The working class is getting royally screwed.

[Mina]

No, it's not. Far more of Americans' income goes to housing and food costs per month than 40 years ago.

Is that true? I know on a forum like this the custom is generally to assert something that would be helpful to your argument if it were true, and assume that it must actually be, without ever checking. But aren't you at least a little curious if it's actually true? Let's check:

In 1982, the median family earned $23,433. Today it's $84,008:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA646N

In 1982, median home price was $62,113. Today it's $366,555:

https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/

In 1982, a 30-year fixed mortgage rate would cost you 16.67%. Today it's 5.25%:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US

So, in 1982, the annual cost of a median mortgage was $10,428. Now it's $24,288.

https://www.mortgagecalculator.org/

So, in 1982, after paying a typical mortgage, a median family would have $13,005 left over for everything else, or $38,962 in today's money.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Today, a median family would have $59,720 left over after that annual cost of a typical mortgage.

That's all the more interesting considering that in 1982 the average house was 629 sq. ft. per person, whereas now it's 1,058:

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/04/05/the-size-of-a-home-the-year-you-were-born-5/
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-...verage new house,using the average size house

So, people are buying homes that are 68% larger in relative terms, yet they have a lot more money left over to spend.

40 years ago the CPI for food was 97.2, versus 298.379 now. So, food costs 3.07 times as much today:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDSL

But, again, median household income is 3.59 times as high as it was in 1982. So, again, food is LESS expensive today than it was 40 years ago, relative to median incomes.

Shove your statistics...

Unfortunately, that's how debates tend to go on political sites. One side deploys verifiable facts and figures, the other side says "shove your statistics" and insists that their own gut-level personal impressions are all that matters. That is a particularly common approach among the elderly, who have often lost the ability to reason, much less to research, and so they want to treat their own vague impressions from their personal memories as stand-ins for nation-wide experience... never even considering whether their own lives might have been atypical or misremembered.

There's less upward mobility now.

If you define "upward mobility" as earning more than your parents in real terms, it's true that upward mobility took a big dip starting with Reagan. However, it's worth noting that this is not a nation-wide thing. Upward mobility is horrible in conservative areas: worst in LA, OK, SC, AL, FL, KY, MS, NC, and TX. But it's still good in many liberal areas: best in MD, NJ, NY, CT, MA, PA, MI, and UT (the one conservative state that often finds itself among liberal states in rankings like that).

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/resear...ts/0001/01/01/economic-mobility-of-the-states

Liberal policies tend to help with upward mobility, which is why it remains better in liberal states (and countries), and why in the nation as a whole it took a dip with Reagan and his aristocracy-favoring policies.

 

[PoliTalker]

Verifiable facts and figures win the argument over personal impressions.

No contest.

 

[Mina]

Yes, that plan effectively shuts down the rich gaming the system, but it still attaches a life-long punishment to someone who fell on hard times and was unable to complete the education.

I don't think of it as punishment. I think of it as repaying a huge favor the rest of us did them. We paid off a debt they'd taken on, with them slowly repaying us over the course of decades (and possibly never repaying us fully). If it were me, I'd prefer that, anyway, since I hate the idea of being a total deadbeat -- I like the idea of eventually making it up to the people who did me a favor like that, even if it takes me a very long time to do so.

What if the government ran the schools, or at least paid a set rate amount for a basic education K-16?

That's a good idea -- basically, have the government add four years of college as part of normal public education. However, if we do that, it needs to be done in the spartan way you see with other countries that publicly finance college, rather than the extravagant spending you see at US colleges. For example, don't insist on lots of little classes with high professor/student ratios. Accept that the intro courses are going to mostly be big lecture halls where one professor can teach scores of students. And don't insist on manicured campuses and resort-style rec facilities and dining accommodations that look like quaint little bistros and lots of elaborately funded money-losing sports. Accept that it'll look very institutional, with the students mostly on their own for recreation and social stuff, to keep prices down.

There are ways to make university a whole lot cheaper than it is in the US, but it means cutting away as much as possible that isn't critical to education.... and that means cutting away a lot of the social-engineering mission colleges have adopted. You can't have low-cost higher education if you have a dozen assistant deans and other six-figure admin positions with various "diversity," "sustainability," and "community" mandates. When you start paying $200k per year for a Vice Provost of Inclusion and Equity, as well meaning as that may be, you wind up with high prices. It would need to be more bare-bones, the way high schools are (though even more so, since you'd probably also spend less on "special needs" students). Do that, and you could get the cost of college back down to the kinds of price-per-year it once had in the 1960's (albeit in inflation-adjusted terms).

