New Study Shows We Really Are Worse Off Then Our Parents

[stickarts]

I only have my memories as a kid to go on but it seems to me that I am better off than my parents were in many ways (financially and standard of living)
In some ways the quality of life is declining as far as stress and the environment for example, however I have the same worries as so many other people: being able to afford my kids education and my being able to retire comfortably.
I started saving for college the day my daughter was born and yet it seems it won't be near enough.

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

Well the way we live is incredible now! How we pay for that may not be so incredible. (financing, etc.) I would advise everyone to save and make sure that you are putting away for the future even if it seems like a small amount now it really can add up later on down the line.

 

[Catalyst]

1) Puh-leaze. The fact that things are truly hellish in Haiti in no way alters the fact that they are bad and getting worse here. And as for Mexico, it is enjoying precisely the sort of economic regimen which the current Administration and monied elites want for us. Stagnant job creation, a shrinking middle class, falling wages, government mostly as a tool for funnelling money from the many to the few. They are further along than us and are exporting their unemployment North of the border

3) Health care is a necessity, not a luxury despite what the government and the CEO of WalMart say. Housing, gasoline, health care and food are taking up a historically large and growing share of our income. The only way we finance that is through debt. Consider that something over half of all bankruptcies are the direct result of a catastrophic medical event. The standard Right Wing lie of "It's all because the Lower Orders don't have any morals or self-restraint" doesn't wash.

4) Consumerism has been the national religion, enforced by unremitting propaganda, government policy, economic priesthood and corporate screed. It is certainly destructive. But do you know what? It wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if we hadn't had decades of economic complacency followed by almost thirty years of the systematic destruction of family-wage jobs.

1.) I'm sorry that you feel things are bad for you in the USA. They're a lot better for me than they were for my parents. We'll just agree to disagree.

3.) I agree with you on the Health Care, that is a necessity (I just want the same Health Care coverage as my Congressman). I was referring more to housing and transportation. Food actually costs less than it used to.

Here's where I'm coming from:

"The average new home in 1970 took up less than 1,500 square feet. Today, new homes average more than 2,400 square feet, and there are fewer people living in them (about one person fewer, compared with the 1970s). Smaller homes cost less to buy, insure, heat, cool and maintain. Since the typical American household spent $15,167 on shelter and related costs in 2005, trimming even 10% of that bill would save you more than $1,500 a year. (If you could actually save a proportional amount -- 1970s homes were about 40% smaller -- that would be about $6,000 in savings.)"

'The 1973-74 oil crisis led to lines at the gas pumps and a new interest in fuel-efficient vehicles. But most households didn't have multiple tanks to fill. At the start of the 1970s, only 31% of households had more than one car, according to the U.S. Census Bureau; more than a quarter had no vehicles at all. By 1995, 60% of households had more than one car and only 8% were carless. The AAA tells us the average car costs about $7,800 a year to finance and operate, so one fewer vehicle could save you a tidy sum."

Food in general used to take up a lot more of our budgets. Food costs declined from 20.2% of the average family's expenditures in 1960 to 16.3% in 1972 to 12.8% in 2005. But even as food costs have dropped, the portion of our budgets we spend on eating out has grown considerably... ...Eating out just one less night a week could save a whopping $1,560 a year (and that's in today's dollars)."

We're living larger than ever and that's due to personal choice.

4.) Not quite sure of your point, so I'll just say that whether anyone (you, me, others) likes it or not, in a market economy, Capital and the employment associated with it, is going to flow to the most cost efficient producer.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Why do the Libs have to be so rude?

 

[Touch Of Death]

Why do the Libs have to be so rude?

Prolly because you have labeled them as libs.
Sean

 

[bluemtn]

ATTENTION ALL USERS:

Please, return to the original topic.

-Kerri L./ tkdgirl
-MT Moderator-

 

[tellner]

Why do the Libs have to be so rude?

On second thought, this doesn't even deserve a comment.

 

[Sukerkin]

I raise my glass to 'second thoughts' and the peace they can often bring :tup:.

I get the feeling that what is being missed in some intangible way here is that there are valid points on both sides of the better/worse divide and what is causing the difference is how we add up the points.

As an example, the room I'm sitting in right now as I type this must contain something like £10,000 of high-tech equipment (five PC's, a couple of (commerical grade) laser printers, big TV, PS2, two top-of-range force-feedback wheels, monitors, cable-modem etc etc). This kit would be un-imaginable to my dad and the money value is huge.

But, even taken in one lump it is still only half of my salary. Significant in percentage terms but I didn't buy all this in one go, it's been ten years in the accumulating.

Forty years ago, half of my dads wages would've been about £400. As I said, he paid cash for his house when he got married. How much? £800. In other words he paid two years wages for his home. I shall pay something like £350,000 for mine once all the mortagage interest is factored in i.e. approximately 17.5 years of my salary. Yes, it's a bigger house, a semi rather than a terrace but I think the point is made quite strongly. The flip side is that when I was a child we couldn't afford a TV or a refridgerator.

