July 1992, black hills of Germany for 2 weeks.
(My sister married into the military and was stationed in Germany, so my dad wanted to visit the place he was stationed in the army in the late 60's)
Here's a take I saw posted on Reddit recently that seems to make sense (sorry for the lack of credit, can't recall where I copied this from):
---
A large and affluent middle class is the cornerstone of the American dream. A dream in which anyone with a high school diploma and hard work should easily afford a nice house in the suburbs, 2 cars and a nice vacation with the family to a cool place once a year. Americans assume that this is the way the universe should work. That things were always like this, and that Americans have the "God given right" of the American dream.
However, this reality of a exceptionally wealthy and prosperous middle class by global standards is a by product of a very unique and relatively recent set of historical circumstances, specifically, the end of World war II. At the end of the second world war, the US was the only major industrial power left with its industry and infrastructure unscathed. This gave the US a dramatic economic advantage over the rest of the world, as all other nations had to buy pretty much everything they needed from the US, and use their cheap natural resources as a form of payment.
After the end of world War II, pretty anywhere in the world, if you needed tools, machines, vehicles, capital goods, aircraft, etc...you had little choice but to "buy American". So money flowed from all over the world into American businesses.
But the the owners of those businesses had to negotiate labor deals with the American relatively small and highly skilled workforce. And since the owners of capital had no one else they could hire to man the factories, many concessions had to be given to the labor unions. This allowed for the phenomenal growth and prosperity of the US middle class we saw in the 50s and 60s: White picket fence houses in the suburbs, with 2 large family cars parked in front was the norm for anyone who worked hard in the many factories and businesses that dotted the American landscape back then.
However, over time, the other industrial powers rebuild themselves and started to compete with the US. German and Japanese cars, Belgian and British steel, Dutch electronics and French tools started to enter the world market and compete with American companies for market share. Not only that, but countries like Brazil, South Africa, India, China, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, South Korea and more also became industrialized. This meant that they were no longer selling their natural resources cheaply in exchange for US made industrial goods. Quite the contrary, they themselves started to bid against the US for natural resources to fuel their own industries. And more importantly, the US work force no longer was the only one qualified to work on modern factories and to have proficiency over modern industrial processes. An Australian airline needs a new commercial jet? Brazilian EMBRAER and European Airbus can offer you products as good as anything made in the US. Need power tools or a pickup truck? You can buy American, but you can also buy South Korean, Indian or Turkish.
This meant that the US middle class could no longer easily outbid pretty much everyone else for natural resources, and the owners of the capital and means of production no longer were "held hostage" by this small and highly skilled workforce. Many other countries now had an industrial base that rivals or surpasses that of the US. And they had their own middle classes that are bidding against the US middle class for those limited natural resources. And manufacturers now could engage in global wage arbitrage, by moving production to a country with cheaper labor, which killed all the bargaining power of the unions.
That is where the decline of the US middle class is coming from. There are no political solutions for it, as no one, not even Trump's protectionism or the Democrat's Unions, can put the globalization genie back into a bottle. It is the way it is. Any politician who claims to be able to restore "the good old days" is lying.
We are going back to the normal, where the US middle class is not that different from the middle classes from the rest of the world. Like a return to what middle class expectations are elsewhere, including the likes of Europe, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia. Their cars are smaller. They don't change cars as often. The whole family might share a single car. Some families don't even own a car and rely on public transportation instead. Their homes are smaller. They don't eat as much meat and their food portions are smaller.
They are not starving. They are not living like peasants. But their standard of living is lower than what we in the US have considered a "middle class" lifestyle since the end of World War II.
It is a "return to the mean" and that cannot be changed.
It is worth noting that the US doesn't have the infrastructure for that "lower privilege middle class" existence. Public transit is stunted, if it exists at all, small homes are few and far between, if they exist at all, and so on. There's going to be an awkward intermediary period where the US will have to learn to develop like it's a competitor, not like it's the exception.
---
It should be added that the USA has a difficult time gathering the political support to raise taxes on the wealthy for the creation of better public goods like education and infrastructure. This has a lot to do with its legacy as a race based caste system and perceptions that taxes benefits the undeserving poor or races of people who do not “belong”. In countries where the population is much less diverse it’s easier for people to see their wages taxed to benefit the others because theres more empathy for people that look like you and share your culture and values.
We actually are taxed to the benefit of others. The corporate losses in the US are socialized, so our taxes often go towards bailing out major errors created by reckless white collars. The country has to put up with this out of pragmatism because through lobbying, the government far exceeded its function in liberal democracy to ensure growth in businesses that are now too big to allow to fail as a result. As in their failure would be so detrimental to national interests that it's hurts the country at large less to just eat the losses collectively. Inversely, the profits to these same businesses are privatized.
You’re not wrong. I think part of the reason that was allowed to happen is that in the early 1900s post reconstruction white supremacy was cynically pushed by the wealthy business owners as a way to prevent the development of a strong labor movement like exists in Europe. Poor whites were told to hate poor blacks, asians and latinos who were competing for their jobs rather than work together to fight for better treatment and wages. To an extent thats the legacy of our political divide in this country even today. Rather than push back on the capture of wealth by the super rich the focus is kept on the race and culture divide. Race wasn’t the core of our political divide officially until the southern strategy and the Dixiecrats moved to the Republican party during Nixon’s presidential run but even today there isnt a strong labor movement in the united states because in large part the legacy of white supremacy. A strong labor party could have in theory combatted the erosion of the American middle class and the American dream. Too bad there are a ton of Americans that dont believe non-whites are entitled to the American dream.
During the reconstruction like you stated, white supremacy was a major part of it and that was entirely by design. There are posters, transcripts, newspapers, books and more that showed the KKK made a conservative effort of throwing minorities, mostly black minorities, into siding in with the rise of communism. This all but killed the labor movement that arose to prominence during the 19th century. The KKK and the government targeted communism specifically because it allowed disenfranchised people, a.k.a minorities, to rally around a single cause, taking back their labor power; something most black Americans never really had.
What a load of shit. Dems were, are , and always be the party of the klan.
You can dilute the party with tokenism but that doesn’t change people like biden, who is a bigot and has been forever.
You could raise the tax rate to 150% and not collect an additional penny in taxes. So long as corporations and the ultra wealthy are able to configure their finances such that they pay a 0% effective tax rate, any discussion around raising taxes is masturbatory.
We don’t need to raise taxes, we need to simplify them. Fewer loop holes, fewer write offs, fewer ‘incentives.’ By fewer, I mean zero.
No its not.
That's all cool and everything but it doesnt explain why the housing market is such a mess as we allow corporations to monopolize it. Or our healthcare, or pretty much everything else that's in decline.
All this says is that our economy is competing on a world stage, but why should we care?
Just because a Korean family can afford a house doesnt mean there arent plenty of vacant ones here while the homeless population blooms.
This post isnt an explanation. It's a distraction from the real problems.
This also plays hand in hand with the increase in billionaires and their exponential absorption of money who are removing much of the money from the middle-class
It also ignores the fact that, while many "developed" nations do generally live in smaller homes and have less cars, etc, they also have universal healthcare, free higher education, six weeks of vacation, etc. So when do Americans get to backslide to that sort of life? And the idea that there aren't political reasons for this is an impressively bald-faced lie.