 

[Mina]

Empire dies by a thousand cuts but NAFTA hemorrhaged the life blood from the working class

Yes, empires die by a thousand cuts..... but if you look at the actual data, things just didn't play out in a way that implicates NAFTA. Like over the 20 years before NAFTA, we were hemorrhaging badly. In 1993, the last year before NAFTA, the poverty rate was 15.1%, which was the highest in a decade, and four full points higher than a generation before! Life was going to crap. And it wasn't just rising poverty. Unemployment rates had been elevated for almost two decades. We didn't have sub-5% unemployment in even a single month between the start of 1974 and when NAFTA was implemented. Not even once in all that time.

That's the context to remember. Things were AWFUL before NAFTA. After NAFTA, poverty rates dropped like a rock, and within a few years unemployment rates went under 4% (and went under it again and again in the following years -- in 2000, 2007, 2018, and now.

I know people are desperate to blame our problems on NAFTA, but the FACT is that things were getting worse before NAFTA and have gotten better since NAFTA. Those facts are stubborn things.

Again, millennials and zoomers lack the opportunities that we had. They are stuck in a gig economy with little possibility of owning a home.

Again, there's a huge desire to blame NAFTA for such things, but the stats don't support that. At the end of 1993, right before NAFTA was implemented, the home ownership rate was 64.6%. That was DOWN from a pre-NAFTA high of 65.8% in 1980 -- the dream of home ownership was moving out of the reach of more and more Americans. In fact, as of just before NAFTA, the home ownership rate just before NAFTA was lower even than in the late 1960s. But then things changed. After NAFTA, the home ownership rate in the US soared for over a decade:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

That's simply not the pattern we'd expect to see if somehow NAFTA were causing homes to be unaffordable. In fact, it's literally the OPPOSITE of the pattern we'd expect to see.

You tout booming economy when a dem is potus but scream recession when a con is potus. Make up your mind.

I have no idea what you're saying here. The economy does, in fact, go in out and of recessions. It went into recession Feb 2020, Dec 2007, March 2001, July 1990, July 1981, July 1980, November 1973, December 1969, April 1960, August 1957, and July 1953. I know it's kind of inconvenient for bothsiderists that we had Republican presidents 10 out of 11 times we fell into recession, but history doesn't care about our feelings. What happened happened and the question is simply whether we will allow the facts to influence our understanding, or whether we will insist on our gut feelings and reject the facts.

 

[Mina]

Care to prove me wrong? Or just be a typical liberal and talk out your ass.

I think we can get a sense for how many want to do physical work for money just by looking at what happens when new jobs are available that require physical labor and have decent pay and benefits. We see huge lines of job applicants:

https://apnews.com/article/fall-riv...i-state-wire-ba3f4d70ebb945e7b2bea7dbb9735a2a

 

[Jarod]

The working class is getting screwed, and many are voting for those screwing them.

Just look at the tax structure. The inheritance system. The ownership of American wealth.

 

[PoliTalker]

Hello Jarod,

The working class is getting screwed, and many are voting for those screwing them.

Just look at the tax structure. The inheritance system. The ownership of American wealth.

Private equity is claiming an increasing share of business ownership. When private equity moves in, the working class generally gets royally screwed. Tougher working conditions, fewer workers, more responsibilities, more scrutiny, fewer benefits.

It's a way for big money to escape government oversight and regulation.

 

[PoliTalker]

Every kind of way that people create businesses and successfully profit while creating jobs is being bought up and gutted to the bare essentials. The result is a worse deal for workers and consumers. Jobs that either pay less or are more demanding, products that are lower quality and quantity per package, less serviceable, are more prone to planned obsolescence, and more expensively priced.

America is in the process of extracting raw materials from the ground, turning them into products which are used for a relatively short duration, often single use disposable, and then the ultimate destination is the land fill. Gaseous pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere in the process, and micro plastics are released into the environment. Micro plastics have been found at the bottom of the seas and at the very bottom of the entire world food chain where they are consumed by the most basic forms of life and then travel up the food chain to be found in the top predators and every form of life that humans eat.

We wonder why health care costs so much, well it's no big secret. It is because we get so sick. And we wonder why.

 

[Truck Fump / h1b]

Every kind of way that people create businesses and successfully profit while creating jobs is being bought up and gutted to the bare essentials. The result is a worse deal for workers and consumers. Jobs that either pay less or are more demanding, products that are lower quality and quantity per package, less serviceable, are more prone to planned obsolescence, and more expensively priced.

