Quote:
Originally Posted by mynameisjim
The middle class is going through hard times, but you also have to understand that by definition, the middle class will ALWAYS be the most vulnerable during an economic downturn. Most middle class people are middle class by the skin of their teeth, that's just the nature of the middle class. If they had a huge savings, they would be upper class.
When an economic downturn hits, the poor are already poor, you can't really go much lower. The rich have enough of a cushion to ride it out and the rich are the first to make money off of the upswing when things turn around. So it's ALWAYS the middle class that takes the most visible and jarring hit when an economy turns bad. The middle class is the only economic class that really changes during a slowing economy.
On a side note, not sure if the author should use the 1970's as an example of "glory days" when it comes to the middle class..lol!
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A friend of mine lives in what I would call the very typical middle class neighborhood. The houses are very nice, but not huge. Most of them were selling for between $250K and $300K about 3-4 years ago. Now they are worth about half that. You can almost tell the unemployment rate by the number of empty houses and for sale houses in the development. right now about 1 our of every 10 houses in this neighborhood are either empty and bank owned or for sale. So many of these people bought the houses which made them house poor so when they lost their job they had no choice but to move.