Class Warfare: or telling it like it is?

http://stevendedalus.joeuser.com/newpost.asp
from JoeUser Forums

Upward mobility has dropped dramatically since the golden years immediately following WWII and the GI Bill— thanks to college grads saddled with huge student loans and the fact there are fewer opportunities in an economy rigged for those of the inherited class — affirmative action for those with connections. Oh, one can argue till blue in the face that there are greater opportunities for the Horatio Algers by falling back on those who made it during the internet bubble by ignoring that these are exceedingly rare cases. But the glaring fact remains that the number of dead-end jobs have grown astronomically since the Reagan Revolution.

Still, this is not a Right or Left matter: both progressives and conservatives have contributed to this sad state of domestic affairs by allowing the money class with its huge contributions access to legislation that protects and enhances its capital, putting the nation right back into the 20s when no one gave a damn but ever conscious of his own self-seeking gains. It was out of control then as it is now, resulting in more and more of those who are at a dead-end. Even most of the post college people trying to make a buck for themselves are stymied by huge personal debt and no well-off parents to bail them out.

Those of suburbia are dwelling in a pasteboard world of SUVs under lease, fine homes they can’t really afford and spend increasing sums to shuttle their kids into nursery and private schools because of the dire need of two incomes. Then there are those — I hesitate to classify them — who, under stress knowing they are never becoming upward mobile, who will continue to work their rumps off and pray they never have children, not because they wouldn’t want them, rather, cannot afford them.

Despite this calamitous trend toward upward mobility limited to 15% of the population, we are led to believe that it not politics, stupid, but the natural capitalistic progression of the beautiful people who know how to manipulate those of the Haves.
politics
16,666 views 48 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
Here, here!
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
You might want to research your topics a bit more.

Where do you get these stats? Upward mobility has vastly improved in the past two decades thanks to the advent of low overhead capitalism such as the Internet. Credit today is much easier than it was 40 years ago, risk is much less, and the amount of capital needed to start a venture is much less.

As for Joe Six pack, the 900 square foot homes of the 50s have given rise to 1500 to 2000 square foot homes. The standard of living for most people have dramatically risen. The obsesity level of the "poor" is at ridiculous levels.

The problem is that so many people have raised the bar so high on what an acceptable living standard that they end up with unrealistic expectations. No, you can't have the 2500 square foot house and have 3 children and no one at home if you're a clerk or a factory worker. But guess what? Neither could you in 1950.
SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
I've noticed you're a stickler for stats; yet your outrageous comments are never backed up. If you include upward mobility for a college kid working at McDonald's for tuition and then upon graduation works as a waiter or waitress in a swank restaurant, then I agree upward mobility has been on the rise. And how do you explain all the baby boomers?
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
I agree with your comments on upward mobility. However the upward mobility only feeds the rich and keeps those in poverty locked their. From reading what is said it is more of the psychological implications of such a system that I said Here, here! too.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
An interesting analysis of upward mobility statistics based on Business Week: http://www.everyvoice.net/blogs/kevin/archives/000046.html

If you accept this author's statistics, then yes upward mobility is in decline.
The dot.com businesses created wealth for only a few, although some of those few were spectacular.
Another trend, according to University of Michigan studies, fewer people believe that their children will have more opportunities than they will. Founded or not, the general economic perception is pessimistic.
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
Occult: Upward mobility is not necessarily a device to get rich, but to exist in dignity but you're right in many cases in order to get there one must cowtow to the rich.

Larry: Thank you. I more or less read the same in The Nation.
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
I think something that contributes to this decline is all the social welfare programs, which helps keep people alive that would normally no longer be around before. While others are progressing as usual, these people, who would be dead otherwise, are making it seem as though the quality of life for everybody is worse. Therefore, the solution to this problem is to cut social welfare programs. After all, California's full of homeless people because of its welfare programs, while other states that have none are doing better with the homeless situation.
Reply #8 from JoeUser Forums Top
Shall we start killing the homeless? My grandma tells me there was a time that people died of starvation in this country. Thank God it isn't that way anymore. I know we all hear about the people who abuse the system but what about the kids of these people. They have no choice in the matter. Should these children not have dinner?
Reply #9 from JoeUser Forums Top
Good points stevendedalus. I am responding to comment above, LocaMama_
Another indication of Bushs inability to help the poor is that the number of Americans suffering from hunger rose from 8.5 million in 2000 to 9 million in 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Soup kitchens and similar places report huge increases in needs.

