http://gawker.com/5885705/
http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/.../almost-rich/2/
http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/.../almost-rich/5/

Let's engage in another exercise in "out of touch with reality!"




I FUCKING HATE PEOPLE.




YOU OUT OF TOUCH RICH FUCKSTICK. DIE IN A FIRE.


Every one of these assholes whining about how their money doesn't go all that far has some reasonable real-life expenses (house, nice house, cars, whatever) and then they whine about their monthly four figure WINE COSTS or CLOTHING BILLS and I just want to explode with rage.


This article seriously unhinged me.

Wow. I don't think that they can say 196K seems middle class just because they choose to spend most of it.

Remember when people called Occupy protestors entitled?

Monthly Expense:
Wine: $400–$500. (“We try to get the better $11 bottles, but they go fast.”)

Annual Expense:
RRSPs and investments: $0. (“Ha! We live month to month. When we have money left over, we go out.”)

I FOUND THE PROBLEM IN YOUR ACCOUNTS!

Just because you're so clearly pissed off, the fact that 1% or entitled, which I agree with, means that the people protesting them can't ALSO be entitled?

Or, to put it another way, 99% of Americans have less money than you'd expect!

196k is absolutely upper class, but people earning 196k aren't really part of the problem. If anything they're being fucked over almost as much as anyone else and should start realizing this. They're still not decision makers.

The problem is the super wealthy that are making millions in bonuses at the expense of salaries for everyone else.

Disagree partially, since people that making 196K (or close to it) are completely part of the problem, as this includes our senators who see their salaries as too little, and they have decision making power. They are sadly influenced way too much by the super wealthy, providing yet another way for the super wealthy to add to the problem.

To me, they're part of the problem in the sense that irresponsible people in the 1% are used to re-frame the debate to prove that no one is rich, that increasing taxes on $250k households is going to crush these "middle-class" families earning that much money. People in the lower 50% are sneered at for their lack of money management, and then people in the upper 5% are "middle-class" who work awful hard and are just in a tight spot.

To add to this, people who have this much money have a hard time differentiating between needs and luxuries and so they have a hard time imagining the needs of people earning less than themselves.

"If poor people would only spend less on wine, they would have more money with which to send their children to private school or wash their cars or whatever it is they are struggling with."

Listen, the lease on my Infiniti is three years old now. Do you have any idea what that's like? Can you imagine the looks my neighbors give me and what it does to property values in my neighborhood?

I hope all of you realize the $196,000 quoted in the article describes the top 1% (if you believe the article's figures, which I am not sure I do) OF CANADIANS!

The disparity between rich and poor - and increasingly, the disparity between rich and middle class - is much worse in the U.S. than in Canada.

Still Craig Haynes deserves a flaming bag of poo on his doorstep each and every day of the year.

I got a lien put on my house by my Homeowner's Association for having a 3 year old car!

Yup, in the US it's over $250k.

And I still say they're not part of the problem. Should they be paying more in taxes? Of course, but that's not an active choice of theirs. They're there passively.
Is this what senators make? Yeah, but most have money beyond that and are earning on capital gains.


The biggest issue is people making major amounts of money making decisions that benefit solely themselves. Earning $250k/y for a family is not a major amount of money. It's a very, very nice amount of money, but we have people making more than that in a day or three. These are the people that actually have the capability to stimulate the economy, Reagan was 100% correct about that. But Reagan was an idiot in thinking that cutting taxes on them would cause them to share that wealth. It just freed them up to keep it with themselves.

A couple earning $125k apiece isn't in a position to make decisions like that. Nothing they can do will impact anything. They don't close factories. They don't sell companies. They're just middle management. Often stupidly so, as mentioned they fail to see the difference between luxuries and needs, but they still aren't the ones causing the issues. The best argument you can make is that they support those that create the issue, but higher income states tend to be blue states...

That means it should be up soon? Whatcha getting next?

