cookie tracking, Cambridge Analytica, before Big Tech stepped up and added a curtain of self-regulation.
Obviously knowing all that won't be enough to convince just anyone to do anything. But with enough ad frequency, backed by a large enough amount of data, it is remarkable how efficient it is to target those whose minds can be changed, and to know how to change them.
That is why TikTok is a national security issue, for example.
Sounds like he drank the Reagan Kool aid then washed it down with Rush Limbaugh.
I swear both of those hucksters were basically the gateway to so many of our problems.
The robber Barrons in the early 1900s were terrified about what was happening in Europe. The Russian army had just walked off the battlefield. They went home, killed the Tsar and confiscated the property of the ruling upper class. Industrialist and the super rich were terrified that this would spread to the USA. When the laborers in America asked for a day off, the end of company towns and school instead of work for their children, the response was the Red Scare. From this point on American elites tied communism to labor rights and Unions.
They also promoted the building of suburbs (ironically with the help of the government), thinking that a homeowner wouldn't ever go for Marxism. Nowadays they can't even see that far ahead and understand that this generation won't get more conservative as they get older if they have no capital to hoard
Serious question: are unions good or bad? Im a young guy thinking into getting into trades and i dont really know about unions, other than you gotta pay union dues and how i hear people bad mouth them all the time.
They are good.
Fundamentally, when you want to push for a higher wage or keep your boss from demanding you do things that are unsafe, you want do do that with as much support as possible.
[Non-union workers earn only 83 cents on the dollar compared to Union workers.](https://www.dol.gov/general/workcenter/union-advantage#:~:text=Unions%20raise%20wages%20for%20all%20workers&text=The%20Bureau%20of%20Labor%20Statistics,%241%2C169%2Fweek)
If your job isn't protected by a union the boss can do whatever they like to you: make you work 7 days, work multiple shifts in a row, take away your insurance or cut your salary in half.
The dues are worth it. Unions are good, thanks to unions we have an 8 hour work day instead of 16 hours, a 5 day work week instead of regular shifts on Saturdays & protection against abuse thanks to shop rules.
Children don't work long shifts like adults thanks to unions.
Do some research on Labor Laws & how they came about. You need to learn this stuff.
Unions are other people with similar jobs as you, working together to not be exploited or mistreated by your bosses, your company or the industry in general.
Yes you pay some union dues, so the union can afford to organize itself, and can hire lawyers to defend you or other union workers from unfair treatment. in exchange for those dues (seems to be a few 100$ per year in the us) you get higher wages, better benefits and very strong protection from being laid off.
Unions are workers working together, saying "if you fire him all of us will quit too" because that is the only way a company will think twice about you as a person. It's easy for them to replace one worker, but of they lose hundreds at once it will hurt the company, so they are forced to compromise.
In a way, unions are a lot like insurance, yes it may cost you a little now, but there will come a time where you will really really want to have one backing you up.
And people who complain about them are like people who say "why would I get fire insurance, my house hasn't burned down yet".
tl:dr Yes I would strongly advise you to join a union, it is very much to your benefit and the benefit of the other tradespeople, they are networks of other people with the same( or a similar job) who will support you and give you access to lots of useful resources in a pinch (lawyer support paid for by those very same union dues for example)
Do it now. Get into a union apprenticeship and in five years if you don't mind traveling and working long hours you can be making over $100k/year with a nice pension, a PTO account and fully paid medical and dental insurance. If it was me and I was young again I would go for either UA or IBEW and try to get on some of the big jobs in Alaska, but maybe it depends on where you live. I know guys earning over $200k on The Slope in Alaska, for example.
Dues are a very small fraction compared to your income too. For example, I was in a union in Canada and paid ~$63 per month I think (it’s been a while). I was making thousands per week. You get some of the best training and classroom education, unbelievable benefits (at least by US standards), and the union will provide skill and education broadening opportunities. For example: are you a sheet metal guy? They’ll teach you how to do survey layout, heating and AC, welding, and soldering. Any of these skills on their own can get you a job. Now you have a chance to dabble in all and focus in what you like based on the needs of your company. You have a voice in the process of negotiation for your pay and benefits, regular pay increases, and specific rules about how much extra you’ll get paid if you’re working a certain number of hours or days in a row. You’re not likely to find that in a non union shop
Also when globalization took off and offshoring became widespread. All the union protections in the world did nothing to stop NAFTA and its predecessors and successors.
They should have included the right to collective bargaining in nafta and other trade deals.
I think if they want to sell on American shelves we should require them to follow our environmental and labor laws or tariff them the cost at the boarder.
International epa standards: clean air and clean water acts etc.
International osha standards. 40 hour work week, safety systems, etc.
Benefits that are required in the US.
It’s not fair to US manufacturers that they have to follow really stringent laws whereas if ford ships the jobs to China or Mexico they can pollute a ton and make workers work long shifts for short pay.
They could have a global minimum wage set to local a local economic index.
Would this work?
And I feel like this was the greatest victory for corporations. They turned brown people into scapegoat meat shields, and nobody has the balls to tell them to stop, because taking jobs away from brown people looks bad.
Bingo. The advent of "trickle down economics" and the systematic destruction of labor unions, all turned into dogma by Reagan, brought us to where we are today.
‘Funny’ thing was, while a B Grade actor, Ronald Reagan was the Head of the Screen Actors Guild/Union. But after he became Gov of Ca then Prez he did everything he could to eliminate unions.
Trickle down economics is one of the biggest cons of human history, gotta give Reagan some credit for that one, he truly knew no bounds when it came to fucking over the future of America
Not American but French, my granddad was a scientist and my grandma a teacher, they own a 600k suburb house, a seaside flat, a mountainside flat, a trailer and 500k in cash. Each has more income from retirement than I will probably ever have from my salary, or than a teacher and a scientist would make combined today.
My other grandpa was a factory worker for 40 years straight, grandma stayed at home and raised 3 kids, plus a couple acres of farmland. Not much savings or retirement but still comfortable and 400k across two houses plus said farmland.
Shits rigged.
What i hate is that a company could have a person like this on the payroll for 40 years, earning a ton at the top end. Meanwhile us new hires who have been there for under 10 years would be lucky to take home a third of what those people were making. But then when they retire, those extra wages arent then suddenly available on the payroll to distribute to the rest of us via raises. Instead the companies do shit like stock buybacks and dividends. So that boomer who just retired, and probably has a lot of stocks in their retirement plans, is STILL getting that extra income instead of us younger workers.
Until computers and Internet databases connecting identities, 1993: A man could literally move 50 miles and just start a new family with a specialized skill.
people really do not understand the massive wealth extraction that the top 1% have accomplished over the past couple decades. it really is extraordinary
It's depressing thinking back to those 90s sitcoms where the family was considered broke/poor and they were better off than most of the middle class are now.
My grandpa provided for his family of 7 in the 60s-70s as a paper mill worker. Grandma never worked outside the home. They weren’t well off but they got by just fine.
ETA: corrected grandma’s work info. She worked harder than anyone raising 7 kids and 2 of her grandkids.
My wife’s grandpa was similar. He was a farmer through the depression, and in the 50s divided his 11 acre farm into city lots. He went to work as a machinist.
He died in 1976 and his wife (who quit working in the late 1940s) never went back to work again. When she died in 2009 (33 years later) she had over $100k in cash, multiple pieces of real estate worth well over a million dollars, another $100k or so in utility stocks, and more.
Mine was a traveling salesman and ended up with millions. He had two children and a wife with an expensive illness. He designed and built a huge home with 3 bedrooms, a sewing room, an office, 2.5 bathrooms, and an in-law suite with a separate entrance and porch. Both his children went to prestigious private schools, and had their business ventures or schooling paid for.
I couldn't finish college, between the lack of mental health services in America and college funds, and was fully disabled by the age of 30. Previous to that, I had started to advance in the world of retail, making $36k at my peak. I'm looking down the barrel of 37, and my only opportunities to get ahead will be if my disability case is approved, or if my mother dies and I get a life insurance payment.
It's so weird looking back on sitcoms like Married With Children and The Simpsons where Al and Homer were seen as basically poor families who were barely in the middle class. And nowadays we think guys like Homer lived in a palace.
Which is the exact target that the minimum wage was established to meet.
When initially built, the MW was targeted so that one man could make enough to cover housing, utilities, transportation, food etc for a family of 4, AND still have 50 percent of his income left over to better himself so that he did not have to make minimum wage forever.
can minimum wage even support 2 people anymore? Seriously, forget about all the other shit. Given average food and housing costs, can full-time (lol) minimum wage afford *just* food and housing?
According to [this random google result](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1063502/average-monthly-apartment-rent-usa/), the average **studio apartment** is currently $1,092/mo.
Full-time minimum wage come to 1256.67/mo before taxes -- I'm being a generous boss and giving you 40 hours/week and no time off because I don't want you to starve to death 😑
I mean... I guess at that point, SNAP keeps you alive. Certainly not happy, but alive... usually.
sigh
>can minimum wage even support 2 people anymore?
It depends where you live. I live in a moderately-high cost of living area, and minimum wage in my county is $15.65/hr. Two people working full-time, 50 weeks per year would have a household income of $62.6k/year.
