There are a bunch of us old farts.

I've been an old fart for quiet a while now

When I graduated from highschool in may of '66 I worked after school and weekends and then went to full time making 50 bucks a week. by the time I went in to the Navy in Sept of '67 I was making 70 bucks for 60 hours of work. I didn't know any better then. I was happy, making all the money I could spend. Paying for a brand new '67 Plymouth Belevedere 2 two door hard top and a girl friend who was keeping me out all hours of the night.

As I look back I was in hog heaven

What did that Belvedere sticker at, $2,245? 383-torqueflite? I guess a 361 or 318 wouldn't have been uncommon in those days. My uncle had a 67 GTX that I got to ride in.

My bestest bud had a 66 Fury. He ended up in the Navy too

When the cheerleaders talk about the "economy" improving, I always ask "for whom?" You can look at a bunch of gross indicators that take all classes and costs together, and make claims that things keep getting better and better, but I've always been more concerned about the simple things, like how much does an average person make, and how much does it cost him to live? The ratio of price increases for necessities to paycheck increases tells you all you need to know about the "economy" for anyone who isn't rich.

Remember when we were kids, we were taught to budget "1 week's pay" for housing? What a laugh.

-- Mal

I even commented on it.

The low participation rate of the rising generation in DU is a cause for concern. But I imagine they're too busy trying to live.

-- Mal

Remember? In the 60's when they said, "Don't trust anyone over 30".

There ya go.

He proved his own point.

And he was 30 or thereabouts when he said it.

-- Mal

So, again.

There ya go.

Does "dead" count as over or under? I always figured "dead" is as old as you can get.

-- Mal

And had a job at a gas station making $4.25 an hour. The only prices I remember at that McDonalds had $0.29 hamburgers on Wednesday and Sunday, gas was $0.95 a gallon, a carton of Marlboro lights was $9.99 and light beer was $8 a 24-pack.

Those deli lunch meat prices are nuts, one reason why I don't eat that stuff (mainly don't eat it because of the sodium and preservatives).

well said.

Started with an Arkansas traveler if I remember correctly. My moms favorite tomato was the Arkansas Traveler so I plant a few plants of them every year in memory of her.

After all it was my Mom who at an early age painted my thumb green for me

got the seeds from Burpee I think, anyway, those plants took a licking from the Texas heat and they just kept on ticking, Great garden tomato!

That was before Reagan. Need I say more?

I tried to tell everyone who would listen and a few who wouldn't that he was not going to be good for us little guys.
Reagan sucked

Take for instance the following little "Inconvenient Truth"...

http://www.newswithviews.com/Wood/patrick9.htm

Unfortunately, when you elect snake oil salesmen into political office snakes become highly respected.

It's to bad that truth has to be such a downer, but it is what it is.

Thanks for the video.

Dems and Rebubs need to band together to fight their common enemy.

Thanks, a lot of people still aren't aware of this. Anytime I hear people gushing about Carter, as much as I appreciate the good work he has done in retirement, I think of him as the first president who came from and represented the Trilateral globalists. We have to understand our own history in order to recognize these types in the future.

cost 20-30 years ago vs. how much i was paid. young people now don't even know how much they're being screwed. you used to be able to survive, even on lower paying jobs; now days all the jobs are lower paying and there's no way you can survive without living in your parents' basement or with about 10 roommates.

For awhile after high school anyway. He's my only one and I'm single so I don't mind if he sticks around for several years. When I was 19 in 1997 and had a $400 a month house payment, a little $150 a month truck payment and no other debt on a $12.50 an hour job and saved a little money every month! Good luck doing that today!

We felt so rich.. I was making a whopping $3 an hour

We paid $275 a month for a 3 bedroom brick house..had just bought a brand new Ford ($73 a month for 3 years)..

We ate at a fancy steakhouse with friends a couple of times a week..

We took vacations, we saved money..

It was infinitely do-able back then because this was pre-Reagan, and rich people still paid taxes..

