Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
Some of the posts here are so strange to me.
I was raised to kick ass, take names, and move ahead. That's what I did...and it worked.
It's always worked.
If there is a smaller middle class today it's because of a different sense of entitlement amongst our society (you can see it in the posts in this thread). The "Middle Class" just don't have the same work ethic.
People imagine that wealth is some sort of "pie" and the rich have all the pie.
Bullshit.
Money comes and money goes. But the cream ALWAYS rises to the top. If you haven't, then you need to change your work habits and make it work for you.
I wasn't raised to think like some of you...I listened to my grandfather and he was 100% right.
Those of you thinking that it's the "evil" rich "holding you down" are the ones who are never going to be rich.
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While I will agree that desire and work ethic are a big part of it, there are other factors.
Take for example wages. The year I was born (1971) the average wage in the US was $6,497 per year. That works out to about $37,465 in 2013 dollars. The average wage in 2013 is $44,321. This means in 42 years the actual average wage has only gone up $6,856. That works out to about $163 per year or an average of about 8 cents per hour per year.
Now you can attribute this to many things. Lazy could be one of them. Another could simply be that more people are now pursuing liberal arts degrees than applied science degrees so there are fewer people moving into some of the higher paying jobs. Another very real factor is that many of the good paying manufacturing jobs have moved out of the country and have been replaced with lower paying service and retail jobs.
At the same time this has happened the cost of the average house in the US has gone through the roof. Let's look at the median house price. In 1971 it was $25,200 which is the equivalent of $135,769 in 2010 dollars, however the median price of a house in 2010 was $221,800, down from $246K in 2006. So while wages have gone up about 8 cents per hour per year, the cost of hosing has gone up $1.02 per hour over the last 42 years.
Add into this the crazy cost of healthcare, education and other things and what you have is a middle class that now has more debt then ever before. They have less disposable income and if something bad happens (major illness, job loss) it can bankrupt them and send them into poverty. They may well end up getting another job and making their way out of it, but they could easily end up in poverty for a few years while they do this.
At its best the middle class is weaker than it has ever been. Is this because of the evil rich people? Not really. You could argue that a company moving its jobs offshore to make a little extra profit isn't great, but in the end I blame credit and the middle classes hunger to use it. As credit became more and more available people started buying bigger houses, cars, toys etc than ever before. In the past they were not able to afford these things, but now they can do it no problem because they can have 5,6 even 7 years to pay a car loan and 30 or 40 years for a mortgage. Every company seems to have a credit card and banks offer all kinds of loans so people buy these things and not only are they putting themselves in debt, they are driving the market on many of these things up so even those people who want to live within their means have a harder time doing it.
Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent here. What I am getting at is that is that I agree with you. The cream rises to the top. Most people don't have the drive, ability, courage or knowledge to build a successful business. However, the way our system is developing it is becoming harder and harder to just get a good job and live a normal middle class life.