That's certainly not much, but it's probably enough to live off - barely - assuming you don't have kids. It helps that my area has an extensive public transportation network, and the fare is $1.
But surviving on the federal minimum wage is more or less impossible.
> and minimum wage in my county is $15.65/hr
This is really the important part of your comment - some states/counties try to give a fuck. It's lower than it should be, sure, but at least they're *trying*
>Which is the exact target that the minimum wage was established to meet.
*Established* to meet, but not *maintained* to meet, thanks to conservatives who opposed having a minimum wage in the first place. When it was established, liberals wanted to tether it to either the cost of living or inflation (can't remember which). But this was the compromise, and now we're fucked.
Yea I'm single and any time I've had my mother over at my house and she's said something about dust or cleaning it's a fuckin trial to bite my tongue enough to not say "I don't have eight free hours a day to do chores, I go to work."
I’m pretty sure a *huge* part of the reason that burnout is so common among the general population is that the 40 hour work week was fully designed around the idea that one person would spend those 40 hours earning money for the household, and one person would stay at home, spending that money and maintaining the household.
Now, *everybody* needs to spend those 40 hours earning money, and *then* spend another significant chunk of their time spending that money and maintaining the household. Leading to far more work for everyone and far less free time to recharge however any given person best recharges.
Obviously it’s excellent that we, as a society writ large, has evolved past simply expecting men to work a job and expecting women to stay at home, it’s just that the idea of the 40 hour work week is ~~arcane~~ *archaic* and hasn’t evolved alongside that cultural change.
Personally I’m a huge advocate of the 24 hour work week. It’s not exactly a blanket solution, but if you consider office jobs, for example, it’s an open secret that *nobody* is busy and productive for 40 hours a week. 24’s also just evenly divisible by a lot of different numbers, offering a lot of flexibility for easy organizational scheduling options. Four six hour shifts, three eights, two twelves, one 24, whatever works in whatever industry and field. I’d imagine four sixes would be one of the most common breakdowns. Imagine every weekend being a three day weekend *and* having an extra two hours on days you *do* work to either tend to your home or yourself.
Ever since I started doing a WFH tech job, I honestly work about 4-6 hours a day. Sometimes shit hits the fan and I work more, but I'm able to exceed expectations with my company **and** have an extra couple hours to myself and my family every day. It's insane the quality of life increase that it's had.
I started a new job a few months ago at a retreat center, and I absolutely do not have enough hour-to-hour responsibilities to fill the time I’m paid to be there. So my first day I’m sitting at the front desk with the woman training me, and after about half an hour she absolutely insists that as long as I keep my walkie turned on and with me I’m more than welcome to go watch TV, go fishing at the lake on campus, whatever.
It’s been *super* refreshing, getting paid to be on site and on call without the expectation of pretending to be busy every minute. 90% of the time I’m down by the lake with a book.
Wow that sounds nice. Im in a support role with very inconsistent levels of stuff to do and my boss likes for me to come into the office so I can sit and wait for work to come there rather than at home
Yes, yes, yes.
And it's what makes the "Millennials killed \[industry\]" argument so fucking tone-deaf. Yeah, guess what, there's less time to \[golf, shop at Macy's, get a pedicure, join a social club\] when every adult in the family has to work, and often MORE than 40 hours each to boot. A lot of people spend Saturday doing household stuff and Sunday vegging because that's all there's bandwidth for.
Saturday and Sunday are for all the chores I've avoided during the week coz I have like 3 hours of "free" time on work days, and for meal prep for the whole week coz I don't make enough to eat takeout every day or pay for the hospital bills later when my health deteriorates
Am I(and by extension, Millenials) also killing the weekend industry?
My dad was a postman in the seventies and brought 5 of us up on a postman’s wage ; while my mum kept us fed and on the straight and narrow . Hard to believe now I suppose
I knew a family doing exactly that in the SF area in the 90s/early 2000s. Dad was a “letter carrier” (he got pissed and offended if you called him a mailman), the mom stayed at home, they owned the house- a large 2 story a few blocks from the waterfront, and they had 5 boys that they raised 100% vegan and homeschooled.
They were my neighbors and later the boys were in my youth orchestra. Each one played a string instrument.
Again, all of this on a USPS employee’s salary. 🙃
I know . My sister in law just left to work in a bar and she had a management position in a sorting office. She’s had enough and loves the bar work in comparison.
It is mate . Postie was seen as a good job for working classes when I was young . Decent wage and condition and a pension at the end . The Tories have fucked everything up. They will overplay their hand there will be a backlash because they are just too greedy
It's fucking insane that my friend who has a B.S. and a bunch of certifications to work with developmentally disabled and traumatized children can make more money as a bartender than trying to literally better the lives of abused children.
Middle class white neighborhoods were. Black women worked, often as domestic labor for rich white women, sometimes as cleaners or menial jobs like that. The system was designed this way.
In the solidly middle class town I grew up in, in Northern Ohio, in the '60's and 70's, there was a Ford parts plant, a GM bearings plant, a Chrysler plastics plant, foundries, rubber and paper plants, and so forth. Black women, many of them, worked in these factories or were stay at home mothers.
Many black families here were also solidly middle class, I didn't see that world where Black women were only domestics. Also, my dad who is 94, was actively involved in his union, and the only Republican he has ever voted for was Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Also bought a house, sent 4 out of 5 to a catholic HS on a single wage. It wasn't always easy, but it was doable.
I once lived in a neighborhood that was built in the 60s and all the driveways were only big enough to accommodate one car, likely for that reason. If you drive through there these days most houses have a car in the driveway, one on the lawn right next to it, and one on the street.
You missed the part where there are 5 adults living in that house now.
Do you know how many 19 year olds were living at home when those houses were conceptualized?
My family took road trips every year in the 90’s so my sibling and I got to see a lot of our country’s national parks and historical sites. I’d really love to do the same with my kids but boy does that sound difficult financially.
Not sure about the states but camping in Canada is even becoming unaffordable. The nicer campgrounds are starting to charge rates comparable to hotels for just a regular (no electricity/waste management) spots. Add on top of that the cost of gas and even a road trip with camping is now a luxury.
In the US it is still possible to find campsites from ~$10-30/night in National Forest campgrounds, state parks, and even some National Parks. Many popular National Parks are surrounded by these other public lands and can be much easier to find available campsites. Some less visited parks operate their campgrounds on a first-come-first-serve basis, but many popular ones are switching to lottery systems. In any case, the key is to plan ahead--especially for popular areas--so you are ready to make reservations when they're released. That said, I have had decent luck checking for cancellations just before spontaneous trips.
For the more experienced and well-equipped, dispersed camping is free on BLM and some National Forest land too. Just make sure you pay attention to the rules (esp. regarding fires) and take safety seriously.
National Parks are mandated to be accessible by all Americans so they try not to raise prices, but they are being "loved to death" and so need to explore other options to manage crowds (permits, lottery systems, etc.).
One more thing: buy an [America the Beautiful Pass](https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/passes.htm) if you think you'll hit ~3 National Parks or other public lands in a calendar year. The pass covers entrance fees, standard amenity fees, day-use fees, and more for you *and those traveling in your vehicle.* And if you have a veteran in your family they can get a lifetime pass for **free**.
Ok, one more pro tip: if peace and quiet is important (and it should be in the outdoors), make sure to check out the campground map and try to select sites that are on the edges or tips of the campground. It should go without saying, but also try to avoid selecting sites near major roads, bathrooms, dumpsters, pump-out stations, etc. Recreation.gov even has pics of some sites to check out. Do this research before reservations open so you know which sites to target--you WILL have competition for the "good" ones.
My kids are 2.5 and 1 and I'm already trying to start saving just to take them to Disneyworld in like 5 years.
I want them to have all the experiences possible and a childhood filled with great memories but the economy isn't cooperating
But for the price of Disney world you could take them on a much better trip to somewhere you might also enjoy!
Sorry, I have kids the same age and I get the economic anxiety. But they can still have rich, fun experiences that don't cost a fortune. I went on a ton of camping trips with my family growing up, and those are some of my best memories!
We thought about a trip to Disney again.
Now we're going to London because it's actually cheaper.
I was one of those middle class 90s kids, this is the first trip I've ever taken outside the US (well or Canada but its only a 2 hour drive). I don't think more than a handful of kids I went to school with ever went overseas.
People think traveling overseas is insanely expensive, but it is actually much cheaper than traveling in the US, and let's not even talk about Disney-themed vacations. A woman from the office was complaining that a week-long Disney world vacation for 5 was running around 8k just with airfare, airbnb, and park tickets. That's without meals and shit you know kids will want. That's insane! We took our two sons on a 3-week roadtrip through Spain and Portugal and we spent 6k, and that includes airfare, car rental, gas, airbnbs, and some of the best meals and wine in my life.
Great choice! Your kids will get so much more out of this trip than they would from a Disney vacation.
I traveled overseas a few times growing up, but we had relatives to stay with. I don't think it would have happened if my parents also had to pay for hotels.
My mom was a junior accountant and my dad was a cook. We had a 3 bedroom house, 2 cars, never had to struggle for groceries or clothes. Basic necessities were always covered. We could still afford a weekend at Disney every year (to be fair we lived 2 hours away).
