Community Chat

[Surfnturf]

This might not be popular with some, but I am going to say it anyway. I believe the best days for a thriving middle class in this country are behind us. We have become a consumer based society, but without a thriving middle class to support it. That's why I said what I did in my initial post on this thread. Welcome to the future.

[KittyLouSoutenu]

On 5/15/2015 wookie said:

This might not be popular with some, but I am going to say it anyway. I believe the best days for a thriving middle class in this country are behind us. We have become a consumer based society, but without a thriving middle class to support it. That's why I said what I did in my initial post on this thread. Welcome to the future.

I think you're right.

[Dam Yankee]

On 5/15/2015 KittyLouSoutenu said:

On 5/15/2015 wookie said:

This might not be popular with some, but I am going to say it anyway. I believe the best days for a thriving middle class in this country are behind us. We have become a consumer based society, but without a thriving middle class to support it. That's why I said what I did in my initial post on this thread. Welcome to the future.

I think you're right.

Well, I guess the only thing left to do is wring our hands and wait to die.

[WenGirl42]

On 5/15/2015 Dam Yankee said:

On 5/15/2015 KittyLouSoutenu said:

On 5/15/2015 wookie said:

This might not be popular with some, but I am going to say it anyway. I believe the best days for a thriving middle class in this country are behind us. We have become a consumer based society, but without a thriving middle class to support it. That's why I said what I did in my initial post on this thread. Welcome to the future.

I think you're right.

Well, I guess the only thing left to do is wring our hands and wait to die.

We can clutch our pearls, too.

[60sgirl]

On 5/15/2015 CrazyDaisy said:

On 5/15/2015 Macy said:

the problems started when adults had to take minimum wage jobs at fast food restaurants because they could not find work in a decent paying job with wages suitable for making an actual living. When we were young, kids took those jobs after school, or during the summer months, or sometimes moms did as a second income. But then when people lost jobs and couldn't replace them, they had to take these jobs and now want higher wages.

While the entire system is not fair, it is unreasonable to me to pay unskilled, uneducated adults $15-16 hour to serve coffee and fast food. While I do realize that some workers may have skills or education and forced to do this work, if you pay everyone those kinds of wages, then it's only fair to pay college grads double the amount. They worked hard to get a degree, have massive student loan debt that cannot be forgiven and will never be able to pay it back, start a savings account, buy a house like we did at their age.

I see the same scenario everyday IRL where students graduate with $100,000 of loans, end up in a $12 an hour job and can never get ahead. It has nothing to do with them not working hard enough, many of them work 2 jobs. I have a friend who told me that people are graduating with PhD's in fields like biology and zoology because they want to work in zoos or aquariums and they are scrambling to get job offers for $10 an hour because the competition is so tough. These are people who want to work in a field in which they are interested, not just take a job for money. Compensation across the board needs to be analyzed so that those who put in the time and effort have a fighting chance of a good job, not just pouring coffee for a living. I doubt many people take those jobs because it is a <em>career</em> choice.

It all comes back to...there are not enough good paying jobs. Young people need to obtain skills to get a job, not flip burgers and expect to raise a family. It is the lack of jobs that is holding people back, not the wages. Throwing money at any problem is never the solution, it only creates a bigger problem.

what skills? I worked my way through college as a waitress in a local diner. For 4 years. I did not get paid except for tips. I started my career at the very bottom of the company making $4.25 an hour but I learned many things and worked my way up slowly. I also had a crummy used car, did not buy hordes of junk from the t.v. and lived very frugally. No cell phones back then, no computers, just basic living expenses. People today don't just want a cellphone, they Need a smartphone that costs $600. Why?

What I see today is young kids not wanting to work their way up but demanding wages compensatory with those of people who have earned the higher wages through many years on the job, schooling, toughing it out. I bought my first house at 24. I had saved enough for a down payment. But I did not have thousands of dollars of debt from school. I went to a state university and it was paid for by scholarships and cash, no student loans.

We can't go back to the way it was and I don't have an answer. I don't think anyone does. But throwing money into jobs like working for Starbucks is not the answer IMO.

