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> New middle-class jobs might not be an oxymoron after all ... I have seen $17–$20 starting hourly wages at new factories in Mississippi and South Carolina. Th

• ch4s3 12y ago
  Yeah, and those entry level jobs require training and certification that the company doesn't provide. Guess who pay for you to learn how to operate a CNC lathe?
  • sliverstorm 12y ago
    I have met a handful of craftsmen willing to provide training for the right workers (as in, the ones that seem promising and likely to stay a while) Also community college costs have stayed pretty darn reasonable amidst the inflating costs of four-year degrees.
    • ch4s3 12y ago
      Yeah, that's true but with caveats: one being "a handful of craftsmen," the other being limited access to those community colleges. This is especially true in states that are slashing public spending on education. My point was that these types of jobs offered on site training 20 years ago, and now they don't, shifting the costs to prospective employees.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• sliverstorm 12y ago
  That's $40K per year at best. Hardly a middle-class salary in contemporary United States - There's a huge range to "middle-class". Consider whether your idea of "middle-class salaries" is in fact upper-middle-class. Remember that most of the middle class cannot afford to drive Priuses and BMWs. - In a lot of the United States, cost of living is a hell of a lot lower than the Bay. When your rent is $350/month for a two-bedroom flat and your car cost $5k, $40k might not be so bad after all. - The figure quoted is starting wage. It goes up from there, and twenty-year-olds don't yet need quite as much to live comfortably as they will later.
  • llamataboot 12y ago
    Rents are above 33% of median wages in most cities in the country. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/business/more-renters-find-30-affordability-ratio-unattainable.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/business/more-renters-find... You can surely get by on $40k a year. With my Master's Degree in Social Work from one of the best schools in the country, my best paying jobs were about $33k, but 2 bedroom apartments for $350 are gonna be hard to come by.
  • eloisant 12y ago
    By definition (of the OCDE) the middle class is the middle 3 quintiles, e.g. people who make more than the bottom 20% and less than the top 20%. In US in 2011, that meant a household making between about 20k and 100k. So yes the middle class is huge (60% of the population by definition), and 40k is right in the middle quintile (between 38k and 62k). Not upper-middle-class, but not "minimum wage working class" either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...
    • shakethemonkey 12y ago
      Unfortunately this is a terrifically bad definition of middle class, and may not match what people think of as "middle class" life. By this logic, 13th century feudal society had an ample middle class.
      • eloisant 12y ago
        The problem with "what people think of middle class" is that everyone has a different idea of what it is, depending on where they are on the revenue scale. That leads to discussions like this thread.
        • shakethemonkey 12y ago
          Absolutely correct. But we also know that the OCDE definition is a strict percentage which is so absurd it creates large middle classes in cultures which have absolutely no middle class. And events may unfold such that the definition may be absurd even in our own culture in 20? 50? years.
• beambot 12y ago
  In Mississippi and South Carolina, you can buy a house in many areas for sub-$100k, for a 1:2.5 salary-price ratio. Compare to Silicon Valley, where good tech salaries of $200k and 2 bdrm homes for $800k give a 1:4 ratio. $40k is middle class for that part of the country.
  • Quizz 12y ago
    But is $40k on offer in these more affordable parts?
    • sliverstorm 12y ago
      South Carolina is not large. If you were willing to commute for an hour, if you lived in the center you could work almost anywhere in the state.
      • fixedd 12y ago
        A one hour commute could easily cost ~ 5k/yr in fuel alone (50 weeks * 5 days * $3/gal fuel * (60miles / 20mpg)), instantly cutting that increase from 30k to 40k in half.
  • ulfw 12y ago
    Plus with progressive tax rates and high taxes in CA that ratio realistically goes more towards 1:6 or higher
  • fixedd 12y ago
    The difference in costs for everything else is similar or worse in rural areas though. For instance, a 32" TV costs the same on Amazon no matter where you live, but when the water company only has 900 customers instead of a few hundred thousand the cost-per-gallon sky rockets.
    • noonespecial 12y ago
      As a counterpoint, there are some places (like this one) where more water than you can want just falls from the sky. The water here is cheap no matter how many people are connected. If it weren't, you'd just dig a modest hole in the ground and suck out what you need.
• prostoalex 12y ago
  Median household income in the US is $50,054 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#After_2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_... So having two household members earning $40k puts the household in upper-middle-class category.
  • sp332 12y ago
    We used to have only one person working per household, plus maybe a part-time job. Can't we go back to that, preferably without the sexism this time?
