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Local business already pays high taxes in Austin. Local business doesn't expect individual security. Local business does expect crime management. Having local business call the police after being hit time after time is not crime management. Crime management involves strategic identification and eradication of endemic crime sources. Safety is a core service of any community. Without safety, local businesses and jobs go away.
The middle class went to Walmart for their kids clothes b/c the clothes on Main Street became too d*** expensive. A pair of jeans on Main Street (where my generation shopped) is at least 10% or 20% more than a pair of jeans at Walmart. Why? Because Main Street rents went up out of sight and it's cheaper to warehouse stuff in a mall. A middle class paycheck just doesn't go so far anymore, in case some haven't heard. In going to Walmart, they save what they have to. The Main Street stores now cater to the folks with bigger bucks (I'd guess you'd call this the upper classes). They deserve the better stuff of course and don't have to stoop to Walmart.
And most of that was due to higher taxes and insurance.
Lookig at teh numbers od people eating out by incrase in nmber of resturants;level of cars and numbers; non-essentail things bought;I would say that midddle class has changed alot since say the 50's. That is why I really don't think it really means much anymore to say middle class.
This is a very good point that most Americans are in extreme denial about. Almost as bad as saying people that make over $250K a year somehow are "struggling". LMAO!
My grandparents were middle class. They hardly ever bought new clothes. Ate out only on special occassions. Always bought semi used cars of if they bought a new car hung on to it for most of their life. They also never had granite countertops, stainless steel sinks and appliances, and cloth seats in their vehicles worked fine.
But on the flip side my grandfather retired at 55 on a full pension from Monsanto with a $50K purse to spend on healthcare needs. My grandmother never had to work. They had an inground swimming pool and put three kids through 4 year universities.
The problem is our REAL quality of life has been exchanged for consumerism. The bottomline is Americans have become exponentially more productive since our grandparents yet somehow that productivity has been sucked off by government and corporations and our quality of life is not even close to what generations before us experienced. Americans have been lied to and they keep spoonfeeding themselves more of the same lies and deception. I hear it every day...........free market......capitalism......etc. LMAO! We haven't had a free market or capitalism in America since.............well probably never. But we've all been brainwashed into believing the current status quo is capitalism at its best. It's not. We've had state corporatism bordering on fascism where government is in bed with the corporation and vice versa.
Local business already pays high taxes in Austin. Local business doesn't expect individual security. Local business does expect crime management. Having local business call the police after being hit time after time is not crime management. Crime management involves strategic identification and eradication of endemic crime sources. Safety is a core service of any community. Without safety, local businesses and jobs go away.
For your police woes you can blame BJ Bill for that.
Then obviously city-government has over-stepped its authority and abrogated its responsibilities.
The whole purpose of township, village or city government is to coordinate the provision of certain services, "The Seven"
1) first and foremost security (police)
2) safety (fire and ambulance)
3) water (clean water that doesn't look, smell or taste like something that came out of a rice paddy in South Vietnam)
4) sewage disposal
5) garbage collection
6) basic infrastructure maintenance and repair
7) Green Space
When a city can provide that 100% perfectly 100% of the time, then, assuming there is a surplus of tax money and assuming the voters allow it, the city can do stupid stuff like hand out condoms and needles and open "homeless" shelters and build sports stadiums and venues and pretend they actually know something about the Arts.
For every city that is a failure, you can look and see where they refused to provide "The Seven" and people and businesses fled which destroyed the tax base and left them in even worse shape. Detroit is a prime example.
This is a very good point that most Americans are in extreme denial about. Almost as bad as saying people that make over $250K a year somehow are "struggling". LMAO!
My grandparents were middle class. They hardly ever bought new clothes. Ate out only on special occassions. Always bought semi used cars of if they bought a new car hung on to it for most of their life. They also never had granite countertops, stainless steel sinks and appliances, and cloth seats in their vehicles worked fine.
But on the flip side my grandfather retired at 55 on a full pension from Monsanto with a $50K purse to spend on healthcare needs. My grandmother never had to work. They had an inground swimming pool and put three kids through 4 year universities.
The problem is our REAL quality of life has been exchanged for consumerism. The bottomline is Americans have become exponentially more productive since our grandparents yet somehow that productivity has been sucked off by government and corporations and our quality of life is not even close to what generations before us experienced. Americans have been lied to and they keep spoonfeeding themselves more of the same lies and deception. I hear it every day...........free market......capitalism......etc. LMAO! We haven't had a free market or capitalism in America since.............well probably never. But we've all been brainwashed into believing the current status quo is capitalism at its best. It's not. We've had state corporatism bordering on fascism where government is in bed with the corporation and vice versa.
My parents had a two bedroom, one bath bungalo and my dad paid cash for his cars. One at a time. My mom never worked. We went out to dinner maybe once a week. I had new clothes but didn't get them monthly. My mom had thoughts on acceptable fashion and most of what kids wear now would have been not part of them.
We didn't feel poor but then we didn't feel rich either. We had a nice tv and raido (my mom always listened to music). We went on vacation once a year. I was secure. I didn't grow up demanding everything my friends had and wasn't afraid we'd run out of food or lose the house.
To me that was middle class. When the mega mansions appeared and people "needed" three cars and a boat and had credit cards to get all the "stuff" it seemed odd to me. Myself and my ex had a house built in 1952 about the size of the one I grew up in, and did pretty much the same. But by todays standards we were not "really" middle class.
My guess is that lofty standard will be changing. We may "redefine" middle class as part of the 40 percent who don't live paycheck to paycheck. We may define the sixty percent who do with new subcatagories of poor.
Pretty sad that we let this happen. But everyone loves the idea of something for nothing and visible affermation of security. But the only *real* one is when if NO money comes in you still have food and a place to live for at least a little while. People put much worth on their boys, but have discovered that boat or other fun toys are not worth much now that they need the money back.
I wouldn't be surprised if people do buy stuff for furture liquidation just in case, but things which will actually hold a value.
There was a story by Philop Wylie called LA2017, which was produced by CBS as an episode of Name of the Game in the 60's. It was about ecological catastrophy, but the mechanism was corporate government. When the "offical" one collapsed, the Corporations became what they already were. People had value according to their value to the bottom line. Kinda bad when you depend on them for food and air and life....
"Middle class American workers now find themselves in direct competition for jobs with the cheapest labor on the other side of the globe."
In my OP this one sentence tells the tale of why America's middle class is disappearing. The NAFTA & GATT treaties moved American jobs offshore for the profit of the boardroom since America now makes very little of what we consume down to the most basic level.
If America has no manufacturing community where are the jobs to pay the wages to buy the stuff that made up the middle class?? You and I compete with some poor slob in another country that is now manufacturing what we used to.
It's class warfare at the most basic level and Joe Average can't fight for his job since it's now 10,000 miles away. The real question is...how much humanity can we give away just for the sake of profit for the few???
A look at history will show that when the rich don't share with the population the population will rebel......and take...their fair share. When/how will that happen in America???
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