Real World Event Discussions

The Economy is Great. The Middle Class is Mad

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Friday, April 29, 2022 22:10
VIEWED: 548
PAGE 1 of 1

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, April 29, 2022 10:10 PM

Quote:
If the middle class is feeling left out of one of the strongest economies in decades, when the unemployment rate is at a historic low, it’s a grave sign that social discord is coming. Right now, there’s no Great Recession, no tech meltdown, no collapse of complex real estate investment products to explain away why things are tight. On the surface, the economy looks buoyant. But like Swope’s slowly cooking frog, lots of middle-income earners are realizing that they’re in hot water and going under. “It’s not like this volcano came out of nowhere,” says Reeves, the Future of the Middle Class Initiative director. “To some extent, we’ve seen these long-term shifts in the economy like sluggish wage growth and downward mobility. It can take some time for the economic tectonic pressure to build sufficiently—and now the volcano is erupting.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-economy-is-great-the-middle-clas
s-is-mad/ar-AAWGAQK?li=BBnb7Kz

Yes, But...

The examples given in these articles are poor ones.

Other than feeling resentment for how easy the Baby Boomer generation had it before them, forgive me for not having sympathy for a family of three that is struggling with an income of over $120,000 per year. Even in Biden*'s shit economy after 20 years of stagnant wage growth and higher than they report inflation.

Take this for example:

Quote:
For Jen [redacted], 35, who lives in a suburb of Phoenix, the rage arose when she calculated how much she owed on her student loans: although she’d borrowed $22,624 and has paid off $34,225, she still owes $43,304.

I mean, what the fuck? Either she is lying, she is ignorant of how much she actually initially borrowed and paid off so far, or these numbers are real and she's a fucking idiot. There is no option D. This is an one example of a person who probably shouldn't have gone to college. Make no mistake... There are millions more of these.

Quote:
(She’s in a dispute with her loan servicer, Navient, about how her repayments were calculated.)

She'd better godammned well be. But she probably won't get anywhere with that because SHE signed all the papers without reading the terms and understanding what she got herself into. On top of that, she didn't even bother looking into this until 11 years after she graduated college. The only way she's getting out from under that loan is to pay more per month than the interest, which she obviously hasn't done one single month for 11 years. Might I STRONGLY suggest to Jen that she get that loan refinanced to something less resembling a Payday loan before the FED raises interest rates again?

How much are these people paying for their cell phone plans? Their Cable TV/Internet? How many streaming services do they subscribe to per month, and how many of those have they not even watched once in the last month? How often do they eat out at restaurants? How often do they buy a new car? How much do they spend per year on their clothes and shoes? What is their yearly Amazon expenditures on "stuff"?

I mean, look. I get it. The economy right now IS fucked. House prices are fucking ridiculous AGAIN because after only 14 years we've turned real estate into a huge fucking bubble through speculation AGAIN.

But if you're making 6 digits and seriously struggling, you need to re-prioritize EVERYTHING in your life right now. You need to buckle down and have a few "tough" years of living without all of the extra things you've surrounded yourself with and brown bag your lunch every day.

Pay those debts down, from highest interest rate first to lowest last. Refinance any stupid loan terms you were foolishly paying while rates were at record lows NOW before it's too late to do that. Fuck keeping up with your "friends" and live with that used car for a few more years than you would have. Introduce yourself to Goodwill/Thrift Stores. Get rid of your streaming services. Shave down your