The funny thing is they'd be doing a 1,000 person circle jerk in Tampa if Obama had grown up a Republican with his background story.
What I wrote was these things may not apply to you. That is not the same as it is your fault. Did you just call my friend irresponsible? Why do you hate poor people and hope they don't have refrigerators? I see you have a job and your 401K has rebounded. Your lot in life has improved quite a bit since post 64. None of your friends provide cable or cells for their kids. Most of mine do. We know very different people.
Congrats on the new kid. It's good to see you have adjusted your budget and I wish more people would. What I think is going on is we are both seeing people struggle and we both feel strongly about the reasons why. Not because either one of us are jerks it's that we care about those around us and the middle class in general. I can see where people are lured by easy credit and would love to see the bankers and BS peddlers get what they deserve. I would also like to see more people living at or even below their means rather than above.
Well, wasn't that what you implied when you said that he spent too much money and that he gave a very expensive cellphone plan and HBO to his young kids? I have never questioned refrigerators, I only said that some people implied that the poor in this country must be doing very good because 90 something percent have one... I know people whose life expenditures are a little over the top but the people that I know that went under I'm almost sure that it was not because of unnecessary luxuries like the ones you mentioned. The only reason I mentioned your friend was to say that his expending habits did not make a lot of difference facing the Great Recession. Did they? You really need to work in your reading comprehension. I never said that I was out of a job, only said that my paid has been slashed and that a lot of people where I work has been laid off. My 401k rebounded to 2008 levels, meaning that I have lost at least 4 years of growth. And I'm indeed underwater. If I had your friends income and instead of "wasting" my money had put it into principal or my 401k for the 3 years that my pay was not slashed, it wouldn't had made a lot of difference. Would it?
You did type this. The fridge comment was when you typed "OMG... The poor actually have TVs, Microwaves and Refrigerators!!!!!!" Sorry for the sloppiness but I do not know how to multiquote. I cannot imply anything about your finances because I know nothing about them. I can discuss the spending habits of people I know and see every day. I can say people live above their means because it is an opinion and because they are spending more than they are making. I do not know if putting the money aside a few years ago would have helped. I do know that spending money one does not have can become a dangerous habit.
Yes it would, you are still buying stocks, depending on when the 3 year period occurred, but 401Ks took a big hit since 2007, but it also means stocks were cheap from 2007 to 2009, so as the stock market recovered, lots of the older stock got their value back, and the stock you bought in the down years got a nice pop. So you ROI was shit for a good 3 year period, but unless you have multiple stocks that went under or are not going to recober, then your 401K value should be back to at least even.
The point I was making was that the term "middle class" is too general. Economically, my wife and I are DINKs, solidly middle class. But that will not be the case for ever. At some point, we will become 1%ers. Part of the reason is that we do not have to consider the expences of kids (both money and time). This makes us different from somebody like dapip, who has 3+ kids. Currently living in Memphis, if we had kids, we would likely be living in a different location. But we don't, so we have more freedom to choose, which puts us at an advantage over a family like dapip's. Further, due to my wife's sound financial management, we have enough to survive for 6+ months if we both lose our jobs, which will not happen unless there is some event similar to Katrina (wife has a rather secure position, and her CV is very good - she will be able to find a quality job if such a situation occurs, in many places around the world. As a teacher, I have plenty of versatility). This puts up in MiTH's view of the "Dream." But dapip is a different story, in a less forgiving situtation. He did what was necessary under the circumstances, but it may not have been the best decision pre-recession (even considering 20/20). Yet he seems to have adjusted to his situation, which is good. But, still, he/his family is in a very different financial sitution from me/my family. Yet we are catigorized as the same - middle class. Statistically, I don't think that is honest. And that was my overall point.
I guess we all have different views on how far your $ will go and what a family "needs," but I laugh when I read the middle class tax cuts for those making up to $250K(!) should remain. I don't care if you live in S.F. or NYC, if you can't live on $250K in this country, you're a friggin' moron. It's like 5-7X what the average family makes. I know lots of people don't want to admit they're doing well for psychological reasons I guess (even Paul Ryan) but it's not helpful when we're deciding who gets taxed more than others. I'd say a family of 4 making up to $150K might still be considered middle class, but is still on the rich side.
Thanks for your long, thoughtful and detailed reply to my post. I don't believe I created a straw man, I was addressing specifically what was being discussed in this thread. But I am not going to get into a point by point debate with you again. I know you are an intelligent poster who has reached some well thought out conclusions that unfortunately are based on underlying principles that you accept and I completely disagree with. So it's not surprising that we come up with very different conclusions. If you want to continue believing that the US has failed, that it's a horrible place to live, go right ahead. If you want to continue blaming the US middle class for its problems, go right ahead. If you want to continue believing that restricting freedoms is the best way to run human societies, and that restricting trade and punishing achievers is the way to improve economies, go right ahead. I think certain ideas are too ingrained into your way of thinking to bother exchanging ideas with you. Frankly, as much as I respect your intelligence and appreciate the clear way in which you often express your thoughts, I find your pessimistic outlook very depressing and very different from the reality I've observed and experienced.
