Finance: the Downscaling of America

Reuters ^ | July 5, 2003 | Linda Stern

[sarcasm]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When mutual fund powerhouse Fidelity Investments wants new ideas, one of the places it goes is Inferential Focus, a quirky New York prognosticating firm.

In their efforts to predict the future, the company's staff of seven, led by President Charlie Hess, read 350 publications on a regular basis. They ignore most of the noise -- surveys, prognostications, formal speeches and staged events -- and look for actual occurrences that can point to changes in American society, which can then be spun off into investable ideas.

What they are finding now is this: We're going down. Downwardly mobile, that is.

Even though the worst of the bear market might be behind us, the American middle class will continue to lose ground and the American consumer will continue to be squeezed for some time to come, said Hess and Gail Eisenkraft, one of his partners, in a recent interview.

They find that to be true at both middle and upper levels of the income spectrum. That has implications for the way we all spend and invest our money.

It's no secret that the U.S. has been on a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer track for several years. Most recently, the Labor Department said that the top 5 percent of America's wealthiest households earned 22.4 percent of national income in 2001, the most recent year for the compilation of these figures. That is its highest share since figures were first collected in 1967.

The lowest class, meanwhile, earned its smallest share, 3.5 percent. The middle section is slipping too.

Middle income households, which in 2001 earned between $33,315 and $53,000, earn 14.6 percent of American income every year. That's another 35-year low. Hess and Eisenkraft now say that this slump is spreading to the better-off, who are starting to act more like the less-well-off.

There are specific economic forces that will continue to hold the middle class down, says Hess.

Here are some of the events and trends that he sees working together to create a middle-class slide: the export of technical jobs and the continued unemployment of many American tech workers; the squeeze on state economies that will result in higher state taxes, fewer state services, and higher-priced state educations; the triple threat of high health-care costs, high debt burdens and continued weak stock prices and battered portfolios.

As a result, even the upper-middle class is starting to downscale spending habits and life style.

'We're seeing those pressures converge on the reasonably affluent household,'' says Hess.

More resourceful parents are sending their children to community colleges for the first year or two of higher education, just to save money. Everyone is shopping discount.

``The Dollar Store near Beverly Hills has shown more growth than any other Dollar Store in the country,'' Eisenkraft notes.

Maybe that's not all a bad thing. Perhaps if everyone is worrying about their money, they will spend less on empty status items, and nobody will have to be ashamed of being budget conscious. It might even be considered cool to shop the sales.

What, besides handwringing, can a squeezed middle-class person do?

Shop down and invest like everybody else is shopping down, suggests Hess. ``We are talking to our investor clients about the many plays that might result from the search for cheaper upscale and cheaper downscale.''

You can live well and spend less by nailing down a 15-year mortgage instead of a 30-year mortgage while rates are low; by buying used cars instead of new, and by looking for freshman-year college bargains, Hess suggests.

You can make money in the market on this trend by buying companies that sell used cars, good clothes at a discount, product manufactured homes or quality items at commodity prices, like the big warehouse stores.

Look, too, at for-profit trade schools that could benefit once middle-class students realize they are graduating college with tens of thousands of dollars in debts and no solid job prospects to speak of, suggests Eisenkraft. That's just one more way of investing in the downscaling of America, so that even if you're down, you can be up, at least a little.

[Maximilian]

Current US fertility rates fall just below the replacement level. That is not national suicide.

Reasonable point. But they're still falling. Where are they going to stop? Russia, for example, is looking at a huge population collapse. It's true that we're not there yet, but we're on the same trajectory.

Of course there are adjustments our society must make as we reach a population equilibrium.

Japan is already facing those "adjustments." So far they have taken the form of permanent economic depression. That's why the issue is pertinent to this thread.

The train wreck occurs when the Boomers begin to swell the ranks of the retired and the Ponzi scheme fails.

Yes. And the train wreck is on the horizon. It's a reality, no matter how much we may personally take exception to the whole concept of the program.

[DugwayDuke]

"Remnants? Well, these remnants sure are very vocal around here."

I'd like your opinion, have you noticed an uptick in the number of threads or volume of "Fair Trader" posts? I don't seem to remember as many in the past (leaving out the 2000 election year).

[DugwayDuke]

"I'm not familiar with Daschle's comment. However, I'd imagine that he was promoting more socialism as the answer, an approach with which I would not agree."

Actually, I believe it was in the context of the Bush tax cut, ie, that it only rewarded the winners of life's lottery (or something like that). I was just curious if you were aware of the similarity in your phraseology?

[rdb3]

I'd like your opinion, have you noticed an uptick in the number of threads or volume of "Fair Trader" posts? I don't seem to remember as many in the past (leaving out the 2000 election year).

Yes, I have. There are roughly 5 to 10 of these per day posted by the same people who do not disguise their agenda. And the news in these posts are always negative.

