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The Middle Class: Canary in the Gold Mine · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here to us sitting in for a
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: good old fashioned stuff you should know episode.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: That's right, not one of those new fangled ones.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: No, no, not one of the new ones that are
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: just like you know, all hair gel and yeah, you know, style,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: no substance.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: It still has that new podcast episode smell.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Yes for sure. Speaking of new Smell, how do you
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: feel being fifty five? Birthday boy?
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: New smell? You know, it's great. I think I have
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: actual privileges now that come with it.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: That age, like cheap coffee at McDonald's that kind of stuff.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know about McDonald's, but like I think
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: I think I can play golf for a little cheaper now,
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: like literally as this your rate, which is that's hysterical.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well I think you can get an AARP membership
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: now too.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean you're probably already getting that stuff
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: in the mail, right. They start early.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: H No, I'm not even fifty yet. They won't let me.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: I keep applying and they keep denying.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Okay, maybe fifty. I mean they start sending in that
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: stuff years ahead.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we used to have when you had to get
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: it for work or something like that. But they found out,
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: you know, what our age is, and they got really mad.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: They said, we've been spending sending things to spring chickens.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: But yeah, well, let me know how the golf thing goes,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: and if you get cheap coffee at McDonald's, and what
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: being a senior is like, Chuck, because you know, I
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: think for me and Jerry and everybody, we just want
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: to wish you a happy birthday.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: I appreciate that.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: People went bonkers on Instagram.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, was that you?
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: I figured, you know what my uncle, My uncle wished
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: you a happy birthday?
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Did he on that post? I didn't see that.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty funny. Then THO was a confusing series
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: of texts where he was finally like, is it your birthday?
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: It was like those a few days ago.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Sure, he said, who is this? Yeah exactly, he said, McGovern,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: not mcguffin, no McGovern. Okay, all right, let's start talking,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: because we're talking about the middle class in America at least,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: although this definitely extends to other countries like the UK,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: some of the Nordic countries, Australia, there's not an obsession
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: but a real like obsession with the middle class, how
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: it's doing, how mobile it is, upwardly, downwardly, and there's
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: it's essentially the middle class is like the thumbnail metric
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: for the health, the real, true health of a society
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: and economy.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Would you agree, Yeah, I mean I think so. And
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: I think that used to be a real like it's
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: always been a talking point in the United States, but
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: I think it used to be a real, genuine talking point,
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: whereas now I think it's like, you know, are all
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: the rich people doing great? Okay, all right, now let's
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: talk publicly a little bit about the middle class, I
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: guess right.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: But not everybody's fallen for that. There's like this whole
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: idea that the middle class and the health of the
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: middle class was a canary in the coal mine. Yeah,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: and not only is the canary dead, it caught fire
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: at some point as far as a lot of people
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: are concerned about the United States middle class at least
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: because there's this idea that it's dead. But then if
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: you read up a little further on it, you come
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: across other people who are like, no, no, dude, look
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: at these statistics, like the middle class is actually doing great,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: way better than they used to be doing, and other
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: people are like that just doesn't quite add up. So
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: when you get into it, it's really tough to define
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: the middle class. And you can monkey around with who's
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: middle class or who's not and come up with all
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: sorts of different profiles. But I think it just matters
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: what people who would probably self identify as the middle
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: class feel about the economy and about their prospects in life.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Like what is that the vibe session? Yeah?
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: What was her name, Kyla Scanlon. She's a kind of
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: a gen Z financial explanatory journalist. Yeah.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's the idea of like sort of like
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: not falling for being gas lit by everything you're being
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: told about how great it's going. And there's something called
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: a vibe session. Am I saying that?
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Vibe session?
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: It just sounds weird because a vibe session sounds like,
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: you know, something I do late on Friday nights.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Right, This is with a C instead of an S.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, and it's much less ire. Yeah, oh man,
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: But yeah, the idea of you know, various politicians, you know,
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: whenever anyone's running for something talking about typically reelection, talking
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: about how great everything really is, whereas everyone is like, yeah,
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: but why doesn't it feel that way. That's a vibe
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: session instead of like a true recession.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was pointing out like that actually can
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: become self fulfilling. Yeah, sure, because if enough people start
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: feeling like, no, things aren't going so good, they start
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: not spending money, and that actually can trigger a recession
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: just from the fact that people feel that way, no
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: matter what the metrics say. So, yeah, we'll talk about
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: all that, but let's talk about the history of the
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: middle class because it hasn't always been around.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting if you look at, you know, the
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: history of the middle class in the West. It generally
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: you can point to late medieval Europe as you know,
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: when things started to get cooking a little bit as
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: far as the middle class goes, and you know, we'll
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: walk you all the way through you know, modern times.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: But as cities became a thing, you know, all of
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: a sudden, you needed a middle class to sort of
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: administer what the aristocracy was asking for in a lot
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: of cases. Is so you know, there was this distinct
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: group kind of created that wasn't aristocracy, and it wasn't
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: the peasant class. And I think one word, and I
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: believe they've eve been done a short stuff on the bourgeois, Yeah,
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: didn't we?