Shall we start killing the homeless?
you ask...I think theres a plan for this plague on society to, sponsored by the federal gov't, Eugenics: coming soon to a ghetto near you.
Reply #10 from JoeUser Forums Top
Wait wait wait, you're all overlooking an important definition of homelessness. Are they on welfare due to necessity, or choice?
Are they unemployed due to circumstances or "fate" ? (i.e., given up hope of ever becoming upwardly mobile and therefore staying in the slump they have fallen into)
I am referring to the Majority. There are special cases in which yes, someone has no other option, but those are few and far between. Let's take a look at the masses.
Even if you've ignored every comment I've made so far, comment on this one.
Reply #11 from JoeUser Forums Top
it is interesting that it only mentions adult men. would the number of women make a big enough dent?

"The Death of Horatio"
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It is true, however, that America was once a place of substantial intergenerational mobility: Sons often did much better than their fathers. A classic 1978 survey found that among adult men whose fathers were in the bottom 25 percent of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23 percent had made it into the top 25 percent. In other words, during the first thirty years or so after World War II, the American dream of upward mobility was a real experience for many people.

Now for the shocker: The Business Week piece cites a new survey of today's adult men, which finds that this number has dropped to only 10 percent. That is, over the past generation upward mobility has fallen drastically. Very few children of the lower class are making their way to even moderate affluence. This goes along with other studies indicating that rags-to-riches stories have become vanishingly rare, and that the correlation between fathers' and sons' incomes has risen in recent decades. In modern America, it seems, you're quite likely to stay in the social and economic class into which you were born.
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after searching i found what this site says is the original business week article:
"Waking Up From the American Dream"
Reply #12 from JoeUser Forums Top

Stickler on stats? Do you really need to read a statistical analysis to see that the average home is much larger than it was in 1950? That we consume far more "stuff" today than we did in 1950.  Why is obsesity such a problem today and not in 1950? Because we're poorer?

Good grief. Open your eyes.

Reply #13 from JoeUser Forums Top
Messy: You can't be serious--I simply will not permit you to believe what you say. Though there are homeless by choice in the end, they did not choose that in the beginning and after years of frustration and neglect by society and indeed by themselves, they have given up hope. Welfare is an interim phase to help people makeit on their own; but it cannot be done in a vacuum--jobs are needed even if itmeans revival of the WPA.
Reply #14 from JoeUser Forums Top
Yes, we are heading in the direction where we will no longer be talking about welfare cases and homelessness, but will be commenting about ourselves who can no longer count on upward mobility.
Reply #15 from JoeUser Forums Top
I don't know about the rest of the country but sixty percent of the housing in my city is apartments. The houses are larger but most people don't live in them. My son and his wife both work and live in an apartment, they both have college degrees. When I was young, my father worked and we always had a home. My mother started working when I was in sixth grade and continued until she retired at sixty five. Her job paid for my parents health insurance.

There is no doubt that there is very little upward mobility.
Reply #16 from JoeUser Forums Top
Welfare is what keeps the poor around, which brings the statistical percentage of upward mobility down. Before, in the fifties, it wasn't as much of a problem, since poor people did not have as much opportunity to sustain their livelihood. What I'm saying, if we want statistics to look good on upward mobility again, then we have to kill poor people. After all, compare a place that helps the homeless such an California with a state without any help for homeless people. Which one has a worse homeless problem?
I'm not saying that's a good thing, but if people really think it's worse now, then we should make it more like how it was before welfare.
Reply #17 from JoeUser Forums Top
"Do you really need to read a statistical analysis to see that the average home is much larger than it was in 1950?"
Brad, how much did a cheeseburger and some fries cost back then. Was it the same as it costs now?
Or..did inflation happen?

The money we make today isn't the same as we made in the '50s..
Likewise, nothing costs the same it did back then, either.

Keep that in mind when arguing now vs then.
Reply #18 from JoeUser Forums Top
Thanks for the support, Lunaticus; also Brad's obsession with obesity could be answered that in the 50s there was no McDonalds--they eat real, high protein hamburgers.
Reply #19 from JoeUser Forums Top
Things are just different, Dedalus.

Don't forget, in ther 50's eating out every day wasn't as popular as it is now. Some people live their life on fast food from resturants and haven't had anything healthy or homecooked in years. The modern businessman on the go!
(But not going anywhere remotely upward, mobility wise. Today you have to compete to stay where you are..or lose ground)
Reply #20 from JoeUser Forums Top

steven - the words used were standard of living. Not money adjusted for inflation.

The fact is that the mean salary of an American today buys a vastly better standard of living than it did in 1950. I just can't see how anyone can possibly argue against that.

To have the lifestyle one had in in say 1955, one needs to make a fraction (in inflation adjusted dollars even) of what they did in 1955.

Food is cheaper overall adjusted for inflation. Gas is nearly the same adjusted for inflation. Access to credit is vastly easier than it was in 1955 (did they even really have credit cards back then?).

Do any of you realize just how ridiculous you sound arguing that our standard of living has fallen when you have 25 year olds posting from their own homes in their air conditioned rooms on their own personal computers bitching about how their wife may have to work in order for htem to afford that second or third car and 2,500 square foot house?

