Was talking to older Sis the other day…
She said if you’re going to start a business, either go low end (like a Dollar Store) or go high end (like selling expensive cars).
Because the middle income earners are becoming extinct.
I kinda agree with her. Nobody I know seems to have any disposable cash anymore…salaries haven’t kept up with inflation. The haves and the have nots, is this what we’ve become?
Thoughts?
starting small is sensible, no?
The warehouse job where I worked in 1989 is still paying the same hourly wage today…$11.50 per hour to start!
Can you believe that? 28 years later and the same starting rate of pay.
Something is wrong here.
At some point in the mid 90’s, ‘please the shareholders’ became the norm, and hell be damned to the employees and their families. So cut cut cut…now getting one person doing 15 things poorly instead of 5 things well.
I blame simple Corporate greed and Free Trade agreements in part for destroying the middle class.
Don’t what is causing the trend but apparently the gap between the rich and everybody else has been increasing. I don’t know about the middle income. According to this:
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/
The middle class became rich steadily since the 1970s. Maybe the way they determine who is rich hasn’t kept up with inflation dunno. Which is weird because the labor force participation rate has declined since around then too. Sometimes I wish I got my degree in economics so I would know all the ins and outs of why this is so.
And most women are stuck in miserable low-paying retail jobs, when they would rather be home with their young children.
It takes two incomes now to have the lifestyle our parent’s knew.
Yea something about what I just posted doesn’t seem right. About half of working people are considered upper class in america? Maybe it is skewed by people in new york where waiters earn like $80,000 a year or something.
Groceries…gas…smokes…booze…hydro to heat your home…
These were all afterthoughts for me in the 1990’s, because they were all reasonably cheap.
Now these staples are chewing up most of our income, and the wages just haven’t kept up.
That’s why I don’t like inflation. Also are you responding to me? It isn’t giving me the notification.
Yes and no…
I was responding to both you and anyone interested in the thread.
Interest rates, overbearing insurance and liability costs, overwhelming regulations and beurocricy of municipalities make small business and mid business levels too costly to maintain as well as providing a higher wage to workers. So unfortunately the wages dont get raised as they should.
I ran a commercial lighting company for 10 years and while with only a handful of employees and bringing in almost a million dollars a year in sales, i was still struggling to pay my mortgage and make payroll at the same time most of the time, my expenses were thru the roof. The cost of doing business is just outrageous, and maintaining cash flow was a full time job in itself. Everything runs on credit so when interest rates spike or there is uncertainty in the market or future everything haults and it really kills the small businesses. I do not miss the headache of running a company, i always thought growing up that i wanted to be my own boss, little did i know what it would cost me financially and the toll the stress took on my health. Im now currently happily unemployed.
Interesting story. Thanks for relating that to us.