Millions of Americans to Fall off an 'Income Cliff'

The 'poor' with iphones, expensive tattoos and hairstyles, $200 sneakers, and a fast food habit?

 

They're not losing access to running water. They're choosing not to pay their bills because they prefer to spend their money on fast food and expensive phone plans.

 

I think some used credit cards to help keep the standard of living they were used to. Until they maxed it out. The middle class income allowed them to have a middle class home with higher notes. Then they lost that income.

But the fact is middle class income is enough to prodpet

 

I guess a lot of folk just find poverty very attractive, since they're so willing to do whatever it takes to get there or stay there.

A middle class income can buy you the world, in terms of financial security. All depends on how you spend it!

 

Lol. Who actually does that? If a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his arse.

Yes most with a middle class income can afford a middle class life style. If not they go bankrupt.

Working poor with kid can draw food stamps. Middle class don't burden the taxpayers.

 

Smart people?

 

Not at all.. When your job got sent to sweat shop labor and like many people you are not college material or don't have the money to go to learn to code...

Our middle class here is half the size it was after factories left . That was out of their control. External forces made these people drop into poverty. Blaming them for losing those jobs is silly. If they could have been coders or in professional class they would not have been factory workers to begin with.

 

Lol So all smart people choose to live like they are poor even if middle class.

Sounds like unreality. And in fact is. They suffer when they don't have to?

Not gonna happen. Delusional.

 

My weakness was good whiskey, fast women and slow horses.

 

Nothing new.

Real wages went up (before COVID-19) just 9.1% since 1979.

 

And per capita GDP has only increased 20%.

How much has GDP really increased since 1970 ?

 

It does happen. Financially smart people do exactly that - live below their means - and wisely invest the rest. And then unsurprisingly, one day they wake up and they are financially secure - not living check to check - with savings/investments that could carry them for 5 or 10 years if necessary.

I realize that the above may sound "delusional" to some people, but there are people that do exactly this, and some of them are members of this board. You used the phrase "suffer when they don't have to" but that isn't really the correct way to put it. I would suggest instead that it is "make sacrifices in the short term in deference to the long term." Smart people think for the future.

People who spend/waste all their earnings and live check to check are not financially smart. Again, live below your means and invest the rest. That is financially smart. Living for the short term is a recipe for disaster, and I try to teach that to the youngsters I come across in my daily life. If you are young, you would do well to heed this advice. If you are old, then you should understand that the above is true.

 

Yes you should make sure you are able to go rafting in the Grand Canyon after you get too damned old for rafting in the Grand Canyon. There are a lot of things in life that you can postpone but growing old isn't one of them.

 

Then by all means, live beyond your means, live check to check, and jack up that credit card debt to the max! But when the next corona virus shows up, don't be expecting the taxpayer to bail you out. When the electricity is cut off for non-payment, don't claim that "electricity should be a right of all Americans." And when the bank comes to repossess the mansion you live in, that you couldn't afford, don't claim that the bank is evil.

 

Well that's pretty much how I lived it and I have been most fortunate, never too much but always enough. I hope that you live as well.

 

Looks like Trump built that wall just in he nick of time. Without it, Americans will be emigrating to Mexico by the thousands.

 

Good deal, glad you are doing well. But are you saying that you live check to check and have your credit cards maxed out and have no savings or investments?

 

Not now but been there done that.

 

Being financially secure adds comfort and security to a person's life, and for some, that is a valuable thing - and not a bad thing to teach to the youngsters we run across.

 

To be honest I don't think you really know what poor is. Millions of Americans actually do.

 

No...

 

That would be the 1%?? And is it black people's fault they are poor or Jim Crow's Systematic Economic Inequality?

I was looking for a job for months and just got one when the thing boroke out. I am 56 with a Nuclear Engineering Degree and part of the 42% of America making less than 15$ an hr.. I am on the edge of the cliff.

At least Cannabis is essential as my job and my employer doesn't give a crap if I smoke weed or not.. Those guys on the submarines are all RWNJ's now supporting the orange diahrrea super stable idiot genius.

Their mney will evaporate. Dissapear like the Corona Virus didn't

 

The one graph had a very steep slope for Trump.. Yours only goes to 2014

 

Not buying it. I have known upper middle class people who lived a middle middle class life but never a middle middle class family who lived a working poor life ..

You shop at good will or the salvation army for you, your wife and kids? And wasn't murdered by your family? Lol

The smart people live within their means and don't choose voluntary poverty in living standards.

 

What graph?

GDP growth under Trump has been, before COVID-19, about the same as under Obama. Wage growth had a bump in the last year, but was modest in 2017-19.