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Poll: What percentage of Americans Can Be Middle Class? (1 Viewer)

What percentage of Americans have the opportunity to be middle class?

  • Total voters
    64
wikkidpissah said:
The flaw is not caring, TripItUp. Not about delivering care, the whether & how of which is arguable. It is that you don't care and appear to term yourself a citizen. I've followed your posts long enough to know you're a thoughtful person and you certainly have the same right not to care as anyone. But this country was built by communities, not individuals. The great extent of frontiers & resources and how little fettered was innovation set us apart from the rest of the world's nations, but America was built town by town, with care for any & all who shared in the Grand Experiment. Channel flipping between ballgames last nite i came upon the revisionist western Silverado. Remember how the four heroes came upon a hijacked wagon train and jumped into action, risking life & limb without incentive greater than Rosanna Arquette nor second thought. That's America. You're walking west and there's a guy mopping his brow from digging postholes by his lonesome, you spend the afternoon, day, week, rest of your life diggin' postholes with that guy because that's how the frontier is tamed. Chippin' in.

You've had this selfishness marketed to you and you've bought it. Yes, there are hordes of filthy beasts who don't care and are beneath your consideration, but everyone from the odd child of trailer junkies who don't want it to be like this, to hordes fleeing subsistence living to the south, to the person who just realized that the old ways which kept his family sound for generations have passed him by & ain't coming back got the right to do what they're doing and if you see it you should help. The question shouldn't be who you get to determine is filth or not, but who you gonna help. If you are to call yourself a citizen, you are not here to prove anything. You're here to provide everything you can. Otherwise, your life has no value but to you. Go in peace.
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Never saw this until today. @TripItUp totally TurdledItUp.  Likely he's overwhelmed by Ayn Rand Cliffs Notes.

 
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TripItUp said:
Should median income people be buying property in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world?
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It makes sense to me that someone making the median income for that city should be able to own a home in that city. 

 
Ilov80s said:
It makes sense to me that someone making the median income for that city should be able to own a home in that city. 
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Both of those cities have hard artificial ceilings on housing growth and a lot of outside real estate investors.

 
jonessed said:
Both of those cities have hard artificial ceilings on housing growth and a lot of outside real estate investors.
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The issue exists in every major city except Detroit

It is just a very interesting generational gap that has occured. Older peopl who bought in the 70s-90s saw their home values spike and they have likely made a  profit. People looking to buy in the 00s-present are stuck paying much higher price tags to get into those housing markets. 

 
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Ilov80s said:
The issue exists in every major city except Detroit

It is just a very interesting generational gap that has occured. Older peopl who bought in the 70s-90s saw their home values spike and they have likely made a  profit. People looking to buy in the 00s-present are stuck paying much higher price tags to get into those housing markets. 
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Great article. Housing affordability issues are causing these trends: millenials in big cities are renting not buying, sometimes sharing an apartment, and fueling more gentrification;  millenials who want to buy are moving to smaller cheaper cities. In the last 5 years I've seen younger coworkers with kids move to Tallahassee, Lakeland, Jacksonville and WPB in order to buy a house. Detroit is not on their radar.

 
Ilov80s said:
The issue exists in every major city except Detroit

It is just a very interesting generational gap that has occured. Older peopl who bought in the 70s-90s saw their home values spike and they have likely made a  profit. People looking to buy in the 00s-present are stuck paying much higher price tags to get into those housing markets. 
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Yes.  We aren’t building enough housing in areas where population growth is fastest.  A lot of NIMBYism going on.

 
SoBeDad said:
Great article. Housing affordability issues are causing these trends: millenials in big cities are renting not buying, sometimes sharing an apartment, and fueling more gentrification;  millenials who want to buy are moving to smaller cheaper cities. In the last 5 years I've seen younger coworkers with kids move to Tallahassee, Lakeland, Jacksonville and WPB in order to buy a house. Detroit is not on their radar.
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Yeah Detroit is more of a destination for single artsy types. It’s the old dream of what say Chelsea or Soho or Brooklyn used to be in New York. Detroit isn’t a place to come with a family though.

 
My brother is 30 and a college drop out with no other training or certification. He is pretty much restricted to manual labor jobs that pay less than 15/hour. The most he’s ever gotten is 13.50/hour at a warehouse. 

40k for him would be monumental. 

Good thing is he has no kids. 

I feel like this is a reality for more young males than we realize. 

 
Ilov80s said:
It makes sense to me that someone making the median income for that city should be able to own a home in that city. 
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It does not to me.   Not for the prime coastal cities.

 
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Gachi said:
My brother is 30 and a college drop out with no other training or certification. He is pretty much restricted to manual labor jobs that pay less than 15/hour. The most he’s ever gotten is 13.50/hour at a warehouse. 

