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Is it All that Difficult to Enter the Middle-Class or Above in the Current US System?

Is it All that Difficult to Enter the Middle-Class or Above in the Current US System?

  • Yes

    Votes: 10 31.3%

  • No

    Votes: 18 56.3%

  • Other

    Votes: 4 12.5%
  • Total voters
    32
xMathFanx said:
I just gave some (rather detailed introductory) information about the "Game" in the University system & the Market/American monetary system as well as valuable introductory information about how to "play it" with some success (enough to achieve the Middle-Class or above, at least). Note, this is all information that was never told to me, but rather I had to seek it for myself (so I don't buy the argument that its not feasible to expect others not instructed in the matter to find the requisite information independently). Also, I could get much more detailed about all this if you (or others) would like--although I don't see anyone else making a similar claim to the one you submitted here... Nice try....
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You like to make stuff up. I'm not impressed
 
devildavid said:
Why do you think your nephew in law or his children are overachievers? Maybe his success is a sign of his innate abilities and attributes.
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Notice the work your ass off part. Emphasize that. Albert Einstein said genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. You can be as smart as a brick in this country and still have a good life if you work your ass off. 40 hours a week don't cut it that is the bottom. 80+ is the ticket, to move and relatively quickly out of poverty.
 
devildavid said:
Yes, because you have no good answers to any valid questions. How does reasonable savvy give someone the ability to be a plumber? Plumbers have a particular skill set. I never thought of a plumber as having reasonable savvy. It is meaningless.
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First, 2 of your 3 sentences do not make any grammatical sense.

Second, becoming a Plumber (or similar Trade profession) in the current American system earns one access to the Middle Class. Therefore, a person with some basic information about the system would understand that all they need to do in order to move up the ladder & enter the Middle-Class (assuming they were below it to begin with) is to go to a Trade School for 1-2 years (which costs about $1000-10,000 total--all of which could be covered by Government Loans that any citizen of the US over 18 with a High School Diploma or equivalency has access to), earn the certificate/degree and the average salary of they will make is $50,000.

You need to marshal an argument explaining why this ("this" being the path I described above) is entirely unfeasible under our current model or else your position is holds no weight.
 
PirateMk1 said:
Notice the work your ass off part. Emphasize that. Albert Einstein said genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. You can be as smart as a brick in this country and still have a good life if you work your ass off. 40 hours a week don't cut it that is the bottom. 80+ is the ticket, to move and relatively quickly out of poverty.
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Although I largely agree with some of your observations, I feel it is a bit incomplete as stated (above). A person could easily get caught up in perpetually working two crappy full-time jobs 80+ hours a week and have serious monetary problems (even though they are working their as' off). However, that isn't out of necessity--rather, it is more out of ignorance to "the Game" going on and a failure to "play" it with any real success. If they had higher-order knowledge of the "Game", then they could use one of the various methods I have detailed previously to enter the Middle-Class within 5 years time (or less). One example of this is attending a Trade School, which will pay off big-time in a relatively short amount of time (1-2 years to earn the Certificate/Degree). So, there is more than one salient variable to consider in this respect.
 
PirateMk1 said:
Notice the work your ass off part. Emphasize that. Albert Einstein said genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. You can be as smart as a brick in this country and still have a good life if you work your ass off. 40 hours a week don't cut it that is the bottom. 80+ is the ticket, to move and relatively quickly out of poverty.
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It depends on the hard work that you are doing. No one works harder than the lowest level workers doing the most underappreciated jobs. Sometimes hard work only brings more hard work, but minimal reward.
 
xMathFanx said:
First, 2 of your 3 sentences do not make any grammatical sense.

Second, becoming a Plumber (or similar Trade profession) in the current American system earns one access to the Middle Class. Therefore, a person with some basic information about the system would understand that all they need to do in order to move up the ladder & enter the Middle-Class (assuming they were below it to begin with) is to go to a Trade School for 1-2 years (which costs about $1000-10,000 total--all of which could be covered by Government Loans that any citizen of the US over 18 with a High School Diploma or equivalency has access to), earn the certificate/degree and the average salary of they will make is $50,000.

You need to marshal an argument explaining why this ("this" being the path I described above) is entirely unfeasible under our current model or else your position is holds no weight.
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Going to trade school will not work for many people. Not everyone has the aptitude to work a trade. And the market will only sustain a limited number of people within each trade.
 
devildavid said:
Going to trade school will not work for many people. Not everyone has the aptitude to work a trade. And the market will only sustain a limited number of people within each trade.
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First, you go to get trained in that area specifically.

