8 ms·

70s through 90s wiped the blue collar middle class off the map, there are no other options outside of non-MD healthcare work if you want income that even begins

by imbnwa 5y ago

70s through 90s wiped the blue collar middle class off the map, there are no other options outside of non-MD healthcare work if you want income that even begins to keep up with inflation. Its gigs and part-time work from there. Edit: to be clear, I'm agreeing and saying people definitely had time to see the writing on the wall

gruez 5y ago
>70s through 90s wiped the blue collar middle class off the map, there are no other options outside of non-MD healthcare work if you want income that even begins to keep up with inflation. Is it? According to the CRS[1], real wage (ie. inflation adjusted) growth is up 6.5% even for the bottom percentile. [1] https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf#page=9 https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf#page=9
- justicezyx 5y ago
  LMAO Dont you know that equality is a critical aspects of social satisifaction. See everywhere, equality is mentioned as the magic word that described the sacred value of liberal society... But It's never applied to personal wealth... Your thinking is precisely the ludicrous disconnection between the elites' idea of society and the reality... (I am not saying you are elite, just that elitism thinking is so blindly superficial...) BTW, equality in personal wealth is emphasized nearly 2000 years ago by Confucious 不患寡而患不均. [1] https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%8D%E6%82%A3%E5%AF%A1%E8%80%8C%E6%82%A3%E4%B8%8D%E5%9D%87 https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%8D%E6%82%A3%E5%AF%A1%E8%...
  - gruez 5y ago
    How is this relevant? The parent poster made a testable statement ("there are no other options outside of non-MD healthcare work if you want income that even begins to keep up with inflation"), and I disproved it by pointing out that even the bottom 10% of Americans are keeping up with inflation and then some.
    - justicezyx 5y ago
      The idea is that absolute improvement does not change the fact that people are seeing some are much better off than themselves. It's about why people want to be elites. As for the inflation, that's irrelevant. I should have read the comments closely. But it remains the case that such technicality is not at the right direction.
- refenestrator 5y ago
  That's against CPI inflation. Consumer goods have gotten cheaper over the period, so even slow wage growth will outpace the CPI measure. Housing, education and financial products including health insurance are not included in CPI measures -- https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-price-index-up-4-2-percent-from-april-2020-to-april-2021.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-price-index-up-4-...
  - gruez 5y ago
    >That's against CPI inflation. Yes, that's implied. If you get to choose your basket you can make inflation seem arbitrarily high/low. >Housing, education and financial products including health insurance are not included in CPI measures -- https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-price-index-up-4- https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-price-index-up-4-... Why would you lie like that? https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2020.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2020.htm Housing: 42.385% of CPI-U Education: 3.033% of CPI-U "financial products" (whatever that means, the closest I could find is "Financial services"): 0.229 of CPI-U health insurance: 1.209% of CPI-U
    - refenestrator 5y ago
      Ah, my information was bad. The study you originally cited specifically mentions CPI-U as the measure they were using. I assure you I wasn't lying, and thank you for the correction. (perhaps consider not jumping straight to the lying accusation in the future). There's still a conversation about housing taking up an increasing share of the pie that doesn't exactly shine through in that top line number, but no point in belaboring it.
      - gruez 5y ago
        > Ah, my information was bad. The study you originally cited specifically mentions CPI-U as the measure they were using. well the BLS publishes a bunch of CPI numbers, but "the" CPI is just CPI-U. The others are even more specific (eg. CPI-W for clerical workers or CPI for the elderly) >There's still a conversation about housing taking up an increasing share of the pie that doesn't exactly shine through in that top line number, but no point in belaboring it. The rise in housing prices has mostly been canceled out (or caused by?) low interest rates. After you adjust for interest rate and inflation, the monthly payment for a house (ie. the price you actually pay) has actually gone down from the 90s. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Screenshot-2021-03-20-101503.jpg https://awealthofcommonsense.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/...