40k for him would be monumental. 

Good thing is he has no kids. 

I feel like this is a reality for more young males than we realize. 
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So he is dealing with the repercussions of dropping out of school.   :shrug:

And doesnt seem interested in finding a trade or other certification.

 
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wikkidpissah said:
The flaw is not caring, TripItUp. Not about delivering care, the whether & how of which is arguable. It is that you don't care and appear to term yourself a citizen. I've followed your posts long enough to know you're a thoughtful person and you certainly have the same right not to care as anyone. But this country was built by communities, not individuals. The great extent of frontiers & resources and how little fettered was innovation set us apart from the rest of the world's nations, but America was built town by town, with care for any & all who shared in the Grand Experiment.

Channel flipping between ballgames last nite i came upon the revisionist western Silverado. Remember how the four heroes came upon a hijacked wagon train and jumped into action, risking life & limb without incentive greater than Rosanna Arquette nor second thought? That's America. You're walking west and there's a guy mopping his brow from digging postholes by his lonesome, you spend the afternoon, day, week, rest of your life diggin' postholes with that guy because that's how the frontier is tamed. Chippin' in.

You've had this selfishness marketed to you and you've bought it. Yes, there are hordes of filthy beasts who don't care and are beneath your consideration, but everyone from the odd child of trailer junkies who don't want it to be like this, to hordes fleeing subsistence living to the south, to the person who just realized that the old ways which kept his family sound for generations have passed him by & ain't coming back and wants to give up or get reeeeal mad got the right to do what they're doing and if you see it, it's on you to chip in if you can. The question shouldn't be who you get to determine is filth or not, but who you gonna help. If you are to call yourself a citizen, you are not here to prove anything. You're here to provide everything you can. Otherwise, your life has no value but to you. Go in peace.
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 Of course I care, but implementing policy that detracts or impedes our economic strength and vitality is a short sighted solution.

Our current system is greater than any other system in the world.   Just about everyone that is not handicapped can become American middle class.   And as we all know American middle class makes you better off than most others in the world.   We are protectors of the free world, not to mention the economic support we provide globally.  We are global leaders in education, innovation and moral ethics.

Don’t mess with greatness, or you’ll be the next Europe before you know it and all of that greatness that my family has fought to protect and died for, will disappear.

 
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Also, nothing that has been “marketed” to me has influenced my political leanings.  As liberal as the media has become, if anything I’d be more left had I been influenced by that garbage.  

 
TripItUp said:
It does not to me.   Not for the prime coastal cities.
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You really can’t understand the median worker in a city being able to afford a home in the city? There’s 800,000 people living in San Francisco but of them you don’t think it’s reasonable that the median SF employee could afford a home there? Who should be able to afford a home in a prime coastal city of potentially millions of people?

 
TripItUp said:
Also, nothing that has been “marketed” to me has influenced my political leanings.  As liberal as the media has become, if anything I’d be more left had I been influenced by that garbage.  
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We all have had our ideas marketed to us. And just because someone doesn’t buy the best selling truck in America, doesn’t mean they don’t own an automobile. 

 
Ilov80s said:
We all have had our ideas marketed to us. And just because someone doesn’t buy the best selling truck in America, doesn’t mean they don’t own an automobile. 
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What tripitup is trying to say is that he is so much smarter than you that he has become the first person to ever develop his own thoughts and opinions devoid of any outside influence.

 
I voted 80%-89%, but on reflection I think it's probably a little lower than that.  Setting aside people with disabilities, there's a pretty large chunk of the population that just doesn't have the cognitive or social ability to perform any jobs that would get you into the $40K+ category.  Even middle class jobs that don't require a lot of formal education -- plumbing, HVAC repair, etc. -- require a certain level of intelligence and problem-solving ability, and they require professional responsibility that some folks lack.   

 
TripItUp said:
People that can responsibly afford the real estate.   :shrug:
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Yeah but that’s exactly what we are discussing: why and how the “people that can responsibly afford the real estate” has changed and what that means to our country. 

You have contributed, “median income people shouldn’t live in major coastal cities because they can’t afford to.” Which is to say you have just restated the basic premise. 

 
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100% of Americans can become middle class.  Full stop.  To say otherwise is to say there are formal,  structural impediments preventing, such as "person X is prohibited from education".

That being said, it's a lot tougher for some than others.  The obstacles can be self-inflicted (dropping put of school, having too any kids too young, drug use, face tattoos, lack of desire, etc), or not ( mental/physical handicap, learning disabilities, lack of role-model/guidance). 

I'm sure I'm losing my liberal cred, but I believe it is possible to pull yourself up by the bootstrap, regardless of circumstance.

 
moleculo said:
100% of Americans can become middle class.  Full stop.  To say otherwise is to say there are formal,  structural impediments preventing, such as "person X is prohibited from education".

