Letters to the Editor
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I don't think that housing size is correct -
Great interview, and sounds like an interesting book. But I wonder about that 2300 square foot average size of house number. If I google for it, I find the same number quoted all over the place. But I know I live in a 1400 square foot house, and so do lots of other people I know who also live in this neighborhood of 80 year old houses. I don't think all of the postwar housing developments were razed either, were they?
So I went to the NAHB website, which seems to be the source cited for that statistic, and although I couldn't find the exact report, their square footage by region matches that number pretty closely. It's for new houses sold. New construction. I'd like to know what the real number is, especially when you factor in condominiums. Also would like to know what the demographic is building the big new houses - none of my college-educated middle-class friends or relatives.
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Unsustainable Norms
Without falling into the "people should cut out the lattes" camp, I think that a good deal of the problem for my generation--people in their 40s, with good jobs but still sinking in debt--is that we were raised with unsustainable norms. The large house, the two cars, that's all part of it, but I think there's another thing that may need revisiting: the assumption that it's possible to sustain close, face to face family relationships AND careers that rocket us from one end of the country (and world) to another.
Most of the people I know from my peer group do not live in the same town as either their parents or their siblings. Quite often, they live hundred of miles apart. My own sister lives in Arizona; my parents in Oregon; myself in Illinois.
When I was growing up, I never gave a second thought to this, despite having very close relationships with my parents, etc. I just assumed that twice a year or so I would hop on a plane and fly to see everybody. That was the norm.
But now that I have a family (wife, two kids) AND that plane tickets have gone sky-high, that norm seems a little weird. We're spending, like, $4000/year on plane tickets (and my youngest doesn't buy a ticket yet!). For the nonce, that's the sort of stuff that ends up on the credit card. In the future, though, I definitely think I will have to make a choice: see the folks rarely, or make getting a job in their town a greater priority than pursuing my career.
I think many Americans are in this boat: bicoastal, tricoastal familial relationships that were based on low petroleum costs and airfares. A norm that you could buy your way over distance. No longer.
I wonder how many aspects of middle class family patterns--not lattes, mind you, but basic, structural elements--are about to change drastically. And this isn't so much about the squeeze being applied by health care, etc., as by the end of the petroleum age.
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Absolutely terrified by what's happening...
In my late 30's, been divorced 6 years, no kids, have a MBA, Master's in Accountanting, CPA, CMA & incredible job insecurity. I've worked for 2 large corporations in the past 10 years & have had nothing but total chaos in both. I'm terrified of getting married or having children solely because of financial reasons. I've stopped listening to news or watching news on the radio, TV or Internet. That & I've purposely stopped looking at gas signs. All I was hearing is how I'll be working until I'm dead & be lucky enough to eat even with all this goddamn education. Psychologically the constant drum-beat of bad news bad news bad news all day & having it endlessly reinforced was enough to almost drive me crazy. I know I'm getting fucked & can do almost nothing about except not have kids or a 2nd wife. Hell of a trade but thank you to that asswipe George Bush that's how it is.
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Debt affects choices
My husband and I put off having children during our 20's because of our student loan debt for undergraduate and graduate school. While our education has afforded us good jobs (we each make about $60K as librarian and higher ed fundraiser, respectively), we ended up waiting too long and fertility issues got in the way. We don't have children as a result. We've considered adoption, but my point is that student loan debt is affecting the choices people make--we knew that having a baby when we had $40K in debt and were barely making $30K combined when we first married wasn't very smart. Alas, waiting until the loans were paid and we had good paying jobs wasn't a good idea either. The only upside (if it can be called that) is that now we are able save more money than if we had children and might actually be to retire someday, maybe...
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fixing it
Author Nan Mooney argues that the middle class is slipping, and fixing it is going to take more than cutting out lattes.
There may be no fixing it. Already it is too late to prevent the decline of the US middle class. From here it's mostly a matter of how little the average American will settle for, and experience suggests Americans may be prepared to settle for very little.
Most of history is characterized by a small, wealthy elite ruling the great mass of poorer people. Even US history before WWII is that way. The prosperity of US middle class of the last 50-60 years is the product of the reforms of FDR, but that relative prosperity is suspected to be merely an aberration of history.
The Wealthy and Powerful Powers That Be have militated against those reforms ever since they were passed. Money, unlike water, naturally runs uphill unless effective mechanisms are in place to keep some of it in the lower classes, and those mechanisms - minimum wage laws, higher education, taxes on the rich, labor unions - are increasingly minimized where they are not compromised outright.
This entire article mostly provides indications that those mechanisms have been compromised, but it tends to be a symptomatic treatment and does not directly address the root causes: the rich, represented by corporations and their lobbyists, largely control all three branches of the federal government, and government policies favor the wealthy elite over nearly everybody else.
The last time the country was in this situation it required the desperation of the Depression to motivate change. This time, that may not be sufficient, because the wealthy and powerful who profit from this situation are likely to be able to prevent those kinds of reforms.