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and what it means to be bourgeoisie. That's right,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: there's another word for him burgers too, and apparently both words.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: I don't I don't remember this, but I'm sure we
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: talked about it in the bourgeois short stuff. That that's
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: the name of the cities, the fortified cities where they worked,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: right or where they emerged from. Yeah, and the burger
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: is that's why the burger Meister is called that in
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: either Rudolph or Frosty or some rankin bass something like
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: the scary BG exactly. Yeah, Burgermeister means mayor so he's
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: like the head of the city essentially. Anyway, those were
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: the merchants, the bankers, professionals that emerged to kind of
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: fill that space between the peasants and the aristocracy. And
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: you could call them the first middle.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: Class, yeah, sort of. But they grew in size and
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: wealth and power, so they were kind of like, Hey,
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: we tricked everybody. We're not really the middle class. We're
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: I mean maybe upper middle class. Certainly obviously not aristocracy
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: because they weren't born into that. But as people got wealthier,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: there was kind of a true middle class that came
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: after that, where you needed people to do things like
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: bookkeeping and you know, kind of handled the business of
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: the people that previously had said that they were the
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: middle class, even though no one was using those terms,
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: you know, we should point.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Out, right, no, nothing like that. There was also a
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: lot of changes where before it was wealth and power,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: right because that's what nobility kind of based itself on.
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  Speaker 2: So the earliest middle class kind of based itself on
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: those same markers. But thanks to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: other markers kind of came along. The whole idea of thrift,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: of saving your money, of not being just frivolous with
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  Speaker 2: your money, that became a really big middle class social marker,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: certain tastes, certain ways you would dress. And then of
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: course wealth, wealth has always been a marker for the
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: middle class, especially the upper middle class. But these were
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: all like, all these things seemed so normal to us
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: and so ingrained that it seems alien almost to kind
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: of tease this stuff out and identify it historically.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And this was you know, in Europe
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  Speaker 3: at the time when the United States was born. Olivia,
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: by the way, did a great job with this article.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: I thought, uh, greed, she is a heck of a writer.
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  Speaker 3: So the United States was, you know, as she points out,
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: kind of a sort of a bourgeois not a I
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: wanted to say, project or a test an experiment, maybe
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: the American experiment. Yeah, because there were people like Thomas
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: Jefferson who were very much believed like, hey, we're going
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: to build this new country on and not on the
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: backs of but like the middle class, these people that
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: owned farms and could provide for their family and that
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: own some land, like this is the American experiment, that
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: like the goal that we're striving toward.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and those yamen farmers were typically not slave holding.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: So his idea was to basically become a nation of
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: self sufficient farmers growing food for their families and themselves
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: and then selling some in the market. And that just
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: is not how it went, because the wealthy landowners who
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: had actually had slaves became essentially the power, the elite,
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: the people actually pulling the levers, and eventually they except
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: in the Antebellum South. They kind of replaced that wealthy
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: land owning and agriculture with industry as the Industrial Revolution
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: started in Europe and then spread to the US, and
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: then we had a real disparity in power and wealth growing.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, because if you're owning a factory or
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: owning a railroad or a share of a railroad, that
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: is a very distinct upper class. It may not be aristocracy,
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: but aristocracy became less and less important as time went on.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Flashed forward to like the middle of the nineteenth century,
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: and you had people like Karl Marx, and we should
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: say Carl Marx was trying to sell something which was Marxism,
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: but he would come along and say like, hey, they're
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: really two classes. There's the working class and then everybody
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: else that's exploiting the working class.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the exploiters or the oppressors and the oppressed.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: I think he also put it, they owned the capital.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: They were the capitalists. They were the ones who could
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: open a factory and employ you and you depended on
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: them for money, but they were exploiting your labor. Yes,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: And in this sense where there's an owning class and
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: a working class, there's really no room for a middle class. Eventually, though,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: a middle class still emerged because those capitalists aren't going to,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: like you said, do their own books. They're not going
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: to go teach the next generation of workers to come
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: work in their factory. So like there was a need
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: for people to train the working classes to better serve
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: the capitalist elite. And that's where the middle class really
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: started to emerge in the United States in particular, but
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: also in the UK, Australia, some of the other places
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: in the West. That's where that the middle classes we
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: understand it now, really developed.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, and it was there during the time
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: of Marx, but that wasn't good for Marxism to point
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: that out. So yeah, it was very much easier for
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: him to say, like you're being exploited or you're the exploiter.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: It was a little black and white, yeah, for sure.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: So in the nineteenth century, the middle class values system
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: started to kind of take shape, which is, you know,
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: sort of this the value system that ideally is still
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: around today, which is the idea that you know, if
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: you work hard, you save up, you can be a success.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: In the United States, you know, they agreed that people
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: should vote more and more like have access to voting.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: And of course that started with like, hey, maybe men
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: that aren't land owners should be able to vote, and
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: then that kind of spread throughout the years to you know,
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: people of different races, and then women finally. But the
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: idea that expanding voting rights and expanding education was always
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: sort of a middle class value, and then early on
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: it was you know, the role of women in society
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: has definitely changed as far as the middle class value goes,
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: but early on it was, hey, women are very important
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: to keep the home, but really be the moral center
