[quote=joec]I suppose I’m in the camp that think the upcoming generation will have a lower standard of living than our parents or people who are in their 40-50s currently on these forums.
30 years ago, an honest guy can find a decent blue collar job, get married to a stay at home spouse, buy a small house, have 2.5 kids, get 1-2 cars before and pay for the kid’s public school education and with the pension, live ok in retirement.
Nowadays, anyone without a pension is in a world of hurt with how much they have to save for retirement.
Also, in the past, public sector jobs (government) used to pay less than private sector jobs. That has since reversed now according to multiple reports. Here’s the first link I saw on a Google search: http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/05/public-sector-vs-private-secto
Wages are 30% higher in the public sector and benefits are 70% higher.
Since pensions are gone now and people are living longer in retirement, most younger folks will have a lower quality of life since a lot of blue collar work is gone so it’s off to advanced degrees and college (more debt service); that may or may not lead to better paying jobs and we’ve all seen the reports of the tough employment market due to a global economy. Even industries such as law, nursing have it tough.
Also, with higher costs for housing (rent even), education and medicine, you now have both parents working to support the household and college since without a degree, it’s even harder to find work.
I don’t disagree that we have more luxuries and as a people in the US, live longer and don’t have to worry about starving (yet), but I do think that it’s not as peachy as someone who is successful in a field and who hangs out with mostly wealthy/successful types. It’s sorta like if everyone you know has an advanced degree and is doing incredibly well, it clouds your view of what’s the norm or what’s going on with the other 90% of people out there.
Generation to generation should do better, but with people living longer now, junior may not get his inheritance until after mommy spends it all on nursing care when she is 92 and kicks the bucket…That makes junior 67? :)[/quote]
Great post, joec.
————–
sdr,
The complaints about the disappearing middle class are not without merit. As brian has aptly pointed out, we tend to measure our success in comparison to those around us. What our grandfathers and grandmothers had as far as technology, etc. doesn’t mean much, because NOBODY at that time had the technolgy and gadgets that we do today. The best measure of whether or not the middle class is doing well lies in the distribution of wealth. There is no doubt that this gap has grown tremendously over the past few decades. That is what’s causing all the anxiety.
“Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes. On his blog, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called the numbers “truly amazing.”
Though income inequality has been growing for some time, the paper paints a stark, disturbing portrait of wealth distribution in America. Saez calculates that in 2007 the top .01 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000.
As of 2007, the top decile of American earners, Saez writes, pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages, a level that’s “higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the ‘roaring” 1920s.'”
