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The American middle class isn’t coming back — it’s going to die with the Baby Boomers
Salon ^ | June 15, 2015 | Scott Timberg

Posted on 06/15/2015 12:22:04 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

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To: Boogieman

You bet, people in their 90s today are still collecting SS on top of the retirement pensions they were afforded back in the former late great America.


121 posted on 06/15/2015 2:12:28 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Mr. Jeeves

Right, it’s time to get back to strategies that worked for the prior generations that built this country.


122 posted on 06/15/2015 2:13:17 PM PDT by BlackAdderess ("Give me a but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth". --Archimedes)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Salon gets it wrong, intentionally as usual.

Big Government buried the middle class. Period.

123 posted on 06/15/2015 2:14:24 PM PDT by skeeter
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To: Eric Pode of Croydon

“My point is that most families today who want to live on one income, and are willing to live the same lifestyle that young families did in the ‘50s, could probably do it.”

It’s a nice story, but it isn’t true. Where I live, the little bungalows from that era are still everywhere, the market is full of them. Still, you just can’t buy one with a single income, unless you are lucky enough to make 6 figures.

Newer or larger homes? Forget about it!


124 posted on 06/15/2015 2:16:30 PM PDT by Boogieman
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To: dragnet2
“Their folks were buying brand new homes on ONE income, and Mom stayed home to actually raise the kids. Try that in today's America.”

One problem with replicating that scenario today is that many, if not most, children today do not grow up in intact (two-parent) families. Divorce (or single parenthood in general) is a leading cause of child poverty, but few people want to acknowledge that.

125 posted on 06/15/2015 2:16:33 PM PDT by riverdawg
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To: skeeter
Big Government buried the middle class. Period.

You bet. That and corporate big biz greed. The same SOB's who hire tens of millions of illegals while forcing middle America to subsidize their low wage workers.

126 posted on 06/15/2015 2:18:59 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: PGR88

That’s what communism is. They destroy the middle class and replace it with the proletariat.


127 posted on 06/15/2015 2:20:57 PM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose o f a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
"To avoid taking credit for their failed socialist handiwork, the Left blames it on conservatism. "

I think you missed the mark. When the problem is isolated to this country, the problem is localized to us.

Add in things like the dismantling of unions that has accelerated apace since Ronald Reagan crushed the air-traffic controllers, and we’ve seen the middle class more solid in places like Canada, Germany, and Scandinavia, and begin to grow in a number of nations even while it shrinks here.

The article completely demolishes the blame game on the left.

"But you know what else the original Boomers brought us? Despite their dabbling with progressivism and hippie utopianism, this group served as the shock troops for market-worshipping neoliberalism and the Reagan-Thatcher shift in the ‘70s and ‘80s. They gave us junk bonds and the privatization push and Gordon Gekko. Some of them went into the corporate world and started dismantling. "

Again, the problem is localized to our dismantling any controls over greed capitalism. Which has now succeeded in ruining capitalism itself. Yes, the middle class is traded out in today's U.S. business model. Now doing the best in the world. But the price paid is that the middle class can no longer depend on greed capitalism for jobs but resort to the government. The baby has gone out with the wash water. God Help Us.

128 posted on 06/15/2015 2:21:04 PM PDT by ex-snook (To conquer use Jesus, not bombs.)
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To: riverdawg

Ya, when things get ugly, no money, lack of jobs, etc. marriages fall apart...This is no secret.


129 posted on 06/15/2015 2:22:34 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Eric Pode of Croydon

Your childhood experience was almost exactly like mine and those of most of my Boomer friends and all of my first cousins. Hardly like being born on “third base.”


130 posted on 06/15/2015 2:26:38 PM PDT by riverdawg
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To: dragnet2
Marriage is rapidly becoming an upper-middle class phenomenon. The lower class rejects it, and the middle class claims they can't afford it. With assortative matching (the well-to-do marrying each other), the relatively rich will become relatively richer.
131 posted on 06/15/2015 2:36:06 PM PDT by riverdawg
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To: RKBA Democrat
Note the number of stories of late decrying boomer pensions, payments for medicare, etc. the only thing missing is the term “useless eaters.”

Seniors living today in the middle class worked hard all their lives and saved. They postponed buying houses and other big ticket items until they had cash for them. They postponed having children until they had good jobs. So now those seniors who carried this country on their backs for the past 50 years are now public enemy number 1?

Give me a break. Maybe the reason the middle class is shrinking is because they are taxed to death to pay for younger generations who are sitting on their cans and living irresponsible lifestyles.

Why do liberals covet all the wealth the seniors have accrued by the sweat of their brows, while they strongly advocate that people who are contributing absolutely nothing get a big slice of the pie?

(Rhetorical question - we all know the answer is because seniors vote for conservatives and do nothings vote for liberals.)

132 posted on 06/15/2015 2:42:23 PM PDT by randita (...Our First Lady is a congenital liar - William Safire, 1996)
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To: Uversabound
By the way Social Security I paid into, dont make it sound like its a liberal given free bee.

I have paid into the government ponzi scheme all my life knowing full well it will collapse just as I turn 65. Those that paid in pennies collected hundred dollar bills for decades. I paid in hundred dollar bills for the privilege of getting screwed out of bennies I earned. I hope you enjoyed my retirement money. I will have to work till I die.

133 posted on 06/15/2015 2:53:32 PM PDT by SpeakerToAnimals (I hope to earn a name in battle)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

http://www.generationjones.com/?page_id=26
This explains my generation.


134 posted on 06/15/2015 2:57:12 PM PDT by chalkfarmer
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To: randita
It's the classic Aesop fable, The Ant and the Grasshopper. Boomers are the ants.

-PJ

135 posted on 06/15/2015 2:58:57 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: a fool in paradise
Destroying the American family was part of their goal of destroying the American middle class.

Through the family unit comes nationalism, enemy of the globalists. To remove nationalism and supplant with globalization you need more supporters/ drones who could care less about the country and more for "one world government". To accomplish this "it takes a village" and so the destruction of the American family continues on all fronts.

136 posted on 06/15/2015 3:02:21 PM PDT by Clay+Iron_Times (The feet of the statue and the latter days of the church age)
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To: blueunicorn6
"Oh.....from Salon."

They should change their name to "non-CIS-Libertine".

137 posted on 06/15/2015 3:15:44 PM PDT by Paladin2 (Ive given up on aphostrophys and spell chek on my current device...)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Translation:

They have, we want it, we should take it.


138 posted on 06/15/2015 3:27:34 PM PDT by BeauBo
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To: Las Vegas Ron

I did continue, but at least the dead give away did come early in the screed.


139 posted on 06/15/2015 3:29:12 PM PDT by Radix ("..Democrats are holding a meeting today to decide whether to overturn the results of the election.")
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To: JPX2011

I have a degree in EE, yes, it was difficult— I also got a credential to teach — less difficult, harder to find work.

Our son got a degree in business, did not fancy working as hard as his boomer dad. Ended up learning programming and now is an analyst and Visual Basic master.

So there is the answer. do’t go for EE, go for CS. Master a programming language and get back in the rat race.


140 posted on 06/15/2015 3:54:00 PM PDT by KC_for_Freedom (California engineer (ret) and ex-teacher (ret))
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