I do not think that part is right, Ratdog thinks the middle class is free of blame. Edit: he may blame the middle class for voting republican.
But where do you make the cut off? At any point, it is arbitrary and somebody in DC will always try and justify it. I remember when we were talking about $75k. Now it is $250k. Personally, I think all these tax cuts should be removed. But I agree, I think $250k is too high. It would be interesting to see a report/study on how may people purposefully keep thier income below $250k in order to pay the lower tax rate.
To be fair, he didnt say Republicans. He said you are to blame if you voted for policies that cost you your job. Obviously unless we are single issue voters or we are voting on specific propositions - as we are asked to do in California - we don't vote for specific policies. But I think based on context and on the way he's argued in the past he means we should blame ourselves if we support freer trade and lower taxes.
I'd say it's doable in 95% of the zip codes in America, 100% if you're making $250K and aren't living like Mike Tyson
True to a limited point. The problem for your argument is that when most (but not all) of a party's economic platform undercuts your economic issues and you still vote for them anyway because you hate gay people or women or people who speak Spanish and you don't vote for the party that mostly (but not entirely) supports policies that are in your economic interests because you think the candidate somehow isn't macho enough or doesn't have the correct skin color, then you don't really have a right to bitch and blame the party you didn't vote for that you lost your job and got kicked out of your house. Too bad that the current version of "freer trade" trumps human rights, fair trade practices, the environment, etc. The problem with "free trade" as it has been practiced so far is that it comes with more negative baggage than it's worth. "Free trade" has simply become a MSM euphemism for letting the elites run wild to destroy the American middle class and trash the environment as mush as they want while everyone else pays for the social and environmental damage. If someone can offer a version of "free trade" that actually helps build a middle class elsewhere while not destroying the one we have here and doesn't crap all over the only planet we have as well as producing a host of other negative outcomes, I'm ready to listen. Too bad that the lower taxes are only for the rich and contribute to the deficit. When lowering taxes on the rich and raising them on the middle class can find an economic justification better than "we hope it will get the rich to spend more" despite all experience to the contrary and have more proof that it will work than just "Amity Shlaes says so", then maybe someone outside the Reep and Lib parties will take Art Laffer seriously. I'm not holding my breath.
The fallacy is that you are buying the talking points that claim that taxing people making $250k is akin to "taxing the rich". Actually, that is just a political phrase designed to exploit anti-rich sentiment. The obvious reality that gets lost in the slogan is that we are not increasing taxes on "the rich", we are increasing taxes on those who make $250K on a given calendar year. I personally through my business have had some years when I made over 250K of taxable income. Also I had some years when I had net loses. Such is -or I should say was- the nature of my business, and particularly it was so in the past decade when profits became more and more tied down to just a few factors like whether or not a couple of chains in my industry picked up some of the products we designed on a given year and gave me some shelf space. Obviously my situation is not typical, but it illustrates the point that making $250K on one given calendar year does not make someone one of "the rich". If I make 250K one year, but I have to keep working hard to try to make money the following year, that's not being rich. My definition of rich is somebody who doesn't need to work in order to make a living and cover expenses. Somebody who can have a comfortable lifestyle without having to work. Now, If I could have made 250K in profit for myself for ten years in a row...yeah, I'd probably be rich today.
There were two different posts... In the first want I acted like America's middle class and said all the different things that have affected our group. After we got more personal I disclosed a lot of information about myself. I'm not going to say that I'm perfect, that never went a little too far from what the numbers said but at the same time I bet in what was supposed to be the pillars of a better financial future: 1. We bought a home that we could afford. 2. I studied in order to get a better job, my wife wants to, but does not make a lot of sense now. 3. I saved money for the future through 401ks and investment accounts, since I'm not a stock market wiz. My home is underwater around 35 or 40% of market value. My paid has been cut although I invested in my education, and all and all it is difficult to find a position that pays enough to make the move worth. Yep our 401ks have somehow rebounded and we can be in the workforce for another 25-30 years, but when you put everything together I cannot help but think that even with decent returns we will have to work way past retirement age. We adjusted and the good thing is that our incomes are not bad and we were able to slash things here and there; the house losing value helped too in the form of lower taxes and premiums. I would be lying if I said that our lifestyle was heavily affected, mostly we lost a lot of flexibility in our decisions and we are chained to our house and to our jobs.. But the main point is basically the same: Even if I overspent 2 or 3 grand each year in little luxuries from 2005 till 2008, would that have made our long term situation much different?
That's WSJ propaganda, it pushes up the definition of middle class so as to make people think that almost nobody is actually rich. It is as most WSJ material, pure and utter nonsense. If you make $200k, you should kiss the pavement as you leave the house everyday, you are wealthier than 99% of world population today and 99.9% over history.