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The income for Americans, except for the rich CEOs has been stagnant since the 70s. Believe it or not, although the US is the biggest economy, the GINI is pretty much "third world". The income gap is terribly huge. Japan, Korea, Hongkong and Singapore have lower income inequality and lower % of poor people. The US is also NOT in the top 10 for the most open economies. Singapore and Hongkong beat the US to that.
CEOs who make bad decisions and end up crashing the economies still get millions of dollars, yet wage for ordinary workers never caught up with the inflation.
Most jobs available are actually retail and fastfood...yknow those jobs that have high turnover rate, so there is really lots of distortion. In addition, many decent-paying manufacturing and service jobs (call center) have been shipped overseas over the past 20 years. It also does not help that many people who should be retiring aren't retiring. Can't blame them given the situation of the economy, inflation, wages, and cost of living.
However, there are job prospective overseas for Americans ESPECIALLY if you are white... take TESOL certificate and teach English in either China, Korea, or Japan. While most salary won't equate to US wages, you are gonna save quite a lot since housing is partly covered by your employer, they have excellent transportation in those countries so no need for get a loan for a car, and they have national health care system (kind of like Canada where everyone pays the same amount and are entitled to the same health benefits) - so no overpriced meds, hospital bills, doctor bills and insurance premiums.
In 1959 when I joined IBM I was offered only 12,500 a year. 30,000 is a fortune compared to that and could have afforded a wealthy lifestyle.
When I retired in 1999 I was making 250,000. The wage growth is there. You just have to stay adamant in your career.
$12,500 in 1959 was a wealthy lifestyle, forget $30,000!
In 1959 (according to What Happened in 1959 inc. Pop Culture, Prices and Events)
Average Cost of new house $12,400.00 (equivalent today $100,749.78)
Average Yearly Wages $5,010.00 ($40,706.16)
Cost of a gallon of Gas 25 cents ($2.03)
Average Cost of a new car $2,200.00 ($17,874.96)
In 2013 (from same site)
Average Cost of New House $262,260.00
Average Yearly Wages $40,925.00
Cost of a gallon of Gas $3.52
Plus keep in mind that the entry level job at IBM in 1959 likely did not even require a bachelor's degree (and we're not even talking about how much the cost of college has increased more than inflation). Today, that job likely pays less and requires more.
The income for Americans, except for the rich CEOs has been stagnant since the 70s.
I always find it very disheartening that, even though it's widely known that wages have been stagnant, there's so much opposition for the working class getting minimum wage increases. However, there's much less passion when it comes to calling out CEOs slashing your job benefits just to further line their pockets.
I always find it very disheartening that, even though it's widely known that wages have been stagnant, there's so much opposition for the working class getting minimum wage increases. However, there's much less passion when it comes to calling out CEOs slashing your job benefits just to further line their pockets.
70s deregulation. PACs
Just think of the CEOs in GM, Toyota USA, and those accounting firms who still earned huge bucks even if they hid the defects of their products and never recalled it until the government noticed the increasing deaths due to malfunction of their vehicles, the accounting scandals, etc...
GM in fact got of so lightly because they were supposedly bankrupt in 2009.
DB Cooper,
It's not like that anymore. Companies don't value human beings anymore, loyalty means nothing, only the bottom line.
It's a whole different world now, a global business world.
You get paid for what you know, not what you do.
You are competing for jobs from the entire global community, so if someone in India will take 30K less,
for the job that you want, they will hire in India instead.
Get it?
That is the problem.
They will keep you til they can pay someone cheaper to do the same job, then they lay you off.
That is what the job market is like now.
No more getting a job with a good company and staying for 30 years, unless you happen
to know a hands on job, PHYSCIALLY having to do the job in the USA.
Like auto mechanic, maintaince, some job that you have to hire here in US.
It's a global economy now, and the young people know this, and the entire work life has
changed drastically.
I'm presuming I'm older then you but you are actually correct, todays job market is very competitive, college costs have gone very high, and unless you come from a wealthy family then you will have to rely on loans to pay for college until you've accumulated so much debt you'll never get out of it, only other option is military service with GI Bill benefits.
DB is also right however because back in his day and even in mine you didn't always need a degree to be successful, you could work your way up from the bottom, they had real apprenticeship programs, college was affordable.
My wife has a degree, I'm ex-military and went to tech school for mechanics, she works in pharmaceutical, I work for VW/Audi/Porsche, we sell and service all 3 brands.
If you are not college material that's ok, but at least go learn a skilled trade where you can earn at least earn 25-30 bucks an hour.
I always find it very disheartening that, even though it's widely known that wages have been stagnant, there's so much opposition for the working class getting minimum wage increases. However, there's much less passion when it comes to calling out CEOs slashing your job benefits just to further line their pockets.
Because increasing minimum wage is socialism. Those CEOs work harder than the burger flippers. They deserve 800x more than the regular employees.
OP is out of touch. Like waaaaaaaaay out of touch. In 1959, all you needed was a high school degree. Now, you're just doing clerical work with a Bachelor's degree. Why do you think all these for-profit colleges showed up in the last decade?
Exactly. OP was laying it on pretty thick but people still took him seriously.
It's called a parody, people!
That led back to my post for some reason. Sorry, I guess the OP's post did not read as sarcasm to me, since I feel like many of my deficits are indeed in the "soft skills" department, and this feels like a pretty bad set of situations.
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