In strictly income related terms, what is 'doing alright' in 2020? What is middle class?
There are rules of thumb that were established a long-time ago, earning your age being something of a minimum standard while earning 40-60k meant you owned an Aldi. You will probably notice that these rules originate from the 00's though and while calculators do exist they seem to apply national averages which seems odd as a large bottom doesn't mean you eat lots of camembert.
The median income for taxpayers is £22,400 and the median household income is £29,600. If you earn more than that, you're doing better than most people. What kind of lifestyle that affords you depends very much on where you live and whether you have kids.
With that said, I think that beyond the level of near-poverty, "doing alright" is much more about managing your expectations, living within your means and building yourself a secure financial foundation. A lot of people who earn well above the average still feel poor, because they compare themselves to an unrealistic standard. A lot of people who could live comfortably are beset by constant money worries because they're living beyond their means.
Having a nice car or a big house doesn't actually make much difference to your day-to-day life, but being financially secure is life-changing. Pay off your debts, build a rainy day fund, take night classes to add another string to your bow and you'll play the rest of your life on easy mode.
That's setting the goalposts rather arbitrarily, not everyone is a full time employee but the concept of class and relative prosperity applies to us all.
There is a heap of conspiracy theorist prattling elsewhere online. Normally I'd shrug, but given what's happening with COVID and other prevailing political trends I'm worrying that this 'Great Reset' will end up being a reboot of Feudalism.
I'm reading 'Neo-Feudalism' by Joel Kotkin rn, which probably isn't helping matters.>>8031>>8031
>The most famous dysfunctional family of 1990s television enjoyed, by today’s standards, an almost dreamily secure existence that now seems out of reach for all too many Americans. I refer, of course, to the Simpsons. Homer, a high-school graduate whose union job at the nuclear-power plant required little technical skill, supported a family of five. A home, a car, food, regular doctor’s appointments, and enough left over for plenty of beer at the local bar were all attainable on a single working-class salary. Bart might have had to find $1,000 for the family to go to England, but he didn’t have to worry that his parents would lose their home.
What do you lads think of this?
As a Millennial who grew up thinking the Simpsons was the greatest show of all time, approaching my mid-30s I'm looking at their lifestyle (which I considered to be mundane as a teenlad) as an unattainable goal and it feels bad man.>>8032>>8032
As I understand it, wages in the U.S. have essentially stagnated since the 1970s if you go by purchasing power. I'm fairly sure that the lifestyle of the Simpsons was barely possible even in the early 1990s. The set-up is a parody of 1950s television shows which present functional families and tended to be set in comfortable suburban homes. They were themselves questionable representations of an 'ordinary' life.
I'm sure someone here posted the article in the past, and I can't find it, but it was all about how films disregard economic realities. The article mentions how much the path of destruction in films like The Hangover actually costs, and how even films with anti-consumerist themes like Fight Club will have the characters go to a delapidated Victorian house rather than a caravan/trailer park to represent poverty. Spielberg probably has a lot to answer for, as well, as many of his films are based on the 'ordinary' sleepiness of a surburban home being interrupted by something extraordinary. I haven't been able to find it again, though. Does anyone have a link?
It could also just be the middle class bias that media has; middle class kids make up the majority of people that land creative jobs, skewing the perceived "average" or "normal" life toward their own experiences. Spielberg was the son of a concert pianist and an eletrical engineer. Groening was the son of a teacher and 'ad man', growing up in a "two story house in Portland's West Hills". It's not surprising that the idea of what a normal economic background is gets distorted.
>>8046 It is posh if you live in a whole house in the expensive bit of a city. I don't know, not the lad you replied to and maybe Portland was a complete dump when Groening was a wee kid.
>>8048 Is Portland that place supposedly full of hipsters? I'm sure I remember a Grauniad column about someone moving there from London and being shocked when it turned out not everyone was a bleeding-heart liberal like she was.
I was there for work last year and it has a shocking homeless problem. The whole airport metro/shuttle ride into town seems like one long trip through tent city.
>>8041 This is just a rehash of threads I see get made over and over again on imageboards. It's no wonder he makes 31k a year and thought 3k was enough for the deposit on a house as a freelance writer.
The reality is that it's a fools errand to compare across generations because things change. I'm sure everyone around in the early 90s remembers the crime and while my parents had free university neither could go and only own a home because of Thatcher selling the council houses. Something we also need to consider of the UK is that the place was an absolute shit-tip until very recently so American memes you see online about 'boomers' don't necessarily apply.
'Millennials' have been kneecapped by the Great Recession and the housing market but Office Space has always been more realistic of what you should expect from life. A dull tech-job you're liable to be fired from with the industry about to crash. Plus doing two chicks at the same time is just as unattainable.
>>8045 Fight Club is actually used as an explainer of this phenomenon - the house is so large because of the practicalities of film production. It's
something people noticed when they recreated the home and you ended up with dead rooms.
This kind of thing is especially noticeable when you look at sitcoms because the set-design is just that - it's a stage fixed up to approximate a home.
>>8045 > skewing the perceived "average" or "normal" life toward their own experiences.
A lass I knew¹ at uni was absolutely convinced that she and hers were 'average'. When I mentioned getting full student loan and also full financial support from the uni, she seemed confused -- why weren't my parents funding me? I mentioned that their wages together were still less than the national average for one person, and that they, and even parents twice or three times as well-off as mine simply could not afford £9k uni fees and probably the same again in living expenses every year. She seemed genuinely shocked and could not fathom how people could live on 'such a small amount' of money.