The problem is wages and middleclass haven't kept pace with the times! The top 2% have more than kept pace and since repubs and the top2% hold our country by the throat shall we say, here we are! Be prepared! the koch brthrs are preparing a massive onslaught of ads to demolish middle class and the dems in 2014 and 2016! I guess their billions aren't enough. Here is Florida our crook gov, rick scott, is up for re-election but so far, Charlie Crist is ahead. In order to save middleclass and jobs for our kids, we really needs the dems...

black with the 5.4 engine. I could fill it up with a 20 dollar bill and that was putting in Premium gas too. Now that I'm retired I hardly ever fill it up and I'd guess it would cost 60 plus today.

ETA: Welcome to DU, we're always looking for good people. Hope you like it here

(pizza delivery, to be exact), and over the last 20 years all the main pizza companies have actually LOWERED their driver pay and commission, while gas prices have tripled. (we have to pay for our own gas). the only thing that is saving us is that fortunately, customer's tips have pretty much kept up with inflation.

It would be too simple to answer, "cause we let it happen". Our democracy has become dysfunctional to think that "the people" could still be represented in the labor force. What has turned as unfettered capitalism has produced a fascist state, since I'm in the mood for answering this question.

I've been a respiratory therapist for 39 years. Over the same time comparison, I'm making now what I would have made as an entry level therapist. This… after attaining credentials and certifications and degrees AND expertise of my experience.

I don't matter as much cause the WallMarts of health care are fast joining a most unworthy kind of mankind.

It makes no sense to me, either.

K&R

Lou Grant from "Mary Tyler More," "If i don't like you, you're fired. and if you don't like me, you're fired."

Gems in that Mary Tyler Moore Productions…. good writing, come to think of it, is nurtured by writer's guild, in which he was involved.

Hey, Welcome to DU, TheFrenchRazor!

...I HATE spunk!"

PEACE!

It's part of the reason I want to strangle the 75-year-old Fox News-loving white guys who think that economic conditions are the same as they were in 1958 and that everybody should be able to work their way easily into a four-bedroom house, new cars, and college tuition for their kids because, dammit, they did, back in the day!

All these retirees (not all, but those with THIS attitude) think that things are like they were when they were out there 25 years ago. They all had good factory jobs with good pay, health care, pensions. They think that world is still out there and that young people are just lazy.

And I've heard their stories, they (some admittedly) didn't all work that hard either. I remember an old in-law guy telling of his last few years at his job…they sat around and played cards a lot. Everybody thinks THEY deserve to do well and THEY worked harder than everyone…while they begrudge others a decent living and think others are lazy.

it used to be that one person could support a family.

As others have said, that was before the "conservative revolution."

Brought to us by Republicans and "conservative" Democrats, thanks for all the "free" trade!

and it accelerated with Clinton... and so on and so forth.

Mind you, the so called free trade agreements have also hurt people who are workers in OTHER COUNTRIES too. Mexican workers, for example, are as much fans of this as we are, which is not very much.

me.

They think I'm losing my memory, reimagining the past as better than it really was.

My boss, who is 20 years younger than me, always challenges me on observations like this -- he was alive in the 70s (albeit a toddler) so he thinks he knows better.

I made 1.65 an hour, which was minimum wage. Doesn't sound like much, but I could buy almost five gallons of gas with that 1.65.

Ask yourself how much gas you can buy with one hour of minimum wage pay today. Pretty much everything, inflation-wise follows the price of gas. Except minimum wage, of course.

I was riding with my grandmother, who had just filled up her tank at a service station. A little farther down the street, she saw a sign in front of another service station that said "Gas Wars! 19 cents a gallon!"

"Nineteen cents a gallon!!!???" cried my grandmother. "Argh! I just filled up for 21 cents a gallon!"

Average price around then I remember was around 35 cents.

I was paying an average of 35-38 cents per gallon on my first cross-country car trip that I took in 1978.

In the early 60s, I remember sometimes seeing 19 cents a gallon.

no minimum wage here. Worked 77 hours one week, check was $77.
Gas was $0.339 for Shell. I was a pump jockey.
This was Missouri, not a high-dollar area.

federal minimum wage? I'm horrified.