The problem is that big businesses have outsourced all their jobs to fucking China, so instead of that money recirculating in our economy, it is going overseas. Big businesses profit exorbitantly because of the enormous workforce of dirt cheap labor over there, but overall it greatly harms the health of this country's economy.

I was going to try and explain how outsourcing jobs is beneficial for both countries involved, but that would require too much work, so I'm just going to call you stupid and move on with my day.

This cracked me up pretty hard.

The thing that gets left out of this conversation is scales of economy.

My job necessitates me to be in what would be more affluent areas of the US. Could I live with less? Sure I could. As much as I bitch about money being tight I don't necessarily live paycheck to paycheck but I could very quickly spin out of control if I am not careful. Could I live with more??? Absolutely.

Lets just state that when I combine my wife's salary to mine we are not quite at that mark $. But if anyone was to tell me that I was rich, I'd smack them in the teeth. I am certainly not rich although I am further up the income ladder then some.

I am not poor but maybe if I lived in Iowa I would be upper class but in Laguna Niguel, CA I am definitely not. But there are a LOT of people that live here who frankly could live anywhere because of their income. And I now am living in a firmly conservative area of America vs. 14-years in liberal N. California where upper income echelon people don't sit there bitching and moaning all day about taxes. Instead, they talk about structuring the government to better function and streamline the way that they spend money.

Here is the thing for me. While the Bush tax cuts have produced some benefits to me it doesn't make or break me. I could use them but I do have some other advantages. Child care tax credits and such. And these are available to most everyone.

But I am willing to pay my share as should anyone else. It costs to live in this country. I have been other places. Poverty in places like the Philippines is staggering compared to the US. That is what some of these ultra right wing, upper echelon earners don't get. They don't mind earning off of their backs but that is another story.

Anyone who thinks that they are being over taxed for the privilege to live in this country is smoking crack. Gladly, I will pay the taxes to live in the US. Membership does have its privileges.

And its all scales of economy. I hope to one day be rich but I most certainly am not by any other metric other than my total income.

After a while, though, those benefits are one-way. The pendulum swung too far, and the US has no true manufacturing industry. Which means we have no manufacturing jobs. People can either go to college and get white collar jobs or they can go into service and be a barista. Sometimes a combination of both. But we've more or less saturated our office job population, and we've begun sending those jobs overseas, so we have a much smaller job base with much higher demands to get those jobs.
Meaning we have more people that are unemployed or underemployed.
Meaning those people have less money to spend.
Meaning less money is spent.
Meaning fewer goods are bought.
Meaning fewer goods need to be made.
Meaning more companies are making less money.
Meaning more employees are underemployed or unemployed.

Underemployed is now relative. Too many people, too much competition, salaries go down. That isn't going to change. The paradigm is now shifted and this is the new norm.

What needs to happen is the US needs to radically retool its work force. The new jobs are R&D, healthcare, engineering.

My wife is in healthcare and they are looking outside the US for positions to fill because there simply are not enough skilled people in the US labor force.

There is an issue coming up. The costs for importing from China are beginning to push back the savings. So some manufacturing like assembly has the opportunity to return to the US. The parts may be made in China but the assembly can be done in the US.

So while your cyclic pattern is true, I think that Americans have to change their mentality a little as well. You may want to be a lawyer but if your job is in healthcare and you go to law school you are not correctly reading the markets needs.

Underemployed is relative. Relative to your debt.
If you take out six figures to get a degree and end up with a job that makes it impossible to pay for your degree you are underemployed. Sure, we can debate basket weaving degrees all day, but virtually anyone coming out of college is in a situation such as this.


