My grandfather supported a wife and 8 children on one autoworker's salary.....

[marmar]

..... and they didn't exactly live the high life, but they didn't go without anything they needed either, and actually got quite a few of the things they wanted as well. And the family did this incurring little debt.
Michael Moore referenced this in "Capitalism: A Love Story", talking about his own childhood.
But I, a GenXer, had two parents who worked, both of whom earned "middle-class" wages, and I was an only child. I got the things I needed and wanted too, but there's NO WAY my parents could have managed eight children, and probably not more than 2.
Now when my younger cousins hear my mother and her siblings talk about one parent supporting a family of 10, they absolutely don't believe it.

What the hell happened? Have real wages lagged inflation that badly, or have our expectations of what constitutes a "good life" gotten that warped, or both?

[boobooday]

1. Wages have been stagnant for a long time

My father raised three kids on one factory worker's salary, but I was born in 1963, and by the time we were teenagers, our working class family was falling behind.

[hobbit709]

2. A lot of inflation

and higher expectations of what's necessary in your life.

But mostly the cost of everything has gone up much faster than wages.

[Selatius]

3. The ultimate negative of fractional-reserve banking is inflation.

Employers pinch pennies when it comes to giving raises, but they are liberal when it comes to passing on costs to consumers. That, coupled with the debilitating effect of the Taft-Hartley Act over the decades has shifted wages up the income ladder away from most people. It's been made worse by the loss of mass manufacturing jobs. Those were the staple of middle-class wages back in the day. Without that, you just have inflation. Inflation almost has the effect of a regressive tax levied every year, higher and higher if you are not receiving a concordant pay increase from your employer.

[Gman2]

22. I think the lack of money created to cover the interest, is intentional, to

cause them to have an excuse to act against wage pressure, far harsher than they otherwise would.

[Ineeda]

4. Both, but as a country

we have confused our "needs" with our "wants."

[Orsino]

8. Yes, the citizen-as-consumer meme has triumphed.

Let's include that as a factor.

[End Of The Road]

5. That era was a blip on the radar of American history

After WWII, manufacturing in the U.S. soared, I believe in large part because we didn't have alot of competition. Europe was rebuilding, and Asia was still trying to enter the 20th century. All the countries behind the Iron Curtain were a world unto themselves. There were tons of jobs, domestic products were relatively cheap in relation to wages. It was Golden (for the white folks only, of course).

But the two-worker family, struggling to get by, is more typical in our past. When we were still mostly a rural population, life was hard and everybody worked their ass off with their fingers crossed. When population moved urban for "better" jobs, Mom had to stay home to manage the household, but the KIDS went out to work to make ends meet. Even in the rising middle class, multiple generations lived in one house (variety of reasons, but still equates to multiple-incomes under the same roof). And we all know what the Great Depression was like.

There's an outstanding book called "The Way We Never Were." I think it's by Stephanie Coontz -- but I'll check and get back to you. It was a real eye opener for me.

[End Of The Road]

6. Yep, Stephanie Coontz n/t

[marmar]

7. Thanks. I'll check it out.

nt

[Atman]

9. My FIL supported his family on a barber's pay

My wife grew up dirt poor, had to sleep in the same bed with her sister until her sister got married. He packed the wife and four kids into the station wagon and moved to Florida in the sixties, hoping to find work somehow in the booming space industry. He didn't, and wound up working as a repo man. But he taught the kids how to work your ass off and make yourself better. Three of the four managed to get into college; my wife worked while she attended community college, which I helped pay for, eventually earning her Masters at UMass -- while we raised two kids. She/we couldn't have done it without the life lessons her dad taught. We, in turn, taught our kids similarly, and after living paycheck to paycheck for years, we're finally fairly comfortable and are able to help out our kids. I'm always amazed, as I look back on our owns struggles when we were young, that my FIL raised a family working as a barber...and three of his four kids went on to earn advanced degrees. Very different than the "Buy lots of stuff!" crap kids have been taught over the last couple of decades.

.

[Kalyke]

15. But you can still work your ass off and never get ahead.

That's the truth for many Americans.

It's not just that they "buy lots of stuff," it's that the cost of daily living (food, shelter, many cities w/o public transport so a car is necessary, etc.) is ruining former middle class families by either forcing them into debt or homelessness or hunger.

[LiberalEsto]

21. Now the corporations work your ass off

It's different from working your own ass off.

You work your ass off for a corporation, and the CEOs grab the profits you make for them, and tell you you should be grateful to have a job at all.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

10. I always think of my in-laws

They both never graduated from high school. He went off to World War II, worked in the oil fields, and came back to work as a blue collar line worker for a large oil company. She stayed home to raise the kids, but got a blue collar factory job when the kids were in high school. They had a modest house which they paid off, purchased all their cars with cash, never had a credit card until very late in life when the kids insisted they needed one as a convenience (but they paid off the balance every month always). They purchased a second home in a vacation area, which they retired to. His company had a great retirement plan. They put both kids through college with no financial assistance. They left a fairly sizable estate because of their lives of hard work and thrift.