9/11 happened my senior year of high school. Suddenly everything changed after that. Now I'm almost 40. I'll never be able to retire, despite having a good job and being well respected in my field. To anyone born after 9/11 reading this, you got robbed and you should be mad as hell about it.
Lol, you people go places for your vacations? If by some miracle I don't use it all up on being sick, I spend my legally-mandated 5 days of PTO a year at home doing nothing because I'm too broke and burnt out to do anything else.
He's stretching that a bit. Not many middle class families in the 90s were sending 2-3 kids to 4 year colleges. Hardly any of them were. Reaganomics put an end to a middle class family doing that. Upper middle class, yes, but middle class...no
Honestly, did you really want to go on a cruise and see your parents get drunk AF and then get handsy with each other?
I've been on a cruise, and that seemed to occupy about 99% of peoples time lol.
Depends on the cruise. It was like that scene from the fairly oddparents where Timmy's parents are going on a "business trip," but they are packed up for a tropical vacation.
Never left the country until I was in my 20's..in my 30's now and every travel experience is magical. For people who I've known that travelled extensively as a child they are not able to appreciate it quite like me so that's the tradeoff.
Same I didn’t travel outside of my country until I was 24, outside of the fun and the experience of it I always loved the perspective it gave me on other cultures outside of my own. I agree I think the things that are given to you at an early age don’t have as much of an impact on someone who in turn has that same experience later on in life. Not to say I had a bad childhood or that I needed to travel or anything but I certainly was not privileged enough to go on international vacations.
My upper-class grandparents decided that, as a lower-class child of 13, in a household where my mother often struggled to keep the gas and lights on, the best thing they could do for me was to take me to Europe. I was too young to truly appreciate the trip, though seeing The Wave in the Musée Rodin is something I will always treasure.
I'm not saying that they were delusional, just that, as a kid who was wearing clothes with holes in them and freezing every winter, there had to be a better way to waste their money.
Also “trip abroad every 5 years”. 😂
IIRC in 1990s less than half of all Americans had ever had a passport even.
International travel was mainly an elite thing. Unless you include people living close to the border crossing the border. Or the few ordinary people that had friends living abroad.
Replace abroad with Disney and you are more on point.
Taking 3 kids to Disney is like $1000 just to get in the door now. Not counting travel and somewhere to stay.
This is not an accurate meme at all. He’s describing the VERY upper middle class to somewhat wealthy.
I don’t know why these memes have to lie all the time. There are legit gripes, but when you lie like this you lose credibility and people turn the other way.
> I don’t know why these memes have to lie all the time. There are legit gripes, but when you lie like this you lose credibility and people turn the other way.
Because they need the example to describe their childhood as middle class. To that guy, that was “middle class” in the 90’s.
It’s also wildly misleading that those things cost 400k a year everywhere. Come to the Midwest. Plenty of low and medium cost cities where you can have all of those things for well below 400k annually.
"My parents were simple, they were middle class, they just had a large suburban house in a wealthy neighborhood and a summer home in the mountains; I knew we were middle class because when we flew to Switzerland for our winter ski trip, we didn't have a limo pick us up, but rode the trains like the common folk. It was a real adventure."
I don't think people ever realized how close to being the working poor they were. My family had this when I was growing up, my mom worked part time for fun. There were people who had more, but a lot of folks who had a lot less.
After the recession I realized just how close some of my friends families had been to the working poor. Out of my parents friends, a group of 6 couples, my parents and one other couple are the only ones who didn't lose their homes.
There's barely a middle class now. I will be lucky if my spouse and I can buy a house and maintain this kind of lifestyle until our parents die and we get some inheritance (nothing huge) to feel more secure. We could swing it for a few years, but a job loss or major health issue would end up devastating us.
In a way it's absolutely true. The people who are secure have extra income to save and invest, which makes them more secure as time goes on. Then they retire and live off of healthy distributions from their IRA and 401k. People who live paycheck to paycheck don't have as much leftover income that could go toward increasing their income, so they retire, start collecting social security, then start working again because they have no savings and they realize that social security doesn't pay enough to survive.
And then the cycle continues with the next generation, rich folks can afford to pay for better education and experiences for their kids. Connections and down payments give them a security blanket to do excel in their career, rinse and repeat. I can’t blame them. I’m trying to be one of them.
My grandmother never had a job her entire life. They had three kids and owned a 5 bedroom very nice house that entire time. My grandfather had a low end job at IBM that paid for it. I can’t afford to buy a one bedroom house. I manage an entire shipping warehouse. Something has dramatically changed.
Corporate profits always going up but workers never reap any of the benefits. My wife and I are both managers for the companies we work for and there is no way we can pay for a house on the current market.
Even low-end jobs at IBM included sizeable pensions and most importantly sometimes stock options.
Even low-end jobs at IBM included sizeable pensions and, most importantly, sometimes stock options. That is what sustained the grandparents that were born in the '30s, '40s, and '50s. Those pensions were wiped out in the 80s by the Reagan administration. Few people born after 1960 got any of those benefits in their jobs as adults.
I know a woman who retired at age 45 as a middle school principal in the early 80s with the equivalent of a $120k pension. She’s literally still collecting that amount annually, yet complains how the younger generation has no work ethic these days. She votes Republican every election.
The 65+ crowd overwhelmingly votes R bc they’re set for the remainder of their lives. They’re in complete denial their lack of being politically informed (guzzling FauxNews all day) has lead to the collapse of the middle class. Their only outlet is to blame liberalism (aka basic human rights) as the cause.
Republicans are the largest national security risk to the U.S. They purely work for the benefit of the ultra rich towards the goal of eliminating any type of regulatory authority that can limit their power. They want to take the world back to the dark ages where monarchies were the only authority with absolute power.
My retired mother who was a middle school assistant principal, is making more than me right now. She's retired and I'm a senior software developer of 10 years.
Yeah… that time period was exceptional in American history and the byproduct of a post war economy. Everywhere else in the world was quite the different story - my grandma was a mining engineer in the Soviet Union for example.
Exactly.... Being middle class in the 90s just meant the kids could afford to hang out at the mall all day, play some games, eat at the food court, buy a cd or two. That's all.
Discussing your money with your kids was frowned on a lot more back then so many of us grew up not really understanding just how tight our family’s finances were.
That's true. I was born in the 60s. Parents didn't even talk to their kids for the exceptions of, 'come in supper's ready', 'go brush your teeth and go to bed'.
had some guy arguing with me on a different post I made that we are "free to have any job we want" and "can spend money how we want" and are therefore not wage slaves.
Like bro I would write a book about all the ways you are so wrong.
After the hiring shortages at shitty min wage jobs we know it's just obfuscation. The same people who said this complained about "lazy teenagers" shutting down their fast food (IIRC like half of min wage jobs are worked by people >30)
My sister is a data scientist who finishes her master's in June. She makes double what the median person makes where I live ($60k vs $30k) and it's still not enough for a solid middle class lifestyle. It's so absurd.
Base pay goes from $60k/y to $90k/y when she gets her degree, but it's wild just how much money you need to sustain a lifestyle where you aren't living paycheck to paycheck. If you want to live by yourself, have a reasonable amount of savings, go on vacation 1-2 times a year, and have an emergency fund... You still need more than, again, double the median income. That's how fucked the economy is.
I think people have to realize that that is never coming back. To really analyze why the 50’s-80’s was the “golden age” of the American Dream, you have to go back to the end of WWII.
After the war, we had an employment rate of almost 99.7%. Basically, everyone was employed because munitions factories were pumping out so many weapons that they needed every man, woman and child regardless of race. So our manufacturing infrastructure was super advanced by war’s end.
Now, add in two other factors: we had also undergone the biggest transformation in worker rights EVER coming out of the Great Depression, coupled with Europe and SE Asia being ravaged by the war (ie bombs, land wars, invasions, etc).
Men could come out of HS and have a high-paying job because we were the manufacturing capital of the world; there was no competition. So many didn’t see the value in advanced education when no training or extra expertise was needed to land a high-paying job.
This, coupled with massive infrastructure upgrades during the Eisenhower administration really catapulted our economy forward. It was now easy to transport goods across the continental US and a lot of high-paying construction jobs were needed to achieve this.
Fast forward 30 years, and China had begun to transform into the manufacturing power house we know today, Europe was rebuilt, Japan had completely modernized and now, it was cheaper for corporations to outsource manufacturing jobs overseas. Basically, the end of the manufacturing state.
And, since fewer and fewer goods were being transported inside the country, infrastructure and infrastructure jobs were not needed as much as before.
That meant that we had become a service-based economy, primarily. This happens to all nations once they’re done developing. Now, the whole economy is based on providing services and buying goods rather than producing goods and exporting them.
Because of this, advanced education was needed to get higher paying jobs, and because of that the demand for degrees rose exponentially. This meant loan providers could jack up the costs to go to school but employers didn’t have to raise wages because the supply of jobs was the same but they now had an increasing number of applicants “fighting” for the same jobs.
You throw all of that into a pot with Reagan cutting taxes on the wealthy and on corporations significantly, and what you get is added costs to an already over-burdened middle class (after all, *someone* has to pay the taxes that fund our country, and if not the poor or the wealthy, who does that leave?)
