America's Middle Class: Living Large

Reason.tv: To hear the Lou Dobbses and Bill O'Reillys of the world--not to mention politicians ranging from Ron Paul to Hillary Clinton--the middle class of America (however you define that term) has never had it so tough. Between credit squeezes, out-of-control immigration, rising costs of education and health care and everything else, it's all darkness out there for those of us who are neither millionaires nor welfare cases, right?

In "Living Large," Drew Carey and Reason.tv examine the plight of the American middle class. What do they find?

Featured in the video is Michael Cox, chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. On the topic of the middle class making ends meet Cox says, "If you’re willing to settle for the living standards of the 1970s, it’s easy to make ends meet. It’s not the high cost of living, it’s the cost of living high, and it’s the fact that we insist on having so much more today." Further, "Americans are richer today than at any time in history. We should really be thankful that we live in a society where we don’t have to work day and night in order just to eke out a living."

Despite what Lou Dobbs and the media tell us, just by being alive in 21st century America, even if you're middle class, you've "won first prize in the lottery of life."

Comments

[Kunst:]

The size of the average American house has doubled in the last 3 decades while household size has gone down. The first secret of financial success is to live below your means, spend less than you make, and SAVE the difference.

2008 Feb 06 01:41 PM

[virilio:]

you've "won first prize in the lottery of life."

slow down you nationalistic cheerleader, it's not like at the age of 20 I can do as the swiss do and say social security is not something for me to pay into and build up and then take payments at 65, it's money society owes me for being a citizen. So I can cash it out as a lump sum at 20 even if I haven't paid into the system, oh right and If I get cancer I don't have to sell a house to pay for the treatment. And the minimum wage at around $16/hour with 1 bedroom apartments renting for $500/month. From an economic standpoint I wish such parallels were available to me here.

2008 Feb 06 05:27 PM

[Eric Balkan:]

If you start with a conclusion and then hunt for data to support it, cherry-picking the data you like and discarding the rest, you can pretty much "prove" anything.

Want to have dueling stats? Here's a little one to chew on. The US has the highest rate of downward mobility among any developed country in the world.

[e-mail]

2008 Feb 06 06:29 PM

[vodka_tonic:]

people are hurting for sure, but not all.

2008 Feb 06 06:58 PM

[NoFate:]

It's bad enough mixing economics and politics ...but to throw in reality TV just ads insult to injury.

Seriously though, I think our generation is doing ok. The reality though is that our kids are sceeeee-rewed.

If we can't turn around the rising cost of SS, MC, the National Debt, energy crisis, environmental damage, etc.

Sorry, but our biggest threat IS NOT al Queda. It is the baby boomers retiring and the Chinese/Indian middle classes in 30-40 years.

2008 Feb 07 02:03 AM

[Malkiel:]

I think the gist of this was a wry comment on moving expectations, to which I'll add the observation that being poor is a lot more comfortable today than it once was; I remember an economist vehemently arguing on tv in the late '80's that falling prices for consumer goods like shoes or clothing or electronics from overseas didn't help anyone enough to offset the loss of jobs, but I maintained at the time and still do that the "essentials" were becoming so affordable that even the poorest people on the streets were looking better dressed. Today even the poorest homes have the newest tv's, dvd players, and music systems, because commodity pricing has made them reachable by all incomes. Being poor in an earlier era involved having no shoes for the children and nothing to do at night for entertainment, not to mention stretches of hunger; today, being poor is more about (yes, I know, not ENTIRELY about) not having future prospects than being grossly materially deprived...

2008 Feb 07 12:42 PM

[Kunst:]

"today, being poor is more about (yes, I know, not ENTIRELY about) not having future prospects than being grossly materially deprived..."

How about about losing your home and your job? There will be a lot more homeless coming to a town very near you.

2008 Feb 07 09:32 PM

[Rhodomontade:]

I hope you didn't earn a PhD lazily poking out one-paragraph fake articles like that and then letting some video do all your thinking for you.

That video is plainly and painfully a piece of globalist progaganda trash.

The lies about prices going down are a complete canard. For all the cost of technology goes down, but what about the cost of health care, gasoline, and food? -- the latter of which is going UP, not down, as your lying video asserts.

Why is it that the feelgood free-traders who put together this paper-thin analysis never ask all those beer-swilling lake jockeys how much they BORROWED to afford those hummers and motorboats? How much credit card debt they have? How much it costs to fill up their ugly trucks? How much of their home equity they tapped to buy all that junk? How many of them are upside down on option ARM loans sold up and down by snakeoil salesmen?

Oh no, your Reason magazine crowd blames it all on the media. But even an ivory-tower idiot ought to be able to see what a specious and pathetic argument of last resort that is: "Your honor, my defendant shot up the school because of violent TV!"

Just pathetic.

2008 Feb 12 03:25 AM