The middle-class condition

The average American wants a simple life. They want to find a decent partner, have kids, find an occupation they enjoy that provides them with nice things. Most people don’t have dreams of being the rich and famous and don’t want to live on the government tit, they just want an average life an to be happy. However, that middle ground is the hardest to maintain and brings more stress and worry than it does happiness.

Middle-Class America is dying, it’s dying because people work hard to get to a place of comfort but end up in a place of debt. There is a fine line between poverty and “middle class”. Those who work their way out of poverty always have one foot in the grave, and one foot a step away from heaven. The American Middle-Class family merely gets a taste of the fruits of their labors. 

In today’s economy, it requires both parents to work, that’s just to live decently. To afford a modest home, or pay rent for a home with enough space in a decent neighborhood. We want our kids to have all their needs met, to have it better than we did. With that, we sacrifice raising them. We sacrifice family time; our kids are left unattended all so we can keep our heads above water. 

Everything is so expensive, cost of living goes up but pay doesn’t go up to compensate and if it does, the cost will get higher because the cut the rich takes is so significant it will never balance out.  One unexpected expense, illness or injury could take a working-class family from comfort to struggle.  Ironically there is no help or assistance for the middle class. If they make over a certain amount of money on the previous year’s tax return they qualify for no help or assistance.

They cannot afford to pay for everything out of pocket, they aren’t able to get any help so what the end up in is debt, an overwhelming vortex of consuming darkness they never can get out of. Meanwhile, industries around them are making money hand over fist and selling the people the delusion of happiness.

Are we really giving our children better than we had?

More than we had?

Our wants have eliminated a crucial part of human growth; suffering and struggle. Growing up in the 80s/90s was very different. The majority of the working-class families would be classified poor per today’s standards. Growing up in those days we didn’t see it that way. A landline phone was a luxury, some families signed up for party lines, which were community phone lines where you could listen in on other people’s conversations, but it gave you access to phone service.

If you had too much month at the end of the money, phone access was the first thing to go. We had a TV but usually one per household, maybe two and we got 3 channels, that played news, sports, cartoons, and the weekly sitcoms. We had to use rabbit ears to get a decent signal. Cable was available but only for the extremely privileged families and they only had 12 channels.

We were left to our own imagination to entertain ourselves. In those days video game systems were very new and the games were very limited. Parents would have to save up to buy their children an Atari, Nintendo or Sega Genesis.

Even our meals were different. We got protein daily but the meat was a weekly treat, not three times a day expectation.  We had gardens for our fruits and vegetables, beans and peanut butter made up our protein and rice were a filler to help us sleep at night. We didn’t have bottled water; we drank from the hose or faucet. Soda was a luxury not a staple in our homes. We made our own tea and Kool-Aid came from the package.

We mowed our lawns, even if it was with an old-fashioned rotary mower. At the same time, kids could work at 12 and earn money. Girls often babysat for their neighbors or were paid to help clean houses.

Boys could make a decent living pushing a mower around the block. Boys could show up at a construction site an get paid to clean up the scrap. It’s becoming extremely hard for kids to earn money until they are 18 years old. I personally feel we have slowed down their developmental process by making their lives more convent.

What are we doing?

Are we better?

I think we are weaker as a nation. I think our kids are weaker, but still, obtain the same rebellion all generations had without the understanding and experience behind them. Our society has “PC” or caused such a political correction that the average American is weak-minded. We are raising kids in a society where they believe everything should be equal and fair because that’s what the schools are teaching.

Standard conflict resolution skills have been deemed barbaric behavior so instead of kid’s getting into a fistfight to resolve their issues they go and get weapons to resolve their problems.

Few kids understand a one on one fight because they are taught that isn’t ok. Instead, a gang of children will jump one child and if that child fights back they are equally accountable for the fight. They are told to ignore it or walk away.

Discipline has been removed from the hands of the educators as well.  On a different end of the spectrum, kids aren’t allowed to have fun and be kids anymore without consequences. Nearly every minor infraction is a criminal charge. This has happened because the role of the parent has been taken from the parents.

Society has determined that children have more rights than parents, so if you discipline your children and they don’t approve you could have child services in your home. What have we done in this past 30 years but screw our children up?

This brings me to the world wide web and social media. We have tools at our hands that we never could have dreamed up, but like all tools, they can build or destroy depending on what hands they fall into. Social media can be an amazing tool to network, keep in touch, market or just have fun. Social media can also let evil into your homes.

It can give your children access to a dangerous world that consist of bullies and predators who come into your home without an invention or you ever knowing. Are we really building a better tomorrow? Have we asked ourselves if the world comes to complete and total chaos would our children be able to survive without the luxuries, we have forced on them? Could they live without Wi-Fi?  Would they know what to do without water or electricity? Our need for more has completely crippled the future.

The middle class isn’t a happy place, it’s an illusion that is harder to keep than attain and betters the rich more than it helps those who are working to live it. Money a comfort doesn’t provide happiness, it gives you things. The stress of trying to keep it all together will only cause you stress and pain. We need to take America back and go back to a simple life. Stop feeding the cash cows.

Live life and love it.