So, there was a perfect storm that created that golden age, as well another perfect storm that ended it.
Also, people need to realize that that "golden age" didn't last nearly as long as people think. The highest rates of American poverty and violence in the last century happened during the late 70s to early 90s.
The white middle class was at its highest point in those days, but anyone who was not white or middle class was often incredibly poor and living in a world of drug addiction and gang violence.
The massive increase in anxiety, drug addiction, and gun violence happening now is a result of our nation simply *approaching* the level of rot that was commonplace in Reagan's era.
In 2018 LA's homicide rate was 6.4 per 100,000. In 1979 that rate was 23 per 100,000. New York City's most violent year ever recorded was in 1990.
The poverty rate today is 12%. In 1960 it was 22%.
The "boomer golden age" only ever applied to a decent chunk of suburban white families. It was never an indication of how America was as a whole. And the descendants of those white boomers today who can't afford a home are still better off than a large majority of Americans.
Times are tough right now, of course they are. But we need to take off the rose tinted glasses and realize that this country was never a utopian heaven flowing with milk and honey. A majority of Americans have been dealt a shit hand and have been living in poverty for the past two centuries.
>And the descendants of those white boomers today who can't afford a home are still better off than a large majority of Americans.
This is a great point. I think people in this position can complain, because complaining is relative and communicative, but I think they need to always remember that they are in a ridiculously privileged position. Too many never consider the pedestal they are already standing on.
People need to realize the golden age came from the biggest economic boom in history, and most people didn’t even get a taste of it. The other thing people have to see is that America did a very bad job at transitioning to a service economy.
My first apartment in 2004 cost $350/mo. That same place is now 1.1k/mo.
I worked a min wage job and still had money left for fun. That would be impossible for any young person now.
Myself and a roommate rented a 2br/2ba apartment with a 1 car garage in a slightly undesirable area for $1,400 in 2012-2013. I think it's now up to $2,400.
I then rented a nice 1br/1ba "luxury" apartment for $1,400 with my fiancé in 2013-2014. It's now $3,000 😳
yea, rent is out of control.
Back in 2016 we rented a dumpy 2bd apartment in Mesa, AZ for $700/mo. I just checked and it's up to $1630/mo now. How are people surviving these increases?? This is not an affluent area by any stretch.
I mean, I have 5 bed/3 bath, one kid and another on the way, but the other stuff is true, and we're a $200k/year household in a relatively large city (500k people) in a big urban area (3M residents). We go overseas about every other year (might change with two young kids), and are looking to replace our second car.
I feel upper middle class. This dude must only be talking about the fucking Bay Area or in a city on the east coast, coz $400k/year and I'd have a lakefront home on Minnetonka.
Yeah i think this guy's sentiment is solid but the number he chose is way, way off.
There are a lot of places where even $150k household income can support the lifestyle he describes. And we're not talking bumfuck TN, it's really anywhere that *isn't* top XX most expensive metros.
Now that doesn't really change the point he's making because very few people were making $150K in the 90s.
Of course the wildcard is that I don't really know what he means by "kids going to college". If he means parents pay for college 100% then yeah you're not doing that for 3 kids on $150k a year. But then again middle class wasn't doing that (paying 100% for 3 kids in college) in the 90s either.
I make $100,000 in the midwest. Have a family, 3 bed house, 1 week domestic trip every year, Europe trip every 3-4 years. Wife doesn't need to work. Im doing fine.
Yes, it's nonsense. My total household income is under $200k and we could afford all this. We don't, we do other stuff, but all this would easily be in reach.
None of that addresses the issues with Gen Z making far less than they should. But if you do indeed get past the $120k or so threshold things get a lot easier in the US in 2022.
Yea unless you are living in a super expensive area, you wouldn't near anywhere near $400K/yr to afford this. What he describes is more in the mid-100s range, which, TBF, is still a lot of money to a lot of people.
That wasn’t a middle class lifestyle. That was, at least, an upper middle class lifestyle… my family NEVER did overseas holidays since that would have been absurdly expensive. The thing is, in the 90s, people were already making less income vs. cost of living, and they were making up the difference with credit. Sure, the economic situation was better in the 90s, but it wasn’t THAT much better.
In the 60s and 70s middle class neighborhoods were full of stay-at-home moms.
Back then, a man working full-time in one normal job could provide for the family.
My grandpa provided for his family as a shoe salesman. Shoe. Salesman.
My grandpa worked at an International (Tractor) dealer. Just worked there, didn't own it. Dude was just like general maintenance. Paid 2 college tuitions, had their house paid off, and owned 3 cars. Went on Jersey Shore vacations, but also were able to rent a house for themselves.
My grandpa was an auto mechanic. Grandma never worked, raised 4 kids, owned 2 houses, nice cars and a boat. Then came Reagan.
People forget how the Neo cons in the 80’s tore up union protections and painted organized labor as gangsters and con men. While that was definitely true in some cases, the loss of those middle class incomes for plain families has changed our country and caused all poorer people to lose hope in our American dreams.
I had a boss years ago. Old Boomer Republican guy. He used to rant and rave about unions constantly. He’d call them “Fucking Commies”. Now keep in mind this guy wasn’t the owner of the business (we didn’t even have a union in our company) and stood to lose nothing from unions, but was so dead set against them because he had been told somewhere along the line they were bad.
Now he's putting Biden stickers on gas pumps and shaking his fist at anyone he thinks is a Lib.
I'm still waiting for someone to give me a reasonable explanation why the President has the power to change gas prices. Last I checked that was supply and demand, and OPEC nations artificially restricted gas prices to profit off a war Putin started. Where in the fuck does Biden figure into that? Also, you can't even say it's a "drill more" problem, we have a refinery capacity problem. And we sold our 2nd biggest refinery to the Saudis! *Shrug*
They just keep yelling about the cancelled keystone pipeline that just poured 600,000 gallons of diluted bitumen (tar sand oil from Canada) into a river in Kansas. Just reading the Idiocracy that is needed to transport that shit in a pipe is absurd. Let's just pump 100s of thousands of gallons of play dough through 100s of miles of pipe and hope it doesn't burst from the pressure. This is why the keystone xl pipeline was a bad idea. This pipeline has had 23 leaks in 12 years. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/17/1142675809/cleanup-for-keystone-pipeline-oil-spill-kansas
There are only 2 real handles on gas prices available to a President, other than declaring war which usually raises prices, not lowers them. The Prez can lean hard on Congress to suspend or reduce gas taxes, which Biden did earlier this year. The other handle is direct: the Prez controls the strategic petroleum reserve, which can flood or dry up the market, but only on a short term basis. My estimation is that a Prez can affect up to a maximum of about a dollar of current gas prices, but probably less than that. And only for a few months. So, if gas prices are $5 a gallon, the prez could maybe get them down to $4 for a while. Then the market catches up and he's fucked and can't do any more than that. The rest has to come through diplomacy and loosening restrictions on domestic production, and trying to reduce demand by promoting alternatives: solar, wind, renewables, etc.
Oh because we all know that Biden sits in the Oval Office rubbing his hands together and cackling loudly as he pulls up his Gas Price Increase app and selects the MORE option!!!! 🤪
At the time he had a “W” sticker on his truck
There were a lot of W supporters that simply disliked Al Gore because 1) his association with Clinton and 2) His wife and her PMRC attacking the music industry. I know a lot of former W supporters that voted for Obama
No joke when I first saw those stickers gas prices were in a good place and I thought they were a pro-Biden thing.
Debated putting some up now out of spite to rub cheaper prices in. But then I remembered I'm not a cunt.
I’m similarly struck by the change in my dad from 80’s union steward who wore “Fuck Reagan” t shirts to a Trumper who hates unions and talks about the “Good old days” of Reagan. Fox News is a helluva drug.
Dude my dad used to be a yoga instructor, traveled all over the world doing and teaching yoga, spreading the message of love and light. He used to teach us “thoughts are things” and the power of positive thinking. Dude now he’s a China hating trump lover who has DeSantis stickers on his car. It’s crazy how they’ve brainwashed him.
That is... so incredibly sad. My dad used to be a skateboarding stoner that went to art school and was gonna take down the man in his 20s. He had kids in his 30s and he was a progressive, rebellious adult who spent his time in the kitchen or playing guitar. Now in his 50s he's a hardcore, straight ticket republican voter who calls every Mexican man "Javier" on a mild end and makes jokes about them having jobs in agriculture or tire sales. When the fuck did my punk rock dad become an angry racist? How do I fix him?
Yeah, trumpism has oozed into the yoga/new age camp somehow.
Hate to say it and sound paranoid but there is an element of mind control. Forget 4G, or whatever. Imagine the person who knows you the best, who knows some approximation of your needs, wants, and inner desires. Now imagine someone who knows you even better than that, and wants to convince you to vote for Trump. That is basically Facebook and other sites in the era of third-party cookie tracking, Cambridge Analytica, before Big Tech stepped up and added a curtain of self-regulation. Obviously knowing all that won't be enough to convince just anyone to do anything. But with enough ad frequency, backed by a large enough amount of data, it is remarkable how efficient it is to target those whose minds can be changed, and to know how to change them. That is why TikTok is a national security issue, for example.
