Getting ahead? You only think so

We are definitely not living in a bigger house than my parents. At the same  relative income as my father, we were able to afford a less than one acre lot with a 900 sq ft house with a half hour work commute one way. My parents were able to afford a thirteen acre farmette and fund a one hour work commute one way. Both houses were fixer uppers.

From what I have seen, most Baby Boomer parents have unconsciously raised their progeny to fail. Our WWII grandparents are too far into their dotages to realize just how close to poverty they have allowed their grand children and great grand children to become while also unconsciously raising their children to fail.

Big profit always trumps humanity.

As a conservative here, I do break from the norm and believe people making over 500k per year should have that amount over 500k, taxed at 50 percent.

It would pass easily if lawmakers would agree to lower property taxes, and business taxes, so it would be a wash.

But thats not how government works, they spend our money like drunken sailors and would not return the additional money they would get.

Also saw this coming 15 years ago. Now that we are in a true global economy, the US had no where to go but down in terms of income. It will level out but probably not for another decade.

MMCI1 - You caution others not to argue with you and then bloviate like a teenager (hey, are you really just a thirteen year old kid on Mom's PC?).  Sorry, but somebody needs to call you on your silly diatribe.  I especially loved your marcoeconomic treatise which stated "Women in work place depresses wages over the past work place where only men competed against each other for wages. If you double the supply of workers, wages decline."

It's not as if there's a fixed number of jobs in the U.S. and anyone who gets one depives someone else of their prosperity.  Adding more workers to the workforce adds to total our productivity; the real question is whether the added productivity is more or less than the added consumption of these new workers.  Since women were already consumers long before they enetered the workforce in large numbers, the answer is that their working is a net benefit.  I'd debunk the rest of your ridiculous blather but what's the point - Mom probably wants her PC back and it's time for you to go do your Social Studies homework (and you really need to do a lot of work in that area).  

Smaller houses are better. Easier to clean, cheaper to keep warm and cool, and it will encourage you to buy less loot. And you can have more people per square mile. The only thing wrong is you have to sell them for less if you are charging by the square foot.

Mom and Dad's place in retirement was like a space station, 28 by 20 feet for four people. Yep. Two 100 square foot bedrooms, one bath, and a large area combining the functions of kitchen, living room, dining room, and recreation room. The kind of place you could stand for a weekend.

I didn't mean to say make SS a pension. Just make it secure. That was the idea under FDR. Now we are making it meaningless by the pittance amount without actually killing it outright.

That Social Security check is so small it is under the stamp, dude.

The de-evolution of progress. Watch out for it. Many in politics don't care for any but their rich friends and backers. Screw everyone else. Rich people don't need Social Security or national health care or aid to college students. Beware the trend toward government of the people, by the people, for the rich people, and no services or poor services for the rest. Government used to care for people. I think that is fading.

If you are rich what do you need? Less taxes less government except for a big military and some police so you can keep your loot. History says the rich have always been sacked by the powerful.

If you're not rich you need a government and its services.

You tell me what the trend is toward government services, privatize this, smaller government, Tea Party, and who benefits and who loses.

How to plan for a life that sucks

1. Be the only income.

I am sorry but in my sociological opinion (Master's but I work in Federal Web design)... Look at the A-10 Warthog with its two engines spaced apart by design.  If one is hit by ground fire or a missile, the other can keep the aircraft in the sky. 

Do you want to fly a single engine F-16? Bail out and risk becoming prisoner of war?

You don't want to be POW in this economy.

I can give you a long laundry list of good reasons for two incomes

1. College costs keeps going up, and up. (And does college have to deliver anything except faith?)

2. Your wife may be alive long after you are dead, sock the extra money away for retirement. (We need to put the security back into retirement. None of this garbage about investing Social Security so crooks can swindle it. Make Social Security more like a pension backed by taxes.)

3. It ain't the government that has your back, stupid, it is your family. If anything happens to you or your spouse short term long term or permanently, the government will make a Good Will Gesture with unemployment. YOU or YOUR SPOUSE will save the day. (Or your parents if you are fresh out of college and aren't married yet.). Welcome to the United States.

If you really want to ruin your life, have plenty of kids. They cost about $222,000 each by current reckoning.

3.

MMCI1

2. Environmentalists, taxes, law suits, unions, and Liberals have driven high paying blue collar jobs overseas.

If you want to live in cesspool, feel free to move to India, China or Africa. Or a war zone (after all if you have no laws or regulations, the only way to settle things is the "old way").

3. Home ownership is more difficult because of your tax bills.

Tax bills go up with the price of housing. Over the past 30 years, the price of housing has risen twice as fast as overall inflation. I find it interesting that the generation that benefited the most from that increase are the first ones to whine about it.

4. We have more highly paid public employees now. In the past they were not highly paid.

I have never encountered any stats where a government employee (as opposed to a "contractor" picked by the mayor, governor or Congressman) that was paid more than an equivalent private sector job. Never. As for the overall higher costs: you can thank the GOP for that since they favor over-priced private contractors (that BTW raises your taxes or deficits).

5. When companies these days pay out settlements for discrimination, it is your raise that "goes away". When one expense goes up, something else must come down. These things did not exist in the past.

Stop being a jerk and the problem goes away. Jerks SHOULD go out of business.

Mmmmm!  Perhaps Ms. Lewis can't see the forest for the trees!

Beyond the inflation-adjusted income numbers, the W.W. II generation had smaller houses, fewer cars per household and less "techno toys" for their time.

I also think you are missing an inflation-adjusted index for the cost of everyday things.  Clothing, furniture, electronics, etc. are now cheaper after production was shifted overseas.

If every one under 55 today feels that they're better off than their parents or grandparents, perhaps they really are.  We have more "stuff," no matter what our nominal income may be.

As you say, that is the whole point of "progress" - our children are better off than we were.