But it was POSSIBLE. They earned decent incomes as blue collar workers. I don't see this scenario happening today.

[Skidmore]

11. We consumed less then and saved more. I was one of 8 too.

Who had more than one care back then who wasn't wealthy? Very few people had more than one bathroom in a house. My uncle bought his house in the 1950s for $7000, and it is now worth $250K in a rural community in the midwest. His payments were $100/mo. after passing fairly stringent criteria to get a mortgage. Whole families were raised in 3 bedroom houses--one bedroom for the parents, one for the boys, and one for the girls. Not everyone felt they needed their own suite. ANd your house wasn't a piggy bank but an investment.


There were no electronics then--teevees had tubes, not ICs. There were no VCRS, DVDs, MP3 players, etc. AM radio and black and white teevee broadcast on 3 channels was new. No computers, internet, or other associated gadgetry. We got our first TV when I was 16. We didn't have indoor plumbing until I was 12 or 13. There were not 900 flavors of one toothpaste x 5 gazillion more just like it with different labels. Fast food was a new idea.

People repaired their belongings and did not see them as disposable. They lived with thrift in mind.

You tell me what happened.

[frazzled]

14. You are so correct

My father (who turns 93 in a few months) often talks about the changes in consumption--actually, just the changes in things that are available to consume. "We didn't have all these things to buy," he often muses. Aside from all the technical devices (the iPods and flat-screen tvs--one in every bedroom, and one for the kitchen too, as compared to the one set for the household we had growing up as kids) there are the associated costs: cable bills that can exceed $100 per month with add-ons, cell-phone bills and now their data plans, etc.

Education is the one cost that has risen more dramatically than any other. My father loves to tell us how his tuition was $50 per semester--waived if you had an A average. For four years of college, his total costs were $50. I even marvel at the cost my parents had to pay for my education at a private university. I think the tuition was a whopping $3,000, and I had scholarships to cover part of it. The tuition at that same school today is nearing $40,000 per year. We will be paying off our kids' college educations until we die.

[Skidmore]

17. The changes in telecommunications have greatly added to household

expenditures. For years we had one rotary dial phone in our home when I was a child and we shared a party line with 5 other families. You had to be good neighbors then. :)

Also there has been a drastic change in food production and consumption. There is also a change in the production of clothing and consumption of those products. WHen I was a child, my mother made all of my clothing, my grandmother knitted my socks, and we got one pair of shoes each year at the beginning of the school year. You prayed your feet didn't grow during the year so they would fit. Summer was welcomed for the constant state of barefootedness that kept little feet free of too small shoes. Yes, things may have been cheaper then, but salaries/wages were a lot smaller too. I vaguely remember when my father told my mother once that the factory he worked at were going to strike and he wanted the strike because he could make more than $125/mo. then. Our rent was only $50/mo. for a 3 bedroom house. My parents only paid for electricity and winter heating fuel. There were no airconditioners anywhere--buildings or cars. We had a well and that's where our drinking water came from. We had a burn barrel for burning trash and a compost pile for other scraps. We gardened in the summer and my mom put up large quantities of canned vegetables and jams for the wintertime. Mom baked our bread every Saturday and winter or summer, the oven was in operation. Yes, "women's work"...there was a division of labor in the family.

There have been many changes in the past 50 years, some good and some not so. Sometimes we forget how much lifestyles have changed.

[raccoon]

12. Both, to answer your question. Let me remind you, and many others, that expectations have been

raised a lot since somebody's father/grandfather/uncle/houseboy raised a family of umpteen kids on one salary.

Houses are, in general, much larger than they were in previous decades. In the 1960's, in my neck of the woods at least, a 3-bedroom, one bathroom house was pretty much the norm. Like most of my classmates, I didn't have my own room; I shared a bedroom with a sibling.

The vast majority of high school students didn't have their own cars. In fact, very few did. Some families just had one car.

Kids wore clothes handed down from big brother/sister/cousin. They didn't get clothes and shoes because they were some bigdoings brand that they just had to have.

On prom nights, kids took the family car. They sure didn't rent out limos, and if anybody had everyone would've thought they were out of their minds.

Also, a lot of things that people take for granted now didn't exist then; microwaves, computers, AC in cars and houses, air bags in cars, etc.

So you can't compare now with then, not very well anyway.

****And yes, I know that wages have stagnated big time--mine sure have. And that lots of good-paying, benefited jobs have gone the way of the dodo.

[KharmaTrain]

13. Easy Credit...No Money Down...No Payments Until 2011...

I think a lot of the changes in consuming and how it affected incomes relates to the rise in Credit Cards. The first ones appeared in the early 70s and acted more like a debit card. Then the banks found a neat little secret...those who revolved were easy marks...give 'em a little more rope and they'll hang a little longer. The system soon shifted that they viewed those who kept a zero balance as deadbeats. People loved the credit...get it today and worry about paying for it later and with it came the justification to raise prices as those who had more to spend (even though they really didn't) would pay more for convenience...and so the wheel kept spinning.