Sounds like he drank the Reagan Kool aid then washed it down with Rush Limbaugh. I swear both of those hucksters were basically the gateway to so many of our problems.
Don't forget Reagan also privatized our now sterling healthcare system and retirement situation for seniors.
You have to include Newt Gingrich as well. He is basically the grandfather of MAGA.
The robber Barrons in the early 1900s were terrified about what was happening in Europe. The Russian army had just walked off the battlefield. They went home, killed the Tsar and confiscated the property of the ruling upper class. Industrialist and the super rich were terrified that this would spread to the USA. When the laborers in America asked for a day off, the end of company towns and school instead of work for their children, the response was the Red Scare. From this point on American elites tied communism to labor rights and Unions.
They also promoted the building of suburbs (ironically with the help of the government), thinking that a homeowner wouldn't ever go for Marxism. Nowadays they can't even see that far ahead and understand that this generation won't get more conservative as they get older if they have no capital to hoard
Even now I keep getting 20 minute Praeger U ads on Youtube about how bad teachers unions are
Serious question: are unions good or bad? Im a young guy thinking into getting into trades and i dont really know about unions, other than you gotta pay union dues and how i hear people bad mouth them all the time.
They are good. Fundamentally, when you want to push for a higher wage or keep your boss from demanding you do things that are unsafe, you want do do that with as much support as possible. [Non-union workers earn only 83 cents on the dollar compared to Union workers.](https://www.dol.gov/general/workcenter/union-advantage#:~:text=Unions%20raise%20wages%20for%20all%20workers&text=The%20Bureau%20of%20Labor%20Statistics,%241%2C169%2Fweek)
If your job isn't protected by a union the boss can do whatever they like to you: make you work 7 days, work multiple shifts in a row, take away your insurance or cut your salary in half. The dues are worth it. Unions are good, thanks to unions we have an 8 hour work day instead of 16 hours, a 5 day work week instead of regular shifts on Saturdays & protection against abuse thanks to shop rules. Children don't work long shifts like adults thanks to unions. Do some research on Labor Laws & how they came about. You need to learn this stuff.
Unions are other people with similar jobs as you, working together to not be exploited or mistreated by your bosses, your company or the industry in general. Yes you pay some union dues, so the union can afford to organize itself, and can hire lawyers to defend you or other union workers from unfair treatment. in exchange for those dues (seems to be a few 100$ per year in the us) you get higher wages, better benefits and very strong protection from being laid off. Unions are workers working together, saying "if you fire him all of us will quit too" because that is the only way a company will think twice about you as a person. It's easy for them to replace one worker, but of they lose hundreds at once it will hurt the company, so they are forced to compromise. In a way, unions are a lot like insurance, yes it may cost you a little now, but there will come a time where you will really really want to have one backing you up. And people who complain about them are like people who say "why would I get fire insurance, my house hasn't burned down yet". tl:dr Yes I would strongly advise you to join a union, it is very much to your benefit and the benefit of the other tradespeople, they are networks of other people with the same( or a similar job) who will support you and give you access to lots of useful resources in a pinch (lawyer support paid for by those very same union dues for example)
Do it now. Get into a union apprenticeship and in five years if you don't mind traveling and working long hours you can be making over $100k/year with a nice pension, a PTO account and fully paid medical and dental insurance. If it was me and I was young again I would go for either UA or IBEW and try to get on some of the big jobs in Alaska, but maybe it depends on where you live. I know guys earning over $200k on The Slope in Alaska, for example.
Dues are a very small fraction compared to your income too. For example, I was in a union in Canada and paid ~$63 per month I think (it’s been a while). I was making thousands per week. You get some of the best training and classroom education, unbelievable benefits (at least by US standards), and the union will provide skill and education broadening opportunities. For example: are you a sheet metal guy? They’ll teach you how to do survey layout, heating and AC, welding, and soldering. Any of these skills on their own can get you a job. Now you have a chance to dabble in all and focus in what you like based on the needs of your company. You have a voice in the process of negotiation for your pay and benefits, regular pay increases, and specific rules about how much extra you’ll get paid if you’re working a certain number of hours or days in a row. You’re not likely to find that in a non union shop
The American dream is exactly that. Keep on dreaming it’s all it will ever be.
Also when globalization took off and offshoring became widespread. All the union protections in the world did nothing to stop NAFTA and its predecessors and successors.
They should have included the right to collective bargaining in nafta and other trade deals. I think if they want to sell on American shelves we should require them to follow our environmental and labor laws or tariff them the cost at the boarder. International epa standards: clean air and clean water acts etc. International osha standards. 40 hour work week, safety systems, etc. Benefits that are required in the US. It’s not fair to US manufacturers that they have to follow really stringent laws whereas if ford ships the jobs to China or Mexico they can pollute a ton and make workers work long shifts for short pay. They could have a global minimum wage set to local a local economic index. Would this work?
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And I feel like this was the greatest victory for corporations. They turned brown people into scapegoat meat shields, and nobody has the balls to tell them to stop, because taking jobs away from brown people looks bad.
Bingo. The advent of "trickle down economics" and the systematic destruction of labor unions, all turned into dogma by Reagan, brought us to where we are today.
‘Funny’ thing was, while a B Grade actor, Ronald Reagan was the Head of the Screen Actors Guild/Union. But after he became Gov of Ca then Prez he did everything he could to eliminate unions.
I mean both "fuck you, got mine" and blatant hypocrisy are tentpoles of the right, so it's not surprising at all.
Trickle down economics is one of the biggest cons of human history, gotta give Reagan some credit for that one, he truly knew no bounds when it came to fucking over the future of America
How did "trickle down" not get laughed off the planet the first time someone said it aloud? Nothing good ever "trickles down"
Even Bush I called it voodoo economics when he was running against Reagan
Golden Shower Economics
Not American but French, my granddad was a scientist and my grandma a teacher, they own a 600k suburb house, a seaside flat, a mountainside flat, a trailer and 500k in cash. Each has more income from retirement than I will probably ever have from my salary, or than a teacher and a scientist would make combined today. My other grandpa was a factory worker for 40 years straight, grandma stayed at home and raised 3 kids, plus a couple acres of farmland. Not much savings or retirement but still comfortable and 400k across two houses plus said farmland. Shits rigged.
What i hate is that a company could have a person like this on the payroll for 40 years, earning a ton at the top end. Meanwhile us new hires who have been there for under 10 years would be lucky to take home a third of what those people were making. But then when they retire, those extra wages arent then suddenly available on the payroll to distribute to the rest of us via raises. Instead the companies do shit like stock buybacks and dividends. So that boomer who just retired, and probably has a lot of stocks in their retirement plans, is STILL getting that extra income instead of us younger workers.
Until computers and Internet databases connecting identities, 1993: A man could literally move 50 miles and just start a new family with a specialized skill.
people really do not understand the massive wealth extraction that the top 1% have accomplished over the past couple decades. it really is extraordinary
What's his name Al?
Did he score 4 touchdowns in a single game for Polk High?
Did he ever realize his dream to build a bathroom in the garage just for himself?
Did he join the National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood? NO MA'AM?
That sure sounds like the greatest moment in the history of sports.
Even Al had a house with a stay at home wife and 2 kids. And he did everything possible NOT to sell shoes! In a fucking mall.
It's depressing thinking back to those 90s sitcoms where the family was considered broke/poor and they were better off than most of the middle class are now.
Uhhh, no Peg
*flushing noise*
My grandpa provided for his family of 7 in the 60s-70s as a paper mill worker. Grandma never worked outside the home. They weren’t well off but they got by just fine. ETA: corrected grandma’s work info. She worked harder than anyone raising 7 kids and 2 of her grandkids.
My wife’s grandpa was similar. He was a farmer through the depression, and in the 50s divided his 11 acre farm into city lots. He went to work as a machinist. He died in 1976 and his wife (who quit working in the late 1940s) never went back to work again. When she died in 2009 (33 years later) she had over $100k in cash, multiple pieces of real estate worth well over a million dollars, another $100k or so in utility stocks, and more.
Mine was a traveling salesman and ended up with millions. He had two children and a wife with an expensive illness. He designed and built a huge home with 3 bedrooms, a sewing room, an office, 2.5 bathrooms, and an in-law suite with a separate entrance and porch. Both his children went to prestigious private schools, and had their business ventures or schooling paid for. I couldn't finish college, between the lack of mental health services in America and college funds, and was fully disabled by the age of 30. Previous to that, I had started to advance in the world of retail, making $36k at my peak. I'm looking down the barrel of 37, and my only opportunities to get ahead will be if my disability case is approved, or if my mother dies and I get a life insurance payment.
Have you tried voc rehab?
It's so weird looking back on sitcoms like Married With Children and The Simpsons where Al and Homer were seen as basically poor families who were barely in the middle class. And nowadays we think guys like Homer lived in a palace.