And you're wrong to assume manufacturing will come back to the US because it's getting expensive in China. I'll give you a few reasons why that won't happen without some hand guiding it other than mere "market forces":
1) We no longer have the expertise. Even if we were cost effective we no longer have the know-how to properly set up a factory. Read the NYT article with quotes from many businesses, primarily Apple, about how the US can't do this anymore
2) Even if we could, it makes sense to have your manufacturing close by. Again, read that article. It mentions factories needing minor tweaks to a part. If one factory is in the US and one is in China that can be a six week turnaround during which manufacturing is halted. In China it was less than six hours, as they immediately found a factory only a few miles away that could make the altered part for same day shipment
3) Most importantly, the US is still high cost. China costs have been rising for years now. Has the US seen a rise in manufacturing in return? Nope, but Thailand certainly has. This isn't about China, it's about low cost manufacturing and a complete lack of tariffs. Having spent time in factories in each country I'd choose Thailand a hundred times over China: cheaper, less interest in odd cost cutting, longer uptime (Chinese New Year prevents 24/7/52 factories but Thailand has no equivalent), better beaches to spend time on when visiting...


Sending jobs overseas makes more sense for a company. It was once an advantage, in that you could send manufacturing there, cut 20% off of your cost, cut 10% off your price and actually make more selling more. It's now a necessity, as you'll get slaughtered on the marketplace if you cost more without having something tangible to justify those costs.
But it makes no sense for a country or economy. The health of a country relies upon distributed spending power, and while having lower cost goods is nice it's not nice if it's at the expense of people able to afford those goods. We're better off with higher prices and more salaries.

A few things. I didn't list in supported detail why it is not as cost effective to do business overseas as it once was. To be sure the vast majority of manufacturing will remain outside the US but a few things of note:

1. A decade ago labor pay was literally like $0.52 in China vs. against like $15 US. That has changed some. Skilled labor in manufacturing in China has gone up substantially. Something like $4 in China vs. $23 or so for the US. Again I don't have hard numbers. So the savings while big is not as big as it once was.

2. There have been a ton of issues with the supply chain and acquisition of materials. For example, we had a job site shut down because prefabricated walls were delayed due to the Sichuan earthquake a few years back. While a lot of construction prefab is still occurring off-shore, some of it is now made back here in the US. Those kinds of delays are unforeseen and hurt future business. So even if their profits drop 10-15% the peace of mind and opportunity for future business is there. My understanding that problem is going to be getting worse and worse as infrastructure is struggling to meet market needs. I read in the WSJ that there were more and more issues affecting the supply chain from Iran, to instability on fuel costs, natural disasters etc... And the costs of shipping in general has gone way up.

In terms of unskilled labor, like someone who makes jeans, those jobs are never coming back. Even China now has competition from places like Vietnam who will swipe those jobs if labor gets too high in China.

But I agree wholeheartedly. There is a total lack of knowhow from the American workforce.

I have one example for you. Lighting design has exploded in technology over the last 5-years. I struggle to keep up with it and I find myself traveling from manufacturer to manufacturer to take advantage of their trainings so that I understand how to utilize their products. At almost every single training there are specifiers, engineers, architects but what is always interesting is nowadays there is a huge arab presence at these things. And every single time they bring in people who are involved with installation. More often now the same is true for the majority of S. Americans. The Germans and Scandinavians etc... Never do I see anybody from the US or Canada that are actual installers.

There is something wrong there. I notice it.

When I spec these things and we go to construction we find that often it is aggravating that we are dealing with electricians who simply don't understand it. And these are union guys. The unions are behind in technology and training. It sucks. This in some cases causes me to to re-spec. This throws the whole process to shit. I redesign, go to work with the engineers. Its time, money and producing a product that is not utilizing the most cost effective technologies because they simply did not have the knowhow to do these things.

And then there is the union themselves. Unions have become very difficult to deal with. They have a very adversarial relationship with us. I don't look forward to working with them sometimes. It seems like some of them want to argue about what they can't and/or won't do. I am a very pro-union guy but whenever we start a new project of all the team that is assembling, the person that I am least looking forward to working with is the union folks. It isn't always that way but it has been too many times. And I also know that they hate me from the get go because I am not the rugged builder but they see me as the fruity architect. I am that geek that they hate to see. But that is my issue. I can't fix the way I look with a hard hat on.