Quote:
Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch
All but a handful of people I know are working two professional jobs per household to afford what is relatively* a upper-middle class lifestyle that my parents managed on one salary. When the first 40% of the smaller salary is going to childcare expenses (and convenience foods etc.), many of us are just treading water from a 1980 SoL on one salary. People in my office who started 25 years before me had vacation homes on one salary.
*In absolute terms it's hard to say whether a 2013 household with broadband and four monthly cell phone bills is middle class since the middle class household of 1980 would regard it as more than luxurious — it would be an unattainable marvel.
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Everything's relative. Broadband and cell phones are cheap necessities of the modern age. The presence of gadgets (and the false suggestion cheap tech innovation is its own unique form of wealth) doesn't undo the fact that the breadwinner in that household is getting crushed by the "middle class squeeze."
Wall Street assholes love the argument that quality of life measured by things like cable, a washer/dryer in the home, and car ownership is proof financialization has brought society immense riches. Fuck these people. Seriously. Seat them on the horn of that brass bull outside the NYSE and twist them on it until their eyes bleed. Wealth isn't cheap shit on credit. Wealth is freedom, and freedom derives from having cash in your pocket with which you can choose your own path, rather than be another debt serf in hoc, ultimately, to Wall Street.
All this said, I am not against the financial sector fucking people over, or turning them into debt serfs. If you can be duped, tough shit on you. But what I am very much against, and everyone ought to be, is sophistry. And the argument the middle class is better off now because Jackass Bank will loan them enough, at 13%, compounded monthly, to have a "professional grade" outdoor grill, or surround sound system, than they were when they weren't living paycheck to paycheck, is fucking bullshit. Steal if you like, but be fucking honest about it.