To the tune "Acres of Clams"
http://riseupsinging.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/acres-of-clams/

Remember those times in the 60s
The outrageous things that we did
Thirty three cents for a gallon of gas
Marijuana for ten bucks a lid

unlike gas, it was cheaper in California than most places.

"things are so bad I've been getting down to the seeds and the stems" means.

right after graduating from high school. I was a "Girl Friday" (don't you just love that term?) at a law firm and made $1.50/hour. After 3 months I got a raise to $1.75 because I had proven I was a hard worker, smart and reliable. I had a used VW bug that cost me $15 a month in gas. I split the apartment rent and utilities three ways with two other roommates. The rent was $100/month. Our phone bill was $9/month but no long distance. You paid for long distance by the minute and making a long distance call was only for emergencies.

It's an absolute shame that we've sunk to these lows. And yes, I agree with others on here who have lived as long as I have that Reagan was the beginning of the decline of our economy. Of course the conservatives think he was the next coming of Jesus.

One other thing I'd like to address that others have mentioned in this thread. When people get older many of them like to revise their histories and they can't stand it when someone their same age like me confronts them with the truth. I have relatives and an ex who tell younger people stories about their lives and it's pure B.S. and I confront them on it. Everyone who knows me knows that I have a really good memory for events and details, etc., so it's hard for them to contradict me. I think it is mostly from people who are in their last couple decades of life and they realize that they didn't really do anything spectacular or noteworthy, so they exaggerate. I work with a woman who's 61 who tries to convince younger people that she was involved in all the protests, was a hippie, was at Woodstock, well, you get my drift, but when I question her about it, it's clear to me at least that she's revising her history from other details she's talked about.

I wish I knew how we could return to a healthy middle class after we've sunk this low. I'm pro union but from what I see, even union people sometimes bash the union they're in.

From both political parties.

We're still on the Reagan Express, and we haven't really ever got off of it.

Neo-liberal policies continue to be implemented and pushed for regardless of which party has power.

once one stops looking at the progression of Administrations as alternating, competing entities instead of one passing the baton to the other.

Reagan - Bush I - Clinton - Bush II - Obama - (Clinton II?): all following the same game-plan.

that stupid that profound has go to be genetic, to vote and cheer against your own pocket book, your own financial freedom.

Deep, deep stupid. Marrow deep.

Because putting DOWNWARD pressure on wages is such a brilliant idea after what has happened in this country the past 4 decades…

and leaving a smaller and smaller piece for employees. That's the bottom line.

We fell for that one like suckers.

40 years ago one worker making an average wage could support a family and save a little, and buy a home...now it takes two and you will probably fall behind at that...
We have fallen a long way down, but it was slow enough that no one realized just how bad we were getting fucked.

I find the "gee, we were all fooled" narrative to be frankly distasteful. Plenty of people knew that Reaganomics was ridiculous, but hardly anyone in a position to do anything was willing to jump off the gravy train. The rich politicians follow policies that keep them rich. Reaganomics is great, if you are rich. It redistributes wealth from the bottom to the top. When your choice is to elect someone who wants half of it, or someone who wants all of it, what are you gonna do?

-- Mal

But they fooled enough people to get elected, and that is what counts.

I look at it this way: as long as I can remember, voting has been a "best of two evils" proposition. There has almost never been any real choice, true populists candidates can get no money and no support for election, except on rare occasions and usually in low-level elections. For the most part, it is the Quick-death or Slow-death candidate, and most people hold their noses and pull the lever for the one who they think will do the least harm. The point is that we know harm will be done, it is a matter of degree.

Now Reagan, he fooled a lot of people, 'tis true. I've always been in awe of how he pulled that off, but he was in a unique position and took advantage of it.

On another hand, my perspective may well be skewed because I've never been forced to accommodate people who really did believe the "Moral Majority" and "Mo(u)rning in America" nonsense. Of whom Mr Obama is one: just listen to him talk about the American Dream. I believe him to be sincere in that -- after all, the American Dream worked just great for him -- but I think anyone who still believes that fairy tale is delusional. Quite a few of our politicians have world views rooted in what the Boomers were fed with our morning cereal. But then, they're still not fooling anyone, because a lot of Americans still have the same world view.