- shkkmo 5y ago
  I'm not sure what report your read, but that report very clearly states the following: > Real wages fell for workers with lower levels of educational attainment and rose for highly educated workers. Wages for workers with a high school diploma or less education declined in real terms at the top, middle, and bottom of the wage distribution, whereas wages rose for workers with at least a college degree. And that is before you start looking at issues with the CPI-U and how it's price weighting compares to real expenses faced by blue collar workers.
merpnderp 5y ago
You should meet my carpenter and plumber and ask them about their nice houses with big yards and new cars.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  These are skilled trades, it's quite a challenge to compare them with factory work that used to employ a large blue-collar population.
- girvo 5y ago
  Though for a lot of people those items are acquired via large amounts of debt, and at a much larger multiple of their income than in the past
  - duduuegeh 5y ago
    I don't understand this allergy towards debt. Oh no, people had the option to take out a loan to access capital they wanted to invest in themselves. If only we could be like the Europeans instead and waste public money to fund whatever stupid whimsy someone fancied rather than make them responsible for the productivity of their choice.
    - throwaways885 5y ago
      Because children were pressured by society into going to university, on what possibly was false pretences.
    - chillwaves 5y ago
      > whatever stupid whimsy someone fancied strange description for democracy.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    Part of that change is artificial. Mortgage interest rates have plummeted, which have caused prices to go up. The real median mortgage payment is about the same over the last 50 years.
outlace 5y ago
Where is cost of living in this analysis? In the Midwest you can still have a nice quality of life with any decent job. Yeah sure, you can’t have such things in SF, NY or LA like maybe you could in the 70s.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  You likely pay for it in other ways.
  - coffeecat 5y ago
    What other ways do you have in mind?
    - nebula8804 5y ago
      There is no such thing as a free lunch and so reduced real estate costs bring with it an environment of potential poor local governance, poor job market, neighbors that do not share values that are conducive with rising home prices. A most recent example is poor compliance with things that benefit the masses (ie. Vaccine, mask etc.) I suspect the next thing will be poor compliance with switching over to energy efficient power generation as the world moves to clean energy + things implemented to discourage clean transportation (ie. extra taxes on EVs/banning solar installs without major caveats). All these boneheaded things drive down the cost of the real estate to its true market value.
pyuser583 5y ago
Non manufacturing blue collar trades are still quite profitable.
ampdepolymerase 5y ago
You conveniently left out the rise of the industry known as software engineering.
- Retric 5y ago
  Software engineering isn’t blue collar work. “A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labor. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-collar_worker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-collar_worker Plumber or nurse sure, but staring at a screen or moving Post-it notes isn’t physical labor.
  - naravara 5y ago
    While wrenching on a car is indeed manual labor I feel like it can take similar levels of mental effort, background knowledge, and training as junior dev work. So the parallel isn’t entirely off base. I believe the OP’s argument is that there are new classes of work that didn’t exist back then. Perhaps they’re not as cleanly sorted into white and blue collar lines as before but they occupy similar places in the socio-economic status positioning.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Being a mechanic is extremely repetitive. Occasionally people are faced with something odd, but it’s mostly a checklist job because identical makes and models generally run into the same issues. Or as a childhood friend out it. It’s boring, but I can zone out and work with my hands.

