> the 'middle class crucible'. Until you break out on the other side of $150k household income, the vast majority of your earned income is effectively running on a treadmill.
> it's an incredible trap / attack against the middle class.
If your household is not making $150k you're not middle class though. You're working class. Middle class people don't have to run on a treadmill like that (unless they want to).
For about 25 years after World War II, an anomaly occurred where a young blue collar veteran could go on the GI bill, or alternatively get a unionized job at the factory, and buy a car and a house in the suburbs with a stay-at-home wife who took care of the kids whose college tuition was affordable, along with long-distance one week vacations every year, a solid pension etc. Some people even extended the term middle class to these people, which had previously meant professionals. Because they were living the lifestyle of middle class people.
If anything is clear, it's the eradication over the past 40 years of the idea of extending the term middle class downward from professional households to those making less than $150k a year. This was the working class before World War II and it is the working class now. Even if nowadays it's banging out PHP code or putting Visual Basic widgets together or wiring Cisco switches together instead of going into the mines or soldering parts on an assembly line.
> it's an incredible trap / attack against the middle class.
If your household is not making $150k you're not middle class though. You're working class. Middle class people don't have to run on a treadmill like that (unless they want to).
For about 25 years after World War II, an anomaly occurred where a young blue collar veteran could go on the GI bill, or alternatively get a unionized job at the factory, and buy a car and a house in the suburbs with a stay-at-home wife who took care of the kids whose college tuition was affordable, along with long-distance one week vacations every year, a solid pension etc. Some people even extended the term middle class to these people, which had previously meant professionals. Because they were living the lifestyle of middle class people.
If anything is clear, it's the eradication over the past 40 years of the idea of extending the term middle class downward from professional households to those making less than $150k a year. This was the working class before World War II and it is the working class now. Even if nowadays it's banging out PHP code or putting Visual Basic widgets together or wiring Cisco switches together instead of going into the mines or soldering parts on an assembly line.