Posted on 08/29/2004 1:57:32 PM PDT by NYC Republican
EWTON, Iowa - Sure, she is upset that she cannot afford health care, and it hurts that higher tuition costs at the community college where she carries a full load have put her deeper in debt. But at the end of this month, Molly Illingworth will suffer the worst blow yet: she is getting laid off by her mother.
"I hate to close the shop," says Pam DeBruyn, Molly's mother, who owns a small party and office supply store here, and also works full time as a graphic designer. She needs the designer job for the health insurance, so she will close the store, and with it will go her daughter's employment.
In this Iowa family, one generation is trying to step through the gateway to the middle class; the other is struggling to stay in it. And it is the middle-class squeeze - rising college tuition and soaring health care premiums at a time when wages are stagnant and job creation is sluggish - that may be the sleeper economic issue of the presidential campaign.
"I feel the squeeze from both ends," said Beth Steenhoek, a mother of two who owns a small insurance agency in Newton. Fewer people are buying insurance, she said, because of a hefty increase in premiums, and her own family insurance costs have gone up as well.
Ms. Steenhoek has refinanced her home mortgage loan, and remembers getting "about $400 a kid" in the Bush tax cut, but she said it still feels like the family budget is shrinking. And she has not even thought of taking a few days off.
"A vacation? No, I can't leave the office."
For Ms. Steenhoek, the economy is the No. 1 issue in the presidential campaign. She is that rare species this election year: the undecided voter. But even solid partisans are troubled by the tremors at the edge of middle-class life.
"I'm a pretty staunch Bush Republican and I have a great job at I.B.M.," said Todd Canny, who was sharing ice cream with his three children and wife in a new mall. "But we're paying a lot more for health care co-pays and premiums, which is through my wife's job as a teacher. And trying to save for college for these three little ones has gotten a lot harder."
Senator John Kerry says the middle class has shrunk since President Bush took office, and when judged by the percentage of Americans who made $25,000 to $75,000 in 2003 - 45 percent of households - he is right, according to factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center that monitors campaign claims. Mr. Bush cites record home ownership and a rising investor class. He points to indicators of coming economic growth, and says his tax policies have put money directly back in people's pockets.
But despite low inflation, record home ownership and productivity, many middle-class households are close to a tipping point - a bill or two away from losing economic control, surveys and interviews show. Even with the creation of a million new jobs over the last year, the percentage of people who say the economy is in good shape has fallen as Election Day approaches.
[The number of Americans without health insurance rose to 45 million last year, up a million from the previous year, and median household income continued a three-year decline, the Census Bureau reported on Thursday. People in the middle-income brackets had the biggest declines in coverage.]
Last year, 1.6 million American households filed for personal bankruptcy, up 33 percent from 2000, according to figures kept by federal bankruptcy courts.
And if current trends hold, nearly one in seven families with children will declare bankruptcy by the end of the decade, said Dr. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who is the co-author of "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke" (Basic).
"These people aren't poor," Ms. Warren said. "But this is the first generation where college-educated people with a good job cannot find financial security."
But Ms. Warren said the squeeze goes beyond short-term economic swings, and is worse than it has been at any time since the creation of the post-World War II middle class. The reason is that the price of things that people cannot control, but need to get ahead of or stay ahead of, are rising much faster than inflation or wage increases.
With wages flat, college tuition is up an average of $1,207 for four-year institutions since 2000, and yearly health care premiums up $2,360 over the same period. Mr. Bush's advisers say the tax cuts have made up for stagnant wages. Real disposable income, money left over after taxes, is up slightly this year over last, and that is mostly because of tax cuts.
Another variable is gas prices. They have fallen some from recent highs, but record oil prices portend a winter when home heating fuel costs could break some family budgets. Already, higher gas prices have cost the average family about $500 a year.
So even though people received additional money out of their houses, through low-interest rate refinancing, or in their pockets, through the federal tax cuts, the stimuli seem to have worn off. Nearly two-thirds of people in recent polls say they have trouble paying bills and feel pinched by the rising costs of middle-class essentials.
