Quote:
Originally Posted by nation-x
I think that PleasurePays and Mutt have a very low opinion of their fellow Americans and have made sweeping generalizations about them. In reality, the majority of Americans are hard working people who DON'T overspend.... but are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.
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True dat.
In the 1970's real incomes for Americans became stagnant or declined.
We maintained our standard of living by having both spouses work full time.
Then later, we maintained our standard of living by both spouses working longer and longer hours.
Most recently, we maintained our standard of living by going into debt. This was fine as long as property values continued to rise, but that couldn't last forever.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...013003116.html
(BTW, if anyone is really interested in the truth about the decline of the middle class without all of the Lou Dobbs xenophobia bullshit, you should google Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor who has done some really great research in this area.)
Of course while the middle class has been grabbing their ankles for the past 30 years while someone keeps telling us how good we have it......the rich have gotten their tax breaks, their deregulation, and their free trade deals that have allowed them to ship our jobs overseas and turn their deca-millions into billions.
Now through the miracles of free market innovation we have a financial system about to collapse because of something called a credit default swap, millions of people are losing their jobs through no fault of their own and now we're going to be told we're greedy and have a sense of entitlement because we want our kids to eat or be able to see the doctor when they get sick?
Gimme a fucking break.