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: of the world. Of the home, you.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Know, yeah, of the family, which was of utmost importance,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: the nuclear family, which became really important in the Victorian
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: era and really informed the middle class values too, right,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: and all of those seem like so we take them
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: for granted so much as values typically aside from you know,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: forcing women to work in the home whether they like
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: it or not, that just goes to show you how
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: effective the middle class was at spreading its basically imposing
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: its values on everybody else in the West.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Should we take an early break here, Well,
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: it's not too early, actually, I think, so, Yeah, all right,
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: we'll take a break. I think that's a good setup.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Middle classes forming. Everyone's getting excited, and we'll fast forward
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: to the twentieth century right after.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: This definitely about our childhood et r.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Y Skur, all.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Right, I promised talk to the twentieth century in the
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: middle class, and that's where we are, uh specifically, you know,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: this is when the middle class in the US really
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: really emerged as like a massive thing, like the largest
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: portion of a like set of people in the US
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: became middle class in the in the twentieth century, and
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: really after the war. It was powered by the New Deal.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: Of course, after World War Two, the United States was
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: in a unique position as as victor, but also victor
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: who didn't have the war fought on their you know,
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: mainland soil, right, so we didn't have to do all
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: this rebuilding after the war. So we were in a
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: position to really he hit the throttle on economic stimulus,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: which was brought about via the New Deal.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and World War two. Just the sheer amount of
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: money thrown into the economy from the government for World
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: War two helped as well, right, And we had all
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: those technologies that we developed that gave us things like
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: pop tarts and stuff immediately after the war and completely
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: improved the quality of life for people in the United States,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: especially the middle class. Right, so you have government policy
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: like the New Deal, like the National Labor Relations Act
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: that are favoring workers, this working class that is becoming
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: the middle class. And then one of the other, really
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: really really big aspects of what built the middle class
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: and the United States and elsewhere were unions. Union membership,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: because if you can bargain collectively, you can't be exploited
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: nearly as easily, and that means that life is a
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: lot more fair for you, the worker, because you're allowed
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: to get together and say no, you can't do that
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: to any of us. If you do that to one
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: of us, you do it to all of us, and
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: we'll all leave.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: Yes, I mean we did. We did a great episode
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: on unions years ago, So I advise you to go
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: listen to that now if you want to learn more
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: about those But no, no, no, everyone else. I mean
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: you can if you want. Okay, a little refresher, But
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: union membership really bloomed in the nineteen thirties and forties.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: I think at the beginning of the twentieth century, it
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: was in the low teens union membership and then it
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: really really rose from there, and so did wages. Between
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: nineteen forty and nineteen sixty, if you were a non farmer,
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: your median weekly income rose. And these by the way,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: everything we're doing is in twenty twenty five dollars, just
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: to make it easier to understand, but your median weekly
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: income for a non farmer went from five hundred and
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: fifty dollars to over one thousand dollars, almost eleven hundred bucks.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: And that was across all you know, a lot of
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: edgecation levels, you know, different racial groups, different industries. That
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: was sort of a broad change. So, you know, it
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: was an interesting time in that, you know, pay for
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: people and what is now like a solid middle class,
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: it was really rising. They were taxing the rich and
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: constraining corporate power such that some people called this this
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: time the Great Compression, where the wealth levels were sort
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: of smashed together on a graph instead of expanded vastly
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: like we are now. We're gonna have some shocking numbers
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: for you later in this episode.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So that era between nineteen forty and I think
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: a lot of people essentially put it at the mid
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: seventies is when they say the party really started to end.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Was just as economic boom golden age for the United
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: States and the middle class. And there was another big
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: factor too, which was home ownership. We did I remember
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: in our racial discrimination or housing discrimination episode that we did,
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: we pointed out that owning a home has long been
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: really important, especially for the middle class, because that is
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: how you generate wealth. For most people, your home just
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: appreciates some value over the years, and then you can
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: also use that home to transfer that wealth to your kids.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: So it's also a form of generational wealth transfer for
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: the middle class. So it's really big deal to own
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: your own home. And that was another big thing that
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: happened after World War Two. Home ownership went up quite
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: a bit.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah previous and this is going way back, but between
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: eighteen ninety and nineteen thirty, home ownership was under fifty
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: percent of the United States. And eventually, you know, thanks
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: to the suspect mortgages that they were handing out like
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: candy in two thousand and four, that peaked at I
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: think it was close to seventy percent, like sixty nine
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: or something.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, and then I think it dropped down
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: to something like sixty five and is basically plateaued since there.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: But this is the point that that you could own
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: a house, you could own a car. Yeah, you could
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: have a family of you know, a husband and wife
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: and two kids and live in the suburbs, and the
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: kids would go to a nice school. And this was obviously,
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: this is the most idealized version what we're talking about.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of disparity. There was a lot of
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: people who are still very poor in the United States too,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: But overall, if we're just focusing on the middle class,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: you could do all of these things and have a nice,
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: comfortable middle class life, a pension after you retired, on
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: one salary, one income, because again, one of the main
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: values of the middle class at this time was that
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: the mother stayed home, raised the kids, and made the
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: house the center of the nuclear family, respite from the