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • sliverstorm 12y ago
      Two earners is a strategy to pick up slack, but it drives down pay over time. The only way to sustain a "one worker per household" system is to have some kind of force preventing more than one worker per household- be it social, legal, or otherwise. Without that, some folks will try to get ahead, and we will wind up right back where we are. In short, it just doesn't seem to be something we can have a mix of. Either everyone has one worker per household, or everyone has two (or more).
      • sliverstorm 12y ago
        I also suspect one worker per household might well be the best long term choice! However I don't really know how to implement that effectively without sexism or some other discrimination. One of the upsides to the old gender roles is it enabled heavy specialization. Men studied business, women studied domestic work. Without those roles, you either have to gamble on one of the two studies, or learn both and in the process sacrifice specialization.
    • AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      > Can't we go back to that, preferably without the sexism this time? No. The sexism is what made it work. If society permits both spouses to work then couples where both spouses work can afford to pay more for a house which increases the price of housing (and likewise for everything else). As more two income families come to exist it thereby becomes more difficult to sustain a family on a single income, which further exacerbates the problem by increasing the incentive to become a two income family (and thus the number of two income families inducing price inflation). The only way to prevent that is for society to somehow discourage couples from both working full time jobs. And since employers have no way to tell what an employee's spouse is doing all day, the most effective social enforcement method is sexism. (Obviously the math doesn't care which sex is inhibited from working but existing culture is a different matter.) Probably the closest you could get to it without the sexism is to provide everyone with a basic income.[1] A spouse who didn't work full time would still receive the basic income which would significantly reduce the income inequality between single income and dual income families, thereby reducing the pressure for both spouses to work and making single income families more practical. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
• randomdata 12y ago
  When half of all working Americans make less than $30,000 per year[1], I'm sure $40,000 looks pretty amazing. I wouldn't want to go anywhere near SF on that kind of income, but is a lot to work with where costs of living are far more reasonable. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...
• rayiner 12y ago
  In Mississippi and South Carolina, $40k per year is an extremely solid living.
• axaxs 12y ago
  Um, in much of the south 40k is decent money. I moved into my first house and got by fine on 35k just a few years back.
• jandrewrogers 12y ago
  Tech workers have no sense of what it means to earn a middle-class wage. I earn more than most tech workers but I have a frame of reference for that income having lived in many parts of the US that are generally disparaged as "flyover country". With all due respect, you are ignorant of the economics of many parts of the US. You can live quite well in South Carolina (briefly lived there) and Mississippi on $40k per year. In many regions, you aren't struggling for money unless you make less than $20k. The United States is a diverse country and I have lived in much of it. In many parts of the US, the cost of living is extremely low and a dollar goes quite far. Believe it or not, there are large swaths of the US where you can buy a house for much less than $100k (cheapest house in a town I've seen in the last decade was something like $12k, out in flyover country, for an actual house, albeit small). You might not want to live there, and I certainly do not, but many people do. If you like the environment, you can live a satisfactory middle-class life on $40k in those parts of the country. Housing is cheap, food is cheap, fuel is cheap, entertainment is cheap, and if your tastes are simple it is easy to save enough money to comfortably retire in those communities. $40k would definitely be on the low side if you live in a place like Silicon Valley or New York City. And I've lived there too. But the article specified South Carolina and Mississippi. And I've actually lived on less than $40k in Silicon Valley. Down in Mississippi, no one is going to be complaining about a $20/hour manufacturing job. That's a good living for modest effort.
  • chiph 12y ago
    Two decades previously, the textile industry was the major employer in the upstate SC area. The Palmetto Exposition Center in Greenville used to be called "Textile Hall" and hosted several trade-shows for the industry where people came from around the world to see the new thread and cloth making machinery. All those jobs went to Central America, China, Malaysia, etc. Not just those of the people running the machinery, but also the jobs that made the machinery too. Unemployment was a big problem. While the textile jobs weren't all that well-paying (often it was piece-work), at least it was something that put food on the table. When BMW Manufacturing arrived it was a tremendous boon to the regional economy. Not only were there new jobs at BMW, but new jobs at both local suppliers and newly arrived "feeder" firms. And these were good-paying jobs, even if they weren't always union. A production associate there starts around $15.50/hr, which is $33k a year. More if there's overtime. This is good money for the area. And then there's the benefits - the employees can buy a BMW at cost every few years. That's like a dream come true for them - being able to drive a European luxury car that's brand new.