On "This is the worst economy EVER" and We are doomed.

[SmileyRose]

We have this notion that prior to shipping jobs overseas everyone was living fat and happy on one household income, but that is just simply not true.

My parents married in 1948, had the first kid in 1950 and had the 6th kid in 1965. My father was a HS graduate, but was not much with books - fabulous with common sense and with this hands. Yes there were some damn good union jobs out there for people in his station, but quite frankly mostly shitty ones, where you did not dare get sick or have any sort of family crisis.

My mother HAD to work, and although we had health insurance (my father said it was GOOD insurance) if any of us had any sort of serious ailment or injury Dad had to take a 2nd job until it was paid off. We had one car and one bathroom. Our home for 8 people was 1200 sq ft. Heat was so expensive that playing with the thermostat was reserved ONLY for Mom, and we had to figure out how to split 1 gallon of milk a day between 6 kids and eating out meant a picnic of peanut butter sandwiches and ice tea. Hand me downs, yard sales, sharing a room, grabbing the laundry off the clothes line before it rains were all norms we didn't even think twice about. I grew up with about 10" of closet space and 2 dresser drawers that belonged to ME. I do not feel deprived in the least. I consider my upbringing the standard middle class upbringing. Nearly everyone in my age range that I have ever met has unique but similar stories of their upbringing.

What I'm saying is the expectations are VERY different. The average family home now is twice the size or more. Kids seem to expect their own room and everyone seems to expect to be able to buy every gadget on the market. Not being able to afford $100 a month for 300+ channels of HDTV is a minor tragedy (and sometimes a major one).

I am not making any sort of comment on the virtues of then and now other than the fact expectations are different. Americans are a product of the last 20-30 years. The expectations of the middle class now require a much higher level of discretionary spending that I am not altogether sure the world economy can sustain long term. I would like to hope so, but with emerging markets we may have to share both the resources and the wealth they produce.

We don't need to "go back to the old days". Personally, I LIKE the convenience of my cell phone and online banking, and if I had to give up my access to "the information highway" I'd be lost in life. Right this minute I am using a heart monitor that uses bluetooth to send my readings to my doctor - for a cost of $100 a month instead of right off spending $2000 on other older diagnostics. Amazing technology.

We ARE in a bad place right now, thanks to the greed and excesses of the few at the top. 10% of our workforce is officially unemployed and if you add in the people who managed to find work after god only know how long out of work - at half the income and bennies or less - plus 100's of 1000's of families having to reset their spending because they can no longer access credit - well things are not pretty out there for a good many Americans. Seemingly the more educated and accustomed to higher incomes seem to be suffering the worst, while those of us who have spent a lifetime accustomed to the retail and service jobs that seem to be so looked down upon at the DU are struggling but managing. I am truly amazed someone at my economic level can even afford access to the internet (dialup) and a cell phone for emergencies (prepaid Tracfone).

As we move forward, and demand more of the profits made by American companies stay in America, in the form of jobs or wages or benefits or taxes paid for government services that make our lives cheaper to live, lets just be real honest about where we are historically. And honestly, I'm not sure it would be an all together bad thing if less of us could afford the gadgets and were forced go sit and talk to each other on our porches once in a while for entertainment.

[Warpy]

1. We can afford clothes that wear out fast

and gadgets that mostly do the same but we can't afford health care. Even if we have insurance at work, we can't afford to get more than the common cold or we're facing bankruptcy.

Well, we can afford those clothes and gadgets if we're willing to go into debt to get them.

That, to me, is an increase in the misery of poverty. I know my standard of living declined sharply in the 1970s and never recovered. Wages never kept pace with inflation, and the closer you were to the bottom, the bigger the gap was.

You can't compare then and now unless you look at things like the debt load, household net worth, ability to save for retirement, and access to health care.

FWIW, my mother worked too, but mostly because she didn't fit that Leave it to Beaver mode and was going stark staring crazy trying to. It was better when she went out to work and I didn't mind being a latch key kid one bit.

