How can the middle class survive when their wages can no longer keep up with the cost of living anymore?

Question

Health Care, Credit Card debt, Mortgages, Cars and Groceries; nothing is affordable anymore.

Once upon a time a middle class family could afford to pay their bills without resorting to credit cards and/or loans. And only one person had to work in the average family forty years ago.

The United States is turning into Mexico - made up of only rich and poor, with a pesky middle class that is an endangered species.

Our standard of living is under attack, yet no one is doing anything about it.

The rich, just as they always have, don't care about anyone else's economic misery. If they lose a few domestic customers for their products, they can always export.

Is the middle class doomed to extinction? What will happen to the U.S.A. once we're gone?

Answer 1

The Constitution was altered from securing rights to each citizen adult individual in1902. The change was to public-interest fantasizing, conducted by benevolent government tsars elected by their victims. the middle class began to die as a group that day; the process was completed in 1994, when he constitution was finished.

Your figures are correct. My father as a postal worker
on a salary in 1941 of $4.000 was able to support a wife, 2 children, own a modern-day $300,000 house, a new equivalent to a $30,000 car, take vacations and own half an acre of land. To own what he did today, he would have to earn $104,000 a year--but even his partially-protected government job now pays only $28,000. That's a loss of purchasing power of over 75% during that time--and the
similar loss for those NOT government connected has been much worse.

Only the floating of credit card debt has kept people from realizing the 3 truths of the economy:
1. It is totalitarian--money does not exist, only collectives--some holding power over others, others in power over you.
2. 85% of the nation's wealth has been arrogated by monopolists alloowed to function so by the government--in financial organzations, media, departments, unions, educational institutios and the military etc.
3. Only credit cards have stopped US citizens from realizing how bad their plight is: no retirement possibe, no safety from health care costs, no marketplaces of categorically defined products, jobs and job competitions,
no protection through government, no meaningful elections, no real arts, no real monetary system, no education in scientific prioritized inner-workings definitions that means anything, and no lives worth the having.

Your questions asks for a "bottom line"--the US can go on in some fashion for another 500 years. But it will be effectively dead of its own deregulational totalitarianism long before that date in the early 2530s is reached, a victim of the betrayal of its republic's constitution.

Answer 2

The countries leadership over the many decades has a wonder talent for forgiving debt and creating it at an insane rate. This hasn't happened over night. Companies still have profit growth year by year.By the way just for giggles monopolization is against the law, unless you have a really good lobiest. So if companies maintain there projected profit growth then who feels the pinch, middle class. But here's the lemon if we as a country were not so spoiled as a nation, we would have more control. People get upset about over payed athletes and ceo/ upper office salaries and lavish vacations. Who pays them????" We do by watching there games or buying there products. Lemmings at best we are mmmmmuu, young Jedi.

Answer 3

Historically, the wealth concentration in the U.S. has been inversely related to inflation and the strength of the unions. Inflation in the U.S. has been steadily declining since mid-1980s, while unions have been losing their power. Both trends are about to reverse; increasing budget deficit will push inflation up, while unions are actively branching out into new industries.

Right now, the wealth concentration in the U.S. is right where is was during the Gilded Age. And we all know what happened after the Gilded Age: The New Deal. Expect history to repeat itself; eventually, the next New Deal will be put in place by the next wave of populist politicians...

Answer 4

only if we help contribute to it is it going to be this way. If we continue to procreate with no regard to the future then that is exactly what will happen along with exhausting all natural resources including water and oil. if it goes like that then middle class is really going to be the last thing on your mind. everyone should really think about only having the amount of children that they can continue to support for longer than 18 years. otherwise they really will be raising people to exist only in poor class since the cost of living continues to rise. the other thing is that all the people buying houses for more are driving up the home prices. lastly, do you really think the economy that has brought us to today is really going to keep us on top. all world powers have collapsed in history, why would we be different.

Answer 5

The standard of living for many if not most Americans will definitely decrease in the upcoming decades (i.e. peak oil, peak water, peak coal, possible economic depression, hyperinflation, continuing resource wars in the Middle East). We are truly living at the end of an era, and the middle class will be one of the first casualities.

Answer 6

I have said this for the last two years. There will be no middle class within the next ten years. Either you'll be rich or poor. You can thank President Bush and his pals that he made millions for, for doing this.

Answer 7

The very poor & the very rich...thats the future. We are on the endangered list.

Answer 8

Welcome Middle Class to the poor class neighborhood
I'm sure more will be joining us in the near future.
Maybe when enough of them join us maybe we can do something about this.

Answer 9

Excellent question. I think you hinted at the answer. We'll end up like Mexico.
Edit: NC and brk - Wow! That's a damn good answer!

Answer 10

First, if they cannot support themselves they are by definition, poor not middle class. The question is, why are we defining all these people as poor? Or, your question is invalid on face.