Are they Democrats in disguise? I don't know, but they, wittingly or unwittingly, are working an angle to depress the GOP vote on FR (game recognizes game, ya feel me?). And they say that they are conservatives to boot. But their fiscal and nationalistic viewpoints point to populism, not conservatism. And this viewpoint is center-left, and has nothing to do with the Right.

Do the math, Dug-D. It was already on your mind. As you can see, you're not alone in your assessment.

Read further on populism here. Compare and contrast the populist sentiments then with what is posited to us today.

The flames shall be like molten lava. But I ain't never scared.

[UnBlinkingEye]

The flames shall be like molten lava. But I ain't never scared.

BS

IIRC you were greatly enamored with your prowess in technology, lost your wife, lost your job and are now selling cars. I hope everything turns out for the best, IMO you are a lucky man.

[Southack]

You've got to remember that FR was first founded at a dark time, back in 1996-1997 when Clinton was in the White House, the Waco church burning was still on everyone's minds, and people actually **feared** the coming Y2K "Apocalpyse".

Well, Y2K didn't bring on TEOTWAWKI, but ever since the Y2K related tech jobs started drying up, followed by the dot com bust, you've got yourself quite a few FReepers who are actively **wishing** for some big disaster.

If the government is somehow destroyed, they "reason", then they won't have to get a new job or learn a new skill.

So this core group of FR malcontents will actively **wish** for bad things to happen in the U.S. They relish posting every possible negative news story, hoping that others will join them in their gloom and doom sentiment.

Every Presidential action is criticized. Every politician is thrashed as not being ideal enough (at best).

They pray that inflation will bankrupt us, or that deflation will destroy us. They greedily lap up stories of layoffs and cheer on the "inevitable trend downward".

They bash the Patriot Act even though not one of them can cite a single unConstitutional sentence in the actual document itself. They bash foreign spending and foreign troop deployments as though we were isolationist and didn't depend upon foreign oil for our daily economy.

Pick an issue and these same malcontents will have some pessimistic opinion about it. They never show optimism, after all, and they don't allow themselves to praise a single thing positive in all of America.

Fortunately, there aren't very many of them here. They are just vocal. You can watch the same ones posting the same depressing criticisms as if they'd never been mentioned before. On and on they repeat themselves.

But like the Leftists who likewise oppose us, they are losing. We continue to win victories and grow in popularity, while their ranks dwindle with each passing day.

[DugwayDuke]

I appreciate your response. It seems that I'm not the only person that's noticed this uptick.

I'm not sure I'd call them democrats in disguise yet I'm troubled by the rhetoric they use. It seems far more consistent with, as you say, a center-left agenda than a conservative one.

As for the flames, I'm sure you'll get some. I particularly like being told to go back to the Democrat Underground when I point out that they are talking like democrats and not like conservatives. (that logic escapes me).

Thanks for the link. I'll have to check that out.

[Willie Green]

Dumbest rant I've read today.

[DugwayDuke]

You left out one characteristic, they all "voted for Dubya in 2000, but....."

[DugwayDuke]

"Dumbest rant I've read today."

I've always suspected you didn't read your own posts. (humor intended).

[Willie Green]

You left out one characteristic, they all "voted for Dubya in 2000, but....."

No, I can honestly claim that I've only mistakingly voted for a Bush just once in my life. That was back in '88. If I knew then what I know now, they never would have gotten that one either.

[rdb3]

IIRC you were greatly enamored with your prowess in technology, lost your wife, lost your job and are now selling cars. I hope everything turns out for the best, IMO you are a lucky man.

No, I didn't lose my wife. She and I are still together. Everything else is correct. I am blessed. Make no mistake about it.

[UnBlinkingEye]

I am happy to hear that you and your wife are still together.

I must also congratulate you on landing on your feet after the tech crash, in a tough market.

God Bless You Both!

[dogbyte12]

What was the average square footage of a house in 1975 versus today. Look at the old track houses from the 1960's. Most people do not want to live in them.

I have an apples to apples comparison. My father was an 8th grade drop-out. He worked as a tool grinder. His yearly salary in 1975 was $14,000. Our house was bought that year. The price was $23,000, or 1.64 times his salary.

Today, the same house is worth $290,000. I would need to make $176,829 to be able to buy it for the same amount in relation to salary today. Yes, the California real estate boom stinks for those of us in Generation X.

Less than 30 years ago, one could just be a blue collar worker with not even a high school education and buy a house in your 20's. Today, after struggling to pay off your student loans while looking at the real estate market is quite daunting. Dad had no student loans to worry about.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Well, I don't know much about saving money, except that I don't have any. However, I made myself a spiffy shirt for a 4th of July party by sewing a patriotic applique over a split in the back of a tomato red linen shirt that I could not bear to throw away. A smaller, coordinating applique on the collar makes my "new" shirt look like a designer number.

No one knows the difference, and I was proud to wear it. Got lots of compliments, too.