[RKP5637]

2. +1, n/t

[Jennicut]

4. The Consumer Society? Buy, buy, buy.

During Christmas, I took pictures of my 4 and 5 year olds and gave them in a nice frame with a homemade ornament and that was the present to all my family last year. I own a tract phone. I do have a computer but it was a Christmas present from my parents and I used webtv for years because I couldn't afford to buy a computer. I think many people overreach and want to be in that so called middle class. Meanwhile, wages are stagnant or declined and health care access has been limited and insurance horrible. I am a diabetic and the cost of my insulin keeps going up and up for no reason. So there is lots of influence to buy more things but wages have not kept up to afford more things.

[SmileyRose]

9. I agree with you.

It is difficult to compare and thus the reason for my post. Expectations have changed so much over the last 20-30 years. There are a lot of variables. I guess I just want us to be real clear about where we stand historically as far as standard of living instead of just accept this is the worst thing since the depression.

[charlyvi]

3. I remember in my neighborhood when I was coming up

There was one TV (if it was color your were considered well off) and one phone per household. We weren't poor, none of my friend's families were poor, but having your own TV or phone simply wasn't how one lived. Times have really changed, huh?

[FreakinDJ]

5. Your 1st sentance "shipping jobs overseas" explains it all

Yes we had the most robust economy the world has ever known. But that is not the reason America is in decline today.

As we formulated these trade agreements Wall St obviously wrote the agreements. Instead of focusing on bring 3rd world countries up to America's standards, they focused on maximizing profit$ for the few. Instead of bringing Democratic principals to besieged peoples, they empowered dictatorships. Instead of demanding the same environmental protections required of America's manufacturers, they encourage off shoring pollution and "High Polluting Industries"

The Wealthy Elite used Free Trade as a Loop Hole to gain even more wealth, and subvert American principals of Democracy and Fairness

[RKP5637]

8. What always amazes me is teabaggers, for example, protest government. They should be

protesting the behemoth corporations that have taken over this country AND the government. I also blame it on NAFTA/CAFTA, poorly written and poorly implemented. None of it had to be this way, the US created this mess all by ourselves. The majority of Americans have been screwed to benefit a few.

[laughingliberal]

6. Well, my father with no college supported our family of 6 on his one income from a non union job

in a chemical plant and sent us to parochial schools and retired with a pension. The home I bought in 2005 is not twice the size of the home in which I grew up. Yes, the 'good old days' may not be quite the perfection people like to think but there is no denying that our wages have stagnated/declined over the past 30 years.

I'm not arguing we could scale back the consumerism by a lot but I am asking we don't ignore the fact that wages have gone down and start deciding it's all due to Americans who live beyond their means. That's the ruling class argument right now and it is meant to hide the conditions which are leading to the decline of the working and middle class.

[truedelphi]

31. Much agree with you. Although I too get a bit disgusted

With a lot of the consumerism - every other young person I see on the street has a cell phone and often tattoos all over their body.

But the one thing that is important in terms of a "good economy" is whether there are jobs or not.

And the answer to that one is there are no jobs -except for a few people right out of college, or those able to find manual work. (Even many of Obama's stimulus-created jobs were for those who could do manual labor on highways and other construction jobs.)

People in their fifties who are out of work are out of work for a very long time.

And listening to C Span, the young policy wonks talk about how that is a shame - but it is just the way it is. A strong manufacturing is not something we should expect our nation to ever possess again, or so the young policy wonks say.

[Gman2]

7. While you would be LOST without these CONVENIENCES

They now are de rigeur to be or remain employed. All the separate issues involved in our plugged in culture, culminate in being the mark of the beast. No man may buy nor sell, save those having the mark of the beast, upon their hand or forehead. That means, that if you become the poor, especially homeless, you are a pariah. Unable to climb from there. Scum for life. And we dont tolerate OKIES anymore. We jail them, or steal all their belongings. Make laws that cause them to move along. Either you keep up, in every respect, or you crash and burn. And once burning, burn forever. Sounds like hell. Nice place you got here.