I drew a line on a piece of paper and asked her to put her family at a point on that line between the poorest and richest people in the country. She put herself bang in the middle. I showed her that she was actually in the 90+ percentile. I still think of that a lot because it really does put into perspective a lot of rich cunts' behaviours - they really don't believe that they are that rich, even when their dad is buying them a new BMW for their first car.
>>8058 I had similar with various posho public school types at uni who were shocked to hear I had never had a foreign holiday. The worst was some rich Ukrainian lass I knew briefly, who had a go at me for saying that relative poverty is an actual problem in the UK, because there were poorer people in The Ukraine (which she had never experienced first hand) which wasn't even what I was trying to say.
In any case, the socio-economic "average" isn't really meaningful unless you really narrow down who you ask and what opportunities/access to opportunities that polling set have. I've known lads who've been taken on by their dad as part of a family building company and live a decentish life, and I've known lads end up doing law conversion courses after nonsense degrees so they can work for their dad's law firms. There's so much more to look into than just income.
>>8058 >simply could not afford £9k uni fees and probably the same again in living expenses every year
Wait, so she was confused that you got a student loan? Missed the boat there, you could've been a rich layabout.
I had a mate at uni who came from old money and still rinsed all the grants that I'd never even heard of. That's why he was old money I guess while I was working class and actually the person these things were meant for.
>>8059 I'd add that I'm not convinced that being relatively wealthy is itself a good metric. Most of the country is on fuck all but collectively just adapt and manage expectations. I've also noticed that Ukrainians in general are uniquely sensitive on the subject of opportunity. I suppose being poorer than Vietnam and heading in the wrong direction will do that.
>I've known lads end up doing law conversion courses after nonsense degrees so they can work for their dad's law firms.
Interestingly I remember reading an LSE paper last year that talked about how the inter-generational poverty influences degree choices and how that's a problem in itself. I'll have no luck convincing you lot that a Philosophy degree will get you anything but career unemployment so I'll just point to the apprentice track and common working class thinking that being a garage mechanic is a good career move.
>common working class thinking that being a garage mechanic is a good career move.
It pays about as well as a qualified nurse and it's not going away any time soon- I don't know any machanics who lost their job because of covid. It depends entirely what you call a "good" career move.
Working class people grow up with different expectations and a lot of them internalise the idea that you're better off making the best of a bad lot. If you're aspirationally minded and intent on increasing social mobility that no doubt sounds like a bad thing, but at the same time I don't think there's anything wrong with a person simply aspiring to the comfortable life, taking the safe bet opportunities which they know are attainable for them.
I feel like there's a sort of inherent elitism to the idea of meritocracy and education as a path to social mobility. We're always going to need binmen, brickies and haggard but strangely attractive middle aged birds behind the counter of sarnie shops. Part of the reason the younger generation is so disillusioned is because when they leave uni and find themselves stuck in a call centre, they realise they might genuinely have been better off taking that BTEC and becoming a plumber than whatever fancy degree they wasted their money on instead.
It's a different risk/reward tradeoff, that's all. Training as a mechanic will provide you with a reliable income that you can raise a family on. Getting a degree might give you a start in a great career, but it might also end up being an albatross; that's especially true if you don't have the wealth and family connections that are all too often essential in getting your first break. Middle-class kids can afford to aimlessly shamble through their 20s until they figure it out, but working-class kids don't have that kind of safety net and need to hit the ground running.
It's also worth pointing out the hidden pitfall in student funding - maintenance loans. Even if you're entitled to the full loan, it's nowhere near enough to live on in most cities. That's no real problem if your family can afford to send you a few quid if you can't find a part-time job, but it causes a lot of working-class kids to drop out in their first year because they just can't make ends meet.
The people I know from school who are doing best tend to be the ones who trained to be electricians and plumbers and the like rather than those who went to university. We left school in 2004.
I suppose it's about getting some decent career advice early on in your life. There are people who didn't go to university and learned a lucrative trade and those that have a menial minimum wage job, just like some people who went to university and have carved out successful careers and others who didn't have a clue what they were doing and are still working in call centres. What really matters is having a career plan and direction towards being successful.
>>8067 Actually all careers in trades require a ridiculous amount of time to break into earning proper money and most don't because of the significant informal barriers for independent plumbers, carpenters etc.
Mechanic is especially bad because you're working in a freezing cold garage paying off debts to big-toolbox with a sketchy employer. My brother did it for 10 years and was miserable while his mate went to uni to study engineering so he could get a cushy job working for Mercedes.
>>8069 This is the opposite experience for me because I left school before the Great Recession. Maybe I just didn't grow up in as big a shithole as I remember but a fair few went on to be solicitors and the like.
Although I'll agree that if you have shit-for-brains and don't pull your finger out then you're going to have a hard time. I suspect daddy's money is being a bit overstated here as you can dodge call centre bullshit by securing internships or just being aware that places like the government are always hiring. Obviously university should also be about learning and doing what you want to do because ultimately I'd hazard most don't end up in their career path and struggle in something shite because they feel they have to. Who knows how much talent has been wasted this way.
Between an oversupply of graduates and cuts to legal aid, a lot of solicitors are really struggling financially. Top graduates can still find entry-level jobs paying £100k+ in a top London firm, but at the other end of the spectrum you've got people doing Legal Aid work earning less than minimum wage.
I've also read recently (>>29347) that background matters a lot. Students from poorer backgrounds who go to the same universities and earn the same grades (e.g. earning a first at Cambridge) still earn considerably less than their more well off peers.