-- Mal

The curtain has been pulled back.

the thing is, most people did not have, could not get those union jobs.

My own story is that in 1976 I was working as a paperboy. Made $55 a month perhaps by 1978. Quit in 1979 towards the end of my junior year. Never was able to find another job as a teenager, other than for the one week of the state fair.

Sure SOME jobs did pay better than they do today, but not all jobs did, and not everybody was working those good paying jobs. College was more affordable, but in the 1970s, a much lower percentage of students were going to college.

It's not like there was no poverty in the past. And today, with the internet, much more information and knowledge is available to those who want to find it.

As for somebody being able to live on $11,500. It can be done. In 1988 I started graduate school as a teaching assistant, may $5,900 for the school year. The inflation calculator tells me that is about $11,200 in today's money. I not only lived on that amount - I was able to save money. It can be done, if you can find low rent, or a roommate.

Even today, I am living on about $12,000 a year, and I have many expenses which are NOT necessities. Then again, I am not paying rent either.

The bottom line is, if you want to compare incomes to 40 years ago, you have to look at more than one job.

than salaries. here's a couple examples from the past 20 years (for my area): electricity and water/sewer have doubled; gasoline has tripled; food costs have probably increased 50-75%; car registration fees have doubled; lower-end home prices have doubled. during the same time (and i've had the same job the whole time), my salary has maybe increased 30%.

and yes, it may be possible for one person to survive on $12k per year, but that is with no savings, and absolutely no unplanned expenses, or you're screwed. any nation that has a significant portion of it's citizens living in that condition is either in deep shit, or headed there.

I figured mine on the inflation calculator about three years ago, and to my surprise it had more than kept up with inflation.

It would be hard to compare NOW, since I got promoted.

And according to the official inlfation rate, prices have doubled over the last twenty six years. Gasoline may have tripled, but it has gone up and down. For a while there in 1999-2000, it was only 90 cents a gallon.

And it also fell in 2008 thanks to the economy crashing. So did home prices in many areas. And computers too. I paid $1,000 for an 8086 in 1992.

My wife and I just had this conversation last night. If you worked 40 hours a week, no matter what your job, you were not in poverty. $5 in 1976 being equivalent to 20.58 today.That's 3292.80 per month before taxes. Yeah, you could live on that.

When we were kids (the 50's) some folks worked at the hardware store, some guys that drove Buick convertibles sold appliances (big money) and some guys worked in factories or in the sewers for the DWP or at service stations but no matter what, they put a roof over their heads and their wife didn't have to work; she just took care of the 3.25 kids. If your job was union, you were golden. The only jobs around in the '50s that still exist today are because of unions. Today, most of those jobs I mentioned that haven't disappeared pay minimum wage. The 10.00 an hour they are asking to make minimum wage?

That would have been $ 1.17 in 1956 dollars.

so there WAS poverty.

In 1976 the bottom 20% got only 4.4% of national income, the next 20% only got 10.4%.

The average income of the bottom 20% was $2,888.37. The average income of the next 40% was $6,855.31.

Meaning, if they had a full time job, it only paid $3.30 an hour, and NOT $5 an hour. 40% of households made less than $8,958. Put that in 2007 dollars and that is $32,533. But in 2007 (the most recent date for which I have this data) 40% of households actually made less than $39,100.

$6,500 more than in the glorious bicentennial year of 1976.

My point is that this unionized grocer of 1976 with his $5 an hour job does NOT represent EVERYbody from 1976. That person made more money than 40% of households in 1976.

True, you cannot do that as a grocer any more, but many people in 1976 couldn't do it in THEIR job either. They were stuck in their own job, making the then-current minimum wage of $2.30 an hour, or maybe even a little more at $3.25 an hour, and thinking "dang, I wish I could get one of those good-paying jobs at the grocery store like that lucky SOB."

