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I think the country moved into a stealth depression/recession after about 1970. The only thing propping up our "prosperity" since then has been the media and politicians.
-A lot of these things, food stamps, that's a modern term for a food line or the soup lines of the 30's. Poverty has moved indoors away from public viewing. In schools (government run schools) they have history books that show kids about the depression of the 30's and FDR. And all these terrible black and white images. But they do not show modern day poverty. They don't make the connection between those days and now. Those were the "old days".
Depressions don't happen anymore, do they? That's what I was taught in school, as recently as the 90's. The teachers I had then, I think they really believed depressions didn't happen anymore. We "solved them". Whatever that means. The economic elite have also washed kids minds and sanitized history books to make them cleaner.
-The employment numbers since the 70's are shams. The media should just admit...we're like europe (and their 14% unemployment). And we've been like europe for a long time. The difference being, they count everyone and we play games and try to avoid counting everyone. We have to break it up into 14 million pieces.
-There's also a nickeling and diming phenomenon since then. It has not been covered fully by the elite media. $35 overdraft charges, etc. Outrageous strong arm tactics by the banks. The banks use to friendly, in the 50's or 60's say. They were not making billions in fees then. Nickeling and diming has taken a good chunk out of the lower and middle classes in this country.
But some of the middle classes decline is really their own fault. I look at my parents and their parents. They had *decades*. A lot of them who are behind, or in trouble, they never grew out of the 50's, never thought ahead, saved very little if any in their prime earning years (through the 80's and 90's). The economic elite does not keep them listening to 50's music.
I think some have also postponed retirement to enjoy the technology and benefits of 90's and 00 society. This is not covered in the media. I think there's some degree of envy, jealousy with todays youth and what they have, ipods, internet, texting.
-You also have horrendous education in school. Probably the worst schooling in the industrialized world. Combine that with the most tenacious banks, lenders, advertisers in the world (on top of lack of responsibility that pervades this country), and that's how you get 25% of current mortgages underwater.
-Homeownership became a mantra after this country really peaked in the 70's and 80's. Many of the people with underwater mortgages shouldn't have been buying homes in the first place. That's not really the economic elites fault. People think they should be buying homes based on our false prosperity. I think a lot of tension in this country would be released if we just admit....not everyone should be buying a home. Maybe that should have been a part of Obama's change. Renting is ok.
I think homeownership has changed radically from it's stability in the 50's to 80's. People don't have the same job security, or income security to support home buying the way they did then. They don't have the same safeguards (like 20% down, or payments in line with income). You should not be using the old model if your situation now is different.
Gen Y for example probably got the worst education/the most underprepared education of anyone in the 20th century (pathetically weak skills in finance or econ). And they met these shark bankers, and lenders in 02-06 who convinced them they should buy a home at any cost. If they had been better prepared, a lot of the housing bubble wouldn't have happened.
Are you saying that were are drowning consumer propaganda to buy, buy, buy?
Are you saying that this same propaganda aggrandized being rich beyond reason?
Are you saying that people today have little to no moral fiber?
Are you saying that America is headed down the same corrupt road that Rome and every other advance peoples have followed to extinction?
Somewhat. I'm not going so far as many to stand around on a street corner with a "The END is now sign" around my neck though.
I know plenty of people that are simple, frugal folks that go about their business. History is littered with fools, the bible even makes reference to financial irresponsibility and I've read accounts of wealthy roman playoffs blowing their inheritance and turning to the arena to try to make a fast buck.
A lot of kids today are learning some hard lessons about frugality vicariously.
My grandparents lived through both world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, etc., lived when we went from the horse and buggy days, gas lighting days, to seeing computers and modern gizmos and such. Yet, they knew a lot and learned a lot about living frugally, and being prepared for bad times. They didn't spend lavishly, they had a very well stocked pantry to the point they could have lived a year or so off just stored food, they had a large garden, they had the option of wood heat if needed, etc. Most of all: they avoided credit. Used cash only.