The economic landscape shifts underfoot all the time and some things become drastically cheaper whilst others do not but the baseline is that, unless we have dramatically jumped up the social ladder, we are not 'better off' than our parents.

I've assiduously avoided debt all my life but I'm still saddled with an enormous one that devolves simply from wanting to own the place where I live (which in turn is driven by the fact that I need to own it to sell it when me and the missus are old because our pensions will be worthless).

I am a 'wage slave' of the first water because altho' I hate my job I cannot quit to go back to a previous profession I adored - that, in and of itself, makes me worse off than my parents, who had the freedom to do what they wanted (within limits) as their fiscal requirements were so much less than mine.

Right, I've now thoroughly depressed myself and I'm going to get a drink ... cheers! {oh the irony :lol:}.

 

[Makalakumu]

Sukerin - brings up some good points, but I think the numbers in this case are rather clear. On the average people are forced to have more debt then their parents did in order to maintain a similar standard of living AND the buying power of our money has been greatly eroded. Despite the advances in technology, I think this adds up to a pretty bleak picture. What good are these trinkets anyway if we have to sign our property away in order to command them?

The other thing that we have to take into account is the cost of things that are rising so much faster then inflation. Health care, education, energy, etc. Take a look at one, education. My grandparents did not have to set a single cent aside for their children for college. My parents paid for their schooling all of the way to Master's degrees with part time jobs! In one generation, the price of college rose so fast that an entire generation suddenly needed to invest in it in order to make it possible for their children.

Now, I look at the price of college for my children. I have one of the best investments set aside for them and I put as much money as I can away for them, but the cost of tuition is increasing much faster then my money will ever grow. It's one step forward and two steps back.

And this is happening in so many areas of our lives that it calls into question the point of it all. Why the hell am I working so hard for all of these financial goals that I have no possibility of meeting because the system itself is structured against me? And where REALLY is all of MY wealth going?

I look at videos such as the one that I posted and I am so angry that I can hardly stand it. How can we allow this sort of thing to continue? Are we really so different (conservative or liberal) that we don't share the same common goals for our children? Are we so polarized that we cannot see the problem that mutually affects us all?

Perhaps that was the purpose behind the polarizing forces in the first place?

Lastly, someone brought up food. The price of food has dropped, but the reasons behind this are a whole other thread in and of itself and this is not a good thing, because the quality of our food has dropped dramatically.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I just am no longer willing to sit by and watch all of my hard earned wealth be shunted away from me and my family and into the pockets of this insular elite. I think we need to change the system and we need to do it in a big way.

 

[Makalakumu]

The other thing that we have to take into account is the cost of things that are rising so much faster then inflation. Health care, education, energy, etc. Take a look at one, education. My grandparents did not have to set a single cent aside for their children for college. My parents paid for their schooling all of the way to Master's degrees with part time jobs! In one generation, the price of college rose so fast that an entire generation suddenly needed to invest in it in order to make it possible for their children.

I want to make another point regarding this. Who encouraged the next generation to invest a portion of their income so that their kids could go to college even when the previous generation did not have to do this? The financial institutions! They set the rules, acted like they had no control, and then suggested something that "was in our children's best interest" and sat back and fleeced us all of a greater portion of our income.

This is how it is happening folks. This is how the wealth of the middle class is being transferred to the very elite. The system got like it is because no body seriously questioned these con men.

 

[CoryKS]

I want to make another point regarding this. Who encouraged the next generation to invest a portion of their income so that their kids could go to college even when the previous generation did not have to do this? The financial institutions! They set the rules, acted like they had no control, and then suggested something that "was in our children's best interest" and sat back and fleeced us all of a greater portion of our income.

This is how it is happening folks. This is how the wealth of the middle class is being transferred to the very elite. The system got like it is because no body seriously questioned these con men.

Strange, I thought the financial institutions were responding to a reality on the ground: that the colleges, responding to the popular belief that all children Must! Go! To! College! jacked the prices up accordingly. You could even blame the colleges for instilling in parents the fear that, lacking a degree, their children will be derelicts fit only for flipping burgers or pumping gas.

Alternatively you could blame the military, as others have, on the grounds that the GI Bill offered in the wake of WWII set off the whole "Coledge Edjumacation Gold Rush" in the first place. That at least offers the satisfying benefit of blaming the US military for yet another of the evils in the world.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

I want to make another point regarding this. Who encouraged the next generation to invest a portion of their income so that their kids could go to college even when the previous generation did not have to do this? The financial institutions! They set the rules, acted like they had no control, and then suggested something that "was in our children's best interest" and sat back and fleeced us all of a greater portion of our income.

This is how it is happening folks. This is how the wealth of the middle class is being transferred to the very elite. The system got like it is because no body seriously questioned these con men.

The cost of College is ridiculous and getting higher by the year. And the rate of payoff on student loans has people paying for it over decades.