Ah, yes, a 'boomer' who 'wrecked it all'. I can share that when I was born, my parents had just bought a new house (small, but new) and a new car. And all of this was on an apprentice carpenter's $90 a week salary. My dad had been in the Air Force (Korea) and went on to be a union carpenter, after apprentice school, on the GI bill.

As I neared the end of college, 1976-77, I was making $5 an hour, and my apartment cost $300 a month (with a roomie) and I had a 1974 Toyota ($190 a month car payment).

I don't think I am imagining it that we all could really get by better then. I lived it, and we did.

...via http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

Using a 1977-2013 conversion:
$5/hour job: $19.22/hour
$300 share of rent: $1153.25
$190 car payment: $730.39

And for your dad's salary
$90/week in 1955 = $782.32/week 2013

... the Powell Memo? 1971, Lewis Powell. Corporate Lawyer. He wrote it 2 months before he was appointed to the Supreme Court. If you really want to know what has happened in the last 40 years, then you have to check this book out at the library or purchase it online. You might as well get your own copy, because your reaction while reading it might cause you to damage the book. The book is titled Who Stole the American Dream?, by Hedrick Smith. If you buy any book this year, buy this one. It, alone, will explain to you in minute detail what has happened in the last 40 years.

seriously damaged, thrown, etc.,

... if you clear the desk or area where you're going to read it (not next to a window), and promise yourself to always close it before slamming down on the desk or floor. Another thought is to place a metal trash can outside the back door and just go out there and give it a swift kick when you find yourself full of rage. Wear steel-toed shoes, though.

All kidding aside, if you're of a certain age, reading this book (Hedrick Smith's Who Stole the American Dream) will be like your life flashing before your eyes. For the younger inquisitive mind, it's a great book, as it has notes and references in back of the book, in case you want to check the validity of what he's saying. It truly is a tremendous explanation to that never-ending question "What the eff happened to this county?"

on several LARGE bottles of wine!!)

I concur, no real growth since June 6th, 1973.

Self deprogramming is not easy or comfortable for me. What’s News?
Does anyone else keep notes of recent activity?

From> Noam Chomsky: Media Control

“The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.”
The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy
http://tinyurl.com/mmzjubq
——
The specialized Class:
Elections; Your choice > One from column A, or One from column B
——
Now > Time to sit back and become spectators instead of participants.
——
How > The media, the schools, and popular culture have to be divided.
——
Must > Provide some ‘tolerable’ sense of reality; And > Instill the proper beliefs.
——
Maintain authority > By serving people with real power, those who own society.
——
Propaganda > Is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
——
Strike breaking > Mohawk Valley formula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula
——
Deprive organization > Organization causes problems.
——
Sit in front of the TV > Have the message drilled into you. The only value in life is to have more commodities or live like the rich middle class family you are watching.
——
Without organization > You assume you are the one who is crazy.
——
Business run society > US the only industrial state-capitalist society without a normal social contract, not even national health care. No general commitment to even minimal standards of survival.
——
The media are a monopoly > There are no parties.
——
Most people don’t vote > it looks meaningless; Marginalized and distracted; Engineering consent.
——
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
——
Business people > Are the ones with the power and resources. That’s who you work for.
——
Public > must be frightened and whipped up for foreign “adventures.”
——
History > History must be falsified so we are not the aggressors. Easy enough to do when you have control of the media and educational system and scholarship is conformist.
——
Operation Mongoose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Project
——
“It’s whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, or with the bewildered herd marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction, while the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they’re supposed to repeat and the society deteriorates at home.”

=============
It's time to look at Steady State economy ideas.
http://steadystate.org/top-10-policies-for-a-steady-state-economy/

=============
Evey: Are you like a crazy person?
V. : I’m quite sure they will say so.

=============

i'll happily vouch for your daughter Craig! she deserves better.

sort`a like my dad and mom told me when i was growing up in the 50`s. you know the dust bowl and the great depression

in those 40 years! Reaganomics worked great for those who designed it.

And companies would hire and train you instead of expecting our high schools to do it for them.

Same milk. Same store. Used to be $1.50. Now is closing in on $3.

I don't know many people who have gotten a 100 percent raise in pay over that time.