by imbnwa 5y ago

gruez 5y ago

>70s through 90s wiped the blue collar middle class off the map, there are no other options outside of non-MD healthcare work if you want income that even begins to keep up with inflation. Is it? According to the CRS[1], real wage (ie. inflation adjusted) growth is up 6.5% even for the bottom percentile. [1] https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf#page=9 https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf#page=9

justicezyx 5y ago
LMAO Dont you know that equality is a critical aspects of social satisifaction. See everywhere, equality is mentioned as the magic word that described the sacred value of liberal society... But It's never applied to personal wealth... Your thinking is precisely the ludicrous disconnection between the elites' idea of society and the reality... (I am not saying you are elite, just that elitism thinking is so blindly superficial...) BTW, equality in personal wealth is emphasized nearly 2000 years ago by Confucious 不患寡而患不均. [1] https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%8D%E6%82%A3%E5%AF%A1%E8%80%8C%E6%82%A3%E4%B8%8D%E5%9D%87 https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%8D%E6%82%A3%E5%AF%A1%E8%...
- gruez 5y ago
  How is this relevant? The parent poster made a testable statement ("there are no other options outside of non-MD healthcare work if you want income that even begins to keep up with inflation"), and I disproved it by pointing out that even the bottom 10% of Americans are keeping up with inflation and then some.
  - justicezyx 5y ago
    The idea is that absolute improvement does not change the fact that people are seeing some are much better off than themselves. It's about why people want to be elites. As for the inflation, that's irrelevant. I should have read the comments closely. But it remains the case that such technicality is not at the right direction.
refenestrator 5y ago
That's against CPI inflation. Consumer goods have gotten cheaper over the period, so even slow wage growth will outpace the CPI measure. Housing, education and financial products including health insurance are not included in CPI measures -- https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-price-index-up-4-2-percent-from-april-2020-to-april-2021.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-price-index-up-4-...
- gruez 5y ago
  >That's against CPI inflation. Yes, that's implied. If you get to choose your basket you can make inflation seem arbitrarily high/low. >Housing, education and financial products including health insurance are not included in CPI measures -- https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-price-index-up-4- https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/consumer-price-index-up-4-... Why would you lie like that? https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2020.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2020.htm Housing: 42.385% of CPI-U Education: 3.033% of CPI-U "financial products" (whatever that means, the closest I could find is "Financial services"): 0.229 of CPI-U health insurance: 1.209% of CPI-U
  - refenestrator 5y ago
    Ah, my information was bad. The study you originally cited specifically mentions CPI-U as the measure they were using. I assure you I wasn't lying, and thank you for the correction. (perhaps consider not jumping straight to the lying accusation in the future). There's still a conversation about housing taking up an increasing share of the pie that doesn't exactly shine through in that top line number, but no point in belaboring it.
    - gruez 5y ago
      > Ah, my information was bad. The study you originally cited specifically mentions CPI-U as the measure they were using. well the BLS publishes a bunch of CPI numbers, but "the" CPI is just CPI-U. The others are even more specific (eg. CPI-W for clerical workers or CPI for the elderly) >There's still a conversation about housing taking up an increasing share of the pie that doesn't exactly shine through in that top line number, but no point in belaboring it. The rise in housing prices has mostly been canceled out (or caused by?) low interest rates. After you adjust for interest rate and inflation, the monthly payment for a house (ie. the price you actually pay) has actually gone down from the 90s. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Screenshot-2021-03-20-101503.jpg https://awealthofcommonsense.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/...
shkkmo 5y ago
I'm not sure what report your read, but that report very clearly states the following: > Real wages fell for workers with lower levels of educational attainment and rose for highly educated workers. Wages for workers with a high school diploma or less education declined in real terms at the top, middle, and bottom of the wage distribution, whereas wages rose for workers with at least a college degree. And that is before you start looking at issues with the CPI-U and how it's price weighting compares to real expenses faced by blue collar workers.

merpnderp 5y ago

You should meet my carpenter and plumber and ask them about their nice houses with big yards and new cars.

zozbot234 5y ago
These are skilled trades, it's quite a challenge to compare them with factory work that used to employ a large blue-collar population.
girvo 5y ago
Though for a lot of people those items are acquired via large amounts of debt, and at a much larger multiple of their income than in the past
- duduuegeh 5y ago
  I don't understand this allergy towards debt. Oh no, people had the option to take out a loan to access capital they wanted to invest in themselves. If only we could be like the Europeans instead and waste public money to fund whatever stupid whimsy someone fancied rather than make them responsible for the productivity of their choice.
  - throwaways885 5y ago
    Because children were pressured by society into going to university, on what possibly was false pretences.
  - chillwaves 5y ago
    > whatever stupid whimsy someone fancied strange description for democracy.
- rayiner 5y ago
  Part of that change is artificial. Mortgage interest rates have plummeted, which have caused prices to go up. The real median mortgage payment is about the same over the last 50 years.

outlace 5y ago

Where is cost of living in this analysis? In the Midwest you can still have a nice quality of life with any decent job. Yeah sure, you can’t have such things in SF, NY or LA like maybe you could in the 70s.

nebula8804 5y ago
You likely pay for it in other ways.
- coffeecat 5y ago
  What other ways do you have in mind?
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    There is no such thing as a free lunch and so reduced real estate costs bring with it an environment of potential poor local governance, poor job market, neighbors that do not share values that are conducive with rising home prices. A most recent example is poor compliance with things that benefit the masses (ie. Vaccine, mask etc.) I suspect the next thing will be poor compliance with switching over to energy efficient power generation as the world moves to clean energy + things implemented to discourage clean transportation (ie. extra taxes on EVs/banning solar installs without major caveats). All these boneheaded things drive down the cost of the real estate to its true market value.

pyuser583 5y ago

Non manufacturing blue collar trades are still quite profitable.

ampdepolymerase 5y ago

You conveniently left out the rise of the industry known as software engineering.

Retric 5y ago
Software engineering isn’t blue collar work. “A blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labor. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-collar_worker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-collar_worker Plumber or nurse sure, but staring at a screen or moving Post-it notes isn’t physical labor.
- naravara 5y ago
  While wrenching on a car is indeed manual labor I feel like it can take similar levels of mental effort, background knowledge, and training as junior dev work. So the parallel isn’t entirely off base. I believe the OP’s argument is that there are new classes of work that didn’t exist back then. Perhaps they’re not as cleanly sorted into white and blue collar lines as before but they occupy similar places in the socio-economic status positioning.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Being a mechanic is extremely repetitive. Occasionally people are faced with something odd, but it’s mostly a checklist job because identical makes and models generally run into the same issues. Or as a childhood friend out it. It’s boring, but I can zone out and work with my hands.