I wouldn’t say we have a thriving middle class but I think people overlook something. We spend more than we make. People use to take savings seriously. You had one car not 3 or 4. We had homes that matched the size of our family. Now we need homes with 5 to 6 bedrooms for a family of 4, a play room, a guest room, tv’s in every room, leather chairs, Large swimming pools,and a screen room in the most expensive neighborhoods.
Kids have to be signed up for all types of activities and go to private schools. And let us not forget about the expensive plastic surgery. So today’s middle class is tied up in severe debt. They want to live like millionaires and the poor want to live like the middle class of the 1980’s.
People today don’t know the real value of the dollar bill. Why? Because credit cards make things come true in a moments notice. When I was little, my parents saved before buying anything. We were poor, but we had clothes and food and shelter. We had one tv for the whole family. No cable, no internet, and only one phone, one bathroom for 7 people. We managed and my parents were able to squirrel away a little bit of money weekly for emergencies. They also had a Christmas savings account so they never had to borrow money for the holidays. My mom never had a credit card till she had to get one to get to purchase a plane ticket online because she couldn’t send physical cash online and the credit card purchase needed to be in her name for her to pick up the ticket at the airport. It’s nearly impossible to simply live off cash any longer.
If the middle class actually started saving more and using credit less and didn’t thrive to live above their means, then you would notice a thriving middle class. Right now the middle class and the poor are in extreme debt. Though not all their fault. Banks have a roll in the way this all played out. They gave loans to people they knew would be put in a financial bind and have let interest rates sky rocket to make more money and at the same time make it difficult for people to actual pay them back so they can steal homes and try to sell them again. And when that failed. Well, then have the taxpayer bail them out.