The Middle Class Is Hurting,But Who's Middle Class? (unemployment rate, drugs, cost)

[HappyTexan]

Originally Posted by Katiana

How elitist! Back in the heyday of the steel mills, many steelworkers made more than my father, who was an engineer in the steel industry. My father-in-law was a union painter; he did pretty well. He put three kids through college, had a great retirement during which he lived to age 97, and had money left over when he died.

That's not elitist at all. I grew up in a blue collar working class family.
I still live that way today and able to save 50% of my take home salary.
Myself and my brothers/sisters are the first generation in my family to get college degrees.

You definitely took my post the wrong way.
How many blue collar familes back then had boats, took extravagant vacations and bought new cars and home every 5-6 years ?
Not many. Somewhere along the way they became "middle class".

Debt can make anyone a temporary millionaire..but eventually the bill has to be paid.

[ckhthankgod]

Keep in mind that the median household income is $53,046 for the whole country. So, that could be used as some sort of baseline.

U.S. Median Household Income State Rank Based on ACS 2008-2012 data*

New York State Income and Careers - USA.comâ„¢

[HappyTexan]

People on welfare and food stamps are called the "struggling middle class".

[Hemlock140]

There are many blue collar workers solidly in the middle class, longshoremen make 100k, and the electricians, plumbers, and other skilled craftsmen working on all of the high rise apartments in Seattle are not much below that. Even the laborers there are taking the bus from homes in Issaquah, where homes average $525, rent $2030 for 2 bedrooms. It doesn't depend on where you live, the income to be middle class varies by living cost, but you are middle class if you can afford a comfortable home, (rent or buy) a decent car, (new or used) have health insurance without subsidies, and can put something into savings each month. At the upper end, I would differentiate upper class by their ability to live off of investments, managing money rather than depending on a paycheck. The typical multi-million dollar CEO gets a check but doesn't need it.

[ckhthankgod]

Clip Syndicate Video: Money in Your Pocket Minute: 10-9-17

[petch751]

Originally Posted by Pandamonium

The baseline is there. The people that are doing the bitchin' are more than likely, by that 15 year old baseline, mid-upper working class. But, hey you can throw a beans and wiener sob story out there if you need to.

The people doing the "bitchin" as you say, are more than likely people who worked hard to get where they are and are now stuck subsidizing those who didn't work hard or made poor life decisions.

And by hard I mean people who gave up years of income to become educated, people who made good decisions and yet the people who didn't don't want to lie in the bed they made and expect everyone else to subsidize them.

[petch751]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan View Post
Give them unlimited debt (2005 timeframe) and they act and spend like they are rich.

Take away all that funny money (credit, debt, call it what you may) and now they realize they are not really rich, nor middle class.

The working class is finding out that they never were really rich.

Originally Posted by Katarina Witt

How elitist! Back in the heyday of the steel mills, many steelworkers made more than my father, who was an engineer in the steel industry. My father-in-law was a union painter; he did pretty well. He put three kids through college, had a great retirement during which he lived to age 97, and had money left over when he died.

It's not elitist, HappyTexan is right. Most in the middle class use credit to support their lifestyle. Take the ability to borrow money away from many in the middle class and they would live the same lifestyle as the poor. Democrats claim to fight to increase the standard of living for the poor while ignoring the debt the "middle class" has to take on to live that lifestyle while the poor want the same standard of living as the middle class while not understanding or caring the middle class borrows money to live that way, they want to live it on someone else's dime.

Think about it, if you (anyone) was not able to get a mortgage, what kind of home would you live in? When someone is living good, many will comment ..."They must be up to their eyeballs in debt".

[Listener2307]

Originally Posted by petch751

........... Most in the middle class use credit to support their lifestyle. Take the ability to borrow money away from many in the middle class and they would live the same lifestyle as the poor. Democrats claim to fight to increase the standard of living for the poor while ignoring the debt the "middle class" takes on to live that lifestyle while the poor want the same standard of living as the middle class while not understanding or caring the middle class borrows money to live that way, they want to live it on someone else's dime.

It's really not necessary to use large amounts of debt to maintain a lifestyle - at least not under normal conditions. If a job has been lost or something like that, consumer debt may be necessary until normalcy returns.
But ya gotta pay the debt off.

There actually is a price to be paid for living debt free, though. A few months ago I tried to co-sign for my grandson's first car (he just graduated from college and got his first real job) and the bank turned me down. Flat!
The problem, they said, was the fact that I hadn't used the credit system in many years. Credit score was 750 or something like that, but the bank said I had no credit history! Go figure; we own our home outright, two rental properties outright, and both cars. I have enough money in the bank to pay cash for his car, but there is that ol' credit history thing.
Evidently my habit of paying off credit card every month doesn't work.
But still, I like the way we live.

FWIW: We never have made an awful lot of money. Had a few good years, but most of it was fairly ordinary income.

[scarabchuck]

Originally Posted by Pandamonium

Actually, middle class had three different classes, lower, middle and upper. And it used to be posted that to even hit lower middle class was making 100,000 and up and this was probably 15 years ago. It wasn't that long ago. And I got that information from a government site. In fact, I think I got it from the WH site.

I remember this because I had to do something for school and I had an argument with my father.Not so much an argument, but he said to back it up and I did. And I made him look this up and his salary put him into right above what used to be called upper working class. Barely. His response was, I have done all of this and I am not even considered middle class.

To me, that was very telling. Primarily because that it isn't necessary for the actual dollar amount ......but the perception.

The baseline is there. The people that are doing the bitchin' are more than likely, by that 15 year old baseline, mid-upper working class. But, hey you can throw a beans and wiener sob story out there if you need to.

I don't think those original money factors count anymore. 20 years ago $100k was a lot of money. If you earned that now, you could not continue to have the same lifestyle that one did 20 years ago.

[Tonyafd]

Originally Posted by Motion

For years I've been hearing about America's shrinking middle class and how it's being negatively affected by this or that policy. But how can we determine if the middle class is being hurt by whatever if we can't even determine exactly who is middle class?

Back in the sixties the middle class was the Cleavers from Leave it to Beaver. College tuition was $600 a semester at a moderately expensive private college and New York City colleges were virtually free. Even in recent years, SUNY schools were $5000 a year.

Update to the present -
Remember that the Cleavers lived in the suburbs. So now June and Ward are both working. They are struggling to insure that both the Beaver and Wally can both go to college. Ward's company cut his expected pension so Ward will now need to work until he is 67 years old to get Social Security. Ward and June both need cars but fortunately Wards car is a station car so it is the older one. June's school district where she was a teacher's aid merged with another district so she was laid off and will be forced to go on Social Security at 62. The property taxes for their address at #1 Happy Street have tripled over time and the Cleavers now pay $12,000 a year in both school and property taxes. A recent presidential election has elected a person friendly to globalization so Ward will consider himself lucky if he makes it to 67 without losing his job to a consulting firm that employs only foreigners on H-1b visas. Wally and the Beaver will be lucky to find jobs within a year of graduation with STEM degrees.