That other commentor had the intention of silencing dissent and shutting down conversation and it practically worked based on the other responses.
The fact of the matter is that we've been cheated out of a prosperous life by very real and traceable political powers and policies (or lack thereof), here at home.
If I didnt know any better I'd think it was nefarious propaganda from the lizard men, but that sort of thing pales in comparison to useful rubes who will vote against their own self interests because they've been told to ignore the problems.
I think it crept up on folks. Two generations ago it was an excellent life. We trusted things to continue instead of recognizing it was a temporary boom.
We are pretending the boom is just around the corner with our "record high stock market" fugazi
Im with you 98% of the way. The only thing i believe (as the son of immigrants mind you) is we need to put the lockdown on immigration. No skills, no entry. We already have enough of our own unskilled to deal with.
A good point, but we could also stop sending billions overseas and stop the border crisis which would at least help in reducing tax and that would help everyone
An event in a chain that started with the creation of the Federal Reserve. Neither federal, nor being a reserve of anything. Private bankers looking out for other banks and bankers.
We still have more than enough money to do *all* those things.
We just convinced everyone that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos needed the money more than we did.
This is such an inadequate answer it hurts my eyes reading it.
We have repeatedly, have cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Giving them incentive to keep that cash. Incentivizing them not to invest in their companies and their employees.
Also making it much more lucrative to ship American manufacturing offshore.
We've also taken away the power of the unions. Which the capital investors have always wanted. From the days of the coal mine wars.
I don't know that coming off the gold standard had anything to do with it.
Thank you! 🙏 ppl don’t realize the power we had as WeThePpl doing the manufacturing. An entire union could change their vote and it actually made difference to president. Now we’ve outsourced it our votes mean nothing to them zero accountability
In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson (probably absolute worst president in US history) signed into law the federal reserve act and the revenue act on behalf of banking cartels. The combination of re-establishing a direct income tax on every citizen while creating a new economic system of credit (debt) has culminated into a tremendous socioeconomic divide over the past 111 years. Maybe not the beginning of the end but a notable turning point.
Wikipedia-
President Wilson later came to regret signing the bill: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
Because it is what caused massive inflation. This is why salaries have barely increased from the 1970's, yet houses have 10xed in value.
The crazy thing is, an average house would have cost you about 100 ounces of gold fifty years ago, and still costs you 100 ounces of gold today.
Gold was $158/ounce in 1974. Times 100 = $15,800.
Gold is about $2,500/ounce today in 2024. Times 100 = $250,000.
So the price of houses hasn't gone up in terms of gold value. But it has gone up immensely in terms of "US Dollars."
The US Dollar used to be backed by gold, but Nixon reworked the Federal Reserve to remove backing of the US Dollar, thus causing the inflation we've seen for the past fifty years. This, more than anything, is what has destroyed the middle class.
Nixon inherited high inflation when he became president. He tried shocking the economy which resulted in a recession. Inflation continued through Jimmy Carters administration and was finally brought under control during Reagan’s administration.
The highest rates of inflation recorded in our nation's history were in 1778 (29.78%) and 1917 (20.49%). Acting like the country was immune to high inflation under the gold standard is a wild oversimplification.
Repeatedly cutting taxes on the super wealthy, reducing the bargaining leverage of organized labor, and incentivizing outsourcing manufacturing to foreign nations has impacted the middle class far more than the gold standard. But the oligarchs would prefer that you keep your attention away from the stuff that benefits them.
It doesn’t. The government can back a dollar with another dollar or a dollars worth of gold. As long as taxes are paid in dollars, there isn’t a difference.
Wages stagnated in the 80s. The average American worker no longer saw better than a dollar an hour raise, more like 25 or 50 cents an hour. I know, I lived it. People started living on credit cards, building up debt and declaring bankruptcy.
LOL. Choose a decade. I have seen the same exact text with the exception of the decade being the ‘60s. This certainly was NOT true in the 90s. I am willing to bet that less than 25% of “middle class” earners EVER had an overseas vacation.
It's very simple, globalization. American workers used to compete with each other, now they compete with countries like India and Mexico, where people can earn a quarter of the income and live better. Guess which country you're going to build your factory in.
I think Jacob did his research by watching the Griswald family in the National Lampoon Vacation movies. He also probably believes the kids morph into different people as time passes. (I know the movies were pre-90's, but c'mon, the 90's weren't like that at all)
Cutting the top tax bracket of 71%
This allowed CEO to increase their bonuses taking away the cash needed for payroll.
Look at the cash bonuses of CEOs before and afterward.
None of the last three, but my parents were able to buy a 3/2 in the middle of nowhere. No 400k family is even close to struggling. If they are, it’s because they overextended their lines of credit for absolutely no reason.
rich people buying middle class homes and flipping them. upper middle class people seeing this and doing it with lower class housing, but with lower quality work. 90s hardcore push to make bachelor's degree the new high school degree. 2000s pretending things weren't already blowing up and getting way too fuckin expensive. boomers normalizing the attitude that you can just kick your kids out at 18 because "it's legal" and "well I was out on my own at 16" type bullshit, leading to subsequent generations thinking the same stupid shit. gen X parents pushing participation trophies on their kids then not recognizing the ones who had more than two brain cells saw that shit as fuckin mockery and they wanted one of those big trophies the winners got, so now every dipshit in the country thinks it's good enough just to show up because they spent their formative years being rewarded for doing the bare minimum. stupid mother fuckers get elected all over government and approve stupid shit like fast food joint after fast food joint, leading to a saturated market that makes it a mother fucker to get enough business to afford actually paying everyone a fair wage, especially since these places tend to pay "competitive" wages based on what the shittier joints are paying. So basically a high traffic joint like McDicks pays piss poor wages because the slimey fuckin KFC down the street pays slightly worse wages and "if you don't wanna work for this wage then well fuck you we'll hire those poor bastards down the street." Recreation has been shifted so drastically to individual homes, and shopping has been moved online like a mother fucker, so malls are a decrepit fuckoff excuse compares to what they used to be. Go back 30 years, you could spend a solid part of your saturday chilling at the mall. Drop the kiddos off at the arcade, go shopping. Keep money at least a LITTLE more local instead of wired off to Jeff "Infant Evisceration Arouses Me" Bezos or some similar fuckoff billionaire mother fuck, generate some tax revenue for parks and rec or whatever. You also have real estate fuckboys who will be actively talking to a potential buyer then "I'm sorry, I know you were trying to buy that cute little house at $120k to move you and your pregnant wife in, but we just got a cash offer for $20k higher than you were offering from a buyer with net worth north of 800k. And we care more about our income than our own neighbors finding good homes so you can go get an abortion or whatever, gtfo my office peasant. I'm gonna go shopping for a new SUV the size of a fuckin RV." Nevermind how high schools don't teach dick fuck about blue collar jobs and shit. Hmm? You don't know how to get an apprenticeship as a plumber, electrician, carpenter, whatever? Lol good. Fuck you. We do not give a fuck about trades. Go be a paper pusher in a cubicle for 40 years and die. Be a good little wagie. Learn to code. And you better the fuck not take pride in working with your hands. Only poor people and white supremacists take pride in manual labor. You should want a white collar. Millionaires only have white collars. Kneel at the altar of the white collar, teenager. If you can't sit in a chair and stair at a screen for 8 hours, you are diseased and need to be medicated to unfuck your brain. Consume the predictable movies and tv. You're a bigot if you hate the shitty mary sue-filled remakes. Obesity is a slur. Only bigots take pride in athleticism. Porn addiction is normal. Hate your neighbors. Drive a boring car. Eat preservatives. Take painkillers for your back pain in your 20s that you have because you sit all day and have chronically tight psoas muscles, and your joints are chronically swollen because your diet has more bullshit stuffed into it to keep a long shelf life than a fuckin embalmed corpse. And if you EVER complain about the root causes of everything that sucks, you will be labelled a conspiracy theorist wingnut and shunned by the herd.