America is in the process of extracting raw materials from the ground, turning them into products which are used for a relatively short duration, often single use disposable, and then the ultimate destination is the land fill. Gaseous pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere in the process, and micro plastics are released into the environment. Micro plastics have been found at the bottom of the seas and at the very bottom of the entire world food chain where they are consumed by the most basic forms of life and then travel up the food chain to be found in the top predators and every form of life that humans eat.

We wonder why health care costs so much, well it's no big secret. It is because we get so sick. And we wonder why.

yes.

the powers that be want to kill most people.

 

[Truck Fump / h1b]

Yes, empires die by a thousand cuts..... but if you look at the actual data, things just didn't play out in a way that implicates NAFTA. Like over the 20 years before NAFTA, we were hemorrhaging badly. In 1993, the last year before NAFTA, the poverty rate was 15.1%, which was the highest in a decade, and four full points higher than a generation before! Life was going to crap. And it wasn't just rising poverty. Unemployment rates had been elevated for almost two decades. We didn't have sub-5% unemployment in even a single month between the start of 1974 and when NAFTA was implemented. Not even once in all that time.

That's the context to remember. Things were AWFUL before NAFTA. After NAFTA, poverty rates dropped like a rock, and within a few years unemployment rates went under 4% (and went under it again and again in the following years -- in 2000, 2007, 2018, and now.

I know people are desperate to blame our problems on NAFTA, but the FACT is that things were getting worse before NAFTA and have gotten better since NAFTA. Those facts are stubborn things.



Again, there's a huge desire to blame NAFTA for such things, but the stats don't support that. At the end of 1993, right before NAFTA was implemented, the home ownership rate was 64.6%. That was DOWN from a pre-NAFTA high of 65.8% in 1980 -- the dream of home ownership was moving out of the reach of more and more Americans. In fact, as of just before NAFTA, the home ownership rate just before NAFTA was lower even than in the late 1960s. But then things changed. After NAFTA, the home ownership rate in the US soared for over a decade:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

That's simply not the pattern we'd expect to see if somehow NAFTA were causing homes to be unaffordable. In fact, it's literally the OPPOSITE of the pattern we'd expect to see.



I have no idea what you're saying here. The economy does, in fact, go in out and of recessions. It went into recession Feb 2020, Dec 2007, March 2001, July 1990, July 1981, July 1980, November 1973, December 1969, April 1960, August 1957, and July 1953. I know it's kind of inconvenient for bothsiderists that we had Republican presidents 10 out of 11 times we fell into recession, but history doesn't care about our feelings. What happened happened and the question is simply whether we will allow the facts to influence our understanding, or whether we will insist on our gut feelings and reject the facts.

your analysis is dumb.

its too high level, with too many factors.

 

[Mina]

your analysis is dumb.

I think what you're really saying is that my analysis hurts your feelings, because it flies in the face of things you thought were true, and yet you're unable to pinpoint what's wrong with it.

its too high level, with too many factors.

With politics, economics, and sociology, there will always be countless factors playing out simultaneously, so we will NEVER have definitive proof of causation on anything. Yet that doesn't relieve us of the duty of making political decisions, such as deciding how to vote. So what we end up needing to decide is whether we cast votes that are informed by the best available data and analysis (however unavoidably flawed it may be), or whether we reject such evidence and just vote our prejudices.

I prefer going with the evidence. If time and again, across decades and dozens of measurable indicators, Democratic leadership coincides with better results for our country, I'm going to tend to vote Democrat, even though I realize it might all theoretically be some bizarrely elaborate coincidence.

 

[Truck Fump / h1b]

I think what you're really saying is that my analysis hurts your feelings, because it flies in the face of things you thought were true, and yet you're unable to pinpoint what's wrong with it.



With politics, economics, and sociology, there will always be countless factors playing out simultaneously, so we will NEVER have definitive proof of causation on anything. Yet that doesn't relieve us of the duty of making political decisions, such as deciding how to vote. So what we end up needing to decide is whether we cast votes that are informed by the best available data and analysis (however unavoidably flawed it may be), or whether we reject such evidence and just vote our prejudices.

I prefer going with the evidence. If time and again, across decades and dozens of measurable indicators, Democratic leadership coincides with better results for our country, I'm going to tend to vote Democrat, even though I realize it might all theoretically be some bizarrely elaborate coincidence.

your evidence is dumb.

too many factors to be meaningful.

 

[Mina]

your evidence is dumb.

For right-wingers, any evidence that doesn't support their starting assumptions will, by definition, be dumb. If you can think of better evidence, though, feel free to share.

