The American Worker has been on a Retrumplican Created Hamster Wheel since 1981

[maxrandb]

I have said this before, but in 1980, I was a Stock Clerk at an Ohio Grocery Store. Started part-time in 1974 bagging groceries, went full-time stock a couple years later. In 1980, I had reached the highest, non-butcher, non-Department Manager full time hourly wage. It was $12.60 an hour, time-and-a-half for over time, double-time on Sundays and Holidays, and got 8 hours of pay for my Birthday. I was a high school graduate. That's equivalent to about $96K in today's money..for a Grocery Store Stock Clerk.

I could raise a family with that job. I could entrench myself, solidly, into the Middle Class with that job. Hell, I might even be able to swing a family vacation with that job.

We threw that all away on the altar of "trickle-down"

The election of RAY-Gun in 1980, and his "landslide" in 1984, cemented the bullshit "trickle-down" economic Retrumplican policies for a generation. Worse, it pitted Middle Class Americans against other Middle Class Americans.

Angry Middle Class Americans making $52K-$57K a year, and seeing their pensions, benefits and buying power erode, were given a new villain to blame for their plight...and it wasn't the already ultrawealthy.

Hate-Radio and other right-wing propaganda sources, convinced those Americans that their true enemy was their fellow Americans making $55K-$60K a year, with decent benefits packages, either through Union membership, or higher education.

We've been on a hamster wheel ever since.

Hell, one of the "great" corporate screeds that became a national "bestseller" was about how workers needed to "adjust" to find the fucking cheese corporate America was fucking stealing. I can't count the numbers of time I heard some Middle Class American quote that fucking book, and claim that the workers problems were caused by not "properly navigating the maze"

That, IMHO, is the driving force that brought us to this cliff.

From Ray-Gun launching his campaign in Neshoba County, FL, to Donnie Dipshit descending the "Golden" escalator, it has always been about transferring wealth from middle America to the already wealthy.

[Johnny2X2X]

1. Fantastic op

I remember the 70s and started working as a high school student in the mid 80s. Even then, in the mid and late 80s I remember working part time at restaurants with people who were still actually making a living as a line cook. These people were working as a cook at a moderate sitdown restaurant and were able to afford apartments and to own cars. Then in the early 90s as I left for college I started seeing changes, friends I had from ebfore were now renting rooms rather than apartments. This type of worker got absoluitely hammered in the 00s and gooing into Covid were totally unable to bear even the most modest of financial crises.

I do think it's worth mentioning though that under Biden, the tide has legitimately started to turn back. Low wage earners have seen huge raises, ones that have greatly exceeded inflation even during the worst of it. Strengthening Obamacare has also led to more people having health care coverage than ever. Biden knows who needs help, the working poor, and the middle class. He's jhe most pro union president in history. He cares zero about the rich, "they're doing fine without any help" are his words.

[diane in sf]

2. Jobs disappeared in the early 70s. All my friends said stay in school as long as possible, there are no jobs.

Baby boomers cresting into the job market as the oil recession hit.

[haele]

5. A couple things happened in the late 70's/early 80's that affected jobs...

Technology which actually reduced the amount of people needed to run larger scaled organizations and businesses. Both in terms of physical labor and service labor. You just didn't need a secretary or accounting pool, or file clerks anymore. Nor did you need as many people to run programmable machinery in the factories, or farm hands to help with harvest or at a dairy.

Corporations realized quickly the benefits of canning higher paid executive and management assistants, and saw that as an excuse for consolidating and restructuring their
internal company labor across the board.
The Post War boom was getting harder to sustain;
loosening regulations affecting big businesses and mergers which creating even more lost jobs as smaller businesses were bought out or couldn't compete.
Baby boomers flooding the job markets as their parents retired or sold their small businesses. Also, fewer and fewer boomers wanted to keep the family farm or small business; developers were offering them instant wealth to take all that hard work off their hands once Dad was no longer making the decisions and the heirs realized the amount of hard work it took to keep things running.
This is still going on; Boomers have found the get rich quick policies of the 70's and 80's did not enable a majority of them to retire and go on to do whatever made them happy as their parents did (401ks are not pensions....) in the 90's and early 2000's as they expected and the jobs they've been holding on to or keeping from younger workers are just starting to unclog. In the mean time, available jobs are again stratifying between physical labor/low end service and "professional" at an alarming rate - more people competing for fewer well paying jobs while those who make money off money take the lion's share of both money and power.

Boomers were the first large cohort of teenagers as we know today, and a larger percentage of them just weren't able to make the leap from a longer childhood to adulthood. This isn't a "kids these days" observation, this is seeing the difference between a far more time consuming work load my "Silent/Greatest Generation" grandparents had between jobs and home maintenance, and the increasing amount of leisure time my parents and I had to be able to just - hang out and veg - after work and chores.

All this being said, Americans have always been a bit more focused on what you do to make or have money than who you are and what you like to do. I suspect that's where a lot of our current malaise comes from. People don't count. Your potential skills or talents don't matter.
The money you can make for yourself or someone else is the only thing that seems to give Americans a sense of value to themselves and others. And that's a bad reflection on our society in general.

Haele

[ffr]

3. Count me in too on your premise.

And it throws up a giant danger flag as to who the middle class could be turned against itself. Sure corporate news organizations played their part, but why didn't and hasn't logic set in for these people? Why do they still choose to vote against their own best interests? Is it a 'dumb' thing? I mean, lead in the food chain has lowered everyone's IQ and lead poisoning can lead to personality disorders, but how does it explain so many dumb angry people choosing to shoot themselves in the foot politically?

I suppose it's a combination of these factors and addiction.

[orthoclad]

4. Trickle down? Gusher up!

from the Congressional Budget Office.

This was before the Trump tax cuts took hold.

Another post today said that billionaires' wealth has DOUBLED since 2020.

Doubled.

Imagine what that does to the curve above, which ends in 2019.

edit to add: Remember, wealth is power.

[shrike3]

6. In the late 70s II knew minimum wage workers who could afford cars and apartments.

Not enough to get rich, of course, but they could survive.