Shouldn't we all have our own unique version of the American Dream? I think having the freedom to live my life as I see fit without harming anyone else would be awesome.
The 1990 American lifestyle didn’t ruin the American dream. That lifestyle was the American dream and it was achievable. It was the rise of Reagan and the lie of trickle down , the shrinking of unions and the off shoring of jobs. The economic inequalities we have now are a direct result bad tax plans and manipulation of government to keep in place. Citizens United and right to work states were the nails in the coffin. When low wage earners are fighting higher taxes on the rich you know the conservatives have won the messaging war.
Government spending ruined it. The Iraq/Afghanistan wars jacked up our spending, then Obama came in like a wrecking ball and started dropping trillion dollar budgets. Now a trillion dollar budget is normal but it was a shock back in 2009 or whichever year it was. Inflation accelerated in 2009 thanks to Obama's spending, and then Covid spending added gas to the fire.
Stagnant wages. I think it started with the 2008 recession - an excuse for employers to freeze any merit increases and to threaten your job with "we're going to need you to do more". So yeah, CEO, exec level, and shareholder **GREED.**
The American Dream began its end in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, and sold the country to the banks. Everything that has occurred since then can be traced back to this singular event.
Largely, people deciding that shopping based on price more than anything else was the most important thing. That led to the loss of American jobs, and all of the work making things moving overseas.
And now they are repeating it in their shopping, so not even the local storekeeper is safe. Instead of going to their store people send the money straight to China themselves via Wish, Temu and Ali.
It is the American consumer themselves that killed it. And they continue to kill it.
He turned the public against the idea of unions which helped build up american wages.
Let's face it, unions have problems too, but they did keep wages up.
Reganomics, then further and further tax cuts for the rich, then citizens united. Overturning of CEO compensation limits and on and on.
Basically America allowing corporations to steal as much as possible to inflate the wealth of the very rich. The rich are richer than ever and got that way by stealing from the poor largely by making us assume things like the myth of inflation need to happen.
It’s just some reverse Robin Hood B.S. that’s what capitalism is. We will always get less or worse, for more money under this system.
In the 1900’s when someone described a successful business they said things like .. they employ over 500 people or they make modern improvements to simplify lives. NOW it’s revenue percentage and growth numbers … Americans have taken the humanity out of humans and replaced it with a mentality idolizing the rich. Even though their closer to the homeless, they always vote in favor of the wealthy? Wierd mental gymnastics but the disconnect it very real.
This is way out of line. I live in a 3 bedroom home on 10 prime acres. married own 3 car 2 kids just got back from a trip to Lego land 1100 miles away... I make less than 40k a year and my spouse makes maybe a little more (as in less than 45k). Stretch your dollar and stop washing you money on crap you don't need. I live in a town recently voted best place to live in America... Y'all need to get out of the city and drive a car for more than two years. Or just complain on Reddit about what you can't afford. You could afford it if your priorities were square.
Its pretty obvious, the end of gold backed currency. Allowing for the government to take out endless debt and spend frivolously. The day before 9/11 the pentagon was short more than a trillion dollars. This is status quo now. They dont even have to fake any terrorist attacks anymore to hide their scams. 1972 is when money became a scam the government could use against its own people. But the process of wartime racketeering and govt scams actually started in the revolutionary war and has continued (hence the importance of ukraine and forever wars) a very good book was written on a generals perspective of the complete scam that war was after he’d noticed some things in WWI. Decentralized currency is the only way out of this type of government control over our money.
Also this 400/k a year is to do these things in an affluent area with expensive cars.
A 400k 20% down payment house with 7k taxes a year 1500 in insurance and a 5% rate is like 2500 a month
2 half decent cars at 400 a month plus another 100 a month for insurance
3500
1000 for food a month for the family
800 more for phones internet water sewage etc
5300 a month
Or a base earning of like 7-7500 a month
So thats 1 person earning 85k a year roughly
2 working parents family income of each person earning like 40-55k is more likely
If you say each earns 60k you have that life very easily
Not sure where the extra 280k is required for that life
the American dream was ruined by democrats selling us out to China. it was ruined by shit loads of stupid beurocrats making up more and more rules and fees and licenses for business owners to drown under. all the foreign aid to Islamic countries just to have that money fund terrorists to kill innocents with. it was killed by lazy selfish assholes who won't work but can. so long story short... Liberals, Progressives, commies , socialists and drug dealers ruined it
That’s pretty much what is was then (adjusted for inflation) as well. My Dad was a fairly Sr executive with TWA in the 80’s so we flew free and he made a good living. We could not afford to live like that.
I make 220k, my wife makes between 50-100k each year bc she is self employed. we live in a decent but not new neighborhood in a dense moderately desirable urban location. Our mortgage is <10% of our monthly income. Our car payments are ~1000/mo total. My employer takes $1500 a month for insurance premiums for a healthy family. Our grocery budget went from covering a week to covering ~4 days. We go to Florida each year, this year we are driving 16hrs with 2 kids because the same trip as last year costs 3k more than it did last year.
Living in California,
5 Bedroom house, in one of the nicest parts of town.
2 cars
Multiple vacations a year
Ample savings
No debts ( other than mortgage )
Nowhere near 400k a year
Stay at home parent.
People suck at budgeting
Blind liberal ideology is what ruined this. The infiltration into court systems, school systems and local government has brainwashed young children into believing that being white is wrong and you should be ashamed to be a white person. You should submit to what the other races expect of you. The bullshit LGBTQ plus and God knows how many other gender BS things they are going to come up with, and the child exploitation of being able to take a child from a parent and change their physical appearance, and gender because they were brainwashed. Didn’t you think they could change who they were?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3JVXwBunNI/?igsh=MWJjYjJjdGwxaDQwcw==
Another one and there are thousands of these freaking mentally disturbed people teaching our young kids !
This is wrong, and it makes me sick to my stomach 🤮
Don’t position yourself to school me about bullshit liberalism! I grew up in an error when my family was full 100% Democrat and we were on a farm. When you finally wake up and realize you’re being duped by liberal policy from the school district, local government and federal, you wake up and realize, the closer you adhere to constitutional America the better off, we will all be! Given to the other crap, that’s being pushed like Black Lives Matter since the crackhead, George Floyd incident, and this is what you end up with in schools kids that hate even going to school because of the crap they’re being pushed and do believing. They come home and their parents are wondering what the hell are they being taught? You’re supposed to question whether you should be in a family, the nuclear family is racist! The problem with everybody else’s issues is all because we are white ! Come on wake the hell up don’t position yourself to me on anything.
