Posted on 07/06/2025 4:47:09 AM PDT by Libloather
The American dream is slipping away.
Most US citizens no longer enjoy “a minimal quality of life” due to skyrocketing costs, a depressing new study has uncovered.
Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity conducted research into the economic well-being of the country’s residents, defining “minimal quality of life” as the ability to pay for a “basket of American dream essentials”: housing, food, transportation, clothing, medical costs and basic leisure expenses.
The leisure expenses included access to cable TV and streaming services, as well as the ability to pay for six movie tickets and two baseball tickets per year.
The Minimal Quality of Life index goes “beyond traditional cost-of-living measures to provide a more comprehensive understanding of what it takes to secure a foothold on the bottom rung of the American dream ladder and have a real opportunity to climb it over time,” the authors wrote.
The bottom 60% of American households by income fell well short of that threshold, the researchers damningly determined.
“The MQL reveals the harsh reality that the American dream, with its promises of well-being, social connection, and advancement, is out of reach for many,” the authors concluded. “Rising costs in essential areas like housing, healthcare, and education significantly outpace wage growth, leaving millions struggling to attain even a minimal quality of life.”
An average American couple with two children would need to spend $120,302 per year to cover the minimum quality of life expenses, the researchers determined.
Skyrocketing costs over the past two decades are to blame...
**SNIP**
“I get tired of the ‘Stop your Starbucks latte habit’ [advice], because in reality it’s not people’s fault,” financial planner Laura Lynch told CNBC in relation to the study. “The structures around us have created an expectation of a lifestyle that is increasingly becoming unreachable for folks.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
You can bet on that!
For the same price (or maybe even lower!), you can call virtually anywhere in the US for no extra charges, the capability of texting which can be very handy, and apps such as maps that are very useful that no land line ever had. You can take your phone anywhere, even use it in you car via hands-free calling.
Yes, you can get carried away with the cost of new phones and plans, but I have found that by careful shopping our phone plans have been getting better and better, and the pricing has at least stayed the same or maybe gotten a bit lower.
It gives you free phone, texts, mapping and ride-share apps through their service. You also get free Internet as long as you have a wifi connection (at home, your library, etc.). Can buy full Internet by the day or month, though for fulltime internet there are cheaper services.
But you can get full data, text and calls for as little as $10/mo: https://www.redpocket.com/plans
Housing and health insurance.
The big cities have priced themselves out of range for the middle class. They have become very expensive playgrounds for the rich, a very difficult and increasingly precarious place to live for those in the middle, and a miserable, hopeless place for the underclass. As the middle and working classes continue to exit, suffering ever longer commutes as a result, the cities are filled with the Eloi, the Morlocks, and foreigners.
American corporations need to shift to lower cost cities. This is already happening, but it’s a slow process. Progress is very much retarded by the fact that the largest corporations are now run by extremely wealthy elites who like the city as a playground and who are rich enough to insulate themselves from the grinding realities — at least for a time.
Affordable health insurance has been destroyed by government overregulation. The costs are driven by relentless cost shifting, and cost shifting means that consumer choice can’t be tolerated. The left wants a complete takeover, which will result in rationed welfare medicine for most of us and an insulated, guarded system for the political class and its cronies.
These problems are not insoluble, but the political will to tackle them is lacking. People don’t want to face the necessary changes, and they won’t until the system heads off the cliff. Which is rapidly approaching.
“What kind of a financial planner is that?!?”
I’m guessing one with unpaid student loans. And an expensive car with a 60 month loan. Maybe with tats and a nose ring.
Ha!
“…and two baseball tickets per year.“
Would that be Yankee Stadium or the local minor league? One costs me about 150.00 per ticket and the other about 20.00, fireworks included.
I understand and appreciate that. Thanks. However, when you are isolated with PTSD, no human interaction except Free Republic, TV is pretty damn necessary.
I had a hotspot for years and it was great. Phone, everything only cost me $67.00 a month.
