Everyone has to be rich now??

[Cadillac_Mike]

It took my father decades starting at the bottom to have a six figure salary. So that's the new starting point in America or else you're a loser? Was just watching Rocky 2 where he worked at the meat plant and still cold have a wife and family from 1979. I've worked hard at Sears and several factories temping but no white picket fence for me.....

 

[bholder]

The way the economics have worked over recent decades. the blue-collar middle class has lost a lot of ground and purchasing power. But how else are them executive types going to have their yachts and Lear jets? Sigh. I'll shut up now before....

 

[Jeff Scott]

...no white picket fence for me.....

Those are overrated, IMO.

 

[Cadillac_Mike]

The way the economics have worked over recent decades. the blue-collar middle class has lost a lot of ground and purchasing power. But how else are them executive types going to have their yachts and Lear jets? Sigh. I'll shut up now before....

It makes me so sad they can't have a larger Lear jet lol and yachts with better looking models. Where's the humanity?!

 

[LiptonJigglers]

Sell your Mesa... that'll get a picket or two!!
You'll have the smartest looking dive on Skid Row!!!
Welcome to the "best of all possible worlds"!!

 

[Cormoran315]

Sell your Mesa... that'll get a picket or two!!
You'll have the smartest looking dive on Skid Row!!!
Welcome to the "best of all possible worlds"!!

İf ı had a Yacht i'll sell it and buy Mesas and Basses . I think thats why I dont have a yacht

 

[JonathanPDX]

It's late-stage capitalism. America is in for reckoning, and soon. You're either going to see a lot of working-class people dying in the streets in the next 10 years, or a hell of a lot more Luigi-style attacks targeting those in power who are holding the rest of us down.

 

[andruca]

It's late STATE capitalism.

Fixed it for you. Just another form of oligarchic collectivism (redundance, only kind there is).

 

[Krakmann]

Salud!

Ultimately, capitalism is a zero-sum game and the ones making the rules seem to not have already enough with their islands and space rockets and zillion houses and jets, so they have to take whatever scraps we have left. Of course, they totally deserve it.

 

[RandomKaren]

I'd comment but I'm already on compulsory vacation from TGP for commenting on a similar thread

 

[Gilmourisgod]

I live on Cape Cod, which up until the late-80's or so was someplace a middle-class guy like me could afford to live in. We bought our house in what I now realize was the last-gasp of affordability.The average 2-3 bedroom house is now $5-600K and climbing, which means no young families who didn't inherit their parents house can afford to live here, including my 4 sons. It's quickly becoming like Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, a place full of wealthy people serviced by legions of working stiffs who have to commute from ever farther off Cape. Sign of the Times as social and economic inequity gets more extreme every year.

 

[Zooberwerx]

To further complicate issues, consumerism is at an all-time high. I live in a fringe (lunatic? most affordable) neighborhood in the most affluent section of VB....I see the "toys", the McMansions, etc. and, let me tell you, some of these folks are in debt up to their eyeballs. We like to covet but, overall, people are starting to wise-up.

Riis

 

[el murdoque]

When the first season of The Simpsons aired in 1989,
Homer was considered a loser. Same with Al Bundy from Married with Children, which started in 1987.

Both of these guys were able to support a family with stay at home Mom, two cars and a house, even though they worked a job they hated and were not particularly good at.

 

[brianrost]

It took my father decades starting at the bottom to have a six figure salary. So that's the new starting point in America or else you're a loser?

Out of college in 1981 I made $25K in my first job as an electrical engineer. That was good money back then, you could still buy a new car for $5K and a T-40 was less than $300

My wife is a nurse and she was able to work part-time until we had our kids starting in 1985, then she was able to be a stay at home mom, taking a few weekend shifts here and there but we mostly got by on my paycheck. After the house was paid off and the kids were out of college, she started working 24 hours a week so we could ramp up saving for retirement.

Four decades later I retired with a salary lower than what one daughter is making after just ten years in her job.

But what I paid for my house (that I still live in) was only a quarter what she paid for hers four decades later so that’s something

 

[Al T.]

@jonathan PDX I think option #2 is more likely.

 

[Jeff Hughes]

Wealth inequality is a recurring pattern in history. The outcomes are not always great for the poor or the rich. Teleworking had the possiblity to change this dynamic given it wouldn't be necessary to live close to your workplace or have the need to own a vehicle to take you there.

 

[Smooth_bass88]

i'd recommend honing your bass-playing skills. that way you get more gigs, better paying gigs. it's a win-win!

 

[Nedmundo]

It's late-stage capitalism. America is in for reckoning, and soon. You're either going to see a lot of working-class people dying in the streets in the next 10 years, or a hell of a lot more Luigi-style attacks targeting those in power who are holding the rest of us down.

I live in Philadelphia, and there are already working-class folks dying in the streets, mostly courtesy of opioids from what I can tell.

I live on Cape Cod, which up until the late-80's or so was someplace a middle-class guy like me could afford to live in. We bought our house in what I now realize was the last-gasp of affordability.The average 2-3 bedroom house is now $5-600K and climbing, which means no young families who didn't inherit their parents house can afford to live here, including my 4 sons. It's quickly becoming like Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, a place full of wealthy people serviced by legions of working stiffs who have to commute from ever farther off Cape. Sign of the Times as social and economic inequity gets more extreme every year.

Similar with my hometown in Connecticut. When we moved there in 1975, it was already largely affluent, but there were substantial middle and working class populations and neighborhoods. Heck, there was even a vacuum factory, one of the last vestiges of industrial America in the region. Now? Most of the middle and working class is gone. There's still some public housing, and I believe one relatively affordable neighborhood and a few apartments above storefronts, but otherwise it's almost entirely very expensive.

 

[KenSmithFan]

Say what you want about the French, but they knew how to deal with an out of control aristocracy.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

The part I've never understood about French History is how they went from beheading the entire Monarchy and then allowing Napoleon to become Emperor a couple decades later. Sounds familiar somehow.