Quote:
Originally Posted by Via Chicago
ancedotal evidence is not statistically meaningful. i know this and i dont even have an econn degree. if you fall in the upper-middle band of income earners than you have probably done OK. but the reality is the american middle class is shrinking.
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I think a couple of you are jumping down jtown's throat a bit, when his point is about personal finance, not multigenerational demographic and macroeconomic income trends.
Yes, the middle-class doesn't have the same opportunity it did in the 1970's when you could drop out of high school in Flint, cross the street to the GM factory and get hired the next day making more than your chemistry teacher did. And the fact the the knowledge economy jobs tend to be concentrated in large metros further limits accessibility to housing. This is real.
But for an
individual who is
early in his career and who has
a professional job and
so does his wife and who
posts on skyscraper page, from a personal finance perspective--which is how this discussion started--he can probably expect his income to go up over the coming years and decades and there might be an advantage to stretching a bit now so that he doesn't lose the opportunity to take full advantage of inflation and leverage.
If I mentioned here that I was unsure about whether to take up Cross Fit or maybe just buy a Peloton at home, it would be a bit weird to spend a few days posting graphs about BMI trends since WW2; tax incentives provided to corn growers; and about how the mortgage interest deduction has made it more difficult to integrate walking exercise into the lifestyle of most people due to subsidized sprawl. "I mean, yeah, thanks. I just was thinking about maybe getting in a little better shape though, you know?"