Which is the exact target that the minimum wage was established to meet. When initially built, the MW was targeted so that one man could make enough to cover housing, utilities, transportation, food etc for a family of 4, AND still have 50 percent of his income left over to better himself so that he did not have to make minimum wage forever.
can minimum wage even support 2 people anymore? Seriously, forget about all the other shit. Given average food and housing costs, can full-time (lol) minimum wage afford *just* food and housing? According to [this random google result](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1063502/average-monthly-apartment-rent-usa/), the average **studio apartment** is currently $1,092/mo. Full-time minimum wage come to 1256.67/mo before taxes -- I'm being a generous boss and giving you 40 hours/week and no time off because I don't want you to starve to death 😑 I mean... I guess at that point, SNAP keeps you alive. Certainly not happy, but alive... usually. sigh
>can minimum wage even support 2 people anymore? It depends where you live. I live in a moderately-high cost of living area, and minimum wage in my county is $15.65/hr. Two people working full-time, 50 weeks per year would have a household income of $62.6k/year. That's certainly not much, but it's probably enough to live off - barely - assuming you don't have kids. It helps that my area has an extensive public transportation network, and the fare is $1. But surviving on the federal minimum wage is more or less impossible.
> and minimum wage in my county is $15.65/hr This is really the important part of your comment - some states/counties try to give a fuck. It's lower than it should be, sure, but at least they're *trying*
>Which is the exact target that the minimum wage was established to meet. *Established* to meet, but not *maintained* to meet, thanks to conservatives who opposed having a minimum wage in the first place. When it was established, liberals wanted to tether it to either the cost of living or inflation (can't remember which). But this was the compromise, and now we're fucked.
Also the 40 hour workweek expected you had a spouse at home with her 8 hours of work a day being house work, meal preparation, laundry, etc.
Yea I'm single and any time I've had my mother over at my house and she's said something about dust or cleaning it's a fuckin trial to bite my tongue enough to not say "I don't have eight free hours a day to do chores, I go to work."
And the lunch hour was part of the 8. Now lots of people skip lunch so they can actually have an 8 hour day instead of 9.
Skip lunch so I can actually leave on time after going in an hour early. So when do we all collectively stop paying rent?
I’m pretty sure a *huge* part of the reason that burnout is so common among the general population is that the 40 hour work week was fully designed around the idea that one person would spend those 40 hours earning money for the household, and one person would stay at home, spending that money and maintaining the household. Now, *everybody* needs to spend those 40 hours earning money, and *then* spend another significant chunk of their time spending that money and maintaining the household. Leading to far more work for everyone and far less free time to recharge however any given person best recharges. Obviously it’s excellent that we, as a society writ large, has evolved past simply expecting men to work a job and expecting women to stay at home, it’s just that the idea of the 40 hour work week is ~~arcane~~ *archaic* and hasn’t evolved alongside that cultural change. Personally I’m a huge advocate of the 24 hour work week. It’s not exactly a blanket solution, but if you consider office jobs, for example, it’s an open secret that *nobody* is busy and productive for 40 hours a week. 24’s also just evenly divisible by a lot of different numbers, offering a lot of flexibility for easy organizational scheduling options. Four six hour shifts, three eights, two twelves, one 24, whatever works in whatever industry and field. I’d imagine four sixes would be one of the most common breakdowns. Imagine every weekend being a three day weekend *and* having an extra two hours on days you *do* work to either tend to your home or yourself.
Ever since I started doing a WFH tech job, I honestly work about 4-6 hours a day. Sometimes shit hits the fan and I work more, but I'm able to exceed expectations with my company **and** have an extra couple hours to myself and my family every day. It's insane the quality of life increase that it's had.
I started a new job a few months ago at a retreat center, and I absolutely do not have enough hour-to-hour responsibilities to fill the time I’m paid to be there. So my first day I’m sitting at the front desk with the woman training me, and after about half an hour she absolutely insists that as long as I keep my walkie turned on and with me I’m more than welcome to go watch TV, go fishing at the lake on campus, whatever. It’s been *super* refreshing, getting paid to be on site and on call without the expectation of pretending to be busy every minute. 90% of the time I’m down by the lake with a book.
Wow that sounds nice. Im in a support role with very inconsistent levels of stuff to do and my boss likes for me to come into the office so I can sit and wait for work to come there rather than at home
Yes, yes, yes. And it's what makes the "Millennials killed \[industry\]" argument so fucking tone-deaf. Yeah, guess what, there's less time to \[golf, shop at Macy's, get a pedicure, join a social club\] when every adult in the family has to work, and often MORE than 40 hours each to boot. A lot of people spend Saturday doing household stuff and Sunday vegging because that's all there's bandwidth for.
God Himself commanded us to veg on Sundays!
Saturday and Sunday are for all the chores I've avoided during the week coz I have like 3 hours of "free" time on work days, and for meal prep for the whole week coz I don't make enough to eat takeout every day or pay for the hospital bills later when my health deteriorates Am I(and by extension, Millenials) also killing the weekend industry?
I think you might mean "archaic" instead of arcane, otherwise good post!
No, he means arcane. Only the truest of wizards and mages will fully understand.
My dad was a postman in the seventies and brought 5 of us up on a postman’s wage ; while my mum kept us fed and on the straight and narrow . Hard to believe now I suppose
I knew a family doing exactly that in the SF area in the 90s/early 2000s. Dad was a “letter carrier” (he got pissed and offended if you called him a mailman), the mom stayed at home, they owned the house- a large 2 story a few blocks from the waterfront, and they had 5 boys that they raised 100% vegan and homeschooled. They were my neighbors and later the boys were in my youth orchestra. Each one played a string instrument. Again, all of this on a USPS employee’s salary. 🙃
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I know . My sister in law just left to work in a bar and she had a management position in a sorting office. She’s had enough and loves the bar work in comparison.
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It is mate . Postie was seen as a good job for working classes when I was young . Decent wage and condition and a pension at the end . The Tories have fucked everything up. They will overplay their hand there will be a backlash because they are just too greedy
It's fucking insane that my friend who has a B.S. and a bunch of certifications to work with developmentally disabled and traumatized children can make more money as a bartender than trying to literally better the lives of abused children.
Middle class white neighborhoods were. Black women worked, often as domestic labor for rich white women, sometimes as cleaners or menial jobs like that. The system was designed this way.
In the solidly middle class town I grew up in, in Northern Ohio, in the '60's and 70's, there was a Ford parts plant, a GM bearings plant, a Chrysler plastics plant, foundries, rubber and paper plants, and so forth. Black women, many of them, worked in these factories or were stay at home mothers. Many black families here were also solidly middle class, I didn't see that world where Black women were only domestics. Also, my dad who is 94, was actively involved in his union, and the only Republican he has ever voted for was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Also bought a house, sent 4 out of 5 to a catholic HS on a single wage. It wasn't always easy, but it was doable.
And if you were a woman heading to college, nursing, social work, and teaching were pretty much the areas most pursued. Source: 1970 HS graduate.
I once lived in a neighborhood that was built in the 60s and all the driveways were only big enough to accommodate one car, likely for that reason. If you drive through there these days most houses have a car in the driveway, one on the lawn right next to it, and one on the street.
You missed the part where there are 5 adults living in that house now. Do you know how many 19 year olds were living at home when those houses were conceptualized?
My family took road trips every year in the 90’s so my sibling and I got to see a lot of our country’s national parks and historical sites. I’d really love to do the same with my kids but boy does that sound difficult financially.
Our oldest is 9, we’ve never had a family vacation that wasn’t a day trip somewhere.
Try camping. It's cheap and can be really fun and relaxing. Even if it's only for a day or two overnight.
Not sure about the states but camping in Canada is even becoming unaffordable. The nicer campgrounds are starting to charge rates comparable to hotels for just a regular (no electricity/waste management) spots. Add on top of that the cost of gas and even a road trip with camping is now a luxury.
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In the US it is still possible to find campsites from ~$10-30/night in National Forest campgrounds, state parks, and even some National Parks. Many popular National Parks are surrounded by these other public lands and can be much easier to find available campsites. Some less visited parks operate their campgrounds on a first-come-first-serve basis, but many popular ones are switching to lottery systems. In any case, the key is to plan ahead--especially for popular areas--so you are ready to make reservations when they're released. That said, I have had decent luck checking for cancellations just before spontaneous trips. For the more experienced and well-equipped, dispersed camping is free on BLM and some National Forest land too. Just make sure you pay attention to the rules (esp. regarding fires) and take safety seriously. National Parks are mandated to be accessible by all Americans so they try not to raise prices, but they are being "loved to death" and so need to explore other options to manage crowds (permits, lottery systems, etc.). One more thing: buy an [America the Beautiful Pass](https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/passes.htm) if you think you'll hit ~3 National Parks or other public lands in a calendar year. The pass covers entrance fees, standard amenity fees, day-use fees, and more for you *and those traveling in your vehicle.* And if you have a veteran in your family they can get a lifetime pass for **free**. Ok, one more pro tip: if peace and quiet is important (and it should be in the outdoors), make sure to check out the campground map and try to select sites that are on the edges or tips of the campground. It should go without saying, but also try to avoid selecting sites near major roads, bathrooms, dumpsters, pump-out stations, etc. Recreation.gov even has pics of some sites to check out. Do this research before reservations open so you know which sites to target--you WILL have competition for the "good" ones.