...working full time for the first time in the late 70s, I was making about $9,000 a year and I ALWAYS had a nice amount of disposeable income after paying my bills. I was also geting about 8% on my regular savings account at the bank.

Then...the era of Saint Ronald began. Yuck & YIKES!!!

Today, my wife's and my combiled income is about 54K, we have a house, 2 cars and a boy who is going to be 14 at the end of March (unless one of us kills him first). We keep the bills almost paid and we rarely have a pot to pee in. Shit!

BTW, since I'm going to be 59 in June, I guess I count as an old fart, too.

PEACE!

got married in 1973 he was making $3.33 an hour as a computer technician. I worked part time for a couple of dollars an hour while attending college. Our apartment rent was $140.00 a month and utilities were included. Gas was cheap and so was food. Tuition at the state university was $72.00 a semester. We were still able to save to buy a small condo in 1976 that cost $33,900.

Today things are completely out of hand. My daughter's tuition at a state school is $4500 a quarter. Her share of the rent on a small apartment is $680.00 a month - utilities not included. At least she's out of the freshman dorm which was $1400.00 a month. Fortunately we saved for many years to make this possible for her, but it is killer.

Just hoping that when she graduates, she'll make enough to eek out a living. It truly is shameful that it's come to this.

There's about a billion reasons. But you know what the bottom line is?

Democrats and Republicans--this country's political leadership--proposed the laws, budgets, Supreme Court judges and foreign interventions that have left us exactly where we are now.

Before you get all DU-hyperventilative and faux-outraged on me and start blasting back that I'm perpetrating a false equivalency--"Democrats are just as bad as Republicans"--that is NOT what I am saying. (I have never voted for a Republican in my life and never will; that should speak for itself.)

Having said that, however, a hard, uncomfortable, incontrovertible fact remains: Communists haven't driven US policy these past 40 years. Neo-nazis haven't. Likewise, it hasn't been anarchists, socialists or independents that have driven public policy in these increasingly-fragmented and disunited states. It's been the Democratic and Republican parties driving the ship of state.

Which is why I point to men like Vermont's socialist senator Bernie Sanders as the cure for what ails us.

And now, here it comes: Freeper! Troll! Idiot! Dissension-sower! Republican-pretending-to-be-an-independent! Pod alien in human form!

:::sigh:::

And money (as in BIG money) begets greed - no matter what the political affiliation. It is a sickness, and distorts reality ("their" reality has no room for recognizing the true reality of the many).

. . . and corporate doners because that's where the money to fund their campaigns comes from.

All very understandable, real-world, and oligarchic.

The rich and powerful should have a voice in governing our nation--but theirs shouldn't be the ONLY voice heard.

PS. Thanks for the smiley-faced wave. I'm dreading the other responses that are no doubt even now winging their way towards me over "teh internets", heh!

The Democratic Party has been the party of the banksters since before the Civil War. The bankster families put FDR in the White House because, as an established Patrician and Governor of NY, they believed he would protect them.

In what I find to be the best corollary to our present situation, they put Woodrow Wilson in the White House to protect them from the Socialists and Communists that were gaining political power.

Last edited Sun Feb 2, 2014, 01:03 AM - Edit history (3)

You are entirely right, of course, historically-speaking re: the long history of banker control and influence over both parties. What I was refering to is the necessity for the current Democratic party (given the lack of finance reform to get absurd/obscene amounts of money out of public campaigning) to kow-tow to the corporate plutocracy even more than in the past, given the whole-sale destruction and break-up of worker's unions these past 50 years. Those unions contributed to many Democrat's war chest funds; without them, they turn to Wall Street to get the millions necessary to run their campaigns.

I would argue that FDR did protect his class--along with the working and middle classes of this country--by helping the oligarchs see reason on reversing the widening gap between rich and poor. (Even so some of this pampered, poisonous class fomented a fascist plot to overthrow him: see Marine Corps Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler's writings and testimony under oath re: the seriousness and imminent severity of the plot). In so doing FDR averted even worse labor unrest and civil disturbances which might have led to a second American revolution, albeit this time a wholly socialist/communistic one.

