Quiz-How much do you know about the middle class squeeze?

[SFG75]

I scored a 40% on this. How did you do?

Quiz

Oh yeah, what should we do about it?

 

[sparkchaser]

I got 60% correct.

What can we do? Stop trying to live the lifestyle that popular culture is trying to make us live. Stop living above your means. Stop keeping up with the Joneses. That's where you start.

 

[RAC42]

50% right for me. I agree with Sparkchaser, live within your means is the most basic thing to do. Of course there is more to it than that and it isn't always easy. For awhile, we were living paycheck to paycheck, it's better now thankfully, but it was a struggle at times. I'm lucky to be in Canada where health care is gov't funded and there is no cost to go to the doctor or have surgery.

 

[Zolipara]

50%.

Realise that you need more limitations on capitalism and get rid of the propaganda against socialist systems.

 

[SFG75]

50%.

Realise that you need more limitations on capitalism and get rid of the propaganda against socialist systems.

It's amazing how folks fall for the propaganda. We have farmers who will defend the "death tax" which applies to 1% of the population, none of them farmers. When an effort was made to repeal the estate tax, a conservative organization asked the farm bureau to document cases where family farms were hit by the tax. These people make some decent money, don't get me wrong. The farm bureau couldn't find ONE documented case. So much for the tax effecting everyday people. However, that doesn't stop conservatives from distorting and stretching the truth about who the tax hits.

Check this out, an excellent editorial by Robert Reich. Now THAT guy needs to be president.

The underlying problem has been building for decades. America’s median hourly wage is barely higher than it was 35 years ago, adjusted for inflation. The income of a man in his 30s is now 12 percent below that of a man his age three decades ago. Most of what’s been earned in America since then has gone to the richest 5 percent.

Yet the rich devote a smaller percentage of their earnings to buying things than the rest of us because, after all, they’re rich. They already have most of what they want. Instead of buying, and thus stimulating the American economy, the rich are more likely to invest their earnings wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

The problem has been masked for years as middle- and lower-income Americans found ways to live beyond their paychecks. But now they have run out of ways.

 

[ylris611203]

40% and I don't live there.

 

[silverseason]

60%. I'm retired, which is not a bad place to be, especially since we have paid off our mortgage. How can you do that? Easy - buy the house 30 years ago.