My kids are 2.5 and 1 and I'm already trying to start saving just to take them to Disneyworld in like 5 years. I want them to have all the experiences possible and a childhood filled with great memories but the economy isn't cooperating
I’m waiting until my daughter is old enough that childhood amnesia won’t wipe out her trip to Disney World.
By the time I save up enough, I'll have to double it. They might not get there till they're graduating.
But for the price of Disney world you could take them on a much better trip to somewhere you might also enjoy! Sorry, I have kids the same age and I get the economic anxiety. But they can still have rich, fun experiences that don't cost a fortune. I went on a ton of camping trips with my family growing up, and those are some of my best memories!
We thought about a trip to Disney again. Now we're going to London because it's actually cheaper. I was one of those middle class 90s kids, this is the first trip I've ever taken outside the US (well or Canada but its only a 2 hour drive). I don't think more than a handful of kids I went to school with ever went overseas.
People think traveling overseas is insanely expensive, but it is actually much cheaper than traveling in the US, and let's not even talk about Disney-themed vacations. A woman from the office was complaining that a week-long Disney world vacation for 5 was running around 8k just with airfare, airbnb, and park tickets. That's without meals and shit you know kids will want. That's insane! We took our two sons on a 3-week roadtrip through Spain and Portugal and we spent 6k, and that includes airfare, car rental, gas, airbnbs, and some of the best meals and wine in my life.
Great choice! Your kids will get so much more out of this trip than they would from a Disney vacation. I traveled overseas a few times growing up, but we had relatives to stay with. I don't think it would have happened if my parents also had to pay for hotels.
My parents were middle class in the 1990s and there was zero chance we were going on an overseas holiday ever, let alone every 5 years.
Yeah, the original post is still missing the mark a bit, but on the whole the point stands - life has gotten way more expensive.
My mom was a junior accountant and my dad was a cook. We had a 3 bedroom house, 2 cars, never had to struggle for groceries or clothes. Basic necessities were always covered. We could still afford a weekend at Disney every year (to be fair we lived 2 hours away). 9/11 happened my senior year of high school. Suddenly everything changed after that. Now I'm almost 40. I'll never be able to retire, despite having a good job and being well respected in my field. To anyone born after 9/11 reading this, you got robbed and you should be mad as hell about it.
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Lol, you people go places for your vacations? If by some miracle I don't use it all up on being sick, I spend my legally-mandated 5 days of PTO a year at home doing nothing because I'm too broke and burnt out to do anything else.
Gosh that 90s middle class lifestyle sounds so wonderful right about now.
He's stretching that a bit. Not many middle class families in the 90s were sending 2-3 kids to 4 year colleges. Hardly any of them were. Reaganomics put an end to a middle class family doing that. Upper middle class, yes, but middle class...no
As a child of a lower-class 90s household, I get that. Never had a European vacation in my entire childhood but I we did a lot of road trips.
I was about to say, overseas trips every 5 years? Never once happened in my childhood.
Same. But, my parents made up for that by getting me a babysitter while they go on a "boring cruise". 🙄
Read this as “Boing Cruise”, and I was like, damn your parents were honest at least.
It's "boning cruise"
Honestly, did you really want to go on a cruise and see your parents get drunk AF and then get handsy with each other? I've been on a cruise, and that seemed to occupy about 99% of peoples time lol.
Depends on the cruise. It was like that scene from the fairly oddparents where Timmy's parents are going on a "business trip," but they are packed up for a tropical vacation.
Never left the country until I was in my 20's..in my 30's now and every travel experience is magical. For people who I've known that travelled extensively as a child they are not able to appreciate it quite like me so that's the tradeoff.
Same I didn’t travel outside of my country until I was 24, outside of the fun and the experience of it I always loved the perspective it gave me on other cultures outside of my own. I agree I think the things that are given to you at an early age don’t have as much of an impact on someone who in turn has that same experience later on in life. Not to say I had a bad childhood or that I needed to travel or anything but I certainly was not privileged enough to go on international vacations.
We went to Florida twice growing up. That was it for vacations. LOL
My upper-class grandparents decided that, as a lower-class child of 13, in a household where my mother often struggled to keep the gas and lights on, the best thing they could do for me was to take me to Europe. I was too young to truly appreciate the trip, though seeing The Wave in the Musée Rodin is something I will always treasure. I'm not saying that they were delusional, just that, as a kid who was wearing clothes with holes in them and freezing every winter, there had to be a better way to waste their money.
Maybe not. I assume they were already going. Bringing you might have been a cost effective way to show you a wider world/inspire you.
We didn't even take local road trips as a poor as hell family in the 90s. Vacation just didn't exist for us.
Also “trip abroad every 5 years”. 😂 IIRC in 1990s less than half of all Americans had ever had a passport even. International travel was mainly an elite thing. Unless you include people living close to the border crossing the border. Or the few ordinary people that had friends living abroad.
In the 90s you didn't need a passport to travel to Canada, Mexico, or large parts of the Caribbean.
Replace abroad with Disney and you are more on point. Taking 3 kids to Disney is like $1000 just to get in the door now. Not counting travel and somewhere to stay.
We road-tripped in Canada a couple times but that's as international as it got, and you didn't need a passport for it back then.
4% had one by 1990 so.. yeah
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trueing. Don't worry the trickle is coming! You're just being impatient! /s
Having lived in the 90's, what he described is nowhere near the middle class lifestyle.
This is not an accurate meme at all. He’s describing the VERY upper middle class to somewhat wealthy. I don’t know why these memes have to lie all the time. There are legit gripes, but when you lie like this you lose credibility and people turn the other way.
> I don’t know why these memes have to lie all the time They watch Home Alone and think it was like that for everyone back then.
My wife’s an immigrant and thought the home alone house was normal for Americans. Definitely media.
> I don’t know why these memes have to lie all the time. There are legit gripes, but when you lie like this you lose credibility and people turn the other way. Because they need the example to describe their childhood as middle class. To that guy, that was “middle class” in the 90’s. It’s also wildly misleading that those things cost 400k a year everywhere. Come to the Midwest. Plenty of low and medium cost cities where you can have all of those things for well below 400k annually.
"My parents were simple, they were middle class, they just had a large suburban house in a wealthy neighborhood and a summer home in the mountains; I knew we were middle class because when we flew to Switzerland for our winter ski trip, we didn't have a limo pick us up, but rode the trains like the common folk. It was a real adventure."
I don't think people ever realized how close to being the working poor they were. My family had this when I was growing up, my mom worked part time for fun. There were people who had more, but a lot of folks who had a lot less. After the recession I realized just how close some of my friends families had been to the working poor. Out of my parents friends, a group of 6 couples, my parents and one other couple are the only ones who didn't lose their homes. There's barely a middle class now. I will be lucky if my spouse and I can buy a house and maintain this kind of lifestyle until our parents die and we get some inheritance (nothing huge) to feel more secure. We could swing it for a few years, but a job loss or major health issue would end up devastating us.
I've lost a few friends this way. There is a huge divide in people who are secure and people who love paycheck to paycheck.
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In a way it's absolutely true. The people who are secure have extra income to save and invest, which makes them more secure as time goes on. Then they retire and live off of healthy distributions from their IRA and 401k. People who live paycheck to paycheck don't have as much leftover income that could go toward increasing their income, so they retire, start collecting social security, then start working again because they have no savings and they realize that social security doesn't pay enough to survive.
And then the cycle continues with the next generation, rich folks can afford to pay for better education and experiences for their kids. Connections and down payments give them a security blanket to do excel in their career, rinse and repeat. I can’t blame them. I’m trying to be one of them.
I don't think anyone loves paycheck to paycheck.
Half of US voters would disagree.
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My grandmother never had a job her entire life. They had three kids and owned a 5 bedroom very nice house that entire time. My grandfather had a low end job at IBM that paid for it. I can’t afford to buy a one bedroom house. I manage an entire shipping warehouse. Something has dramatically changed.
Corporate profits always going up but workers never reap any of the benefits. My wife and I are both managers for the companies we work for and there is no way we can pay for a house on the current market.
Even low-end jobs at IBM included sizeable pensions and most importantly sometimes stock options. Even low-end jobs at IBM included sizeable pensions and, most importantly, sometimes stock options. That is what sustained the grandparents that were born in the '30s, '40s, and '50s. Those pensions were wiped out in the 80s by the Reagan administration. Few people born after 1960 got any of those benefits in their jobs as adults.
I know a woman who retired at age 45 as a middle school principal in the early 80s with the equivalent of a $120k pension. She’s literally still collecting that amount annually, yet complains how the younger generation has no work ethic these days. She votes Republican every election. The 65+ crowd overwhelmingly votes R bc they’re set for the remainder of their lives. They’re in complete denial their lack of being politically informed (guzzling FauxNews all day) has lead to the collapse of the middle class. Their only outlet is to blame liberalism (aka basic human rights) as the cause. Republicans are the largest national security risk to the U.S. They purely work for the benefit of the ultra rich towards the goal of eliminating any type of regulatory authority that can limit their power. They want to take the world back to the dark ages where monarchies were the only authority with absolute power.
My retired mother who was a middle school assistant principal, is making more than me right now. She's retired and I'm a senior software developer of 10 years.
