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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWant a middle-class life? Prepare to pay up
The American middle class is struggling, and the reason is simple, according to a "Squeezed," a new book by journalist Alissa Quart: Affording a middle-class life costs 30 percent more than just two decades ago, while incomes over that period have barely budged.
"Squeezed" follows the lives of people including a public school teacher who drives for Uber to earn enough money to support his family and a meteorologist who juggles three jobs to pay for health insurance. The problem, Quart argues, isn't that Americans are managing their money badly or are lazy, but that the economy has fundamentally changed.
Quart writes that her book, published last month by Harper Collins, stemmed from her own experiences struggling to maintain a foothold in the middle class.
"When I posted on Facebook that I couldn't afford the relatively modest life my academic parents had, many friends added their own stories about how their income goes to rent and child carethe latter often siphoning off up to 30 percent of a family's earnings," she noted.
The markers of a middle-class life are "less and less common," she added. "The middle class is endangered on all sides, and the promised rewards of belonging to it have all but evaporated."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/want-a-middle-class-life-prepare-to-pay-up/ar-BBL1RXe?li=BBnb7Kz
Winning baby!!!!!
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)A long time in the making.
TheFrenchRazor
(2,116 posts)Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)but, when you fight back, of course then it's class warfare........
appalachiablue
(41,131 posts)Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)They have been working on this for a very long time.
backtoblue
(11,343 posts)was the exact same as my ex FIL made in 1980.
CrispyQ
(36,461 posts)In it he said that if minimum wage had kept up with CEO pay, it would be over $23 per hour, & that book was written in 2004.
TheFrenchRazor
(2,116 posts)transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top that has been going on for at least 3-4 decades.
eleny
(46,166 posts)We had one phone, one tv and one record player in our house when I was growing up. Unless we got free books the library was how we read and we read plenty.
These days our expectations are higher and I wouldn't want to go back to the old days when kids also got polio, measles, the killer flu and we took a Saturday night bath. No thanks.
So if they want us to buy their stuff they've got to figure it out. But maybe they don't care if we have purchasing power. Maybe they're relying on the Chinese to consume in mass quantities. Isn't that a kick in the pants. I've been trying so hard to be such a good shopper since I'm all grown up. They don't need me? Well shoot me now! Roll me to the curb so I can dry up and blow away.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)roamer65
(36,745 posts)Inflation is a tool of the wealthy elites for subjugation of the lower classes. It is a stealth form of rationing.