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“Used to be” such a place. Stagnating minimum wage while inflation proceeds unchecked, the rise of marginal employment and contract work. Skyrocketing housing c

“Used to be” such a place. Stagnating minimum wage while inflation proceeds unchecked, the rise of marginal employment and contract work. Skyrocketing housing costs. I don’t think the us is such a place anymore. It fast becoming a place that is not.

mrguyorama 11mo ago
The US was never a place like that. Even in the mostly imagined "golden age" of the fifties, if you were the wrong family or color you would not be able to reliably get out of poverty no matter how much effort or guile you could afford The bank did not care that you would be a profitable customer, they still weren't going to lend to you.
- potato3732842 11mo ago
  You're projecting the current onto the past. It was a problem, but it wasn't the show stopper it would be today. Not having access to credit wasn't as big a deal when there weren't subsidized credit products and you therefore weren't competing with people who had artificial access to cheap money. The reason minority communities exist is because those people were wealthy enough to own land, have businesses, etc. And this was before the modern idea of a home or business as a leverage investments so when they bought homes or started businesses they mostly did it where people like them were, not where a bunch of snobbish white people who hated them were (because that's where the best investment growth potential is). Pretty much every discernible ethnic group in the history of the US has made an upward march from generally poor to more or less the same as average. There are two exceptions, native americans and blacks. And the latter was poised to do so in the 1960s. Much has been written about both so I don't feel the need to opine here. Yeah, society was racist AF back then and imparted a lot of glass ceilings and certainly kept certain groups a little more down, but the past wasn't simply like the present but with more racism.
potato3732842 11mo ago
Minimum almost doesn't matter in a discussion of mobility. Nobody ever escaped poverty working minimum wage. They found a way to move up.
- tstrimple 11mo ago
  Minimum wage provides breathing room for other opportunities including self-advancement. Just survivorship bias nonsense.
- bccdee 11mo ago
  > They found a way to move up. Yeah, and they probably had to spend money to make that happen. Night courses at a community college aren't free. A higher minimum wage makes it easier to get your foot in the door for something better.
  - nradov 11mo ago
    Most community colleges have some sort of tuition waiver or scholarship program for low income students. https://www.westvalley.edu/admissions/free-tuition.html https://www.westvalley.edu/admissions/free-tuition.html

mrguyorama 11mo ago

The US was never a place like that. Even in the mostly imagined "golden age" of the fifties, if you were the wrong family or color you would not be able to reliably get out of poverty no matter how much effort or guile you could afford The bank did not care that you would be a profitable customer, they still weren't going to lend to you.

potato3732842 11mo ago
You're projecting the current onto the past. It was a problem, but it wasn't the show stopper it would be today. Not having access to credit wasn't as big a deal when there weren't subsidized credit products and you therefore weren't competing with people who had artificial access to cheap money. The reason minority communities exist is because those people were wealthy enough to own land, have businesses, etc. And this was before the modern idea of a home or business as a leverage investments so when they bought homes or started businesses they mostly did it where people like them were, not where a bunch of snobbish white people who hated them were (because that's where the best investment growth potential is). Pretty much every discernible ethnic group in the history of the US has made an upward march from generally poor to more or less the same as average. There are two exceptions, native americans and blacks. And the latter was poised to do so in the 1960s. Much has been written about both so I don't feel the need to opine here. Yeah, society was racist AF back then and imparted a lot of glass ceilings and certainly kept certain groups a little more down, but the past wasn't simply like the present but with more racism.

potato3732842 11mo ago

Minimum almost doesn't matter in a discussion of mobility. Nobody ever escaped poverty working minimum wage. They found a way to move up.

tstrimple 11mo ago
Minimum wage provides breathing room for other opportunities including self-advancement. Just survivorship bias nonsense.
bccdee 11mo ago
> They found a way to move up. Yeah, and they probably had to spend money to make that happen. Night courses at a community college aren't free. A higher minimum wage makes it easier to get your foot in the door for something better.
- nradov 11mo ago
  Most community colleges have some sort of tuition waiver or scholarship program for low income students. https://www.westvalley.edu/admissions/free-tuition.html https://www.westvalley.edu/admissions/free-tuition.html