?
——
The specialized Class:
Elections; Your choice > One from column A, or One from column B
——

Time to reform the states primary systems.

I got a union grocery job in 1976. Top checker pay was $6.36 an hour. That was a very decent wage back then. It took me 10 years, but I graduated from college with zero debt & I lived in my own apartment without roommates. When I quit in 1986, top checker pay was $12 an hour, but they were already busting the union. They had restructured the jobs. Old checkers got to keep their rate of pay, but new checkers were hired at & maxed out at a much lower rate.

Now I hear that joining the union is optional. A few years ago when they were in negotiations, I asked a young girl at the store how it was going. "Oh, I would never join a union," she said with disgust. I could not resist. I gave her an old fart rap. "I realize all you've heard since you were born is that unions are bad, but you can thank the unions for your vacation pay, your paid holidays, a safe working environment, health benefits & just about every other thing you value about this job. Trust me, management did not give those things freely." She just grunted & could have cared less.



on edit: To the OP, how did this happen? It happened by design. And they were very successful, as evidenced by the young girl in my story above.

and unfortunately, it will probably take another 20 years before today's generation of young people realize how badly they're being screwed.

Answer:
30 straight years of Supply Side (Trickle Down) Economics by BOTH the Republicans & Centrist Democrats.

it to happen - and the people unwittingly allowed it.

A comfortable, educated population with easy access to truthful news is a dangerous thing.

It certainly is "shameful." k&r

the old school Regents' Scholarship - Tuition was $500 a year and we bitched about the $100 student fee.

My daughter doesn't get any help from the state - our income is considered too high although we are spending a little over $1500 a month paying off student loans for her and her siblings. Her tuition is about $2200 a semester, plus another $2200 for student fees!

We are being whipsawed between stagnant wages and out of control tuitions - even at a state school!

RR breaking the unions, NAFTA, teabaggers and conservative christians!

Just my guess!

but there is a stark difference even for me from when I was in my late teens and early twenties. Money went so much farther even then. For my parents, it's an even bigger difference. It's really sad.

Remember the oil crises of 1973-4 and during the Carter administration.

That's what set off the inflation. Certain folks (the ones at the top) in the Middle East suddenly realized that they were selling a resource out of their ground that was not renewable. So they decided to withhold it from the market unless they got higher prices.

A hike in your basic energy resource and a raw material for creating products raises all prices -- shipping, running machinery, electricity, other transportation and fans out over your entire economy.

We have now reached a point at which we are more energy independent. But we need to keep working toward energy independence using primarily or even entirely renewable energy. Because I fear what will happen if we don't.

It isn't just about climate change. It is also about heating homes in winter storms.

Energy was just one reason for the inflation, but it was and is a big one. The fossil fuels we now use, at least the oil, is more difficult and more expensive to extract than it used to be.

Compare the difficulty of extracting oil form the Gullf of Mexico or the shale of Canada to that of digging a well in Texas. We use oil more efficiently. We use less oil. But the oil we are using is in some cases harder to extract.\

That is why Obama said in his SOU speech that we should stop giving subsidies to big oil. We need to wean ourselves from it.

That bought me an apartment and a crappy car. My daughter is a manager at Chipotle. She can afford neither an apartment nor a car. None of her friends can either, they are all poor.

greed. but boy has it been great for the 2%.

not the least of which is the systematic denial of corporate profits to the workers in those corporations.

A few years ago I told my younger son, then in college, that back when I first went, in the fall of 1965, it was possible to work a minimum wage job ($1.25/hour) all summer and if you lived at home and saved most of it, you could pay for your tuition and books for the coming year. You'd still need to live at home, if possible, because room and board costs were much higher than tuition, fees and books, but it was doable. He found it very difficult to believe me.

What's happened to the public colleges and universities is that the states have been systematically defunding them for the past thirty-five years or so. More and more the students themselves are expected to pay the full cost of their education. It's a huge mistake.

