The Middle Class Two Income Trap

[Ponce]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

Back in 1972 I was the only one working and my wife was going to college she had a new car and we even bought a house.........I had a truck and we also had a 27 ft Komfort trailer.

Now day not even a three member working family can do what I was able to do back then as a simple lathe machinist.

I am happy to say that I was at the tail end of the good life in America because we will never see it again for at least in three to four generations.......maybe.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

Back in 1972 I was the only one working and my wife was going to college she had a new car and we even bought a house.........I had a truck and we also had a 27 ft Komfort trailer.

Now day not even a three member working family can do what I was able to do back then as a simple lathe machinist.

I am happy to say that I was at the tail end of the good life in America because we will never see it again for at least in three to four generations.......maybe.

In the late 1960's, as a setter of Multi-spindle Bar Carrier Lathes, (probably the most challenging job ever created, continuous 130 db noise, bathed head to foot in cutting oil spray from the machines, VERY heavy lifting of tooling and nine foot long steel bars as feedstock. Often bad cuts from razor sharp tooling in very confined spaces and expected to solve very complex machine tooling problems, while standing on your feet for twelve hour shifts; but immensely satisfying when you walk away from a machine you have spent an entire shift retooling to come back twelve hours later to find a smiling operator and five thousand perfectly machined components stacked up in tote boxes beside the machine _"Haven't had to touch it all day"), but I digress, the job then paid me sufficient that I earned 20% more than my best friend who was a high level Quantity Surveyor in the Construction industry.

Today, not much more than minimum wage. So I am in complete agreement.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

I wonder if we are still focusing too much here on the individual human, and not fully grasping the nature of the social, political and economic structures of human civilization.

I could perhaps make an interesting study of the soil in which redwood trees grow, of the soil's structure and composition, of its mineral, moisture and organic matter elements. But sooner or later, to understand redwoods, I have to understand the structure and life cycle of big trees themselves.

Similarly I can study the psychopathology and brain chemistry of powerful bastards until the cows come home, but our study of evil on a mass scale cannot end there. Sooner or later, to understand evil civilizations, I have to understand the structure and life cycle of human civilization itself.

In 1990 I was in San Francisco and drove up to Calaveras Big Tree Park and picked up a seed cone from a Giant Sequoia. Back home in the UK I set out a seed tray with the seeds but every one that germinated died off within two or three days. I left the seed tray in the greenhouse over the following winter and the next year three more seeds germinated. By then I had remembered that Giant Sequoia's stand in or beside stream beds on mountain gravel, so I went off down to the local river and filled three pots with gravel and moved the seedlings to the pots. They thrived. Nothing like local knowledge to suite the job in hand.

I donated the seedlings when about a foot tall to one of the Great Gardens of Cornwall, Trebah. http://www.trebahgarden.co.uk/ I do not know where they went after that, but expect they are somewhere in the UK with at least a thousand years ahead of them. What a thought?

[flintlock]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

Back in 1972 I was the only one working and my wife was going to college she had a new car and we even bought a house.........I had a truck and we also had a 27 ft Komfort trailer.

Now day not even a three member working family can do what I was able to do back then as a simple lathe machinist.

I am happy to say that I was at the tail end of the good life in America because we will never see it again for at least in three to four generations.......maybe.

Well said. I try to explain this to my 77 year old father some times when he can't understand why all people don't just go out and find a job that earns enough to retire at 55 like he did.

It's not that you can't make a lot of money today. Many still do. But its become a lot harder. I guess the bar has been raised in terms of education and other costs like having to move your family all around the country every two years. I suppose that is the natural progression of things, but it makes you wonder where we'll be in another 35 years.

[Rajiv]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

Two threads discussed this a while back

Wages - Inflation - Debt

and a sub section of - The Face of Raising Unemployment


You might find that discussion interesting

[raja]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

Couldn't help myself here Raja :p

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

My Ukrainian wife and I debate buying more real estate . . . but one downside that always comes up is the fear of communist policies being instituted that confiscate private property. :eek: My estimation of the human capacity to make wise decisions is not very high . . . .

As an alternative, perhaps we can just Vote Out All Incumbents, and the newly elected politicians will get the idea and behave differently.

Or we can do it the hard way. What do you think, Comrade? Xорошо?