I think people today are just going to learn some harsh lessons many of my grandparents' generation learned. Many people they knew bought into the credit, spend lavishly, etc., of the 1920's, and were destroyed by it. My grandparents didn't necessarily have it easy (raising 12 children during the Depression and WWII when my grandfather was off to war), but, they got by, and at the end of it still had a home and some land, even managed to buy a cabin on a lake after the war with saved cash. Others had nothing and had to start over from the beginning after losing everything.
I think a great problem is our schools and governments teaching kids to be absolutely irresponsible. It's been going on for decades and several generations of people all believe the lies.
What happened to saving 15 - 20 % of your pay? Below inflation interest rates is what happened. Banks paying 1% for deposits and charging 10+% for a secured and 20+% for an unsecured loan is another factor. The working class has become an endless cash cow for the top 1%.
Consumers paying $2.90 a gallon for fuel that costs >$0.25 a gallon to pump and refine is being on the wrong end of a monopoly. Governments bailing out financiers that should have known better is Corporatism at its worse. Outsourcing to avoid union workers is a simple rip off.
The middle class did not die of old age; it was killed by Ronnie Raygun's greedsters.
Screw opportunity, I prefer results. Everyone should have a good enough job so a single income household can raise a couple of children and provide a college education to the kids that want one. I wouldn’t mind if this requires a tax code that eliminated upper end salaries to 500k or so. I suggest a 10% financial property tax on real estate and financial property above twice the median to balance the budget.
What happened to saving 15 - 20 % of your pay? Below inflation interest rates is what happened. Banks paying 1% for deposits and charging 10+% for a secured and 20+% for an unsecured loan is another factor. The working class has become an endless cash cow for the top 1%.
Consumers paying $2.90 a gallon for fuel that costs >$0.25 a gallon to pump and refine is being on the wrong end of a monopoly. Governments bailing out financiers that should have known better is Corporatism at its worse. Outsourcing to avoid union workers is a simple rip off.
The middle class did not die of old age; it was killed by Ronnie Raygun's greedsters.
Screw opportunity, I prefer results. Everyone should have a good enough job so a single income household can raise a couple of children and provide a college education to the kids that want one. I wouldn’t mind if this requires a tax code that eliminated upper end salaries to 500k or so. I suggest a 10% financial property tax on real estate and financial property above twice the median to balance the budget.
I don't know, NAFTA did in a lot of people's jobs...
And property taxes are way to regressive, too many are struggling to keep their homes here as it is...
My grandparents lived through both world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, etc., lived when we went from the horse and buggy days, gas lighting days, to seeing computers and modern gizmos and such. Yet, they knew a lot and learned a lot about living frugally, and being prepared for bad times. They didn't spend lavishly, they had a very well stocked pantry to the point they could have lived a year or so off just stored food, they had a large garden, they had the option of wood heat if needed, etc. Most of all: they avoided credit. Used cash only.
I think people today are just going to learn some harsh lessons many of my grandparents' generation learned. Many people they knew bought into the credit, spend lavishly, etc., of the 1920's, and were destroyed by it. My grandparents didn't necessarily have it easy (raising 12 children during the Depression and WWII when my grandfather was off to war), but, they got by, and at the end of it still had a home and some land, even managed to buy a cabin on a lake after the war with saved cash. Others had nothing and had to start over from the beginning after losing everything.
I think a great problem is our schools and governments teaching kids to be absolutely irresponsible. It's been going on for decades and several generations of people all believe the lies.
Yes, History does have a way of repeating itself time and time again.
What happened to saving 15 - 20 % of your pay? Below inflation interest rates is what happened. Banks paying 1% for deposits and charging 10+% for a secured and 20+% for an unsecured loan is another factor. The working class has become an endless cash cow for the top 1%.
-How do people in other countries save so much money...like in japan or in china. I think the rest of the world saves responsibly, even though they may get low interest rates. It's not really the interest rates that affect whether a person saves.
Other factors that have led to the decline of the middle class.
-They handed their brain over to Suze Orman, Oprah, etc. Grandparents who lived frugally through the depression, or through the cold war, they were not letting psycho babble on tv dictate how they spend their money or how they live their lives.