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: rest of the world. One salary could do all of that.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was you know, people weren't as far
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: apart as they were financially speaking, like you may live
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: in the same neighborhood or maybe the neighborhood next to
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: your boss. You know, blue collar workers and white collar
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: workers were were way more you know, just kind of
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: squashed together, like your children probably went to school. If
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: you were like a line worker at an auto plant,
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: you know, you may not have as nice of a
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: car or as big of a house as your manager
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: or your boss, but you know, it was in the
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: It was in the same world. And you know, I
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: still remember that stuff growing up in the eighties, like
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: the watch any John Hughes movie, and like all the
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: kids at the same school. They were like, you know,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: the rich kids and then the kids that lived in
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: that neighborhood, right, but it wasn't extreme wealth and poverty.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: No. And the fact is they were all going to
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the same school exactly. There was like a leveling from that.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that was a really big deal. And this
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: is this is going on through about to the mid
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: seventies when things started to decline for the middle class. Right. Yeah,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: there's there was the end of the post war boom.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's really tough to keep up in the
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: form that it was in for very long. Yeah, and
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: it's kind of astounding it stayed up that long. Part
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: of it was that the US was in that unique position,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: like you said, it didn't have to rebuild after World
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: War Two like Europe and Japan did well. After a
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: few decades, Europe and Japan were able to rebuild and
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: they started to catch up to the United States, which
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: meant that they were taking more share of the United
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: States pie with say like exports and manufacturing and stuff.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: That was one factor too. There was also the oil crisis. Yeah,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: I think that that made a bigger dent than I
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: ever realized that that was like a history changing event,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the OPEC oil crisis, and then also political conflicts that
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: ultimately laid the bedwork for today's culture wars, civil rights movement, feminism, environmentalism,
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: LGBTQ plus US rights. All of these things were marginalized groups.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Previously marginalized groups came forward and said, no, there's no
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: reason we should be treated like second class citizens. That
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: created a tension in the United States. A lot of
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: corporations came in and figured out how to exploit this
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: for their own ends, and that eventually started to divide
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: people to where there was this sense of competition is
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: the bedrock of American capitalism, and American capitalism is the
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: bedrock of the middle class. It's part of the middle class.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: It's a new middle class value. It's where we got
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: yuppies in the eighties.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. The industrialization also happened. In nineteen seventy
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: if one in out of every four non farming jobs
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: in the US was in manufacturing, and by twenty seventeen
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: it was one and eleven. So other countries, you know,
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: as globalization and trade increased, other countries started making stuff
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: super cheap. Like this isn't a big surprise to anyone
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: to this. Imports from China started coming in, Imports from
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: other you know, Southeast Asian countries started coming in. Stuff
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: was a lot cheaper to buy, and you know, they
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: started automating a lot of stuff. It was, you know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: kind of the first automation boom was happening in the
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: nineteen seventies where factories didn't need as many people on
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: the line to do stuff that these new machines were doing.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: So that coupled with deunionization, really, you know kind of
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: dropping off, was a huge factor.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it really definitely declined that it's below ten
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: percent for the entire workforce in the United States. A
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: huge chunk of that is just from government jobs like teaching,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: they tend to have a very strong union. But overall,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: it went from like thirty five thirty six percent to
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: ten percent. And one of the reasons that that happened
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: is because the government basically withdrew its support for unions.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Not only did it stop passing legis enforcing legislation that
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: supported unions, it actually started issuing legislation that harmed and
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: crippled unions and essentially removed their power.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And then the last reason, you know,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: we can't talk about the middle class and wealth disparity
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: without talking about Ronald Reagan. You know, he's the one
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: that kicked it off. And subsequent administrations definitely didn't do
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: the middle class any favors. But those Reagan era policies
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: that trickle down economics, cutting taxes for corporations, undermining labor unions,
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: cutting taxes on the top earners individually really transformed the
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: look of our nation heavily, heavily in favor of the
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: rich and you know, the top ten percent, especially the
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: top one percent. And like I said, other you know,
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: Democrats and Republicans since then have failed the United States
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: and their policies. I know, after the economic crash and
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: the real estate crash in two thousand and eight, there
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: were a lot of people, especially now in hindsight that
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: look back and say, you know what, we really had
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: an opportunity there, and the Obama administration failed us. When
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: we bailed out those banks with not very many strings attached.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: We had some leverage there to sort of get some
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: changes in place that could have helped, you know, shift
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: the look of the financial outlook of our country, and
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: we didn't do it.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: No, And what they would have been doing is undoing
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: damage that was done during the Clinton administration where they
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: repealed the Glass Stegal Act that kept banks from dabbling investments.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: You were either a bank or an investment company, which
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: one and after that you don't have to choose, And
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: that's ultimately what helped lead us to that massive financial crisis,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the Great Recession.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it's really easy and fun to pick on
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for kicking all this off,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: but they were not the only neoliberal presidents to come
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: along after the eighties.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: No, for sure, if you're talking about the middle class today,
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: you really have to start with like how do you
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: define the middle class? And Libya did a really great
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: job in this section. I think like there are a
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: lot of different ways that people and pundits like to
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: talk about what the middle class even is. Some social
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: scientists it's just a super straightforward income based definitions, which
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: is good in one sense because you can adjust that