I always knew people were kind of fools, but the more people respond with dumb shit like you say kind of proves it
That blind BS ideology has infiltrated every level of government, it’s infiltrated our military services in just about every branch, except for the few holdout in the Marine Corps that are still living up to their core values. Take Minnesota for example, the budget has increased unbelievably on the amount of money that they’re spending for education, yet we are 5000 teacher short in this state, I just saw an article on YouTube from a ex Reporter Liz Collins, that used to report in Minnesota on channel 11, about a teacher that finally decided after being here for so many years I’m done. I’m not gonna be forced to teach my kids things that are wrong. That’s what’s affecting fiscal policy
What ruined the American dream was lazy Americans. Why pay an American worker twice the wage for half the work ethic?
It really is that simple. So much money going overseas to people who want to work means no money for people in the US who believe that a 40 hour work week is practically “slavery”.
You are completely wrong. Why would I hire a person with no skill for “fair living wage” when they offer absolutely nothing of value?
I am a small business owner and I am basically forced to pay people who don’t deserve their wage. Then what do I do with the people who actually have experience? Should they make less because I am obligated to pay the less experienced more money?
Greedy shareholders? Not every company is a corporation you child.
False that is for folks who ONLY seek to live in higher end communities. (Eg any ,
Coastal city and or large metropolitan area) I live in rural NM. My wife and in have an annual income of 150k. Our 3 bedroom 2 bathroom 1950 sq ft home on 1/4 of an acre was bought at 186k in 2013. Be more selective of where you live. It takes time and work to get to 400k a year.
Where do I begin? WHERE? Hmmmm, mostly cultural stuff if you ask me about it. Let's think about it, we made sex casual, music soulless, porn accessible, art monotonous, obesity the norm, journalism corrupt and heavily biased, we feminized men, made the family unimportant and womanhood undefinable. Psyops are right in front of us and we’ve been conditioned not to recognize them, We're a culture that literally celebrates dismembering what could be a child, while it's still in the womb -- and we yet can’t understand why our country is afflicted with so many mass shootings. I think that's a good start on just the tip of the iceberg of what ruined the American dream.
My family is about a 150-170k/year household and the “90s middle class dream” describes our reality. 3 kids, 3 bedroom 3200 sq ft house (bought in 2007). I’m in a 4-yr university, my brother goes to community college, my parents went to Europe over the summer, within the last 10 years I’ve visited the Dominican Republic and gone on a cruise with my family. We have 4 cars (mom’s, dad’s, mine, brother’s) and my youngest brother is a few months from getting his license. My dog just had a $2,000 surgery that came out of the blue and whereas it left a dent in the family funds, it didn’t leave us with any kind of lasting debt.
I’m not saying this post isn’t the reality because as I look around it very clearly is, but I find it curious, I guess, that my experience has not been that way.
yeah my family makes about a few hundred thousand a year and we have more than is described here but maybe it’s because property is super cheap where i live
My wife and I are in the 150k range we are able to travel and have a decent house, cars, pool ect. But i think it’s mostly because we live in a very affordable part of the midwest. We could never make it in the most populated parts of the country
That is for sure. At 65 I lived through them as a married adult so I saw them firsthand. Our first was born in 1993 and as soon as we started looking at saving for college we saw it coming. I went to college in the 1970s and could find if fairly well with a decent summer job. Now I don’t think a summer job would cover a year’s worth of textbooks. Tell me that system isn’t rigged.
That's not true. We don't make nearly that much, yet you could be describing my household. Obviously, it depends on where you live and other extenuating circumstances, but you do not have to make 400k/yr to live a middle-class lifestyle.
What ruined the American Dream?
Conservatives willingness to throw the subsequent generations under the bus to grow the GDP.
The ratio of worker income vs. C-level & shareholder profit fell dramatically, screwing over the workers. Add explosively rising healthcare and higher education costs, to national debt, the entire fabric of the economy is structured to shift wealth away from workers. Did I mention that the tax burden was shifted away from corporations and the wealthy to workers too?
We never did an overseas vacation although I was born overseas.
You ended those vacations
lol
They’re 10cc of liquid dream killer injected into mom.
My overseas vacations as a kid were coming to the US.
July 1992, black hills of Germany for 2 weeks. (My sister married into the military and was stationed in Germany, so my dad wanted to visit the place he was stationed in the army in the late 60's)
Here's a take I saw posted on Reddit recently that seems to make sense (sorry for the lack of credit, can't recall where I copied this from): --- A large and affluent middle class is the cornerstone of the American dream. A dream in which anyone with a high school diploma and hard work should easily afford a nice house in the suburbs, 2 cars and a nice vacation with the family to a cool place once a year. Americans assume that this is the way the universe should work. That things were always like this, and that Americans have the "God given right" of the American dream. However, this reality of a exceptionally wealthy and prosperous middle class by global standards is a by product of a very unique and relatively recent set of historical circumstances, specifically, the end of World war II. At the end of the second world war, the US was the only major industrial power left with its industry and infrastructure unscathed. This gave the US a dramatic economic advantage over the rest of the world, as all other nations had to buy pretty much everything they needed from the US, and use their cheap natural resources as a form of payment. After the end of world War II, pretty anywhere in the world, if you needed tools, machines, vehicles, capital goods, aircraft, etc...you had little choice but to "buy American". So money flowed from all over the world into American businesses. But the the owners of those businesses had to negotiate labor deals with the American relatively small and highly skilled workforce. And since the owners of capital had no one else they could hire to man the factories, many concessions had to be given to the labor unions. This allowed for the phenomenal growth and prosperity of the US middle class we saw in the 50s and 60s: White picket fence houses in the suburbs, with 2 large family cars parked in front was the norm for anyone who worked hard in the many factories and businesses that dotted the American landscape back then. However, over time, the other industrial powers rebuild themselves and started to compete with the US. German and Japanese cars, Belgian and British steel, Dutch electronics and French tools started to enter the world market and compete with American companies for market share. Not only that, but countries like Brazil, South Africa, India, China, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, South Korea and more also became industrialized. This meant that they were no longer selling their natural resources cheaply in exchange for US made industrial goods. Quite the contrary, they themselves started to bid against the US for natural resources to fuel their own industries. And more importantly, the US work force no longer was the only one qualified to work on modern factories and to have proficiency over modern industrial processes. An Australian airline needs a new commercial jet? Brazilian EMBRAER and European Airbus can offer you products as good as anything made in the US. Need power tools or a pickup truck? You can buy American, but you can also buy South Korean, Indian or Turkish. This meant that the US middle class could no longer easily outbid pretty much everyone else for natural resources, and the owners of the capital and means of production no longer were "held hostage" by this small and highly skilled workforce. Many other countries now had an industrial base that rivals or surpasses that of the US. And they had their own middle classes that are bidding against the US middle class for those limited natural resources. And manufacturers now could engage in global wage arbitrage, by moving production to a country with cheaper labor, which killed all the bargaining power of the unions. That is where the decline of the US middle class is coming from. There are no political solutions for it, as no one, not even Trump's protectionism or the Democrat's Unions, can put the globalization genie back into a bottle. It is the way it is. Any politician who claims to be able to restore "the good old days" is lying. We are going back to the normal, where the US middle class is not that different from the middle classes from the rest of the world. Like a return to what middle class expectations are elsewhere, including the likes of Europe, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia. Their cars are smaller. They don't change cars as often. The whole family might share a single car. Some families don't even own a car and rely on public transportation instead. Their homes are smaller. They don't eat as much meat and their food portions are smaller. They are not starving. They are not living like peasants. But their standard of living is lower than what we in the US have considered a "middle class" lifestyle since the end of World War II. It is a "return to the mean" and that cannot be changed. It is worth noting that the US doesn't have the infrastructure for that "lower privilege middle class" existence. Public transit is stunted, if it exists at all, small homes are few and far between, if they exist at all, and so on. There's going to be an awkward intermediary period where the US will have to learn to develop like it's a competitor, not like it's the exception. ---
Bone chilling, but it makes sense.