I think there was a very subtle, almost invisible shift in the 90's. Life went from being family oriented and backyard oriented (with personal responsibilty) to Suze Orman, The Secret, Oprah's "experts" and all this junk. I think in the 1900 to 1950 era, people mostly got their information from friends, family, neighbors.
From the 70's onward, its been an idiot era. Idiots telling you what to buy, with no prosperity underneath it.
-With the banks charging 10% for secured loans or 20% for unsecured, I mostly blame the schools. They produce people that don't understand debt or money. If they understood debt or money, you wouldn't even have to think about some of these outrageous interest rates. The fact that so many people *have to* think about it, indicates a lack of understanding of debt or money. If you have to think about taking out a loan at 20 or 25%, the banks are running the schools.
-Since the 70's, people have not paid enough attention to family lineage, or their own family values......they're letting morons on tv tell them what to do. In the old days...grandparents raising 12 kids, they knew themselves and what they wanted. They knew their own values.
-Gas, and oil are scapgoats used by politicans. Gas was .25 cents in the 60's and now it's $2.50, but wages have also gone up a lot since then. I think nickeling and diming ($35 overdraft charges) has taken more money out of peoples pockets since the 70's and 80's, than gas or oil.
I dont keep up with all the laws, but I think some banks can charge 4 or 5 overdraft charges in a day!?!? Or they did.
I think "they" (govt, banks, media) have concocted a pressure scheme since the 70's. Also the pharmaceutical industry, they get you so pressurized and worked up,....that you almost have to make those overdraft charges. People would not be handing their money over so freely if they were truely in charge of their own lives. But "they" create jobless recession recoveries where you never get ahead, "they" create a low pay service economy where your bank balance always hovers near $0, "they" shorten your attention span on tv, "they fill your head with things you have to buy, "they" fill your head with anxiety and worry...and "that" produces buying 3 things in a day, and you don't have enough money to cover it, and you suddenly pay $145 for something that cost you $20. And "they" conveniently changed the laws, so the banks could do that.
-Also, predatory lending, check cashing places have exploded since the 70's and 80's. That's the economic elite taking advantage of an uneducated populace. They've taken an obscene amount of money out of peoples pockets. Invisible money, away from public viewing.
Again, goes back to schooling. If after 12 years of school, you don't understand 300 or 400% interest rates, the banks were running your mind in school. Grandparents from the 20's would not be buying junk made in China, and then pay obscene interest on it for years.
Again goes back to family lineage. People are trusting these moron schools to educate them, when they should be looking at what their own family has done, and what their family has previously learned. Kids have to trust what their (government) books tell them, and not what their own family has done or learned.
This is part two of the original thread story published today.........
""The war against working people should be understood to be a real war.... Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class.... And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don't want anybody else to know about it." -- Noam Chomsky"
(There is a reason we have so many immigrants from countries like China working high-paying technical jobs here in the states. We don't develop enough talent here on our own soil.)
Our public education systems have been in an intentional decline for almost 50 years. To understand the reasons why, and the consequences of the decline, read this article in The Atlantic:
"A college professor looks at the forgotten victims of our mediocre educational system--the potentially high achievers whose SAT scores have fallen, and who read less, understand less of what they read, and know less than the top students of a generation ago...
...While students in the bottom quartile have shown slow but steady improvement since the 1960s, average test scores have nonetheless gone down, primarily because of the performance of those in the top quartile. This "highest cohort of achievers," Rudman writes, has shown "the greatest declines across a variety of subjects as well as across age-level groups." Analysts have also found "a substantial drop among those children in the middle range of achievement," he continues, "but less loss and some modest gains at the lower levels." In other words, our brightest youngsters, those most likely to be headed for selective colleges, have suffered the most dramatic setbacks over the past two decades--a fact with grave implications for our ability to compete with other nations in the future." The Other Crisis in American Education - 91.11
For the particularly relevant sections that explain how and why this happened, scroll down to The Incubus of the Sixtiesand The Shock of College-Level Demands subsections.
That article was written nearly 20 years ago and sadly, our schools have gotten even worse. Both the SAT and the ACT (college entrance exams) have recentered their scoring scales since then to adjust for persistently declining scores. More recent scores on those tests are artificially inflated.
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