There has been a lot of talk in this country for years about the erosion of the middle class, however when I look at the income distribution in this country today I see that the income of the upper 50% of citizens is 87.3% of all the money earned in the country, and the income of the lower 50% is only 12.7%. There is in fact no middle class in America today; there is only us and them.
There are those who call this country is the land of opportunity, but as I live and breathe today I know without a doubt that this is a lie, it may have been true in the year 1900, but not having lived then I cannot say if it was just as much a lie in those days. The reality is thereÂ’s a glass ceiling in this nation at the 50% mark, if one is born above that line, one can have any opportunity under the sun and go as far as ones individual capabilities allow, but if one is born below that line ones only purpose in living so far as American society is concerned, is to work. And furthermore to work always for the benefit and profit of someone born above that 50% line.
Want your kids to go to college? Better be prepared to pay. Contrary to what the upper-class would have you believe federal student aid is of little use, the maximum a person of the lower class may receive is just over 30,000. This may sound like a significant amount to some, however in reality it will not even pay for an education at a state level university, to say nothing of the ivy league. Think your kids smart enough to earn a scholarship? Keep dreaming, the vast majority of scholarships offered are given to children from families who are already above that 50% line. Said scholarships are just given out as free benefits to coax kids with “the right breeding” in, or in some cases to help schools meet their minimum standards under affirmative action. Said scholarships will never go to a child from the lower 50% simply because of the kids own intellect. And as for that federal student aid money you can get, it will just about pay for community college, a degree that will get one nothing except a low level office job at best.
So in what other ways might the lower 50% “pull themselves up by the bootstraps” as republicans like to claim they should?
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Want to start any kind of business? Go give it a shot. While we have all heard the “success stories”, the reality is that such a small percentage of such ventures succeed as to make the real number of success’s insignificant. Of course good luck getting backing from the banks. The reality is if your born to the upper 50% like that idiot James O’Keefe, the banks will extend you a 50,000 dollar line of credit at the drop of a hat no matter how stupid your business model is, just like it did for him. But if you’re born to the lower 50%, good luck with the banks, No matter how good your business model is! Unlike the studios you will get the chance to be laughed out of every bank in town.
In the end itÂ’s all a lie. If youÂ’re born to the lower class, your sole purpose in this society is to work your ass off for the benefit of the upper class. Frankly IÂ’m at the point where I would love nothing more than for a REAL class war to break out, because as far as IÂ’m concerned that upper 50% can just kiss my ******* ass.
What is this OP... a farce? If not a farce you are, with all due respect, full of crap. My own case is a good example of that. I was born into a family which could not be called middle class. Except for managing to own our own home, we fit none of the parameters of the middle class. Neither of my parents went beyond the eighth grade. They raised 6 children during the depression, and all but one of us kids graduated from high school, and none went to college. I was the exception; by being the one who did NOT graduate high school, only getting a GED while in the military.
Getting a job straight out of the USMC in 1964 I declined drawing any unemployment compensation and went seventy miles outside my hometown to find and take a job as a junior engineer for $500 a month. Within seven months I was able to, without benefit of a co-signer, buy a half acre parcel on contract and use it, along with sweat-equity, to then build a brand new home for my fiancé and myself before we were married. It was ready to move into on our wedding day in August, 1965, one year and two weeks after I was discharged from the Marine Corps. I had moved back to the hometown to take a manufacturing job 36 miles from home at $100 more a month.
We were able, on our very small combined salaries (added together they were about $900 a month) to make advanced payments as a savings tool and sell it in four years and build another home four times the value, using the equity from the first one to leverage it the construction and mortgage loan. Three years later we repeated that, doubling the value of our second home with our third new one in a row. I had been helping people build their new homes, using a hammer the first time when I added a carport on my first one. By 72, in partnership with my brother we built his new house, and got a job to build another for one of the guys in my engineering office. (In 1969 I had left the manufacturing job applying to Westinghouse Electric Corporation as a junior industrial engineer) Then together we found a four acre tract for sale by an old land-baron in the area, who liked to sell on contract – if the contract defaulted he would give the defaulter all the principle back, but take the land back too for resale to another buyer - and we developed it into 7 residential lots, on which we built houses for the next couple of years.
In the meantime I left my engineering job as a full engineer to build homes and develop land into residential subdivisions separate from my brother. My next project was a ninety acre tract I developed into 30 estate sized lots suitable for luxury homes. During that time I had a half million dollar line of credit, and to get my business a new bank in our city (Chase) offered to and gave me a signature line of credit for $50K, based solely on my financial statement. This was pre-Fannie and Freddie, in the days of the 80% loan to principle ratio, and for specs and land development 60% loan to principle ratio.
At that time my financial statement showed a net worth of about a half million (assets minus liabilities) but that included my rolling stock, so I expected it would be drawn down as the stock (lots and spec houses) sold off. When my last lot sold the money from that my home, and twenty lots in partnership with my brother were about all we had, but I bought more land sans partner and started the process again, this time liquidating my lots and raw land so as to retire with a large part of my net worth in the bank instead of being drawn down for regular income.
My older brother (unlike me he was a high school graduate) followed about the same path ( after leaving a failed masonry business in Chicago in 1969) but after a few years of seeing how the net worth was spent down he decided he could accrue wealth better by building and renting the units, retaining ownership and retaining ownership of them; all duplexes. He is a multiple-millionaire and has, after selling the first few hundred off as condominiums a few at time, bought, loan free another three-quarter-million of old housing in separate (individual) older homes scattered in the two county area.
My own son, like I didn't go to college, probably because, (again like me) he wasn't college material. But he has a sound business in the HVAC business, and his daughter did get a scholarship to I.U. under the guidance of her high school admin.
I don't want to write a novel; I couldn't. I don't want to be a famous actor, I proved I didn't have talent for acting when I forgot my lines my first time on stage in the Christmas play while in the third grade. As for an inheritance, we six kids each got six thousand from the sale of our parentÂ’s home in 1973 when they both passed away.
I would say that at the time I built up my own family's wealth, that I know of six or seven more of my peers who did about the same thing; some better, some not as well. But the main difference between them and me is that I didn't even graduate from high school, leaving in the middle of my senior year. That has to prove something even if it is only anecdotal.
Coming out of the depression my daddy had a more constructive view of banks and lending. He was loaned $500 by his sister to build a home for his family, sold and bought on land contract, and at 14 years he introduced me to financing through local merchants the things I wanted but didn’t have enough of my own funds for ready purchase. There is utility in borrowing money one doesn’t have if it can put it to use earning a return on investment. I have and always have had the top credit rating. I accomplished what I did by never giving up, and working as many hours as it took to get the job done, even though at times I felt that I couldn’t make it – like in the bad years of 79 and 80.