It is one thing to feel the squeeze in Newton, a Maytag company town east of Des Moines where layoffs and outsourcing have had a ripple effect on businesses big and small. But it is quite another to hear people talk about the squeeze inside the polished marble shopping palace of the new Jordan Creek Town Center, Iowa's biggest mall. It had its grand opening this month in the booming suburbs west of Des Moines.
The Cannys live near the mall, in the fastest growing part of Iowa, where big houses and new office parks have sprouted in former corn fields.
Mr. Canny said the Bush tax cut did not help his personal finances as much as the rising health care costs and the higher price tag for filling his S.U.V. tank hurt them. Mr. Canny has yet to give Senator Kerry, who used the term "middle class'' eight times in his Democratic Party acceptance speech, a second look.
"But if things continue to get worse, it may start to affect my vote," Mr. Canny said.
Iowa's seven electoral votes went to former Vice President Al Gore by a slim margin in 2000 and the state is up for grabs this year, according to polls. It is not only a swing state, but also emblematic of all the trends that have pressed middle-class Americans.
Ms. DeBruyn and Ms. Steenhoek, here in Newton, own their businesses. Both women have a spouse who also works. But both women feel they have lost ground because of costs they cannot control, costs of things that keep them among the overwhelming majority of Americans who say they are middle class.
When Mr. Kerry said in his acceptance speech that "People are working weekends, two jobs, three jobs, and they're still not getting ahead," it went directly to the middle-class squeeze issue, and hit its mark in some households in Iowa.
"I like some of what Kerry has to say on the economy," Ms. Steenhoek said.
But both women also like President Bush's emphasis on trying to give tax money back to middle-class families. In Iowa a few months ago, Mr. Bush said the election "is a choice between keeping the tax relief that is working, or putting the burden of higher taxes back on the working people."
Here in the troubled prairie town of Newton, the only way Ms. DeBruyn says she can keep her dream of owning a small business alive is by firing her daughter, whom she has been paying $6.50 an hour. Then she plans to move the business into her home and open it at night, while holding onto her full-time day job as well.
"I'd like to retire in this town," said Ms. DeBruyn, who has lived in Newton all her life. "But it seems like we're holding onto less and less of what we make."
You wrote:
"...Karl Rove bribe??? Are you kidding?"
Sorry, I forgot to arm my sarcasm torpedo.
I thought you'd get it.
You wrote:
"Jeez, another newbie, you're less than a week old, huh? Republican my a$$"
Yes, another newbie, admittedly.
See this posting to me from Polybius:
>To: grey_whiskers
>Let's say you are thinking about posting an article. Copy >and paste the title of the article into >FreeReuplic's "Search" function and then see if it has >already been posted.
>In this case:
>Kerry citation a 'total mystery' to ex-Navy chief (John >Lehman)........ Posted by Grampa Dave On News/Activism >08/28/2004 7:30:49 AM PDT · 786 replies · 18,235+ views
and my response:
>Polybius:
>
>You wrote:
>
>"Kerry citation a 'total mystery' to ex-Navy chief (John >Lehman)........ Posted by Grampa Dave On News/Activism >08/28/2004 7:30:49 AM PDT · 786 replies · 18,235+ views"
>^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Wow!!
>Thanks for not flaming me to well-done
>Marshmallow Toasties (TM) as I so richly
>deserve. Your tact is gratefully accepted.
>Let us always strive to be civil.
Please search elsewhere for my replies before deciding
I am not a Republican.
Cheers!
Sorry bud, I didn't catch the sarcasm... Another poster on this thread was being harshly critical, and I thought you were just piling on..
She may be too conservative, and would be dismissed outright... I'd love to see someone like Fred Barnes do it.
Yep...and imagine how all these po' folk must feel everytime they turn on MTV or VH1 and see the Lifestyles of the "Young," Rich and Famous. I don't know of any other country where talentless teenagers can become millionaires, practically overnight. With record breaking sports and entertainment contracts...somebody is buying this crap. The only time poverty exists is when a Republican is running for re-election.
Yeah, they are basicly flip sides of the same coin.