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: depending on where you are in the world, Like a
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: middle class income in New York City isn't going to
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: be the same thing as in a rural area, so
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: they can you can adjust things economically based on just
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: a strict income based definition, which is kind of cool.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Also, that means that the middle class doesn't move out
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: of reach of certain people too. Like if you just
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: have the median income and say that's the middle class,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: As the median income grows, the middle class goes up
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: and some people stay behind. This is like here's the
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: middle class section, and you can get into it and
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: out of it, or drop out of it and go
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: above it. But it's going to stay in the same place,
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: and it's just going to it's going to change depending
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: on how wages rise. Yeah, it seems like a pretty
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: good it's a good idea to me. The most widely
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: used one comes from the Pew Research Center, and they
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: it's an income based approach that they use, but they
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: basically say that if your household income is two thirds
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: of the median household income or up to double the
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: median household income. You are middle class, right, and I
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: think in twenty twenty four that meant that your household
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: is very important too. That your household made between fifty
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: five thousand, eight hundred and twenty dollars to one hundred
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: and sixty seven thousand, four hundred and sixty dollars any
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: anywhere in there, you were middle class income wise.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is all obviously like pretext money.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, oh yeah, I would think so. Yeah.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: So under that definition, the middle class made up sixty
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: one percent of households in nineteen seventy one, compared to
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: just fifty one percent in twenty twenty three. But at
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: the same time, the upper income category went from eleven
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: percent to nineteen percent and the lower percentage rose from
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: twenty seven percent to thirty percent. So what you're seeing
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: is like the wealth gap like happening in real time, basically.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, But that also suggests that eight percent of people
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: in the middle class moved up from the core middle
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: class to the upper income category. So that's what that's
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: an interpretation that a lot of people who are like, no,
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: the middle class is fine, suggest.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Right, then three percent moved down.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so that's yeah. Income is like, if you're
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: an economist, this is what you're looking at. If you're
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: say anthropologists or sociologists, you might say, well, who considers
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: themselves middle class? Maybe we should look at those people
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: and then kind of study them like that, like ask
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: people are you middle class or not? Are you working class?
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: You consider yourself upper class? And they usually either divide
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: it into those three lower class, middle class, upper class,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: or else they divide it into quintiles lower class, working class,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: which they would also call lower middle class, core, middle class,
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: upper middle class, and then gob smackingly rich.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: And one percent saying buzz office, none of your business.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Quit ask any questions.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: They have them arrested.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: So twenty twenty four was the last Gallop poll that
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: we have where someone said, like, hey, what do you
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: consider yourself? And in the United States, thirty nine percent
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: of citizens considered themselves middle class. Another fifteen percent said
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: there were upper middle class, which brings that grand total
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: to fifty four. Thirty one percent identified as working class,
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: twelve percent is lower class, just two percent of upper class,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: which means a lot of those upper middle class people
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: were lying liars and that they're really part of the
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: upper class.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, But I think also it's not I'm
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: sure some people were like I don't want to say,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: like I feel upper class.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: And self identification, so it makes sense.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Sure, But at the same time, also I think that
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: has to do with the idea that maybe based on income,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: it's almost like that vibe session thing like, yeah, your
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: income would put you in the middle class, but you
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: don't feel wealthy. You feel like you could be ruined
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: by a healthcare crisis at any time. So I think,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: especially with self identification, that gives you a sense of
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: the actual health of the economy as far as like
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: consumer confidence is concerned.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's you know, laziness factors in. You could
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: be in the upper middle class but also still have
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: a car tire sitting in your sideyard for sure, with
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: like typical markers of you know, different glasses.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: For sure, tires in your side Jock, I gotta get
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: mine moved.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: Emily got onto me for years about the car battery
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: that I had that I just it's like, got to
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: get rid of a car battery. I know you can, Oh,
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: you take it to like one of the auto stores,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: I know, but none of those feel right.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: They know they take the core out and yeah it's
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: they recycle them for real.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because you've watched them do all that right from
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: beginning to help.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: I help on weekends as just as pro bono.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: That's my point is, I don't I don't trust any
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: of it. None of it feels right.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm with you. Well, you want to know
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: something that really opened my eyes and changed my life, Chuck,
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: I realized recently that that whole like grocery store recycle
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: bag recycling thing is a total scam. Like publics and
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: all them who have those those things out that said
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: put your plastic bags in your we recycle them. They don't.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: They don't. They throw them away. And I can't tell
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: you how how much time I've spent, like taking labels
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: off of plastic wrap, shaking out plastic crap to make
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: it clean, like taking it all bundled together, taking it
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: to publics and putting it in the bend. And then
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: the idea they just take it and throw it away
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: and use this as just like a pr thing. Oh
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: my god, I'm so sick of stuff like that.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Man agreed two quick things on that. You can't count
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: on your large grocery store chain to do that. You
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: got to go to like the Charm. You got to
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: go what we have here in Atlanta and Athens, the
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: Center for Hard to recycle Materials, because they really do
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: the work. It's just a big pain. And number two,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: just as a quick aside, I went to Belize on
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: winter break recently, had a great time, but the grocery