 

[Truck Fump / h1b]

For right-wingers, any evidence that doesn't support their starting assumptions will, by definition, be dumb. If you can think of better evidence, though, feel free to share.

no.

your analysis comes to apparently no policy conclusions besides 'vote dem'.

youre a partisan hack who has diarrhea keyboard fingers.

 

[Mina]

no.

your analysis comes to apparently no policy conclusions besides 'vote dem'.

That's why you find yourself having such emotional turmoil about it. You start with the assumption that voting Democrat is bad, so any evidence that suggests Democrats are actually better for the country than Republicans is going to be hurtful to you. But the data isn't going anywhere. The fact is Democratic eras have been much better, in terms of nearly every measurable indicator, for many decades. So, the question becomes whether you're man enough to overcome your initial emotional sensitivity and grapple with that reality, or whether you instead essentially take the position that facts are dumb.

 

[Truck Fump / h1b]

That's why you find yourself having such emotional turmoil about it. You start with the assumption that voting Democrat is bad, so any evidence that suggests Democrats are actually better for the country than Republicans is going to be hurtful to you. But the data isn't going anywhere. The fact is Democratic eras have been much better, in terms of nearly every measurable indicator, for many decades. So, the question becomes whether you're man enough to overcome your initial emotional sensitivity and grapple with that reality, or whether you instead essentially take the position that facts are dumb.

your facts are meaningless in terms of policy.

what's your policy proposal based on all your research, besides "vote dem".

 

[Truck Fump / h1b]

you got nothing.

you're a fool.

you probably can't even acknowledge that a declared war on fossil fuels and shutting down capacity might affect the price of gas.

 

[Mina]

your facts are meaningless in terms of policy.

what's your policy proposal based on all your research, besides "vote dem".

Well, there are a number of policies that appear to be correlated with better results. For starters, government should be less reluctant to intervene to address market oversights. The Republican chicken littles always predict doom and gloom if government steps in with an intervention -- for example, saying that the Clinton tax hike on the rich would hurt the economy, or that Obamacare would kill job creation, or that the Brady Bill gun control would cause murder rates to rise, and so on. We can see that those prophecies tend to look pretty stupid with the benefit of hindsight. Meanwhile, we should be a LOT more skeptical about Republican promises. When a Republican says that we can cut taxes and revenue growth will be fine so it won't raise deficits, we should remember that they're wrong about just about everything. Reagan, Bush, and Trump all pushed through upper-class tax cuts, each time we were assured it wouldn't cause deficits to grow, and each time we got massive deficit growth. Generally speaking, our non-military government spending is too low, too, so I think the willingness to invest more in infrastructure (including human infrastructure) has contributed to superior performance of those Democratic eras.

 

[Althea]

It's no secret that CEOs are wealthier now than at any time in history. What is less known, however, is that the working class is poorer than it has been in generations.

Consider:

In 1974, my grandfather was a 20-something mechanic earning $6.25 per hour. It may not sound like a whole lot of money, but when you account for inflation, $6.25/hr in 1974 is equal to $36.65/hr in 2022.

His highest education is a high school diploma and by his 20s he was earning the equivalent of $36/hr.

This is why America is falling apart. It's not because of the left or the right, but the left and the right -- the wealthy elites stealing and hoarding our hard-earned wealth, bit by bit over the decades, and we're left with empty pockets and a struggle to survive.

Minimum wage was just over $2/hour back then, so he was making decent money for a trained professional.

 

[Truck Fump / h1b]

Well, there are a number of policies that appear to be correlated with better results. For starters, government should be less reluctant to intervene to address market oversights. The Republican chicken littles always predict doom and gloom if government steps in with an intervention -- for example, saying that the Clinton tax hike on the rich would hurt the economy, or that Obamacare would kill job creation, or that the Brady Bill gun control would cause murder rates to rise, and so on. We can see that those prophecies tend to look pretty stupid with the benefit of hindsight. Meanwhile, we should be a LOT more skeptical about Republican promises. When a Republican says that we can cut taxes and revenue growth will be fine so it won't raise deficits, we should remember that they're wrong about just about everything. Reagan, Bush, and Trump all pushed through upper-class tax cuts, each time we were assured it wouldn't cause deficits to grow, and each time we got massive deficit growth. Generally speaking, our non-military government spending is too low, too, so I think the willingness to invest more in infrastructure (including human infrastructure) has contributed to superior performance of those Democratic eras.

do you count clinton tax cuts as republican wins or no?