News: "A Middle-Class Stronghold’s Uncertain Future" (company, interest, money)

[GraniteStater]

A Middle-Class Stronghold

[MLSFan]

“My parents worked in manufacturing all their lives, and back in the day, they made a lot more,” he told me. “But we’re still kind of stuck in the middle like everybody else.”

I get his feelings, but I wonder the "when" he is talking about when he refers to his parents.

Is he comparing his pay to what his parents were when they stopped working? I mean, he is 29, if he started right out of high school at 18, it gives him 10 years of experience vs decades for parents.

Or comparing his "current" life to what his parents had when they were 29? I just think it's odd that people "reminiscence" about the good old days while forgetting the bad times too. Good old days - RationalWiki

In Sheboygan, middle-class median income fell 17 percent

To things like this, I'm more like well, yeah... because younger people tend to make less than older people. And there's more younger workers today than in the past. So it means the median income will come down

and yes, I also saw this

Bastasic started working at Kohler 36 years ago, and though he had just a high school diploma, he made $7.25 an hour, which works out to roughly $21 an hour in today’s dollars.

and to that, I can say that I "started" out above $21/hr... If someone is going to say well, I'm not making the "average" starter wage, but the story isn't claiming this Bastasic was "average" either. We have no idea if he was being paid more or equal or less than his peers. Them throwing in the "only" has a high school diploma is an attempt to make him sound less educated when he was "on par" for education during that time period? And by that standard, with half the population now with a college degree, I'm "on par" for education as well...

[Vision67]

Ross Perot's "Giant Sucking Sound" was real.

If you are a manufacturing company and your competitors move to a lower cost area and you cannot cut your costs enough to be competitive, you will become extinct.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkgx1C_S6ls

[J.Thomas]

So sad for them

[lovecrowds]

I lived in Ogden, Utah which has an ultra-big middle-class compared to most metropolitan areas.

I think the middle-class decline is overstated by the coastal media. The coastal areas middle-class is evaporating but it certainly isn't in middle-America.

I love the articles that are negative towards fly-over country when these elite, coastal cities where the magazines are published have a tiny middle-class at best that is mainly government workers.

One thing about middle-America is that it is very, very married.

The average wage according to Bureau of Labor statistics is $41,000 in the Ogden Metro Area which is nothing for a coastal city. But Ogden is a very married metropolitan with a high-amount of dual-income earning households.

I looked it up and Sheboygan has a median wage of $42,000 in it's metropolitan area and is mainly married couples that both work.

I just looked it at the median home price in Sheboygan and it's $125,000 which is with a median wage per job at $42,000 is very reasonable.

Sheboygan homes sales hit pre-recession level

One can get a decent family-sized house for less then $150,000 in their choice of housing style.

It is interesting the setup of Metro Ogden as the Federal Government is a huge employer in the area, they also a huge state university.

There was also a huge manufacturing and call-center sector in the Metropolitan Area.

I personally worked in a call-center a few years ago there and the pay was $15 an hour and there was also over-time available most of the time.

In fact most of the lower wage employers seem to have unlimited hours.

There is a 9 bedroom mansion for sale for in the city for $160,000 and a 6,500 square foot mansion for $300,000.

If one meets LDS standards, they can rent a room in a house for $200-$300, especially if they are in their 20s.

Brand-new apartments were renting for $549 with everything included.

I will gladly take the economic structure of fly-over country over the culture of the coasts which is a few elites and a massive class feeding for the few crumbs that are left.