Here's something else about the difference between some years ago and now: back then none of us had cell phones. Or computers. Or the internet. Or cable. Or Ipods, or any of the many electronic marvels that we all expect to have. Forty years ago women didn't get expensive manicures every week. And so on.

Forty plus years ago my base expenses were rent, electric, and phone. The water and gas were included in my rent. I didn't own a car. There was bus fare, and of course I needed to buy groceries and clothes. But that was it. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everyone who is struggling financially has only self to blame. I am saying we all "need" more than we used to.

Nothing changes the fact that trickle down is a crock, and the wealthiest are beyond selfish.

And lived in an apartment. My kids couldn't do it on full-time, year-round work, living at home. Tuition is about three times higher than it was back then, but wages are not. And books? My kids paid more for books than I paid for tuition!

Which was so possible and so attainable back in the day. Conservatives always attack college students today on the topic of student loans and how they were able to work their way through college and so should they without government assistance. I agree with you. College is out of reach for many American students and the only way for them to afford it is to take out outrageous student debt. Which is something else Republicans have done. They privatized the student loan industry and created another debt crisis on the horizon. I've heard of students that have been paying loans for over ten years and haven't even touched the principle. I've read of cases where a student loan debt of $40,000 balloons up to $90,000 even with paying the minimum amount of monthly payments. I've heard of cases of students moving overseas to relieve themselves of crushing student loan debt. My niece graduated from college over 9 years ago with $12,000 of student debt and her parents told her it was her responsibility to pay it off. Six months ago, my sister allowed us to loan her the money to pay it off because, even though she'd never missed a payment, she owed over $15,000. That's ridiculous! That was more than she took out originally and after spending nine years paying the equivalent of a car payment every month, never missing one single payment. She would have been paying forever with the interest constantly adding more onto the principle. Student loans are the new mafia.

I started at $4/hr and as I learned the line got raises and ended up in what they considered skilled labor within a year. I was able to do that because I understood the fundamental science behind what we were doing which was coating pipes with anti-corrosive plastic coatings.

That was pretty good money for anyone back then and awesome money for a kid to be making. My daughter is working at a Costco distribution center making I think $13/hr and my boys are both in a call center making about the same.

I had some college loans. Not much at a ridiculously low interest rate. I paid them off very easily within a couple of years.

I cannot believe what we do to our college students and their parents these days. It's a damned crime.

I worked as a waitress, but my best friend got a job at the local supermarket, a Foodtown, I think. She told me that she had joined the union and had to pay 25 cents out of each paycheck as dues.

Are there any unionized supermarkets any more? Or for that matter, unionized anything - besides the building trades?

What were the factors that came together to create the most prosperous growth in post war America?
1- Jobs.
2 - Jobs that paid well enough so families could live comfortably on a single income, and have money left over to save.
3 - High taxes rates for the rich.
4 - Few tax breaks / loopholes / subsidies for corporations, so they also paid their share of taxes.

Which led to a thriving middle class that was upwardly mobile.

Then along came Ronnie, and Reaganomics, aka "screw the middle class", which is what the GOP has been promoting all the way up to today. And we have long since proven that Reaganomics, aka trickle down, is a failure and all it does is make the rich richer.

Simple solution - return taxes to the days of Eisenhower (the name that the GOP will not speak), close loopholes, penalize companies that hide their money offshore, penalize companies that pay less than living wages, penalize companies that ship jobs overseas, cap CEO pay, end corporate subsidies that do not directly result in more jobs and income for the workers. IOW, stop big business from running America..

But it would take a revolution to implement it.

I worked in a grocery store (Union job) from the time I was sixteen until I graduated from law school. This was in the mid-sixties and early seventies. I had a paid for four year old car and 3 grand in the bank when I started law school, with no student loans up to that point. No way a person could do that today. Undergraduate tuition was $175 a semester.

where multiple generations will live under one roof.

"Family Communism"

The hurdles are getting so high that it is almost impossible to get over them.

There are people out there making about $1,000 take home per month who think they are part of the middle class.

It seems like most Americans lost interest in politics somewhere along the way,
and let the scumbags of greed gradually take over.

Now, America is all but lost.