Back then, if you were poor, and you told an employer you were HUNGRY, you got a shot. Now, if you need a job, you dont get one. You must already have a job, to get one. Sorta like the new credit scheme.

[lonestarnot]

11. Looking for the job is the new job.

[Bluenorthwest]

14. Just fyi.

The Okies you speak of were hounded and harassed at every turn. During the height of the dust bowl migrations, the Los Angeles Police Department kept border guards at the CA/NV line to turn away those who could not show cash. They were very often jailed, stolen from, and they were almost always told to move along.
My Mom went through some of that, and most of her side of the family as well. So tell me again about how the Okies used to be treated. Read some history. Listen to some songs. The migrant workers of that day were mightily abused.
What you say about 'back then' is a rosy glassed vision that some might have lived, but not the Okies, nor any other loathed group.

[Gman2]

28. Yahwell, there are a lot more regs now. But yes, I did read history.

Which is why it is parallel.

[Mojorabbit]

10. I am in my mid 50's

and that is the way it was for us too but my Dad was in the air force. Five kids. Three bedroom house. My mom worked in the bowling alley child care and took in ironing for extra money. I sold tomatoes from the garden in the 4th grade riding on my bike with bags of them in the handlebar basket for 50 cents a bag.

When he retired he worked during the day and went to business school at night using the GI bill, got his BS and then Master's degree while my mom started a day care business of her own. We were latchkey teens then but they worked their butts off to make a life for us. We had it drilled into all of us esp the girls to have a career of your own and never never count on a husband to support you. College or trade school, it did not matter but have something you can do to support yourself.

My mother made most of our clothes and cooked from scratch everyday. I look back now and am amazed at all she did. I couldn't do it. My father had a plan and retired again in this late 50's and went to live by the gulf, fished by day and did some shrimping at night for fun. Neither of them fell for the consume consume idea of living.
My mom is alone now since my father passed and recently divested herself of most of her things and her house is zen like in it's simplicity and easier for her to care for. I find it soothing to be over there.
I am trying to get there myself but find I am attached to many of my things. I am not there yet.

When I look back it was in the 80's that I started to collect things. I have been packing things up and putting them in the garage to try and simplify my life.

[branders seine]

12. we are not doomed,

but the middle class will not recover its stolen wealth until there is a real change in DC.

[tularetom]

13. I have a three generational example of the point you make

When I was a kid my first bike was a girl's bike handed down by my older sister because they didn't have the money to buy one for me. I can still remember the ration of crap I took from riding that bike and if I wanted to go anywhere I had to ride it because we lived about 8 miles from town.

My first child was a girl, born in 1962. She got a bike when she was 6 or 7. After a couple of years she outgrew it. So did we hand the bike down to her brother, 3 years younger? No, he would have been humiliated so we gave it away and bought him a boy's bike.

In 1982 my daughter gave birth to her first child, a girl, followed by a second daughter in 1984. The oldest girl got a bicycle in due time, but a couple of years later when she outgrew it, instead of handing it down to the younger daughter they gave it away and bought new bikes for BOTH girls.

It gets worse. My son's child, a boy now in high school, refuses to ride his bicycle anywhere so his mom takes him if he wants to go anywhere. I suspect they will buy him a car when he turns 16.

We weren't wealthy when I was a kid and I would not call either of my children wealthy either. But the attitudes have sure changed over three generations.

[Rex]

15. Repukes love working at destroying the middle class.

Their base comes from the very wealthy and the very poor. See where I'm going with this?

[4lbs]

16. My father was able to raise a family throughout the 1970s and 1980s on a single-income, government

salary. Family income was $16,000 per year BEFORE taxes. In essence, a government job that paid $8 per hour.

Before that, I remember us spending two years in a small one-bedroom apartment and being on food stamps and no car. We pretty much walked everywhere or took the bus. That was until my father got that government job that allowed us to buy a home and a car.