Second, I am discussing any one individual (I'm not arguing that the system itself doesn't have many inherent flaws currently--it does (in my view))
 
xMathFanx said:
You have failed to demonstrate that you even comprehend/follow my argument (I don't think you do)
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Your argument is something entirely in your imagination with no basis in reality. You are just making things up that you think sound good on paper without considering their real life applicability.
 
xMathFanx said:
First, you go to get trained in that area specifically.

Second, I am discussing any one individual (I'm not arguing that the system itself doesn't have many inherent flaws currently--it does (in my view))
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You cannot be trained to do something for which you have no aptitude or natural skills for.
 
devildavid said:
Your argument is something entirely in your imagination with no basis in reality. You are just making things up that you think sound good on paper without considering their real life applicability.
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No. People take advantage of the system in the manner I suggested (as well as many other ways I have failed recognize & I may or may not be aware of) all of the time--including myself. I'm sure if you asked other members here to brainstorm on the matter a bit more, many more concrete paths would be uncovered that lead toward the Middle Class or higher (with no extreme difficulty involved)

Your entire "argument" is pulling out the "Hurt Feelings Card" & hoping that this enough to end discussion on the matter
 
phattonez said:
I think you're right about student loans, but this is only part of the problem. Real wages for construction and manufacturing peaked in the early 1970's, well before Reagan. Something else happened that started this process.
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There was the recession of the 70's due to the OPEC crisis. It pushed the cost of all consumer goods up as well as production costs.

Reagan was the one who put the nail in the coffin of education though. He tried to push the personal responsibility thing and all it has done over the decades is create a trillion dollar student loan debt that will never be repaid. The government really needs to get back into the business of subsidizing education while creating laws to suppress inflated tuition rates. Most state tuition freezes were lifted after Reagan changed the student loan policy. But that of course assumes that more educated people are going to solve this problem. I'm not so sure that's the case. Trades could help with infrastructure but on the whole the degree market is saturated.

We already have all the technological solutions all around us but the problem continues to be human nature.

phattonez said:
Combined with mass third world immigration, we currently have a system that keeps most people poor as inflation eats away the value of our money. CPI doesn't capture the true rise in the cost of living, so the problem is even worse than my graphs portray. What is going to fix it? We starve the beasts that have agitated for this system. We stop patronizing the large corporations that thrive on third world immigration and advocate for our dispossession. That means no more McDonald's. No more Target. Keep your money local. Lend to friends, don't let them get enslaved by the usury leeches. We can build strong communities where families can thrive, and it starts by saying no to the companies that lobby against our interests.
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Hard to do when those firms are controlling government now. It's not even all that transparent anymore. They have so much money and so much legal backing that it's next to impossible to roll back the clock. IMO it's already too late. We're just going to keep spinning our wheels until the system collapses and we end up in some kind of post-consumer capitalist feudal society. Ok, that's a bit extreme... but you know what I mean. The middle class has kind of outlived its usefulness and prior to consumer capitalism it accounted for a small amount of the population, mostly the merchant class. Everyone else was rich or poor.

Thanks btw for posting all that data.
 
devildavid said:
The so-called information provided on the thread is absolutely worthless and arrogant and falsely assumes that those who don't succeed are fully to blame themselves.
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No one is to blame, unless you have made poor choices... The study I refereed to before demonstrated that statistically...all you need to do is.

1. Graduate High School
2. Don't have a kid before you get married
3. Get a Job

All those things are completely up to the individual. I don't know why you want to take power out of the individuals hands and make it as if they have no say in the outcome of their life... but it is terribly nihilistic.

You always have a say.... always.... the only case where you don't is when people listen to people like you.

As a side note: I find this a rather silly debate, clearly demonstrates your privilege in living in the West, you don't know real poverty... beggers in U.S. have made six figures.... Meet the man who makes $100K a year begging by pretending to be mentally handicapped | Daily Mail Online
 
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devildavid said:
Why do you think your nephew in law or his children are overachievers? Maybe his success is a sign of his innate abilities and attributes.
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He is reasonably intelligent, has a two-year tech degree, has pretty good self-discipline, is willing to work very hard, and is very careful at managing money. He came across an opportunity to start his own business, took the chance, worked at it very hard, and (with a certain amount of luck, and I'm thinking of a very particular thing but I don't wish to be any more specific) he build his business rapidly, and in managing his money very carefully it accumulated rapidly as well.

I think it was about eight years into this that he bought the big lakeshore house and my niece stopped teaching to be a full time mother and housewife, and this was the point everyone viewed as how he'd "made it".

I attribute some of it to my niece, who has always been a motivated achiever and powerhouse personality who tends to motivate those around her. She has a 4 year education degree and was a teacher and ball coach.

He continued to work his butt off, and also to spend much time with his children despite a grueling workload. I'm not sure when he slept, frankly, and suspect the answer was "not much".