[Surfnturf]

On 5/15/2015 Dam Yankee said:

On 5/15/2015 KittyLouSoutenu said:

On 5/15/2015 wookie said:

This might not be popular with some, but I am going to say it anyway. I believe the best days for a thriving middle class in this country are behind us. We have become a consumer based society, but without a thriving middle class to support it. That's why I said what I did in my initial post on this thread. Welcome to the future.

I think you're right.

Well, I guess the only thing left to do is wring our hands and wait to die.

Why are your replies most always sarcastic when you disagree with someone here?

[Dam Yankee]

On 5/15/2015 WenGirl42 said:

On 5/15/2015 Dam Yankee said:

On 5/15/2015 KittyLouSoutenu said:

On 5/15/2015 wookie said:

This might not be popular with some, but I am going to say it anyway. I believe the best days for a thriving middle class in this country are behind us. We have become a consumer based society, but without a thriving middle class to support it. That's why I said what I did in my initial post on this thread. Welcome to the future.

I think you're right.

Well, I guess the only thing left to do is wring our hands and wait to die.

We can clutch our pearls, too.

What if we had to hock our pearls?

[Dam Yankee]

On 5/15/2015 wookie said:

On 5/15/2015 Dam Yankee said:

On 5/15/2015 KittyLouSoutenu said:

On 5/15/2015 wookie said:

This might not be popular with some, but I am going to say it anyway. I believe the best days for a thriving middle class in this country are behind us. We have become a consumer based society, but without a thriving middle class to support it. That's why I said what I did in my initial post on this thread. Welcome to the future.

I think you're right.

Well, I guess the only thing left to do is wring our hands and wait to die.

Why are your replies most always sarcastic when you disagree with someone here?

That's how I roll. Feel free to ignore me, if it suits you.

[raining_1]

It seems now a days young people all want to sit in front of a computer and make their living. if a job is any more difficult than that they are not interested. Really work ?!?! Surely you aren't serious !?!? However, in a country where the jobs that are available are every increasingly going to service jobs that attitude doesn't get them very far. While I recognize that it is a huge disappointment to them, people who pay living wages actually expect their employees to EARN that money.

[gardenman]

I still think things are reversible and we can go back to greatness. Both political parties have finally agreed that manufacturing jobs are important. For decades there were those politicians who considered manufacturing jobs, dirty, polluting, demeaning, dehumanizing, etc. and did everything in their power to eliminate those jobs. It seems as if there's now been an awakening on the part of the politicians and the great majority now agree that manufacturing jobs are important and we need them.

All we have to do now is get those politicians to work together to remove the roadblocks that were put up, give manufacturers incentives to come back, and prevent any new roadblocks from being put up.

It wasn't that long ago that kids were recruited out of high school to work at good manufacturing jobs that had a path for advancement well up the corporate ladder. Good workers were competed for and rewarded, and even lesser workers could find well paying jobs. We can get back to that.

I still love the idea of waiving sales tax on US made items and such items having a special stamp/seal of some sort on them designating them as being made in the USA. Easing some of the regulations that are onerous would help also. Lowering corporate tax rates for manufacturers in the US would also help. None of these need to be politically radioactive and should be agreeable to enough members of both parties to get passed.Of course, there would still be political nonsense attached. The Left would insist that every worker would have to belong to a union while the Right would prefer none to belong to a union, but some sort of middle ground should be reachable. I don't really see where fixing the issue is all that hard. If enough manufacturers can be brought back it would even solve the immigration issue as we'd need more workers than we have now and that could open many more slots for new residents.

Manufacturing has evolved over recent years into one large plant supplying the world's supply of an item. That's a bit dangerous for if something catastrophic happens to that factory then the company takes a huge hit. I like the idea of multiple smaller plants spread across the globe with each factory producing the items needed for that market. If one plant runs into difficulties, the other plants could absorb their load and there would be fewer issues for the parent company. Things like tsunami's, earthquakes, political upheaval, can happen all over the world and take a large factory down. A series of smaller plants spread out across the globe just makes more sense than one large plant making the world's supply of anything.