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: store in there was a grocery store in Placentia named Publics.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: Publics same exact font and coloring as Publics.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: It's like Ricky Rouse and moneld Muck thought it was very,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: very funny. It's funny. They're like, we spell it different.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: What all right? So we're getting off track. The one
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: of the last ways, I guess, second to the last
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: ways to look at it is through education levels, because
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: a lot of times when you hear you know, pundits
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: on the news talking about the middle class, they'll say
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: things like, you know, people with a four year college degree,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: that's only about forty percent of the population in the US,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: and it's really misleading. So I wish they'd just kind
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: of throw this one out with the Public's grocery bags
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: because you know, you could have a four year degree
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: and be a college professor that also has to have
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: a second job to make ends meet. Or you could
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: also not have a college degree and on a multimillion
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: dollar you know, sort of blue collar business. So I say,
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: just get rid of that one.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: A multimillion dollar battery recycling.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: Business, yeah, because that's where all the money is.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: So yeah. So values also, I agree education levels, just
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: get rid of that, especially with college not really leading
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: to many as many opportunities today as it used to
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: and all of the incredible debt associated with it, that
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: should not be a measurement for the middle class. Values
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: is another one too, And this one I was kind
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: of like, what why, Yeah, and I realized you can't
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: measure social groups strictly on things like income. That self
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: identification thing has a lot to do with values. One
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: we talked about is a nuclear family, which has been
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: altered dramatically since the middle of the last century. When
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: I would say, I would argue in the United States
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: at least the nuclear family was like at its peak
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: of importance. It's definitely declined. People kind of make family
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: wherever they can find it. And that doesn't mean that
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: like all of the values are gone that there was
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: a twenty ten Vice President Joe Biden middle Class task
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Force had no idea that existed, but it essentially went
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: through and said what are your values and they came
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: up with pretty basic stuff that that I think most
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: middle class people would agree with. Economic stability and security.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: You want a car for each of your kids as
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: they get to driving age. You want to take a
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: family vacation once a year. You want to send those
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: kids to college. You want to own your home, like
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: really basic stuff. And the idea that all of that
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: is up for grabs in this country right now is
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: really alarming.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Should we take another break? Yes, all right,
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: we're going to take a break and we'll talk about
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: what's gone wrong with the middle class and where we
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: might be headed right after this.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Definitely large holds of each o.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Y s k.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: Is okay, Chuck. So, I think we've kind of said
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: a couple of times that there's a lot of different
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: ways you can look at things to say the middle
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: class is doing great. I know the middle classes hauloed
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: out in debt. One of the things that you can
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: really kind of point to is like, how much are
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: you getting paid. Right, that's a pretty easy one. So
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: you can look at average hourly wages for non supervisory employees.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: So that's everybody who's not a manager or like a
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: C suite executive, right, just the regular rank and file employees.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: There was a peak of pay in nineteen seventy three
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: of thirty dollars. This is twenty twenty five dollars, right.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, always or always on this episode.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Right in fall of twenty twenty five, we were at
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: thirty one dollars and fifty cents. So we managed to
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: gain an extra dollar fifty in average hourly wages in
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: fifty years. Yeah, and you might think like, oh, okay,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: well really, let's think about inflation and everything. I did.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Get this if you went back to nineteen seventy three, right,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: one dollar today buys fourteen percent of what it bought
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy three. Yeah, so that means that today
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: it does. So you can you could buy, using the
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: same hourly wage today fourteen percent of your groceries if
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: you went from nineteen seventy three to today. So we
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: are definitely worse off because things have gotten more expensive,
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: but wages have stagnated. If anyone ever tells you that
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: wages have not stagnated, they are lying or they're dumb
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: or both, and just tell them so. Yeah, I've been
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: trying really hard not to get worked up, man, and
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to keep it together. Rre we go, everybody,
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: I'm keeping it together.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: The idea of the middle class, though, around the nineteen sixties,
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: was about wasn't just about getting to a spot and
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: hitting it. It was about everybody continuing to grow and the
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: overall economy of the United States continuing to grow. And
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: that has happened, but compensation hasn't happened along with it.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: From nineteen seventy nine to twenty twenty five, productivity in
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: the United States rose eighty seven percent, but that hourly
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: compensation rose by thirty three percent for non supervisory workers.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Right. And there's two ways you can interpret that. If
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: you're like, well, unions are gone, you could say if
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: you're an owner, well you get rid of the union's
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: productivity increases. Unions make lazy workers. Another way to put
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: it is that without the unions, you can exploit workers
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: more easily and get them to work harder because they're
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: afraid of losing their job. Right, Yeah, regardless of how
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: you look at it, like, there's no way to interpret
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: it differently. If your wages have increased thirty three but
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: productivities increased eighty seven percent, that means that that extra
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: wealth that was generated had to go somewhere, and it
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: didn't go to the workers. It went to the wealthiest people.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: And there are just like, if you want to just
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: look at eye popping numbers, just look up income inequality
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: in the twenty first century, because it has gotten completely
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: out of control compared to how it used to be.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: And I mean how it used to be. Like I'm
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: talking the eighties.
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: As Sam Jackson would say, hang on your butts. What
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: do you say, Jurassic Park?
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Hang on your butts?
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: Yep, hang on your butt.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: You need a cigarette sticking out of your mouth?