So, I mostly grew up in a relatively small house (2 bedroom, 1.5 bath), one TV, one radio, one car, one income. Three people. Healthcare coverage was via FEHBP (Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan). About 5 years after initial purchase, my parents decided to turn the patio into another smaller bedroom/den. So, they took out a second mortgage to pay for it ($5000 at the time I think).

After I graduated high school, my first two years of college, I took the bus. No car. Not until my parents purchased a new car in 1990 and gave me the old 1981 3-door Honda Civic.

My mother didn't start working until I was a junior in high school. Even then, it was a blue-collar assembly line job that was 30 miles from home and didn't pay all that well ($5 per hour, no healthcare). She had to lease a car for work and in essence, half her monthly net income went to the car payment and auto insurance. Car lease payment was $250 monthly and auto insurance was $100 monthly. Because it was a lease, the leasing company wanted the more expensive 100/300/100 auto insurance. In essence, she was spending all that time driving to work and working for a grand total of... $350 per month after taxes and work-related expenses.

That was middle class back then.

[shireen]

17. respect

Seemingly the more educated and accustomed to higher incomes seem to be suffering the worst, while those of us who have spent a lifetime accustomed to the retail and service jobs that seem to be so looked down upon at the DU are struggling but managing.

Why do you think DU'ers look down upon retail and service jobs? Personally, i have enormous respect for such jobs. Without them, our society would collapse. It's not an easy occupation; there are the stresses of the economic atmosphere that determine income and even employment. They have to deal with people who can be real jerks and can't do anything about it because of that stupid 'the customer is always right' thing which is such bullshit. The disrespect and bad manners i have seen towards people in the jobs you mentioned come from every cross-section of society, not just "educated" people like the ones at DU.

[SmileyRose]

19. I think it's just life experience.

We all raise our kids to want better than what the parents had - that's part of what the American dream is all about and the reason why so many people have come here from other places. I don't think it's a recent phenomenon that people who make a life for themselves, for whatever reason, at lower paying jobs are often seen as stupid (as in uneducatable) or simply too lazy to do better for themselves and therefore undeserving of decency and respect. No one I know wants their kids to spend a lifetime saying "do you want fries with that". But it's honest work and no one, anywhere, should be made to feel bad about having a paying job. I'm honestly am a little taken aback to find such sentiment on the DU - though I probably shouldn't.

[PassingFair]

18. College out of reach for our children. No jobs. Health Insurance unaffordable.

This is not about not eating out or drying clothes on the line.

This is not about "gadgets".

My FIRST unrec

[SmileyRose]

21. I appreciate your post

As I said, the expectations are very different than in my childhood 40+ years ago. In my childhood there weren't a whole lot of gadgets to be had for one thing and the whole society was geared toward a much more frugal lifestyle.

I really do understand that not every family who finds they can't afford college or medical care for the kids has spent the last 10-15 years buying a 2000sq ft house loaded with 3 LCD TVs, DVRs, IPOD, $10,000 worth of stainless appliances and 2 or cars under 5yr old sitting in the driveway - $5000 plus worth of vacations every year and at least 12 pairs of brand name shoes for each person.

And even for those who HAVE spent the last 10-15 years doing so, this HAS BEEN the general middle class norm - or at least what people seem have been striving for. The sudden realization that this lifestyle is no longer sustainable is very painful and I am in no way making light of that.

The fact is, college now is less obtainable than it was 10 years ago, but it's far EASIER to obtain than it was in 1980 - evidenced by the simple fact a far greater percentage of our population have at least some college and the fact college is now considered an expected norm, not the exception.

[PassingFair]

23. I was unable to attend college in the 70's and my parents didn't much care.

They TRIED, but they had 5 kids. Both worked, by the way.
Mom was a teacher and Dad was in sales.

When it got too tough to keep a job and stay in school,
I think they were RELIEVED.

I wanted better for my own children. I don't live in
a 2,000 SF house or collect GADGETS.

I don't know what state you live in, but you can't
just "pick up a second job" around here.

In Michigan, the economy is MUCH WORSE than it was in the 70's.

Just this morning, we were noticing how many houses had ORANGE STICKERS
or WHITE STICKERS on them, as spring seems to be the motivator for the
banks to deal with their foreclosed inventory around here.

No one is immune to this - and the definition of "middle class" is
very vague.

“ Reckless fools lost first because they deserved to lose, and careful, wise men lost later because a world-wide earthquake doesn’t ask for personal references. Edwin LeFevre, 1932

[SmileyRose]

24. I live in Clayton County Atlanta

70% of the kids in my local school live near or below the poverty level- when we moved here in 1981 that was less than 10%. My house is less now than it was worth in 1981. I am well aware of how tough it is right this moment in time in a good many places.

[PassingFair]

26. Sorry to get so testy.

But the fact that some people overextended themselves
doesn't mean that the majority of middle class Americans
just need to "get real".

The fact is that a family can afford a computer, cell phones
and big screen TV's but can't afford an illness or PROLONGED
job loss caused by an economic blow-up much worse than anything
since the Depression.

You can't "budget" for cancer.

In the 70's we had all those new-fangled washer/dryer sets
and E-lectric iceboxes.

The wringer washer and the ice-man
were good enough for Grandma!

[SmileyRose]

29. I don't think you were testy

but I do think you misunderstood my post.

[OutNow]

20. The Way We Never Were

I also grew up in the 1950s, one car, 1 1/2 baths, father had a union job, etc. But this era was not quite as idyllic as it seems. "The Way We Never Were" by Stephanie Coontz is a great book to read about the "normal" middle class family of that time. Hint; it wasn't so great for many folks.

No reliable birth control or right to abortion for women, Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination both major and minor for African-Americans, the "guest worker" program for migrant laborers, the destruction of the CIO by McCarthy and his ilk in many state governments and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act for union members, and the hide under the desk and kiss your ass goodbye Cold War trauma for all the children including me.

It is not and has not been an easy life for working people in this country since the beginning. It's worse now than it was 50 years ago for many of us, but it never was that great.

[DCBob]

22. Good post. I wish we could live with less yet still not give up some of the good things..

technology has given us. The earth would be "happier" as well. BTW, I miss the "porch talks" too.

[SocialistLez]

25. Didn't things cost less then?

I'm fine with living a simple life...a VOLUNTARILY simple life.

I want a nice simple house but even here in AR they can quite cost a pretty penny, especially if you have a BS service sector job like a cashier or customer service representative.

[SmileyRose]

30. As a percentage of income

My parents initially spent roughly 60% of their income on all the various costs associated with buying and owning their average home (including utilities) and about 25% in the health INSURANCE. Most of the time we barely squeaked by and if anything unexpected came up someone had to get a 2nd job. They certainly were not saving much if anything in the first 15 years of home ownership.

My husband and I spent about 50% of our income on the same costs when we first bought our house. The housing market here has collapsed to the point my home would fetch less than I paid for it almost 30 years ago and the interest rates are about the same. Utilities take up a little more of my income than they did, but then I had free TV and no internet charges then. If I pared down to the same thing I had then it would be about the same on percentages of income.

[TexasObserver]

27. True. Unreasonable expectations are a cause of unhappiness.

It seems that far too many of us want our first house to be bigger than any home we lived in as a child. Whatever mom and dad have gotten in middle age is what their children want as young adults. It is that expectation of instant life time home which fuels the need for more and more square feet in homes. The family that lived in 1500 sq feet 40 years ago lives in 2500 sq feet now.

The key to happiness is satisfying needs, not wants. If one believes he must have the best car, the best cell phone, the best of whatever commercials tell him he needs, he will chase that want forever.

I don't think we all need to live austerely, but this compulsion to buy things to prove our status is anything but progressive. I buy what I need, or what I want to give to others.


I am not addressing the very real problem of loss of jobs, which always concerns me, and is the main cause of unhappiness among Americans right now - unemployment and under employment.