Decline of the Middle Class? Or: Overextension of Middle Class.
- From: markwh04@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 4 Jan 2006 10:17:33 -0800
Jonas Cord wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Why have the living standards of the middle class declined so much in
> the US (and other countries) over the past 30 years or so?
It's a little difficult to speak of any decline when even people in the
ghetto riding buses have cell phones which (at least to me) are
luxuries that only the rich can afford; when obesity is at an all-time
high because (among other things) of the ease of availability of food;
when so many not only have cars but, now even these giant truck they
call SUV's; where houses are practically like mansions with their giant
fields about them called "yards", whereas the middle class of the
1920's and 1930's lived in normal houses in the city crammed up next to
each other. Where have you seen anything like cell phones so widespread
before the 1990's? Where were all these giant SUV's before the 1990's?
Fields that I used to walk in and through in the 1980's out in the
countryside are now ruined by the infusion of subdistricts. Buses were
normal to ride and not conisidered the den of people just out of the
looney bin and the poor. The middle class rode trolleys and buses in
the 1920's and 1930's and yet now this is suddenly considered the mark
of depravity?
Nothing has declined. It's your perceptions, collectively, that have
gone out of kilter. From the perspective of a foreigner, to put it more
bluntly, you've turned into a spoiled lot and now are suddenly griping
about not being able to "keep up" with the unreasonably high standards
you've propped up in recent years.
None of this stuff that passes for normal "middle class" was considered
normal when I was young, a few years ago in the 1970's.
.
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