That being said, it's a lot tougher for some than others.  The obstacles can be self-inflicted (dropping put of school, having too any kids too young, drug use, face tattoos, lack of desire, etc), or not ( mental/physical handicap, learning disabilities, lack of role-model/guidance). 

I'm sure I'm losing my liberal cred, but I believe it is possible to pull yourself up by the bootstrap, regardless of circumstance.
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We can argue about % but it’s not 100%. Certain disabilities are just too limiting unfortunately. 

 
Ilov80s said:
We can argue about % but it’s not 100%. Certain disabilities are just too limiting unfortunately. 
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IvanKaramazov said:
A person born with Down's syndrome is not going to be hold down a middle class job.  
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I'd like to conceed this point, bit I can't.  There is no law that prohibits disabled people from earning a middle class wage.  

As pointed out earlier, it's a matter of probabilities.  It's incredibly unlikely for a Downs Syndrome to actually do it, but I'm not going to say impossible.   Splitting hairs here for sure, but p=0.000001>0.

I would add that there is federal aid available (social security), which lowers the bar some.  Combine a minimum age with disability and you might get close.  If you define middle class as disposable income, you might get even closer if the disabled person isn't the head of his household.

 
Ilov80s said:
You have contributed, “median income people shouldn’t live in major coastal cities because they can’t afford to.” Which is to say you have just restated the basic premise. 
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Huge difference between living somewhere vs owning property.   I thought we were talking about the latter.

 
Ilov80s said:
We all have had our ideas marketed to us. 
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This is a very important point, possibly the most important issue of our culture, because it's the difference between the history of civilization and genX&beyond. Not only politically, but artistically. It would be a hijack, so i dont know if you want to discuss it or not, but America choosing to cast away being customers to start being citizens again may be the only thing can save us from crashing, or may be something that starts a civil war

 
moleculo said:
I'd like to conceed this point, bit I can't.  There is no law that prohibits disabled people from earning a middle class wage.  

As pointed out earlier, it's a matter of probabilities.  It's incredibly unlikely for a Downs Syndrome to actually do it, but I'm not going to say impossible.   Splitting hairs here for sure, but p=0.000001>0.

I would add that there is federal aid available (social security), which lowers the bar some.  Combine a minimum age with disability and you might get close.  If you define middle class as disposable income, you might get even closer if the disabled person isn't the head of his household.
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As a father of a child with a disability I can't tell you how much I wish this were true but it isn't GB.  Your post is the equivalent of saying 100% of men could have been professional sports athletes if they had just really worked at it.  Men are not equal machines. 

 
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moleculo said:
I'd like to conceed this point, bit I can't.  There is no law that prohibits disabled people from earning a middle class wage.  

As pointed out earlier, it's a matter of probabilities.  It's incredibly unlikely for a Downs Syndrome to actually do it, but I'm not going to say impossible.   Splitting hairs here for sure, but p=0.000001>0.

I would add that there is federal aid available (social security), which lowers the bar some.  Combine a minimum age with disability and you might get close.  If you define middle class as disposable income, you might get even closer if the disabled person isn't the head of his household.
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I get your point and it's similar to my thinking but it still can't be 100% - there's some disabilities that just can't be overcome.  I did vote 90%+ but I'll point out again that this is just a function of the way the question is asked.  Trip wants to act like just because any one person can do it that the deck isn't stacked against groups of people and that's just obviously false.

 
Sheriff Bart said:
As a father of a child with a disability I can't tell you how much I wish this were true but it isn't GB.  Your post is the equivalent of saying 100% of men could have been professional sports athletes if they had just really worked at it.  Men are not equal machines. 
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point conceded. 

Would it help if I said 100% (excluding persons of debilitating mental and physical handicaps)?

 
AAABatteries said:
I get your point and it's similar to my thinking but it still can't be 100% - there's some disabilities that just can't be overcome.  I did vote 90%+ but I'll point out again that this is just a function of the way the question is asked.  Trip wants to act like just because any one person can do it that the deck isn't stacked against groups of people and that's just obviously false. 
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oh, the deck is stacked for sure. 

probability for someone of my upbringing hitting middle class is surely >0.5 (white, child of two middle class parents, both of whom have advanced degrees).  Kids raised by single parents, with no college graduates in their family, raised on the wrong side of town, drug use, and all that - p<0.5 for sure - probably more like p<0.1.

 
moleculo said:
point conceded. 

Would it help if I said 100% (excluding persons of debilitating mental and physical handicaps)?
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It would help but there are so many variables involved in any given person's life that, IMO, it's hard to state with any certainty what the number actually is. 

 
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