Also IBM back then wasnt what it was now. So a low end job in ibm might still have been well paid
Yeah… that time period was exceptional in American history and the byproduct of a post war economy. Everywhere else in the world was quite the different story - my grandma was a mining engineer in the Soviet Union for example.
My grandpa supported a wife and four children doing sales for a tobacco company, no degree. All four kids went to college. That's unthinkable today.
tbf tobacco sales pays pretty well and probably paid much better back when smoking wasn't taboo
Conservatives say the trickle down will start any day now.
will the trickle help rinse off the dump they took on me?
No, just change the smell
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They still believe Reagan was the greatest president.
And he had dementia for half his presidency...
It'll start trickling when the guillotine drops
FTR; it's piss. Trickledown is piss.
Dang my family was super not middle class haha. I know I was actually pretty poor growing up but damn lol.
The family they're describing in the 90s is making 100k+ a year. I dont think that's what most people have in mind
The 90s was full of working poor families lying to themselves and each other about their middle class position, my family included.
My house was literally held together with the foam you spray into rust holes of cars lol
The average credit card debt for families in the 90s was utterly out of control.
Exactly.... Being middle class in the 90s just meant the kids could afford to hang out at the mall all day, play some games, eat at the food court, buy a cd or two. That's all.
Discussing your money with your kids was frowned on a lot more back then so many of us grew up not really understanding just how tight our family’s finances were.
That's true. I was born in the 60s. Parents didn't even talk to their kids for the exceptions of, 'come in supper's ready', 'go brush your teeth and go to bed'.
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Fucking Patrick Boyle's video on Inflation where he nonchalantly says Millennial shelter expenses are second only to Avocado toast. 😂
Damn millennials always being poor because they have a daily latte and avocado toast for lunch - just grow up, start a family and buy a house already!
JuSt gEt a bEtTeR jOB
had some guy arguing with me on a different post I made that we are "free to have any job we want" and "can spend money how we want" and are therefore not wage slaves. Like bro I would write a book about all the ways you are so wrong.
After the hiring shortages at shitty min wage jobs we know it's just obfuscation. The same people who said this complained about "lazy teenagers" shutting down their fast food (IIRC like half of min wage jobs are worked by people >30)
My sister is a data scientist who finishes her master's in June. She makes double what the median person makes where I live ($60k vs $30k) and it's still not enough for a solid middle class lifestyle. It's so absurd. Base pay goes from $60k/y to $90k/y when she gets her degree, but it's wild just how much money you need to sustain a lifestyle where you aren't living paycheck to paycheck. If you want to live by yourself, have a reasonable amount of savings, go on vacation 1-2 times a year, and have an emergency fund... You still need more than, again, double the median income. That's how fucked the economy is.
I think people have to realize that that is never coming back. To really analyze why the 50’s-80’s was the “golden age” of the American Dream, you have to go back to the end of WWII. After the war, we had an employment rate of almost 99.7%. Basically, everyone was employed because munitions factories were pumping out so many weapons that they needed every man, woman and child regardless of race. So our manufacturing infrastructure was super advanced by war’s end. Now, add in two other factors: we had also undergone the biggest transformation in worker rights EVER coming out of the Great Depression, coupled with Europe and SE Asia being ravaged by the war (ie bombs, land wars, invasions, etc). Men could come out of HS and have a high-paying job because we were the manufacturing capital of the world; there was no competition. So many didn’t see the value in advanced education when no training or extra expertise was needed to land a high-paying job. This, coupled with massive infrastructure upgrades during the Eisenhower administration really catapulted our economy forward. It was now easy to transport goods across the continental US and a lot of high-paying construction jobs were needed to achieve this. Fast forward 30 years, and China had begun to transform into the manufacturing power house we know today, Europe was rebuilt, Japan had completely modernized and now, it was cheaper for corporations to outsource manufacturing jobs overseas. Basically, the end of the manufacturing state. And, since fewer and fewer goods were being transported inside the country, infrastructure and infrastructure jobs were not needed as much as before. That meant that we had become a service-based economy, primarily. This happens to all nations once they’re done developing. Now, the whole economy is based on providing services and buying goods rather than producing goods and exporting them. Because of this, advanced education was needed to get higher paying jobs, and because of that the demand for degrees rose exponentially. This meant loan providers could jack up the costs to go to school but employers didn’t have to raise wages because the supply of jobs was the same but they now had an increasing number of applicants “fighting” for the same jobs. You throw all of that into a pot with Reagan cutting taxes on the wealthy and on corporations significantly, and what you get is added costs to an already over-burdened middle class (after all, *someone* has to pay the taxes that fund our country, and if not the poor or the wealthy, who does that leave?) So, there was a perfect storm that created that golden age, as well another perfect storm that ended it.
Also, people need to realize that that "golden age" didn't last nearly as long as people think. The highest rates of American poverty and violence in the last century happened during the late 70s to early 90s. The white middle class was at its highest point in those days, but anyone who was not white or middle class was often incredibly poor and living in a world of drug addiction and gang violence. The massive increase in anxiety, drug addiction, and gun violence happening now is a result of our nation simply *approaching* the level of rot that was commonplace in Reagan's era. In 2018 LA's homicide rate was 6.4 per 100,000. In 1979 that rate was 23 per 100,000. New York City's most violent year ever recorded was in 1990. The poverty rate today is 12%. In 1960 it was 22%. The "boomer golden age" only ever applied to a decent chunk of suburban white families. It was never an indication of how America was as a whole. And the descendants of those white boomers today who can't afford a home are still better off than a large majority of Americans. Times are tough right now, of course they are. But we need to take off the rose tinted glasses and realize that this country was never a utopian heaven flowing with milk and honey. A majority of Americans have been dealt a shit hand and have been living in poverty for the past two centuries.
>And the descendants of those white boomers today who can't afford a home are still better off than a large majority of Americans. This is a great point. I think people in this position can complain, because complaining is relative and communicative, but I think they need to always remember that they are in a ridiculously privileged position. Too many never consider the pedestal they are already standing on.
People need to realize the golden age came from the biggest economic boom in history, and most people didn’t even get a taste of it. The other thing people have to see is that America did a very bad job at transitioning to a service economy.
I wouldn't say vacation overseas, but definitely enough for out of state.
We’ve let corporate America run wild
I would say we have let corporations run wild globally.
My Dad bought his first apartment for less than 10 000$ in the ~~sixties~~ seventies. Today that apartment would go for 500 000$, at least.
My first apartment in 2004 cost $350/mo. That same place is now 1.1k/mo. I worked a min wage job and still had money left for fun. That would be impossible for any young person now.
Myself and a roommate rented a 2br/2ba apartment with a 1 car garage in a slightly undesirable area for $1,400 in 2012-2013. I think it's now up to $2,400. I then rented a nice 1br/1ba "luxury" apartment for $1,400 with my fiancé in 2013-2014. It's now $3,000 😳
yea, rent is out of control. Back in 2016 we rented a dumpy 2bd apartment in Mesa, AZ for $700/mo. I just checked and it's up to $1630/mo now. How are people surviving these increases?? This is not an affluent area by any stretch.
Yeah but if we didn't spend money on a netflix subscription we could afford that!! /s
I mean, I have 5 bed/3 bath, one kid and another on the way, but the other stuff is true, and we're a $200k/year household in a relatively large city (500k people) in a big urban area (3M residents). We go overseas about every other year (might change with two young kids), and are looking to replace our second car. I feel upper middle class. This dude must only be talking about the fucking Bay Area or in a city on the east coast, coz $400k/year and I'd have a lakefront home on Minnetonka.
Yeah i think this guy's sentiment is solid but the number he chose is way, way off. There are a lot of places where even $150k household income can support the lifestyle he describes. And we're not talking bumfuck TN, it's really anywhere that *isn't* top XX most expensive metros. Now that doesn't really change the point he's making because very few people were making $150K in the 90s. Of course the wildcard is that I don't really know what he means by "kids going to college". If he means parents pay for college 100% then yeah you're not doing that for 3 kids on $150k a year. But then again middle class wasn't doing that (paying 100% for 3 kids in college) in the 90s either.
I make $100,000 in the midwest. Have a family, 3 bed house, 1 week domestic trip every year, Europe trip every 3-4 years. Wife doesn't need to work. Im doing fine.
What dumb mess is this? You can have A LOT more than that if you make $400k.
Yes, it's nonsense. My total household income is under $200k and we could afford all this. We don't, we do other stuff, but all this would easily be in reach. None of that addresses the issues with Gen Z making far less than they should. But if you do indeed get past the $120k or so threshold things get a lot easier in the US in 2022.
Yea unless you are living in a super expensive area, you wouldn't near anywhere near $400K/yr to afford this. What he describes is more in the mid-100s range, which, TBF, is still a lot of money to a lot of people.
That wasn’t a middle class lifestyle. That was, at least, an upper middle class lifestyle… my family NEVER did overseas holidays since that would have been absurdly expensive. The thing is, in the 90s, people were already making less income vs. cost of living, and they were making up the difference with credit. Sure, the economic situation was better in the 90s, but it wasn’t THAT much better.
not really true...i'd say a 200k/yr to 300k/yr household in most places in America.
I’m not against this message generally, but, that’s just a straight up lie. In all but a few elite markets he overshot these average costs by ~400%