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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 ...
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Doing what? They don't say. Oh, and stop your Starbucks latte habit.
But they can pay $100 a month for an iPhone plan, have a car payment and go to Disney every year
They struggle because they're dumb-asses.
Went to Starbucks once....To get grounds for my garden.
But, yeah, I would definitely blame the 22-year-olds. Those guys spend too much on coffee.
Now that Brandon is out of office, it’s time to notice what he did and try and pin it on Trump or capitalism or society.
The Biden years will be remembered as especially hard on the lower middle class.
The poor.......we have to stop giving them shit. Take the jobs the illegals were doing.
Trumps policies will work for lower middle class folks.
Recognize this is a planned deal......so the folks at the bottom are an ever expanding group.....who will eventually be manipulated into voting for socialism.
Cloward Piven ( planned destruction )- the issue is how fast we get there. Biden put the pedal to the metal.
this blather is psyops to ready the self-absorbed voters for socialism
[[ We can still hear the giant sucking sound that Ross Perot warned us about as the jobs left the country]]
And here all these years ithkught it was just my tinnitus
“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.”
_______________
What kind of a financial planner is that?!?
Believe it or not, the usa spends more of its gdp on government than communist china does. And France far more.
Something is weird here. 79% of the responsibility for the 37 trillion deficit lies with administrations since the Bushes.
(Don’t look now, but Trump also just incentivized them to buy new cars.)
The Dems couldn’t have done it without the Pubbies.
How many trillions did the Bushes sink us into in the ME?
Really?
I see a lot of Escalades, Mercedez, BMW’s driven by people that I would bet shouldn’t be.
I call BULLCRAP! most of our POIR are better off thsn most of the world’s middle class.
“$4,000 worth of tatoos and the latest I-phones and eat out way more than I do.”
The tattoos and phones ... OMG! And I’ve heard that the corn-row type of hairstyle is incredibly expensive.
“They struggle because they’re dumb-asses.”
They struggle because they’re spoiled and entitled. We’re in an excellent financial place. We eat out maybe twice a month. Hubby scolded me because I ONLY spent $47 on clothes one recent year (I hate shopping and being retired I don’t need much). Haircuts at Great Clips. Our phones costed about $350 each. NEVER go to Starbucks or similar. Go to maybe one movie in a theater maybe once a year — if that often.
We do pay too much for home entertainment mainly because there were some weird choices we had to make when moving into our current house two years ago, and that will be adjusted down in a couple of weeks when a contract ends.
Our splurge is a cruise every couple of years.
Importing the 3rd world into America while also exporting jobs to other countries was probably a bad plan in retrospect
I deliver Amazon, Shein, and Temu. Take it from. me, people, even the poor ones, have plenty of money. They have turned the post office into a package delivery service
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