Millions of Americans to Fall off an 'Income Cliff'

Would you be willing to come here and teach that to my family? I cannot believe how many people live off credit cards. It's asinine.

A realtor told me that we were qualified for a mortgage about twice of what I wanted to pay. I refused her nudging us into a bigger home and bought what I felt was "comfortable" to handle month-to-month (in case of an emergency). I knew I made the right decision on 9/11 when air travel and stocks immediately plummeted.

I will NEVER let somebody else spend my money.

 

Neither will ……… oh crap I forgot I'm already married.

 

I know people who live in tents and have internet.

Besides ... nowhere did I say I live in a tree and eat insects.

 

Illegals are used to keep the wages down. As well as hb1 visas. Globalism as well. One reason why both parties hate trump. And why trump won.

 

Interestingly, it's not related to IQ at all .. unless you regard Emotional IQ as a thing.

It's entirely a function of self-discipline, and self-discipline is learned in childhood (when it's at its best .. though it can be acquired in adulthood, with work). It's learned via parental modelling of delayed gratification, and the teaching of delayed gratification. Any 'idiot' can learn it, in reality.

 

If those off the book jobs were so good don't you think you would see more legal guys standing in front of Home Depot waiting to get picked for a job?

 

The great thing is, it doesn't matter if they don't. A family of working adults on minimum wage (or even welfare), when resources are pooled, can build considerable holdings. All it takes is the determination to do so, and the self-discipline and cooperation necessary to make it happen.
Attributes and behaviours that anyone can muster, if they want something enough.

 

IQ has almost nothing to do with any of that. They're all functions of self-discipline, not intelligence.

Surely you've met PhD's who can't figure out how to keep a relationship, or save enough money for a down-payment, or who smoke or do drugs. And no doubt you've met uneducated rustics who get all of that right.

 

Too many cases of the right upbringing goes wrong. Because lower IQ.

IQ is related to success. But there are exceptions.

Yet you must have an economy structured for living wage jobs. Or you won't get many. A service economy won't supply that. There are limitations outside the control of individuals.. But if your IQ allows the education to get the good jobs...

 

1) If it 'goes wrong', then it clearly wasn't the right upbringing. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, that person's parents dropped the ball. Again, nothing to do with intelligence. Plenty of highly educated, high IQ people who raise losers. And plenty of dumb rustics who don't.

2) All self-made success (unless predicated purely on some unusual gift or talent), is a function of self-discipline. ALWAYS.

 

You don't have to be smart to know that. It's pretty darned obvious!

 

Even people with natural ability will have to work very hard to maximise their potential

 

All this is great if you don't live in a place with high home prices. My Canadian home is 30 miles outside of Vancouver and is worth a $1,000,000. It's 3500 sq. ft. on 1/4 acre. I'd like to see the Texas analysis applied to Vancouver. A two-bedroom condo costs $500,000. Maybe he'll suggest moving to Texas.

I'd start a thread on what to do with your money during the pandemic, but it would get sidetracked by Trumpers who would see it as undermining Der Leader.

The other shoe is going to drop on stock prices when states shut down again because of the virus. Even if they don't, business will drop off. Business doesn't like the virus running amok. They're going to bury Trump if he doesn't change course.

 

While that may be - many have not achieved that level.

 

Self-discipline + intelligence is better than self-discipline alone.

A really brilliant guy I knew years ago spent fifteen years looking after a property for a guy who owned a major appliance manufacturing firm in the U.S. That gig was up and he needed to do something to make money. He had a degree in mathematics but had never paid attention to computers. This is the early 1980s. I taught him assembly language programming in a few days and he was away. He quickly wrote a program to count cards and bet for blackjack--you can have an advantage over the house under certain conditions but you have to increase your bet dramatically to make it pay.

He and his wife split, he lived on a 55' Chris-Craft and wrote software, met an artist from France, then moved with her full-time to Provence. He wrote software over there.

Smart and self-diciplined.

 

Nobody said those jobs were "good." And the point is, if those illegal guys weren't around to work those jobs for cheap pay, those employers would have to pay more to get those jobs done, meaning they would pay Americans more to do them.

 

I guess it depends on what a "living wage" job means. There are plenty of people at the lower end who make a living wage, and could even have savings, if they would be frugal and temper their wants and focus on their needs.

 

Why? They already have a better job.
But to some extent your right. If you don't have enough people the cost of labor goes up and output goes down. Part of the reason we outsource.

 

If you're on a very low income, why on earth would you live in a place with high house prices? That would be nuts!

3500sqft? Holy mother of god ... that's freaking enormous. How many people are living in it? A dozen?

 

achieved what level?

 

the flip side is, if those people (like Trump) did not hire illegals, the illegals would not be here, they come here for the jobs

 

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In my area rent is about 800 a month electricity around 180 water 30 car payment 400 insurance 100 healthcare 100 gas 30 cell 50 internet 60 and food 400.

That's around 2200 per month. Or 550 a week. Min wage is 725 an hour or 290 per week or 1160 per month. That bout 1/2 of what you need.. No surplus but a deficet. No money to save. Min wage would have to be 15 bucks an hour in my area rent to just live. No service work here pays much above min wage. Only our two factories do. Hence we lost most of our middle class.

Construction pays 12 to 15 bucks per hour. With most being paid under a 1099. No with holding federal, state or social security..

If the good jobs are not available you can't get them. And reality is we are a servant low wage economy. And such an economy reduces upward mobility..

That is why Bannon says we have younger generations that will never own much of anything.


Bannon a repub.would make a great president for average Americans but they are too busy with partisanship to have the common sense to elect him. He is more of a FDR dem to be in the GOP IMO.

Bannon and his populist economics isn't republican or modern democrat. It's pro working middle class . Unheard of today . Trump ran on it but has diluted it badly.

The few people that would be pro american worker never run. If they do the system keeps them out . Or if they win they get a war waged against them and without political experience will be neutered. By both parties..

I am all over the place so I need to go to bed. Us ancient folks need our sleep. Hopefully this digressing post is somewhat coherent.. Lol

 

Can I ask where you live?

When you say construction pays $12 to $15 per hour, can you be more specific? Which workers? Journeyman plumbers?

 

The level of understanding that many smart people are struggling financially.

 

Let's rejig your scenario, and see how it plays out:

$800 per month rent divided by how many? Let's go with four people on minimum wage (obviously, if you're earning $7 an hour you have no business living alone or in a single family with only one or two adults working) .. which brings that rent down to $200 a month.

$180 on electricity is clearly way too much for someone on $7 an hour. What are they running? Air conditioning? Clothes dryer? Computers on 24/7? Lights on in every room? etc etc. Turn some of that off and your bill is $100 - divided by four which makes $25.

Car payments? No one on $7 an hour has any business buying cars on credit. Sell it and buy a bicycle or an old banger. Nil car payments.

Nil insurance (see above)

Healthcare should be on the state, if you're at $7 an hour.

Internet divided by four = $15 a month

Food should be nowhere near $400 per month per person. Should be half that. Let's call it $200.

So where are we at now, per month? $440. Let's be very generous and round it up to $600. That's HALF what is earned. That means $600 can be saved every month. 12 x $600 = $7200. If all four members of the household save $7200 per year, in one year your 'family' has saved enough to buy a $30,000 house outright. Even if none of your ever worked again, you'd still end up with a very good life because you'd have no debt and no rent. If you bought a property with a couple of acres, you could also produce much of your food and cut costs even further.

Once again .. it has nothing to do with where you start or how much you earn. It has everything to do with how much you spend and where you want to go.