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

My Ukrainian wife and I debate buying more real estate . . . but one downside that always comes up is the fear of communist policies being instituted that confiscate private property. :eek: My estimation of the human capacity to make wise decisions is not very high . . . .

As an alternative, perhaps we can just Vote Out All Incumbents, and the newly elected politicians will get the idea and behave differently.

Or we can do it the hard way. What do you think, Comrade? Xорошо?

Товарищ,

I hope it does not come to that as well.

Still, I find voting out all incumbents troubling - handing things back over to Rove &co. does not a solution make in my mind.

Perhaps if it wasn't a two party system or if voting out all incumbents was a sustainable movement over several election cycles it would be more palatable...not that I'm offering a solution.

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

Lobaczewski is right on the mark, IMO. Sociopaths with 180 IQs are well equipped to gravitate to the top of hierarchical and compartmentalized organizations, like government or corporate bureaucracies. The more power that these types of organizations have, the more power these sociopaths have.

Since we will always have high-IQ sociopaths with us, the only solution, then, is to severely curtail the power of any and all hierarchical, compartmentalized organizations across all fields of human endeavor (politics, business, religion, etc.)

Yes!

Hierarchy is the ultimate enemy of a democratic society - it is required to some extent, but ensuring that it is dynamic, and that there is sufficient "churn" is of primary importance. Hence the way all modern democratic republics are set up.

Churn should not mean [repeat] FIRE -> Government [/repeat].

Corporate structures that maintain hierarchy for decades tend to amplify the problem you state above.

[raja]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

Товарищ,
Still, I find voting out all incumbents troubling - handing things back over to Rove &co. does not a solution make in my mind.

Perhaps if it wasn't a two party system or if voting out all incumbents was a sustainable movement over several election cycles it would be more palatable...not that I'm offering a solution.

The idea is not to Vote Out the Incumbents because their incoming opponents will be better. The goal is to shock the system! :eek:

Kick out all those powerful guys who've been chairing committees for decades. Send a message that The People have woken up and are willing to exercise their Constitutional power and start voting in their own best interests.

This will have two effects . . . .
First, it will make the incoming candidates realize they are being watched, and that they better start acting for the People instead of for the Financial Elite.
Second, it will embolden more People-oriented political hopefuls to run in the next election on anti-Elite platforms.

This plan requires educating the public, but with the help of the Internet . . . and the pain of the next phase -- Economic Collapse Part II -- I think it's doable.

Besides . . . what other choice do we have?

[Thailandnotes]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

“Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy.”

“The Democratic Party has broken with its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and the Sixties.”

“In 1934, early in the Roosevelt Presidency, strikes broke out all over the country, including a general strike in Minneapolis, a general strike in San Francisco, hundreds of thousands on strike in the textile mills of the South. Unemployed councils formed all over the country. Desperate people were taking action on their own, defying the police to put back the furniture of evicted tenants, and creating self-help organizations with hundreds of thousands of members.”

Howard Zinn

http://www.truthout.org/article/howa...ection-madness

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

Well I am an American Cow :



I'll grant you half that claim. If that investment doesn't happen, the collapse continues.

However I won't grant you the other half of that claim. Efforts to reinvigorate that investment won't happen, because we have bigger problems.

Analogy time. If whomever is the world's fattest person at this moment doesn't get up and start jogging, they aren't going to restore their health. Unfortunately (I presume) that person needs a fork lift to get out of bed and is unable to take a single step on their own. (Yeah - I know - a gross analogy - sorry.)

We've been digging this hole since before the decisive event you cite involving Slater Walker, and the hole is deeper and broader than your analysis describes.

On the other hand, if you're able to prove me wrong, that would be awesome. Go for it. I hope you're right and successful.

Not sure I can achieve a total victory, but this afternoon I have managed to get a significent part of the debate going on The Times web site with two related comments on the subject of savings and what to do with them. (Please scroll down the page and read the second one first).

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle7064689.ece

[Bruno T]

Re: The Middle Class Two Income Trap

All through the 60s and 70s, real incomes for average workers increased. That is what is reflected in the auto prices as a proportion of income. The jump in auto prices between 1980 and 1990 came about because the automakers had to retool.



The cost of this retooling was passed on to the consumer in the form of higher (much higher) car costs.

Computerizing and modernizing manufacturing raises prices, eh?