The difference between 1955 and 2004 in my opinion is that the generation of 1955 didn't confuse the terms NEED and WANT.

Reply #21 from JoeUser Forums Top
No one is arguing the standard of living is better than it was. That's thanks to everything from technology to medicine.
But what we ARE stating is that while the WAGE EARNING CAPACITY has went UP...The POWER OF THE DOLLAR has went down. It Takes More to Have More.
Upward Mobility is stangant. That doesn't mean we have to be living in chicken coups and sleeping in crap to be considered poor.

Now, if a person was to live Now in 2004 as a family did back in 1950...Well, I'm sure some of you were alive then, You tell us what it was like and what you'd have to go without.

I'd like prices on how much a color TV was back in the 50's and how much it is now. Let's get comparisons going on.
Reply #23 from JoeUser Forums Top
Discussing economics in forums such as this is frustrating to readers, or at least me I read insightful comments interspersed with "...we have to kill poor people." and the point of the blog goes spinning off into another orbit as we debate minutiae of each others comments.
If 'upward mobility' is the topic, I say I do agree with the blogger.
"Credit" cards did not exist in the 1950's because there was largely no need for it. My father, raised in the depression, was a vocal foe of credit to all his kids, arguing it was not money but debt. That we are offered 'credit' by every scam shylock on the WallSt. block is not a point against the blog. Buying a home with cash was rather normal in the 1950's.
I agree that people can 'exist' today with as little as in the 1950's, but the hope of upward mobility is all but gone. The factors contributing to this are too numerous to list. We've passed civil rights acts, doubled the work force in introducing women to the workplace, passed NAFTA, GATT, gone through Korea, Vietnam, etc. invented the micro-chip, transistor, satellites, all having impact on economy and altering varous factors.
I note that not all these are good. Just as a E.G., I argued to the feminists that Reagan did more for "women's lib" than anyone before or since him. He cut male wages in half (actually I think the number was 40%), and put the wives and mothers(who used to be able to stay home and raise the kids on one income) to work beside them. Whoopee, now both parents can put in twice the hours for the same volume of money. Divorce increased, 'latch-key kids' were born and we could all go to our daycare and read of the innumerable "bumps to the head"(posted usually on clipboards inches thick as Law mandates child assault must be documented in these over-crowded 'businesses' where cramming even more kids in means good business, and the stress on kids- like mice in overcrowded cages - causes anti-social and violent rebellious behavior. Oh, don't get me started on that one), our kid 'accidentally' sustained while we were away making ends meet. This does not show up in our 'upward mobility' list of comparisons of 1950's to today though does it? What is the price of such child-rearing? Go look at the booming prison construction industry as some are showing up in that column even now.
If I were to cite one main reason for the problem though, it would be that the business owner is dis-sociated from his Nation and fellow-American employees. Making a profitable living is a worthy goal of business. TAKING market share from other American business is not. The goal of it all is skewed by such economic premises in the business circles.
"Lost in this world it's so hard to find us..." We have lost our basic premises, the impetus to action is altered, and we have become cannibals who eat each others life-blood under the banner, "Live and let Die".
The amount of savings necessary to live on the interest has increased not decreased, and our savings are at an all-time low. I fail to see how the blog is even open to serious challenge as stated. The NWO, like the devil, has stolen our dreams away.
Reply #24 from JoeUser Forums Top
Brad seems to be confusing standard of living with upward mobility. Granted standard of living is obviously better, but upward mobility, implying the ability to move up in society, has definitely declined. The gap between have and have not is vastly wider than is was, the top is higher and the bottom is still the bottom. The problem is that the 'top' isn't takaing anyone with them, only getting smaller and smaller. Granted GDP, etc. continues to rise, but that doesn't mean that people have better access to climb the ladder. If the topic is mobility, lets not confuse the issue with standard of living stats, apples and oranges, though not unrelated.
Reply #25 from JoeUser Forums Top
Reply #10 By: Lunaticus Minimus - 1/2/2004 2:02:30 PM
Wait wait wait, you're all overlooking an important definition of homelessness. Are they on welfare due to necessity, or choice?
Are they unemployed due to circumstances or "fate" ? (i.e., given up hope of ever becoming upwardly mobile and therefore staying in the slump they have fallen into)
I am referring to the Majority. There are special cases in which yes, someone has no other option, but those are few and far between. Let's take a look at the masses.


No one was commenting on it yet Lunaticus, so here goes. I recommend you go down to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen and ask people if they want to be there. Sure there are those people we all hear about who refuse offers to get burgers when they are begging for money, but whether they are the majority? I honestly can't prove one way or the other, and neither can you, the statistics don't exist, and even if they did, they would be suspect because who would confess to wanting to be on welfare. So, go and ask, and make up your own mind. I personally believe that most homeless and jobless would rather be anything else.

Cheers