The family is also sports-crazy; all the kids play two or three kinds of ball. Oldest daughter is attending a private university on a partial sports scholarship. All the kids are well-adjusted hard-chargers who appear on track to be successful in turn.

In their early 40s now, he's finally slowing down a little and considering setting up some diversified investments and a sort of semi-retirement.


Anyway my point was that his success was not simply a function of innate talent, so much as working VERY hard, overcoming obstacles and problems with great determination, and so forth... he leveraged his abilities to the max to get where he is, it wasn't simply inborn ability.
 
devildavid said:
You cannot be trained to do something for which you have no aptitude or natural skills for.
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Um.... sort of yes but not really. :)

Everyone has various potentials, and inborn limits to those potentials, yes.

However, most people never put in the work to reach their full potential and come up against that hard limit. I could point to any number of people I know who had talent and potential and never did as much with it as they could have.

OTOH some people are more stringently limited. Some have low intelligence or disabilities of various sorts.

However there are many ways to compensate for this and succeed anyway. I know a successful dyslexic doctor (surgeon in fact)... a successful plumber who can't read a newspaper... more like that.

Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris were sickly children who didn't exhibit any athletic brilliance until later in life. Steven Hawking is in a wheelchair but the whole world listens when he speaks.

About the only thing you can't compensate for is a lack of even trying.


Now, I've been around, and I've spent more than a little time on the bad side of town. I've known people from what is termed "generational poverty". While most of them didn't win the genetic lottery on brains, looks or talents, from what I see most of them "rot" because no one taught them not to. No one instilled a "can do" attitude in them, told them they could be something, encouraged them to do more and overcome. Often the exact opposite.

Yet amid the unkempt yards and un-maintained houses you'll still come across a family here and there who has some pride. They're not brilliant but they work, pay their bills and manage their money, and they may be working-class poor but they're far better off than their neighbors. Walk in the house and talk to the folks and the children and ask "what is different here?"

To me the answer is "hope". They have hope than if they work at it they can better their situation, and they DO work at it. The parents teach the children to work at life; they make sure they go to school and do their homework and chores; the atmosphere in the house says "it's possible" instead of "why bother".

Sometimes one of their kids makes it to college or opens a small business.


That only happens if you try.
 
Goshin said:
Um.... sort of yes but not really. :)

Everyone has various potentials, and inborn limits to those potentials, yes.

However, most people never put in the work to reach their full potential and come up against that hard limit. I could point to any number of people I know who had talent and potential and never did as much with it as they could have.

OTOH some people are more stringently limited. Some have low intelligence or disabilities of various sorts.

However there are many ways to compensate for this and succeed anyway. I know a successful dyslexic doctor (surgeon in fact)... a successful plumber who can't read a newspaper... more like that.

Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris were sickly children who didn't exhibit any athletic brilliance until later in life. Steven Hawking is in a wheelchair but the whole world listens when he speaks.

About the only thing you can't compensate for is a lack of even trying.


Now, I've been around, and I've spent more than a little time on the bad side of town. I've known people from what is termed "generational poverty". While most of them didn't win the genetic lottery on brains, looks or talents, from what I see most of them "rot" because no one taught them not to. No one instilled a "can do" attitude in them, told them they could be something, encouraged them to do more and overcome. Often the exact opposite.

Yet amid the unkempt yards and un-maintained houses you'll still come across a family here and there who has some pride. They're not brilliant but they work, pay their bills and manage their money, and they may be working-class poor but they're far better off than their neighbors. Walk in the house and talk to the folks and the children and ask "what is different here?"

To me the answer is "hope". They have hope than if they work at it they can better their situation, and they DO work at it. The parents teach the children to work at life; they make sure they go to school and do their homework and chores; the atmosphere in the house says "it's possible" instead of "why bother".

Sometimes one of their kids makes it to college or opens a small business.


That only happens if you try.
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And I can name a lot of lazy, incompetent people who make money and are comfortable despite their lack of effort. There is no logical connection between effort and financial reward. It has nothing to do with hope and everything to do with accidents of birth and dumb luck and who you know. We don't live in a storybook Horatio Alger world.
 
devildavid said:
And I can name a lot of lazy, incompetent people who make money and are comfortable despite their lack of effort. There is no logical connection between effort and financial reward. It has nothing to do with hope and everything to do with accidents of birth and dumb luck and who you know. We don't live in a storybook Horatio Alger world.
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That some get by on luck, connections or advantages of family doesn't change how some get ahead through working hard and applying themselves to their utmost.


If you stumble into success through no fault of your own, well good for you. If you find yourself short of where you want to be, working hard at it will invariably produce better results than sitting on your ass and declaring it impossible.
 
Trump has made it much easier to join the middle class. He's extended it downward.
 
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