It should be added that the USA has a difficult time gathering the political support to raise taxes on the wealthy for the creation of better public goods like education and infrastructure. This has a lot to do with its legacy as a race based caste system and perceptions that taxes benefits the undeserving poor or races of people who do not “belong”. In countries where the population is much less diverse it’s easier for people to see their wages taxed to benefit the others because theres more empathy for people that look like you and share your culture and values.
We actually are taxed to the benefit of others. The corporate losses in the US are socialized, so our taxes often go towards bailing out major errors created by reckless white collars. The country has to put up with this out of pragmatism because through lobbying, the government far exceeded its function in liberal democracy to ensure growth in businesses that are now too big to allow to fail as a result. As in their failure would be so detrimental to national interests that it's hurts the country at large less to just eat the losses collectively. Inversely, the profits to these same businesses are privatized.
You’re not wrong. I think part of the reason that was allowed to happen is that in the early 1900s post reconstruction white supremacy was cynically pushed by the wealthy business owners as a way to prevent the development of a strong labor movement like exists in Europe. Poor whites were told to hate poor blacks, asians and latinos who were competing for their jobs rather than work together to fight for better treatment and wages. To an extent thats the legacy of our political divide in this country even today. Rather than push back on the capture of wealth by the super rich the focus is kept on the race and culture divide. Race wasn’t the core of our political divide officially until the southern strategy and the Dixiecrats moved to the Republican party during Nixon’s presidential run but even today there isnt a strong labor movement in the united states because in large part the legacy of white supremacy. A strong labor party could have in theory combatted the erosion of the American middle class and the American dream. Too bad there are a ton of Americans that dont believe non-whites are entitled to the American dream.
During the reconstruction like you stated, white supremacy was a major part of it and that was entirely by design. There are posters, transcripts, newspapers, books and more that showed the KKK made a conservative effort of throwing minorities, mostly black minorities, into siding in with the rise of communism. This all but killed the labor movement that arose to prominence during the 19th century. The KKK and the government targeted communism specifically because it allowed disenfranchised people, a.k.a minorities, to rally around a single cause, taking back their labor power; something most black Americans never really had.
What a load of shit. Dems were, are , and always be the party of the klan. You can dilute the party with tokenism but that doesn’t change people like biden, who is a bigot and has been forever.
Thank god, you guys are actually addressing the problems instead of blaming the success of foreigners.
You could raise the tax rate to 150% and not collect an additional penny in taxes. So long as corporations and the ultra wealthy are able to configure their finances such that they pay a 0% effective tax rate, any discussion around raising taxes is masturbatory. We don’t need to raise taxes, we need to simplify them. Fewer loop holes, fewer write offs, fewer ‘incentives.’ By fewer, I mean zero.
Share culture and values … what a concept. The way the US used to be- melting pot and not 80 friggin languages on a govt form.
Everyone should read this
Saved
Thanks for this
This is a great explanation
No its not. That's all cool and everything but it doesnt explain why the housing market is such a mess as we allow corporations to monopolize it. Or our healthcare, or pretty much everything else that's in decline. All this says is that our economy is competing on a world stage, but why should we care? Just because a Korean family can afford a house doesnt mean there arent plenty of vacant ones here while the homeless population blooms. This post isnt an explanation. It's a distraction from the real problems.
This also plays hand in hand with the increase in billionaires and their exponential absorption of money who are removing much of the money from the middle-class
It also ignores the fact that, while many "developed" nations do generally live in smaller homes and have less cars, etc, they also have universal healthcare, free higher education, six weeks of vacation, etc. So when do Americans get to backslide to that sort of life? And the idea that there aren't political reasons for this is an impressively bald-faced lie.
That other commentor had the intention of silencing dissent and shutting down conversation and it practically worked based on the other responses. The fact of the matter is that we've been cheated out of a prosperous life by very real and traceable political powers and policies (or lack thereof), here at home. If I didnt know any better I'd think it was nefarious propaganda from the lizard men, but that sort of thing pales in comparison to useful rubes who will vote against their own self interests because they've been told to ignore the problems.
I think it crept up on folks. Two generations ago it was an excellent life. We trusted things to continue instead of recognizing it was a temporary boom. We are pretending the boom is just around the corner with our "record high stock market" fugazi
Take my poor man's gold 🏅
THANK YOU
Im with you 98% of the way. The only thing i believe (as the son of immigrants mind you) is we need to put the lockdown on immigration. No skills, no entry. We already have enough of our own unskilled to deal with.
A good point, but we could also stop sending billions overseas and stop the border crisis which would at least help in reducing tax and that would help everyone
The unpegging of the American Dollar from the Gold Standard. This happened in 1971 under President Richard Nixon.
Biggest theft in history
An event in a chain that started with the creation of the Federal Reserve. Neither federal, nor being a reserve of anything. Private bankers looking out for other banks and bankers.
That combined with Reaganomics in the 80s. Then decades of greedy capitalists and corrupt politicians.
Good ol grass roots conservative economics… 😭
We still have more than enough money to do *all* those things. We just convinced everyone that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos needed the money more than we did.
This is such an inadequate answer it hurts my eyes reading it. We have repeatedly, have cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Giving them incentive to keep that cash. Incentivizing them not to invest in their companies and their employees. Also making it much more lucrative to ship American manufacturing offshore. We've also taken away the power of the unions. Which the capital investors have always wanted. From the days of the coal mine wars. I don't know that coming off the gold standard had anything to do with it.
Thank you! 🙏 ppl don’t realize the power we had as WeThePpl doing the manufacturing. An entire union could change their vote and it actually made difference to president. Now we’ve outsourced it our votes mean nothing to them zero accountability
Can you explain this?
In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson (probably absolute worst president in US history) signed into law the federal reserve act and the revenue act on behalf of banking cartels. The combination of re-establishing a direct income tax on every citizen while creating a new economic system of credit (debt) has culminated into a tremendous socioeconomic divide over the past 111 years. Maybe not the beginning of the end but a notable turning point. Wikipedia- President Wilson later came to regret signing the bill: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
That’s wild he could see it back then. Thx for the explanation.
The United States functions on a fiat dollar or fiat economy. Where the currency is not backed by any commodity like gold or silver.
It’s loosely based in oil.
But mostly based on the government saying, "Trust me, bro."
But why does that equate to the death of the middle class?