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: Oh, I've got it, pal, all right, So these numbers
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: are going to be slightly depressing and slightly eye popping.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: Annual wages of the bottom ninety percent of Americans rose
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: by twenty nine percent from seventy nine to twenty twenty one.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: For the top one percent during over that same time period,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: they rose two hundred and six and the Forbes four
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: hundred lists it's a list that we put out in
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: or Forbes magazine puts out about the four hundred wealthiest Americans.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: They should probably just stop doing this altogether.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: I know it ruins society.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: But you mentioned the nineteen eighties, nineteen eighty two that
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: it was the initial Forbes four hundred. It had thirteen
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: billionaires on it. Now everybody on the Forbes list is
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: a billionaire, and there's another five hundred billionaires that don't
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: get on the list.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: So in nineteen eighty two there were thirteen billionaires. There
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: are more than nine hundred billionaires in the United States
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: right now who have a collective worth of six point
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: six trillion dollars. I'm sorry, that's just the Forbes four
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: hundred have six point six trillion. Forget the other five
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: hundred billionaires.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Okay. So another thing that that Forbes list pointed out
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: is that the total wealth in all of the United
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: States is one hundred and forty trillion dollars. The bottom
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: fifty percent owns four trillion of that. That means the
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: top fifty percent owns one hundred and thirty six trillion
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: compared to four trillion. Ah Man, there was one other
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: statistic I found too, between nineteen seventy five and twenty
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: twenty four, there was a wealth transfer upward to the
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: top percent that totaled fifty trillion dollars. So, however you
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: want to put it, however you want to look at it,
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: the middle class and the lower class have been held
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: back while the wealth that they have been producing has
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: moved upward. And a big problem with that is when
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: you have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: they're making the decisions about what happens with that money,
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: rather than hundreds of millions of people all making individual
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: decisions and collectively making decisions that are like market signals
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: that tell people, I'm going to go make this, I'm
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: going to stop making this, I'm going to make this
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: price that all these people are upset because they don't
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: have good healthcare, we better do something about that. None
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: of that matters because they don't have money, so they
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: don't have power, and they're afraid of losing their jobs.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: So you can do basically whatever you want to them.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: That's what happened.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, politically speaking, the wealth and the
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: powers is who controls everything. They obviously via campaign donations
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: is the most clear cut way, but all kinds of
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: interventions to basically let the top one or two percent
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: make the decisions for the majority. There's a social scientist
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: and this isn't us railing on stuff. This is just
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: how it is. Like, if you're saying this isn't the case,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: then you're lying. Like you said, there's a social scientist
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: named Richard Reeves who said that the top twenty percent
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: of earners are basically have been completely successful in pushing
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: zoning regulations and tax policies that benefit them all at
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: the expense of the middle class. They gain the systems
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: to pass that you know, wealth down to their children
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: or to get their kids into the better It's just
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: the way things have gone in the United States.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the problem, one of the big problems is
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: people are going to be all over our iTunes reviews
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: being like, these guys are liberal idiots. You don't know
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: what they're talking about. It's not liberal and conservative, and
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: it's not Republican and democrat. This is strictly a class issue,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: and the idea that you are defending a class beyond
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: yours that is exploiting your own class, including you. That's
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: a problem because it's presented as a political thing, and
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: we're so tribal when it comes to political affiliations that
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: you will defend against your own self interest.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Being presented to you as a political issue, and it's.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: Not happens every voting season. That happens.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's true. And I'm not picking just on
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: conservatives or Republicans like Democrats do it too, like tr
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: tribal and toxic and unhealthy. And if, oh man, if
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: we could ever come to get there and break down
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: those lines, oh my gosh, people are so ripped up
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: right now that it would just be magnificent, the sweeping
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: changes that would happen. A new renaissance, Yes, renaissance too,
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: the sequel to h Yeah.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing. You know, Goods have gotten cheaper though,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: if you want to look at again, comparing in today's dollars,
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: groceries are generally cheaper than they were in the mid
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: seventies because the mid seventies, as we said, was pretty bad.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: Things like you know, clothing and furniture, electronics, all that
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: stuff is way cheaper than it used to be. If
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: you look at you know, back when you bought a VCR,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: when those first came out, and they were like a
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: thousand dollars, you know, stuff like that is all like
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: the bottom has fallen out on those kind of prices.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: But that hasn't happened in the housing market, which is
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: a big deal for the middle class. Like you said
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: in Act one, that median sales price of a house
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: and again in today's dollars, it was three hundred thousand
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: dollars in nineteen seventy nine. It's more than four four
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars today. And I think we said it
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: was sixty nine point two percent at its peak of
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: home ownership in two thousand and four. As of I
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: think twenty twenty two. You know, what's happened is that
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: you know, I think you said if it was about
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: sixty five percent, so it's not that big of a difference,
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: but it's that age of buying your first house has
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: just gotten older and older and older. In twenty twenty two,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: only sixty two percent of forty year olds own their home,
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: whereas the Boomer generation sixty nine percent of forty year
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: olds owned. And the same can be said for rent
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: and childcare, in college and healthcare. It's just all these
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: things are outpacing earnings.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Plus also that sixty two and sixty nine percent is
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: a little misleading because there are way more boomers than
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: there are Gen x who are forty now, So that
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: so sixty nine percent of boomers is a new manically
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: a much bigger group than sixty two percent of gen.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: Xers, right, which also means that that's a greater number
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: of houses that are now locked up right being passed
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: on to their kids. And you know, not saying that
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: you shouldn't own a house and pass along your kids,
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: but that as far as the housing market goes, that's
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: just a lot, right.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: So Chuck, what do you what are we going to
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: do about this? What are some things we can do?
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: Oh? Man, let's solve it right now on the spot. Well,
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know, man, It's not like this
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: all over the world. If you look in Europe that
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: there is a middle class there, but it's not quite
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: the same. They aren't maybe don't have the kind of
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: wealth that upper middle class does here, but they have
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: the income and quality isn't as great generally, they have
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: stronger social welfare programs, like the danger of falling into
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: a desperate life straits isn't as great over there. I
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: saw I think on Instagram recently. It was an interview
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: with a guy that was a had a good job.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: It was one of those stories where the guy was
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: on the streets and he had a degree in chemistry
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: and he had a good job, and you know, I
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: read the comments because I was curious if people were
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: going to be like bashing this dude or what. And hearteningly,
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of the people were like, Hey, I worked
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: in shelters for the un House for years and we
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: saw all kinds of people come through here. We saw
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: doctors and attorneys and people you know that just you know,
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: sometimes you're a bad circumstance or two away from that
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: kind of situation, and it's just not like that in
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: Europe generally speaking.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: I remember during the two thousand and eight recession of
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: reading some statistic that something like at the time like
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: forty percent or something like that of Americans were one
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: paycheck away from being homeless. Like that's how little savings
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: and cushion that most Americans had.
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or having to make you know, healthcare decisions like
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: that aren't good for your life because you can't afford it,
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: because it will bankrupt your family. You're having to put
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: yourself and your family in peril physically.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Right, That's part of that why the European middle class
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: is much more secure because most of them have universal
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: health care.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not bankrupted by a diagnosis.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: Right, But even on more day to day pedestrian stuff.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: So the lower income you are, the more inflation affects you.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Where Like if your higher income and you go gas
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: up your car and you're like, wow, gas went up
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: twenty cents today, that sucks, and you just don't think
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: about it from that point on. If your lower income,
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: you might roll up to the gas station and be like, oh,
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: I can't afford to drive my car to work today
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: because gas went up twenty cents a gallon. So that's
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: another issue with the whole thing too. It makes it
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: tougher to get a head when you can't afford the
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: basic necessities because they're growing out of your reach day
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: by day.
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean when I was a snot nosed, no
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: at all college kid working at Golden Pantry in Athens, Georgia,
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: I used to and you know, I was working at
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: Golden Pantry, so it's not like I was making any
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: kind of money, but for a college kid, it was like, hey,
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: that's great. I had everything I needed making that seven
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: dollars an hour or whatever, because my parents were generally
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: paying for my education and it's like easy street. I
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: would I would wonder why someone would come in and
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: buy like seven dollars worth of gas. I aloud be like,
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: what a weird number? Why are you putting seven dollars
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: worth of gas? Because it didn't occur to me that's
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: all that they could afford. It's like, why don't you
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: just fill your car up? And it's like because it
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: couldn't afford to dummy? Right, I was a dummy, that's right.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I know exactly what to mean. I've been
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: on both sides of that.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know the night abitab a college kid,
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: So in a way.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Was that the golden pantry at Alps?
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: Uh No, I worked on the college station road.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Okay side, gotcha. So we didn't figure out how to Yeah,
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: I had the same kind of job, and it is
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: a very weird job. So we didn't figure out how
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: to fix anything. Chuck, you got any ideas, I think
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: that you could learn a lot from Europe expanding social
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: safety nets. We could stop making that a political thing
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: and be like, no, actually, this can help everybody. I
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: saw that in New Mexico has started free childcare for all,
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter what your income level is, doesn't matter, Like
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: you can put your kid into childcare for free, and
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: that's a huge expense that save for the average person.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: I think New York is trying to do that, like
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: Mom Donnie is trying to to institute that in New
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: York City too, So that could be a huge trend.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: Just free childcare, Universe childcare could make a huge difference
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: in people's income.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and all of that is because people want to
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: go out and work their job to make money for
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: the man.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, well put man, you got anything else?
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: Got nothing else?
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, I don't either, which means it's time for listener man.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: It is a quick correction. We heard from people from
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: Tennessee because we stole their college. Hey guys, longtime listener here.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: Your show has fueled many runs and chores over the years.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Quick Nashville nitpick from a proud local. In the Flexner
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: Report episode, you mentioned Maharry being right here in Georgia.
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: Nashville would like to gently reclaim that, guys, Mahary medical
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: College has been proudly in Nashville since eighteen seventy six,
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: and we're pretty attached to it. Totally understand how geography
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: gets slippery mid podcasts, but just wanted to defend a
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: hometown institution and that is from Bridget Chevron or Shavaine.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: And we heard from a lot of people, Bridget, So
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know how we screwed that up, but we did.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we got it screwed up royally. I even went
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: back and was like, surely there's a Mahary College in
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Georgia too. Nope, Nope, it's just the one in Tennessee.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: So sorry everyone in Tennessee who took offense to that,
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: because we did hear from a lot of you.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: For sure, that's right, But we're neighbors and we like
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: to think that we're all the same.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, we all shared your medical college. Yeah,
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: in the Tri state area. If you want to be
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: like Bridget and send us a really nice email correcting us,
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: we love that kind of thing. You can send it
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: off to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.