Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Mill towns and company towns are now overseas. I wouldn't say there's no working class. What do you call garbage men, construction workers building those new units, people working in restaurants or delivering take out, janitors, gas station and car wash attendants, meter readers, gardeners, big store stockers and cashiers, people working in barber shops, hair salons and nail salons, road crews, tree trimmers, toll takers, farmers, fisherman, all the people picking fruit and vegetables and working in slaughter houses and meat packing plants, truck drivers, etc. They are all around you. If they weren't our lives would be way less easy than they are.
It's going to get progressively harder for them unless there's some kind of relief or downward pressure put on housing prices. At my work it's getting harder to get people to take our jobs at current housing rates, even when we offer the max on the salary schedule. It's barely enough to get into an apartment, let alone a house which it MORE than covered just 5 years ago.
How many hours does one have to work today to cover the cash price of a home or a car vs 1980 still?
My thread is about buying power: getting the maximum goods, the maximum return on the ripe harvested fruits, for every gallon of sweat off your brow.
What can you get for your earned dollar? How much is your gallon of sweat worth today at the realtor's office or the car dealership?
cars these days are not the same as cars back in the 1980s,same goes with furniture,electronics,grocery.
what you make today commensurate with the above,you bought a PC for $375 which is more powerful than an ATari OR even an older ATT or IBM.which cost you $3000 in the late 1980s.
Same with your TV set. your micro wave oven,your fridge,your lawnmower,your house built in 2000s.
if one cannot afford todays car,tv,phone,etc,one does not have the marketable skills to earn good salary.
Say a person has been working for McDONALD for last 35 years,he cannot afford a car then,nor can he afford one now,same goes for people who mown lawn,clean houses,baby sit or stuff envelopes from home
How many hours does one have to work today to cover the cash price of a home or a car vs 1980 still?
My thread is about buying power: getting the maximum goods, the maximum return on the ripe harvested fruits, for every gallon of sweat off your brow.
What can you get for your earned dollar? How much is your gallon of sweat worth today at the realtor's office or the car dealership?
The issue with comparing an average salary to an average car or house is that all of them have changed in the last 50 years - an average job in 1971 is not the same as one in 2021 - hours, education and type of work have all changed and the average car is much nicer and reliable, the average house is bigger and has more convenience features.
Maybe a comparison of things that haven't changed such as a piece of fruit or the cost of a gallon of gas would be more appropriate. If nothing else, compare the average mechanics salary against the same exact house or cheapest compact car in each year.
Guess you live in a world where nobody is battling a serious disease, eh?.
Cancer forces 42% of patients to exhaust life savings in 2 years.. Two years after a cancer diagnosis, 42.4 percent of patients depleted their entire life's savings, according to a study published in The American Journal of Medicine.
THere's an amazing amount of hubris in this topic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
Plenty of reasons.
Health problems made it difficult or impossible to work and their life spiralled downward.
Toxic family member, spouse or child, brings everyone down. Or family member who gets sick or addicted. Again, spouse, child, or parent that you can't just jettison.
Some kind of accident that makes them disabled. E.g. a friend of mine from high school injured his eyes & became partially blind. He never recovered from that, hard to work jobs without being able to see right. Went into depression, that made things worse.
Health problems are the common theme in the people I know whose lives spiralled down. Good health, both mental and physical, is a precious gift.
Guess you both live in a world where no one can stay on topic - Go back and reread - no one was talking about health issues - we were talking about doing a good job and not succeeding "due to no fault" - that is different than health issue. Blaming health is deflecting anyway - that is making excuses - many succeed despite health issues.
This is the economics forum, not the health, employment or excuses forum - the discussion is economic impacts.
There is an amazing amount of people that can not stay on topic and want to chastise others for perceived slights that are not relevant.
It sounds like we are now forced to do more these days to get what we actually NEED to live vs what our parents had to do and our grandparents had to do to get what they NEEDED to live.
I don't NEED a bunch of convenience features in a house. The consumer market now is forcing things on consumers that they don't need so they have to work longer and harder to pay for them. It's forced slavery by advanced technology. A lot of this forced slavery by technology is implemented by government regulations and politics. Emissions controls were one of the first things forced on our vehicles driving the prices of cars up so we had to slave harder to acquire them. I don't have the option now to buy a new car or a new home with 1970's simplicity which would make me very happy to have today. We are forced to work more and devote more time, money and energy to college educations to pay for excess baggage we don't need whether we want the excess baggage or not. My DOD-employed father and UNION YES hard-hat grandfather with the limited education of a high-school diploma had enough earning power in skilled trades in the 1970's to provide everything their families needed to live and live happily in the California San Francisco Bay Area, mind you. Humans are now slaves to too much STUFF!!!!!!!!
We did not have credit cards in the 1980's even. Doctor, vet and dental bills were paid cash for.
Last edited by JohnPBailey; 07-08-2021 at 12:03 AM..
Guess you both live in a world where no one can stay on topic - Go back and reread - no one was talking about health issues - we were talking about doing a good job and not succeeding "due to no fault" - that is different than health issue. Blaming health is deflecting anyway - that is making excuses - many succeed despite health issues.
This is the economics forum, not the health, employment or excuses forum - the discussion is economic impacts.
There is an amazing amount of people that can not stay on topic and want to chastise others for perceived slights that are not relevant.
I would classify most health problems or accidents as out of people's control. Seems pretty callous to dismiss a health problem. It'd be as if a basketball coach yelled at Derrick Rose for not being MVP again. Without his injuries he probably would have been. But he can't..his knees got effed up. He couldn't be MVP caliber again no matter how hard he worked, how much he rehabbed. It's impressive he's still playing in the NBA at all.
You're basically arguing that people without problems don't have problems. Okay fine, I agree with that. All things being equal, a healthy person physically and mentally, with no encumbrances or setbacks, and of average or higher than average intelligence, really doesn't have much excuse to not be financially independent at least at a basic level.
The reason he or she wouldn't be, IS some kind of setback such as a health problem.
However, some bad luck could quite possibly be the reason they don't reach their full potential. Some people get breaks, some don't, even if they are of equal capability. It would not be an excuse for poverty or failure, but the difference between average, good, and great.
A big problem I notice on here is that people desparage others, or in some cases beat themselves up, for being within the median range and not in the top 1-10%.
It sounds like we are now forced to do more these days to get what we actually NEED to live vs what our parents had to do and our grandparents had to do to get what they NEEDED to live.
I don't NEED a bunch of convenience features in a house. The consumer market now is forcing things on consumers that they don't need so they have to work longer and harder to pay for them. It's forced slavery by advanced technology. A lot of this forced slavery by technology is implemented by government regulations and politics. Emissions controls were one of the first things forced on our vehicles driving the prices of cars up so we had to slave harder to acquire them. I don't have the option now to buy a new car or a new home with 1970's simplicity which would make me very happy to have today. We are forced to work more and devote more time, money and energy to college educations to pay for excess baggage we don't need whether we want the excess baggage or not. My DOD-employed father and UNION YES hard-hat grandfather with the limited education of a high-school diploma had enough earning power in skilled trades in the 1970's to provide everything their families needed to live and live happily in the California San Francisco Bay Area, mind you. Humans are now slaves to too much STUFF!!!!!!!!
We did not have credit cards in the 1980's even. Doctor, vet and dental bills were paid cash for.
If you go by Maslow's hierarchy of needs - you could argue that everything is a need, just different levels of need.
If we cut it off at physiological and safety needs - first 2 of the 5 levels of needs - that may make it easier for discussion. Physiological needs are defined as Air, Water, Food, Sex, Sleep, Health, Clothes. & Shelter. Safety needs are defined as Personal security, Emotional security, Financial security, & Well-being. Shelter could be provided in the form of a tent but that would not provide personal or financial security. You can have sex without emotional security. Ramen may provide substance but not well being. If go by these "needs" - the what would not materially change but the how and how much may. The need might be for a nicer house or a higher degree to get to the same satisfaction of needs.
As far as Credit cards, they certainly were available and used extensively in the 70s and 80s - I got my first credit card in 1978.
I would classify most health problems or accidents as out of people's control. Seems pretty callous to dismiss a health problem. It'd be as if a basketball coach yelled at Derrick Rose for not being MVP again. Without his injuries he probably would have been. But he can't..his knees got effed up. He couldn't be MVP caliber again no matter how hard he worked, how much he rehabbed. It's impressive he's still playing in the NBA at all.
You're basically arguing that people without problems don't have problems. Okay fine, I agree with that. All things being equal, a healthy person physically and mentally, with no encumbrances or setbacks, and of average or higher than average intelligence, really doesn't have much excuse to not be financially independent at least at a basic level.
The reason he or she wouldn't be, IS some kind of setback such as a health problem.
However, some bad luck could quite possibly be the reason they don't reach their full potential. Some people get breaks, some don't, even if they are of equal capability. It would not be an excuse for poverty or failure, but the difference between average, good, and great.
A big problem I notice on here is that people desparage others, or in some cases beat themselves up, for being within the median range and not in the top 1-10%.
The flip side of the coin is that a lot of people are reluctant to admit that the reason they aren’t doing as well as they would like financially is partly because of the poor choices they made at various points in their lives.
I knew many people, for example, who didn’t believe in studying hard in school or even doing homework. They just wanted to take it easy, have fun and do random stuff while they were young and in their formative years. I used to wonder what they thought their life trajectory would look like with that mindset and philosophy.
The flip side of the coin is that a lot of people are reluctant to admit that the reason they aren’t doing as well as they would like financially is partly because of the poor choices they made at various points in their lives.
I knew many people, for example, who didn’t believe in studying hard in school or even doing homework. They just wanted to take it easy, have fun and do random stuff while they were young and in their formative years. I used to wonder what they thought their life trajectory would look like with that mindset and philosophy.
Sometimes "choices" are not what people consider choices, and it's hard to come to grips with that. It's not so simple as saying "I choose to be rich" at age 17 or something. That may be too late actually.
In fact research I've seen shows that it's the middle school period, particularly 8th grade or age ~14, that determines a lot of life success. At least, college acceptance and graduation is pretty clearly coordinated to how well the student did in 8th grade. So that period is very important at least to the extent things like college determine life outcomes.
I mean, I wasn't thinking very seriously about anything at age 14. So think about all the environmental factors behind whether a student in middle school does well or not, and those "choices" are not choices like choosing which Netflix show you're going to watch. You are the accumulation of the lego blocks that built you, you probably didn't realize at the time you (or someone else like your parents, or environmental factors like your neighborhood), "chose" a lot of those blocks. You can adjust the later ones but at that point a lot of the structire is built.
This is not to say that people can't adapt, turn it all around, but it's harder and they'll never catch up to the people with that head start although they can get far beyond those that don't try.
Last edited by redguard57; 07-08-2021 at 07:47 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
