Be honest. How fast would debts consume whatever savings or property you own? Our fairy-tale middle class is one life-line away from living in the street. To truly be middle class now in the U.S. would require at least a six figure income and a net worth of over a million dollars. The United States is now the land of the great imaginary middle-class.
If you lose your job or have a medical emergency your credit is very likely to be damaged. Once that happens you can forget about getting insurance, or a corporate position (or any other employer who uses credit screening), or even renting to put a roof over your head!
This is a systematic intentional move toward increasing poverty and planned homelessness!
A recent AOL Internet online privacy survey proves that most people simply do not understand the dangers of providing information. The risk is not in the one question you answered today (or the additional information you offered in email, chat, or on social networking). The issue is that what you think is anonymous is not. It can all be tracked back to you to build a huge personal profile on each one of us.
Most computer users are unaware of the awesome power of data mining and how deeply it may already be affecting their lives. Each of us already uses data mining whenever we use a search engine such as Google or Yahoo to locate information. We type in what we wish to know and the search engine presents everything it can find on that subject in the databases it can access.
Like all things useful, data mining is a double-edged sword. Whether it is good for us or bad all depends on who is swinging that sword. Read on about how to protect your privacy.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: WHAT IS MIDDLE CLASS ANYWAY?
- NEW Struggling To Get By On $100,000 A Year (Sep 3, 2008)
- How Living Standards Slid After the 1990s (Sep 1, 2008)
- How to Conceal Massive Economic Collapse (Sep 1, 2008)
- Middle Class In Decline; Radical Change Not Likely (Aug 21, 2008)
- New Signs of a Middle Class Collapse (Aug 15, 2008)
- Shrinking Middle Class (Aug 11, 2008)
- Riches and Poverty, Scarcity and Control, 1984 (Aug 5, 2008)
- Reality Check - Is Six Figures Really That Much? Or Even Enough?
- How Do You Define Middle Class?
- Rich is Relative - Why Do You Think You’re Middle Class?
- Middle Class = Making $5 Million a Year or Less
- Trickle Down… R.I.P
- Making Ends Meet on $300,000 a Year
THE TRUTH BEHIND CLASS, POVERTY, and the ECONOMY:
- NEW: The Greatest Depression is Coming
- The Bankruptcy of America
- The Promise of America (While this is related to politics, I include it here for the background information included and not to endorse any particular political stance.)
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with your premise for the most part - although I think more people could be “middle class” if they were less extravagent with their spending. I consider myself middle class because I can go awhile without making any new money. But I also don’t have an expensive “lifestyle.” Some people just have to have a new car, a new that, a new this. It’s all about what other people think about them. If you leave that behind then you can live a much more modest life but one with a lot less debts and thus a lot less risks. I love being off the treadmill.
Twitter: @GrowMap
Hello Jonny, While that can certainly be true for those who have careers that pay more than it costs to live, there are so many who earn less than it takes to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.
In their cases they are not struggling because they are out buying new cars or bling - they are barely getting by - or not even getting by - because of all the mandated expenses our government has burdened them with such as insurance and taxes of all kinds.
I would love to see schools teach economics based on the minimum wage and what is actually available in their area. Have them look up costs for rent, utilities, insurance, car payments (even on older cars) and see just how impossible it is to live on wages commonly paid.
The working poor would have to live twenty to a house to ever MAYBE dig out of poverty. And there are laws against that in most places. One way to learn empathy is to end up in the same place and learn it the hard way. Learning from someone else’s experience is far less painful.
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Being a middle class means that you know how to go through life without being too extravagant or spending too much money into something that you can get for something less (but same quality). Also, we are able to keep our private lives intact because we don\’t go into the streets, making people heads turn.
Twitter: @GrowMap
Hi Ginger,
While it was common in prior to the 1970s, there are few Americans who can live middle class lives today without going deeper and deeper into debt. Those who choose to be employees have little control over their own economic reality.
There is a solution but few can see it and most will not voluntarily choose it - they will be forced into it.
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