But Dubya has handed Kerry the campaign issue on a silver platter by denying that the problem exists, destroying his own credibility in the process.
That's OK. I have an asbestos suit :-)
Adjusted by fantastical cpi inflators. Hard to get a true read.
About two weeks ago, in Ohio, Bush admitted that there's a problem. Last I heard of it.
We've seen the Dem ads on the topic up here--one is particularly effective--black/white film of a dead plant.
Scary how good the ad was, and even scarier that somebody could be swayed by it...
That is -- the war on America haters (aka terrorists willing and able to kill) -- is the fundament of any recovery plan.
* * *
That's my high road answer. I also have a low road one.
What's really interesting about that graph is that 'median income' peaked BEFORE, and was actually in decline BEFORE the 'recession' shaded area.
Wonder howcumizzit THAT?
Got any ideas?
After adjusting for inflation, median American household income is still up 30% from 1967.
It has declined for brief periods in the last 4 decades, always rebounding ever higher. The last median income peak was in 1999. It stabilized in 2002 and 2003, and is increasing in 2004.
By cherry-picking data, however, the NY Times can claim a shrinking middle-class. That's not the case, however. In absolute numbers, the middle class has continued to grow.
In percentages, the middle class has shrunk only because more have moved up to become rich as well as more immigrants who were already poor have moved in.
But in absolute numbers the middle class has continued to grow.
5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires
Yeah--he's had a large and legitimate distraction for a while.
But my Congresscritter is a little disgusted with the Admin's "see-no/hear-no/speak-no" on the manufacturing problem--and was particularly PO'd when that Bush econ guru popped out of his pointy-headed home and stated that 'manufacturing is for the birds' or some such.\
My congressguy is an ACU 99/5% rated guy--likely will win again, by a decent margin--but the Dimowits are taking shots at him with the economy problem. It will be interesting to see whether his usual winning margin shrinks.
"Median h/h income" is tricky, South, particularly if you use 1967 as a baseline.
Recall that two-income families were a VERY small part of households in '67/ comparo 2000.
And of course, 'median h/h/ medical expenses' are up about 9 gazillion percent since '67, too. (Or 1977: when our first daughter was born, the whole, entire, bill WITH dinner was $1,000. neat, MD and hospital 4-day stay. The last daughter was $8K, three days.--1993.)
Oh yeah--didn't FICA go up a bit since 1967?
So materially we are way better. Still continuing.
That doesn't mean there are problems to be fixed. Debt levels -- personal debt levels are a problem. Morals -- a downdraft right up through midway Clinton. Then resistance to moral decay arose and we seem to be in a moral upswing. One hamper to that is the debt level. Heavy debt, when one loses the ability to pay it back leads to despair. Few social conditions harder to rememdy than despair.
Oh -- and the common recourse to lies of convience about financial matters continues -- but is turning down.
"Median h/h income" is tricky, South, particularly if you use 1967 as a baseline.
Recall that two-income families were a VERY small part of households in '67/ comparo 2000.
And of course, 'median h/h/ medical expenses' are up about 9 gazillion percent since '67, too. (Or 1977: when our first daughter was born, the whole, entire, bill WITH dinner was $1,000. neat, MD and hospital 4-day stay. The last daughter was $8K, three days.--1993.)
Oh yeah--didn't FICA go up a bit since 1967?
"Median h/h income" is tricky, South, particularly if you use 1967 as a baseline.
Recall that two-income families were a VERY small part of households in '67/ comparo 2000.
And of course, 'median h/h/ medical expenses' are up about 9 gazillion percent since '67, too. (Or 1977: when our first daughter was born, the whole, entire, bill WITH dinner was $1,000. neat, MD and hospital 4-day stay. The last daughter was $8K, three days.--1993.)
Oh yeah--didn't FICA go up a bit since 1967?
Thanks bud... Would love to see the % below and above middle class for '80 and '03 if anyone has it.
Clicked on your ID, loved the site.
Here's another quote for you from Chesterton, and
a link:
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
www.rightwingstuff.com
YOW! Wish I could afford
more of this stuff :-)
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