Posted on 05/17/2018 9:56:10 AM PDT by fwdude
The economy may be chugging along, but many Americans are still struggling to afford a basic middle class life.
Nearly 51 million households don't earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone, according to a study released Thursday by the United Way ALICE Project. That's 43% of households in the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Here is the study CNN based their article on
“You’re assuming a static situation.”
Well, yes, but it’s not an assumption, it’s reality. Prices going up and wages remaining the same IS the situation and it has been that way for decades, so it is pretty static.
“We have a much more UNemployable job force than we did decades ago...”
Oh cool, so we can just blame those deplorables, I mean “unemployables” for the situation and then we won’t have to worry about doing any thing to fix it. That’s a relief.
“For instance, in Seattle’s King County, the annual household survival budget for a family of four (including one infant and one preschooler) in 2016 was nearly $85,000. This would require an hourly wage of $42.46. But in Washington State, only 14% of jobs pay more than $40 an hour. “
The summary reporting results could be making more apples-to-oranges like the one above. Data and the relevance of data for Seattle’s King County cannot be compared to data for the whole state of Washington. King county, hosting as it does Microsoft and other large technology companies is bound to have not just higher wages, but a higher cost of living than large parts of the state. Therefor it is not relevant that only 14% of the state has wages like King County. Quite likely only some similar % of the state has a cost of living like King County as well.
Yup. A better cell phone and bigger data plan than I do, I expect.
And them thar tattoos ain’t cheap.
people choose where to live. If they want to live where they can’t afford it, they have to live with others like extended family members or rent out rooms.
“...don’t earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone...” after paying for cable tv, alcohol/drugs, cigs, while working at a lousy job because they cannot read/write, pass a drug test, show up for work...
News flash for CNN: A middle class lifestyle is not easy to obtain or hold. The good news in this country is that even a lower class lifestyle is still good.
My middle class lifestyle for 4 years was a rusty Pinto, brown bagged peanut butter sandwiches, a 12” b/w tv, popcorn, and board games in a 600 sq.ft. apartment. But it also included a hard working wife, church, solid family support, and good friends. We didn’t have money but we were not poor.
I call B.S. on that.
If half the families can’t afford rent I should be able to look out my window and see tent cities for as far as the eye can see.
They’d save even more money if they bought their soda and snacks at Walmart rather than the 7-11 stores that charge much more. Of course, that’s where you buy your cigarettes!
These problems have been brewing long before Obama. It started when we opened our borders to unlimited free trade and migration from the third world. The heavy industry left, and all that remained were service industry jobs that paid below average wages.
Once this happened, everyone was told to go to college. All that did was place monstrous debt on kids who now have no chance of ever living a financially independent life.
Meanwhile, there are the elites in the big cities that are driving up rents and COL on people that can already barely afford to live. We are creating a two tier society: The ultra rich, and everyone else. The once great robust middle class is now gone. That stabilizing force is being replaced with armies of low wage immigrants and underpaid Americans. All brought to you by the Chamber of Commerce and politicians that sold you out to NAFTA, GATT, etc.
Trump is doing great things to get us on the right track, but there are still a lot of citizens out there that are hurting in a bad way from 20+ years of unrestrained free trade and globalism. I help out at a local food pantry in Tacoma, WA, and much to my surprise, I see many middle aged white men with families using our services. Lets do what we can to help our citizens in distress.
A good, if somewhat depressing, summary of the current state of affairs.
And you fell for the Propagandist BS. CNN never said “poor” they said struggling to afford middle class. Classic libspeak. Never accept a libs terms or definitions.
Even if they said “poor” what is their definition? The government uses a relative benchmark and not an absolute one. Poverty intros country means being at a certain income no mater what that income could buy.
CNN adds “transportation” is that owning a car or being able to afford a bus? “Food”? is that basic protein or “healthy sustainable locally sourced” food?
Never argue with a lib until the terms are defined.
What we are talking about is labor arbitrage. There is only so much that cheap labor can get you. A toaster oven made in the USA will not be 10x more expensive than a Chinese made oven. Thinking that is crazy.
Me too. Can’t hold onto a penny. If my cousin has an extra $20 left out of her check (yeah she works) she’ll go spend it on crap at Goodwill and then ask to borrow $75 to pay her $75 PG&E bill before they cut her electricity off. And if you dare ask why she spent the $20 at Goodwill knowing her electricity was gonna be turned off she gets indignant.
Her daughter helps her out and has told me stories. Lol
It’s all about controlling what we see, hear and know.....everybody’s going to die without the Democrats taking care “of the children!”
Gads! Every time they spew ‘it’s for the children’ or taking away from the children elderly etc.... it’s a heads up they’re lying!
The cost of living is higher in America than it should be. It’s worse in the liberal states. This is the result of socialism.
Yeah, housing and automobiles, which are the two biggest purchases for the average household, really show how bad inflation is. 40 or 50 years ago a young couple straight out of high school with no college degrees, and possibly only a single full-time income, could save up to buy a house and a decent car within 6 months to a year. That isn’t possible nowadays for most people.
Of course housing is mostly excluded from inflation statistics, which is a big reason using those statistics doesn’t tell the whole picture.
I didn’t know that cell phones are a necessity of life. How did we ever survive before they were invented?
No, the person making the toaster oven will work for 10X less than what someone here would.
A $500K machine makes the same parts if the guy loading it makes $15 hr, or 50 cents hr. At best you could force them to raise the 50 cent guy to $1.50 hr, but he will still be cheaper by 10X.
The minimum wage in Mexico is about $5...a day! That is more than 10X less the min here. There is no way to compete on non-skilled jobs with 3rd world workers.
I agree with you. It's B.S..
Cnn news has been bad for years but now it’s outright insanely bad. It became clear to me during the Iraq war when their news was so off base to clear happenings otherwise. They were booted off our ships etc. and out of Iraq because they were spewing lies.
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