Quote:
Originally Posted by Rochard
How is it getting harder? My lord you can lease a freaking BMW for $300 a month.
The amount of people who are unemployed and the percentage of people who say they are concerned about money isn't because of the current administration, but instead directly because of the recession.
The American Dream is alive and well because the Americans are living it. Drive into nearly any suburban town and you'll see the same - lots of houses occupied, cars in the driveway, and everyone has a cell phone in their pocket that has more power than NASA had to get us to moon.
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I never blamed Obama for the American dream becoming harder to achieve. I blame the overall job market in this country which is a result of 30+ years of bad policy making by all of our leaders.
The recession is playing a major role in this.
Let's look at some numbers that were on Bloomberg a few months back. They break jobs down into 3 categories. A low paying job is any job that pays less than $13 per hour. A mid paying job is a job that pays $13-$25 per hour and anything over $25 per hour is a high paying job. Before the recession when jobs were created about 20% of them were high paying jobs, 20% were low paying and 60% were mid paying jobs. Now since the recession has ended about 20% of all new jobs created are high paying, 20% are mid paying and %60 are lowing paying. So yes, jobs are being created, but many of them are low paying jobs.
Add into that the reality that we now have an entire generation of people who have been sold the lie of college. They were told to get a degree and they would get a job. Many of them now have degrees and the debt to go along with them and they are working for $12 an hour because they can't find a higher paying job. Why can't they find a higher paying job? A couple of reasons. One is that fewer are being created and another is that with the recession a ton of retirement savings and investments were lost so many baby boomers that would have otherwise retired are continuing to work.
So a person can lease a BMW for $300...so what? Is the American Dream to have a nice car and a house and be so buried in debt that you can't afford to do anything but sit in your house and watch TV? To me the American Dream is to have a decent home and car, and live a life where you feel secure in your future, have some money saved up so you can take a vacation every year and not have to worry if you lose your job that you will be losing your house and car within a couple of months.
Here in Portland the average price of a home is $291K. So at 4% that means your monthly payments are around $1541. Add in a BMW at $300 a month, add in a second car at $250 per month lease. Just house and car you are at $2091 per month. Add in food, property taxes, gas, insurance, utilities and other monthly expenses and you could easily get another $1500 on top of that. So you are at around $3500 per month after taxes which means you need to make around $4600 per month pre tax. That is around $28 per hour on average. According to Bloomberg that is a high paying job just to have the average house and average life. In reality the average wage in America is around $16 per hour. For $16 per hour the average person clearly can't afford the average house.