Reception was not reliable, but tolerable because this is a remote spot... I couldn’t find anything else after the Almeda fire... and I couldn’t live in a car any longer. I just couldn’t. Everyone bitches at me because I moved out here with absolutely no services but there was nothing else livable... motels and restaurants were shut because of Covid in Oregon. I stayed in dumps without plumbing and was robbed and molested!
We don’t all have “choices”. I didn’t believe that until I had none and was sitting along the freeway wondering. “ where do I go?”
So I drove and drove for months... I should not be driving.
I’m trying so hard but after they attached my social security checks for emergency catastrophy funds they sent me 3 years before, I can’t save enough money to get out. There’s not even a post office or a way to make a copy without driving 40 miles. After a natural catastrophy, everyone needs a notorized copy of something every day it seems.
It really sucks. My home was paid for... hadn’t had a house payment for 30 years. I had savings and thought I was prepared for disabled retirement, then lost everything.
LoL!
My wife and I make over 150 combined and have zero car payments and only a mortgage with 2 kids. I refuse I debt. Last year both kids needed braces and we canceled vacation. This year hot water heater and we canceled vacation. We still struggle. We’re still paycheck to paycheck.
And yet they can still afford Tater Swuft tickets, donate all day long to Go Fund Me for every schmuck that comes down the pike, they can buy the most expensive cell phones, they all can afford expensive tattoos, they drive new SUVs and spend more time vacationing all over Europe and eating every meal out somewhere. YEAH! “Depressing”.
Are your eyes good enough to read? If not, I’d think you could get audiobooks from your library on your phone?
And out in nowhere is wonder to me, in that nature is almost all I need.
It’s a balance. You never know what unexpected expenses lie around the corner, but memories made with your family are priceless…
“I think we’ll know whether or not our economy is successful is when a husband is able to provide well for his family and the wife can stay home and raise her children. It used to be that way, pre-feminism. Kids had Mom and home, and there were fewer hooligans.”
********
Perhaps it’s just my perspective. But expectations were less in those days. A house with enough bedrooms for each child to share with another was considered adequate. How many kids today share bedrooms. We had one very old B&W TV that was out of commission for months at a time. A family vacation might be to a location one or two states away, often camping out or staying with relatives. Maybe once in a lifetime you’d do a cross country trip. Most houses didn’t have A/C. We hauled coal for our furnace. A telephone was a party line. People made coffee at home and took it to work in thermoses or there were large communal coffee groups for offices. Eating out was rare. For us a trip to McDonalds (with an outside walk-up window) was a real treat. Soda pop was around but not even close to daily. Maybe once a week or two.
This was life in the 1960’s in an extremely middle class family in the American Midwest.
Vacation can be camping. That’s largely what I grew up with and it was great.
I have no wifi connection. Lol
There’s nothing here... not even a restaurant or post office. I haven’t eaten out in 3 years.
I appreciate it, but
Don’t bother please. It’s like reading a foreign language and just makes me cry.. which I do all the time.. another TBI jewel!
I will learn to do without TV. The doctor says I must stop using all these screens.
Ever since Biden destroyed our economy and doubled the price of everything we buy!...... due to diesel fuel doubling.
Good points. Everyone should have a budget. Everyone should know where their money is going.
Personally, I’ve set up a spreadsheet to track all my spending and income.
And it might seem very basic, but everyone should have a balanced budget. Credit card debt is a financial killer.
For a while, it seemed great that we put the thumb on home ownership with subsidized mortgages.
But now that system is so bloated out of control that it has pushed home ownership out of reach of the young and working/lower-middle class especially.
Won’t happen, but IMO the government should get out of the housing market completely, we need to send 60 million invaders home, and then after some significant pain our country will be functional again.
America is still where it has always been. Rush used to talk about it all of the time. The “media” toads would ask people about the economy and their standard of living. He said that they always would reply, “Oh, I’m doing good but I’m worried about my neighbors.” It’s still like that.
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