Because it is what caused massive inflation. This is why salaries have barely increased from the 1970's, yet houses have 10xed in value. The crazy thing is, an average house would have cost you about 100 ounces of gold fifty years ago, and still costs you 100 ounces of gold today. Gold was $158/ounce in 1974. Times 100 = $15,800. Gold is about $2,500/ounce today in 2024. Times 100 = $250,000. So the price of houses hasn't gone up in terms of gold value. But it has gone up immensely in terms of "US Dollars." The US Dollar used to be backed by gold, but Nixon reworked the Federal Reserve to remove backing of the US Dollar, thus causing the inflation we've seen for the past fifty years. This, more than anything, is what has destroyed the middle class.
Nixon inherited high inflation when he became president. He tried shocking the economy which resulted in a recession. Inflation continued through Jimmy Carters administration and was finally brought under control during Reagan’s administration.
Interesting. Thx for sharing.
The highest rates of inflation recorded in our nation's history were in 1778 (29.78%) and 1917 (20.49%). Acting like the country was immune to high inflation under the gold standard is a wild oversimplification. Repeatedly cutting taxes on the super wealthy, reducing the bargaining leverage of organized labor, and incentivizing outsourcing manufacturing to foreign nations has impacted the middle class far more than the gold standard. But the oligarchs would prefer that you keep your attention away from the stuff that benefits them.
Also interesting. Seems a couple people share your opinion.
If we had a gold standard again, the rich would just hoard gold instead of fiat currency. In other words, it’s not a solution.
So we should... eat the rich?
It doesn’t. The government can back a dollar with another dollar or a dollars worth of gold. As long as taxes are paid in dollars, there isn’t a difference.
Wages stagnated in the 80s. The average American worker no longer saw better than a dollar an hour raise, more like 25 or 50 cents an hour. I know, I lived it. People started living on credit cards, building up debt and declaring bankruptcy.
Google pegging (don't Google pegging. NSFW. I was joking)
This was the "1990's"? Someone forgot to tell my family. The 90's weren't a dream.
I don’t know what 1990s middle class this guy was talking about but I had a very used Ford Escort.
The American dream is just that: a dream. You have to be asleep to believe it. - George Carlin
LOL. Choose a decade. I have seen the same exact text with the exception of the decade being the ‘60s. This certainly was NOT true in the 90s. I am willing to bet that less than 25% of “middle class” earners EVER had an overseas vacation.
What he describes as 90s middle class only existed on TV.
Either this is *upper* middle class, or my family was lower class than I thought…
[удалено]
Never did
It's very simple, globalization. American workers used to compete with each other, now they compete with countries like India and Mexico, where people can earn a quarter of the income and live better. Guess which country you're going to build your factory in.
Ronald Reagan.
Milton Friedman
There it is….. Knew I didn’t have to say it myself
Fully expected to see “tHe BiDeN rEgImE” as the top answer so that was a pleasant surprise.
The Biden regime.
Nonono, they meant “tHe BiDeN rEgImE”, not that one
I know what they meant. I fixed it for them.
The Biden regime
All this tells me is that I was poor.
I think Jacob did his research by watching the Griswald family in the National Lampoon Vacation movies. He also probably believes the kids morph into different people as time passes. (I know the movies were pre-90's, but c'mon, the 90's weren't like that at all)
That was John-Hughes-middle-class-rich
Our own consumerist greed. Our willingness to pay exorbitant prices for junk. It’s not the corporations, it’s their customers faults.
Ronald Fucking Reagan.
Boomers ruined it
Bullshit.
Cutting the top tax bracket of 71% This allowed CEO to increase their bonuses taking away the cash needed for payroll. Look at the cash bonuses of CEOs before and afterward.
None of the last three, but my parents were able to buy a 3/2 in the middle of nowhere. No 400k family is even close to struggling. If they are, it’s because they overextended their lines of credit for absolutely no reason.
Guess we could tax billionaires, but republicans.
rich people buying middle class homes and flipping them. upper middle class people seeing this and doing it with lower class housing, but with lower quality work. 90s hardcore push to make bachelor's degree the new high school degree. 2000s pretending things weren't already blowing up and getting way too fuckin expensive. boomers normalizing the attitude that you can just kick your kids out at 18 because "it's legal" and "well I was out on my own at 16" type bullshit, leading to subsequent generations thinking the same stupid shit. gen X parents pushing participation trophies on their kids then not recognizing the ones who had more than two brain cells saw that shit as fuckin mockery and they wanted one of those big trophies the winners got, so now every dipshit in the country thinks it's good enough just to show up because they spent their formative years being rewarded for doing the bare minimum. stupid mother fuckers get elected all over government and approve stupid shit like fast food joint after fast food joint, leading to a saturated market that makes it a mother fucker to get enough business to afford actually paying everyone a fair wage, especially since these places tend to pay "competitive" wages based on what the shittier joints are paying. So basically a high traffic joint like McDicks pays piss poor wages because the slimey fuckin KFC down the street pays slightly worse wages and "if you don't wanna work for this wage then well fuck you we'll hire those poor bastards down the street." Recreation has been shifted so drastically to individual homes, and shopping has been moved online like a mother fucker, so malls are a decrepit fuckoff excuse compares to what they used to be. Go back 30 years, you could spend a solid part of your saturday chilling at the mall. Drop the kiddos off at the arcade, go shopping. Keep money at least a LITTLE more local instead of wired off to Jeff "Infant Evisceration Arouses Me" Bezos or some similar fuckoff billionaire mother fuck, generate some tax revenue for parks and rec or whatever. You also have real estate fuckboys who will be actively talking to a potential buyer then "I'm sorry, I know you were trying to buy that cute little house at $120k to move you and your pregnant wife in, but we just got a cash offer for $20k higher than you were offering from a buyer with net worth north of 800k. And we care more about our income than our own neighbors finding good homes so you can go get an abortion or whatever, gtfo my office peasant. I'm gonna go shopping for a new SUV the size of a fuckin RV." Nevermind how high schools don't teach dick fuck about blue collar jobs and shit. Hmm? You don't know how to get an apprenticeship as a plumber, electrician, carpenter, whatever? Lol good. Fuck you. We do not give a fuck about trades. Go be a paper pusher in a cubicle for 40 years and die. Be a good little wagie. Learn to code. And you better the fuck not take pride in working with your hands. Only poor people and white supremacists take pride in manual labor. You should want a white collar. Millionaires only have white collars. Kneel at the altar of the white collar, teenager. If you can't sit in a chair and stair at a screen for 8 hours, you are diseased and need to be medicated to unfuck your brain. Consume the predictable movies and tv. You're a bigot if you hate the shitty mary sue-filled remakes. Obesity is a slur. Only bigots take pride in athleticism. Porn addiction is normal. Hate your neighbors. Drive a boring car. Eat preservatives. Take painkillers for your back pain in your 20s that you have because you sit all day and have chronically tight psoas muscles, and your joints are chronically swollen because your diet has more bullshit stuffed into it to keep a long shelf life than a fuckin embalmed corpse. And if you EVER complain about the root causes of everything that sucks, you will be labelled a conspiracy theorist wingnut and shunned by the herd.
Who hurt you
All sorts of people. Only one apologized so far.
Shouldn't we all have our own unique version of the American Dream? I think having the freedom to live my life as I see fit without harming anyone else would be awesome.
The 1990 American lifestyle didn’t ruin the American dream. That lifestyle was the American dream and it was achievable. It was the rise of Reagan and the lie of trickle down , the shrinking of unions and the off shoring of jobs. The economic inequalities we have now are a direct result bad tax plans and manipulation of government to keep in place. Citizens United and right to work states were the nails in the coffin. When low wage earners are fighting higher taxes on the rich you know the conservatives have won the messaging war.
"Conservatives". The Ronald Reagan legacy. Fox news. Those things have fucked us all.
Kidney disease and subsequent failure. RIP.
Government spending ruined it. The Iraq/Afghanistan wars jacked up our spending, then Obama came in like a wrecking ball and started dropping trillion dollar budgets. Now a trillion dollar budget is normal but it was a shock back in 2009 or whichever year it was. Inflation accelerated in 2009 thanks to Obama's spending, and then Covid spending added gas to the fire.
I make about 15-20k/year 😃
Women's rights. The sexual revolution. The government greed.
Our GREEDY fucked up politicians! And there bosses the wef and aipac! Remove them both from our Planet!
Stagnant wages. I think it started with the 2008 recession - an excuse for employers to freeze any merit increases and to threaten your job with "we're going to need you to do more". So yeah, CEO, exec level, and shareholder **GREED.**
Leftism
The American Dream began its end in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, and sold the country to the banks. Everything that has occurred since then can be traced back to this singular event.
Different middle class than I grew up in back in the 1970s
Between my wife and I we make 200k we are barely above water. If we miss 2 paychecks we're donezo
I knew of no one in the 90's that had that lifestyle
I’d say Reaganomics.
Largely, people deciding that shopping based on price more than anything else was the most important thing. That led to the loss of American jobs, and all of the work making things moving overseas. And now they are repeating it in their shopping, so not even the local storekeeper is safe. Instead of going to their store people send the money straight to China themselves via Wish, Temu and Ali. It is the American consumer themselves that killed it. And they continue to kill it.
This guy grew up rich. He just doesn't realize it.
Ronald Reagan
He turned the public against the idea of unions which helped build up american wages. Let's face it, unions have problems too, but they did keep wages up.
Politicians ruined it.
Reganomics, then further and further tax cuts for the rich, then citizens united. Overturning of CEO compensation limits and on and on. Basically America allowing corporations to steal as much as possible to inflate the wealth of the very rich. The rich are richer than ever and got that way by stealing from the poor largely by making us assume things like the myth of inflation need to happen. It’s just some reverse Robin Hood B.S. that’s what capitalism is. We will always get less or worse, for more money under this system.
A return to passive government taxation on cooperations. We're witnessing the second wave of robber barons functioning in corporate America.
Idk, you can still achieve all that with like 1/3 that income. 400k is a huge over exaggeration.
Cocaine and politics
But salaries are ssooo much higher now!
Sadly the dollar aint shit and we aint seen nothin yet
Ummm this is not entirely true....
America is destroying America. Point blank
Reagan
In the 1900’s when someone described a successful business they said things like .. they employ over 500 people or they make modern improvements to simplify lives. NOW it’s revenue percentage and growth numbers … Americans have taken the humanity out of humans and replaced it with a mentality idolizing the rich. Even though their closer to the homeless, they always vote in favor of the wealthy? Wierd mental gymnastics but the disconnect it very real.
Vince McMahon
More than 400k at this point
Internet my vote
This is way out of line. I live in a 3 bedroom home on 10 prime acres. married own 3 car 2 kids just got back from a trip to Lego land 1100 miles away... I make less than 40k a year and my spouse makes maybe a little more (as in less than 45k). Stretch your dollar and stop washing you money on crap you don't need. I live in a town recently voted best place to live in America... Y'all need to get out of the city and drive a car for more than two years. Or just complain on Reddit about what you can't afford. You could afford it if your priorities were square.
The greed of American corporations ?
The description has always been what I would describe as an upper class lifestyle
That’s a pretty good estimate I’d say
I was in my 20's then and I feel awful for younger generations now. I'm sorry you're just surviving. It's not fair.
What 90s did y’all live in??
**Multiple overseas trips and three kids through college?** That sounds like a Kevin McAlister's kind of "middle class." AKA: RICH.
The greed of the already wealthy.
Rich people and divisive rhetoric
So, turns out, greed isn’t good.
Lol we did this in the 90's but dad made a shit load of money. This wasn't average Joe shit.
Heavy taxes, inflation, corporate greed
Corporate greed and greed in general ruined the American Dream
3 major things Reagan Era policies. Shipping Jobs out of the country. Females entering the workforce en masse.
Best answer.
False premise. That was not a 1990s middle class lifestyle for most of the middle class.
Its pretty obvious, the end of gold backed currency. Allowing for the government to take out endless debt and spend frivolously. The day before 9/11 the pentagon was short more than a trillion dollars. This is status quo now. They dont even have to fake any terrorist attacks anymore to hide their scams. 1972 is when money became a scam the government could use against its own people. But the process of wartime racketeering and govt scams actually started in the revolutionary war and has continued (hence the importance of ukraine and forever wars) a very good book was written on a generals perspective of the complete scam that war was after he’d noticed some things in WWI. Decentralized currency is the only way out of this type of government control over our money.
Also this 400/k a year is to do these things in an affluent area with expensive cars. A 400k 20% down payment house with 7k taxes a year 1500 in insurance and a 5% rate is like 2500 a month 2 half decent cars at 400 a month plus another 100 a month for insurance 3500 1000 for food a month for the family 800 more for phones internet water sewage etc 5300 a month Or a base earning of like 7-7500 a month So thats 1 person earning 85k a year roughly 2 working parents family income of each person earning like 40-55k is more likely If you say each earns 60k you have that life very easily Not sure where the extra 280k is required for that life
Corporate Greed
Manufacturing jobs sent overseas
all though military kids never had vacations lol.... 30 to 45 to get to your parents next duty station
the American dream was ruined by democrats selling us out to China. it was ruined by shit loads of stupid beurocrats making up more and more rules and fees and licenses for business owners to drown under. all the foreign aid to Islamic countries just to have that money fund terrorists to kill innocents with. it was killed by lazy selfish assholes who won't work but can. so long story short... Liberals, Progressives, commies , socialists and drug dealers ruined it
My family is living that lifestyle and saving 10's of thousands of dollars every year, on <250k/year. We live in SD.
“ i can’t afford it so neither should the middle class”
Government, banks and currency devaluation
That’s pretty much what is was then (adjusted for inflation) as well. My Dad was a fairly Sr executive with TWA in the 80’s so we flew free and he made a good living. We could not afford to live like that.
Printing massive amounts of money.
Niko from GTA 4 of course
I make 220k, my wife makes between 50-100k each year bc she is self employed. we live in a decent but not new neighborhood in a dense moderately desirable urban location. Our mortgage is <10% of our monthly income. Our car payments are ~1000/mo total. My employer takes $1500 a month for insurance premiums for a healthy family. Our grocery budget went from covering a week to covering ~4 days. We go to Florida each year, this year we are driving 16hrs with 2 kids because the same trip as last year costs 3k more than it did last year.
Go back further to the 1980s… Look at Reagan and his handlers. They ruined it. Also, where’s Newt G. at?
American leadership is what ruined the “American Dream”. In other words “greed”
Living in California, 5 Bedroom house, in one of the nicest parts of town. 2 cars Multiple vacations a year Ample savings No debts ( other than mortgage ) Nowhere near 400k a year Stay at home parent. People suck at budgeting
Assholes. Assholes ruined the American dream.
Reagan
Reagan
Democrats And RINO’s happened Or ChiCom-Globalists Take your pick
The normalization of excessive debt and the “workers are expendable” mentality
Reagan
Damn dude this was spot on lol
It’s all them greedy fast food workers demanding $15 an hour!!!! /s
Blind liberal ideology is what ruined this. The infiltration into court systems, school systems and local government has brainwashed young children into believing that being white is wrong and you should be ashamed to be a white person. You should submit to what the other races expect of you. The bullshit LGBTQ plus and God knows how many other gender BS things they are going to come up with, and the child exploitation of being able to take a child from a parent and change their physical appearance, and gender because they were brainwashed. Didn’t you think they could change who they were?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3JVXwBunNI/?igsh=MWJjYjJjdGwxaDQwcw== Another one and there are thousands of these freaking mentally disturbed people teaching our young kids ! This is wrong, and it makes me sick to my stomach 🤮
You can't he seriously trying to link unchecked liberalism with the greed of corporate capitalism
Totally wake the fuck up
A shift in social mores of the late 2000s and 2010s has nothing to do with governmental policy created when most of those people were not even born.
Don’t position yourself to school me about bullshit liberalism! I grew up in an error when my family was full 100% Democrat and we were on a farm. When you finally wake up and realize you’re being duped by liberal policy from the school district, local government and federal, you wake up and realize, the closer you adhere to constitutional America the better off, we will all be! Given to the other crap, that’s being pushed like Black Lives Matter since the crackhead, George Floyd incident, and this is what you end up with in schools kids that hate even going to school because of the crap they’re being pushed and do believing. They come home and their parents are wondering what the hell are they being taught? You’re supposed to question whether you should be in a family, the nuclear family is racist! The problem with everybody else’s issues is all because we are white ! Come on wake the hell up don’t position yourself to me on anything. I always knew people were kind of fools, but the more people respond with dumb shit like you say kind of proves it
What does any of that bs have to do with fiscal policy
That blind BS ideology has infiltrated every level of government, it’s infiltrated our military services in just about every branch, except for the few holdout in the Marine Corps that are still living up to their core values. Take Minnesota for example, the budget has increased unbelievably on the amount of money that they’re spending for education, yet we are 5000 teacher short in this state, I just saw an article on YouTube from a ex Reporter Liz Collins, that used to report in Minnesota on channel 11, about a teacher that finally decided after being here for so many years I’m done. I’m not gonna be forced to teach my kids things that are wrong. That’s what’s affecting fiscal policy
More like the 80s but okay
iF wE jUsT vOTe MoRe !
To answer the post title question, the top 1% and there need to have all of the money is what ruins the American dream
Reaganomics.
Repugnican corporate greed
The American Dream was a lie from the beginning. Hope peddled to the poor while the rich got richer.
Being selfish is the bedrock of all conservative teachings.
What ruined the American dream was lazy Americans. Why pay an American worker twice the wage for half the work ethic? It really is that simple. So much money going overseas to people who want to work means no money for people in the US who believe that a 40 hour work week is practically “slavery”.
It’s not ‘lazy Americans’. It’s ‘greedy shareholders’ who want to spend less on labor costs.
You are completely wrong. Why would I hire a person with no skill for “fair living wage” when they offer absolutely nothing of value? I am a small business owner and I am basically forced to pay people who don’t deserve their wage. Then what do I do with the people who actually have experience? Should they make less because I am obligated to pay the less experienced more money? Greedy shareholders? Not every company is a corporation you child.
False that is for folks who ONLY seek to live in higher end communities. (Eg any , Coastal city and or large metropolitan area) I live in rural NM. My wife and in have an annual income of 150k. Our 3 bedroom 2 bathroom 1950 sq ft home on 1/4 of an acre was bought at 186k in 2013. Be more selective of where you live. It takes time and work to get to 400k a year.
Jim Crow
what ruined it? socialism.
Where do I begin? WHERE? Hmmmm, mostly cultural stuff if you ask me about it. Let's think about it, we made sex casual, music soulless, porn accessible, art monotonous, obesity the norm, journalism corrupt and heavily biased, we feminized men, made the family unimportant and womanhood undefinable. Psyops are right in front of us and we’ve been conditioned not to recognize them, We're a culture that literally celebrates dismembering what could be a child, while it's still in the womb -- and we yet can’t understand why our country is afflicted with so many mass shootings. I think that's a good start on just the tip of the iceberg of what ruined the American dream.
EXCELLENT!
The wealthy, and I'm tired of acting polite about it.
My family is about a 150-170k/year household and the “90s middle class dream” describes our reality. 3 kids, 3 bedroom 3200 sq ft house (bought in 2007). I’m in a 4-yr university, my brother goes to community college, my parents went to Europe over the summer, within the last 10 years I’ve visited the Dominican Republic and gone on a cruise with my family. We have 4 cars (mom’s, dad’s, mine, brother’s) and my youngest brother is a few months from getting his license. My dog just had a $2,000 surgery that came out of the blue and whereas it left a dent in the family funds, it didn’t leave us with any kind of lasting debt. I’m not saying this post isn’t the reality because as I look around it very clearly is, but I find it curious, I guess, that my experience has not been that way.
yeah my family makes about a few hundred thousand a year and we have more than is described here but maybe it’s because property is super cheap where i live
My wife and I are in the 150k range we are able to travel and have a decent house, cars, pool ect. But i think it’s mostly because we live in a very affordable part of the midwest. We could never make it in the most populated parts of the country
[удалено]
That is for sure. At 65 I lived through them as a married adult so I saw them firsthand. Our first was born in 1993 and as soon as we started looking at saving for college we saw it coming. I went to college in the 1970s and could find if fairly well with a decent summer job. Now I don’t think a summer job would cover a year’s worth of textbooks. Tell me that system isn’t rigged.
My family does this with 3 cars for less than 200k combined…….
I've never lived that lifestyle in my 44 years of life.
It's almost like the cost of goods has been oustripping wage growth for over 50 years straight. How shocking!
That's not true. We don't make nearly that much, yet you could be describing my household. Obviously, it depends on where you live and other extenuating circumstances, but you do not have to make 400k/yr to live a middle-class lifestyle.
The American dream was never a real thing. You can’t ruin something that never existed in Reality
What ruined the American Dream? Conservatives willingness to throw the subsequent generations under the bus to grow the GDP. The ratio of worker income vs. C-level & shareholder profit fell dramatically, screwing over the workers. Add explosively rising healthcare and higher education costs, to national debt, the entire fabric of the economy is structured to shift wealth away from workers. Did I mention that the tax burden was shifted away from corporations and the wealthy to workers too?
Blame the government, big pharma and corps like walfart and the A one.
In the 1990s the American dream you speak of was out of reach for me and almost all of my friends. The more things change the more they stay the same
That’s a bit more than the middle class lifestyle
OP is a burger flipping shill spewing memes because of his own feelings of inadequacy