My parents were depression kids. I was taught if you can't afford it...actually have the money in the bank...you can't buy it. Yet many others didn't see it the same way...we became a no deposit, no return society where status trumped earnings and the corporates world of the middle class changed from that of workers and consumers to purely consumers. Technology, such as automation, replaced some of the factory jobs and unions didn't help through their own largess and inability to maintain jobs or expand their reach.

Our credit crunch is a reflection of an economy that became consumption oriented...one salary wasn't enough. When men became too expensive, more women were hired and soon they became competition in the workplace with lower wages and less benefits. When women became too expensive, then the corporates looked offshore.

To your question, there was a recently released report that showed that with inflation worked in, the average wage has fallen since 1978...people are working more and earning less. I can attest to that. The concept of defecit spending has driven this economy for the past 40 years...can it be turned back to one where earning was more important?

[Berry Cool]

16. It's a combination of things. Life is more expensive and jobs are harder to get

and they don't pay as much as they once did.

Yet there is a greater variety of things to buy than ever, which is kind of the positive side--IF you can afford to buy them.

I'm old enough to remember the '60s and '70s as a kid/teenager, and I often wonder what it would be like to travel back in time just to a supermarket in, say, 1971, and how amazed I would be by the limited number of food offerings. For one, take out all the prepackaged microwavable products. For another, take out all the perishables packaged in a shelf-stable way. For a third, take out just about every foreign or ethnic food with any sort of authenticity to it at all. Everything will have little labels stuck on it to tell you and the cashier the price--no scanners. Oh, and if you want to buy something, better have cash or a check they will accept at the check cashing counter. There are no ATMs or debit cards, and they'll look at you kind of funny if you want to use a "charge-a-plate" to buy food.

[Wednesdays]

18. Both of my grandfathers were ordinary men working the auto line

One grandfather never went to high school. He worked for Ford on the assembly line, and retired in 1967, worth 1/4 million dollars. Twice a year, he'd trade in his Lincoln Town Car for another brand new one (sometimes it was a Mercury Mark VII, he liked both). We still have home movies of his travels with grandma: Las Vegas, Mexico, Hawaii. They never went to Europe, but they paid for my sister's month-long tour of France, Belgium, Holland and England when she was in high school.

I don't know the net worth of the other grandfather, but I do know that when he retired in 1966, he owned two houses (one by a lake), a boat, and two cars (unusual at the time). Both were brand-spanking new, and one was a Dodge convertible that my grandma used to drive us grandkids around for fun. Their main house included a basement remodeled into a complete recreation room that had a fully-stocked bar and pool table.

Neither of my grandmothers worked full-time; the first grandmother never worked at all. The second grandmother worked part-time as a dental assistant, mostly to keep from getting bored. My father attended a private Catholic high school, and my mother was sent to a private college. Both my parents' college expenses were all paid for up-front by my grandparents, right up until my father received his master's degree.

[OHdem10]

19. Reagaonics. Trade Policy Reagan started the 2 workers per

family. Women working outside the home. Power given
to Corporations and Business officially. thus outsourcing
and moving mfg overseas. He started the harmonizing
of salaries downward. Globalization is the the equalization
of standards around the world. Instead of bringing
other countries up to American Standards we are being
pushed downward toward 3rd World Standards. This is why
we have one jobless recovery after another. The Bush
Recession had a jobless recovery --no one emphasized it.
Reeganism is still with us. So far no one is willing
to change.

[CanonRay]

20. My father-in-law put three girls through college on a Sheetmetal Workers pay

Times have changed; for the worse.

[2Design]

23. yes - people had more money with two salaries so home prices rose

car prices rose - they just made it so it took two salaries to buy what once was bought with one. People try to cut back and do on electric so electric company raises rates to get the same amount of money - politicians have raised their salaries in congress 4% every year since the reign of the republicans while not allowing minimum wage to increase

[HughBeaumont]

24. A few things - -

Stagnant wages . . .
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HughBeaumont/86

Zero job security and the ridiculous canard of "retraining" as a panacea . . .
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HughBeaumont/88

Job creation in this country has been horrendous ...
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HughBeaumont/94

The economy is simply not diverse enough . . .
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HughBeaumont/92

40-some years ago, no one ever gave any real thought to the future and just lived in the "now" of laissez-fail corporatism . . .
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/HughBeaumont/87

[Romulox]

25. Your fellow "progressives" have worked hard to bring down manufacturing wages

Then they come on to the internets and post things like "Only a Scion gives me the head room I need!" And you're supposed to congratulate them on not giving a fuck about you or your family. :eyes:

[NNN0LHI]

26. Best one I heard here was the US automakers palette of colors was too limited to choose from

So for that they happily cut their fellow workers throats. And their own in the long run.

But being on an anonymous board I can't automatically blame that on my fellow "progressives", because it could have been a dip shit of any political persuasion posting that tripe here.

Don

[Romulox]

27. How about: "Do I HAVE to support workers to be a 'liberal'"?

"Do I HAVE to support women's rights to be a 'liberal'"?

"Do I HAVE to support gay rights to be a 'liberal'"?

"Do I HAVE to oppose racial discrimination to be a 'liberal'"?

"Do I HAVE to support free speech to be a 'liberal'"?

:shrug: