Just thinking about the separation between the working class and upper class and the void of the middle class. Looking for houses is both frustrating and revealing. I know I am lucky to have a good job working for a big company who provides me many benefits. I am grateful. I have what sounds like a good annual income. Until we look at buying a house. Maybe I am too arrogant or is it naive to assume when I moved from California to Utah I should be able to find a neighborhood reasonably close to work with good school performance? So in my neighborhood median home value is about $250k. Now I qualify for this price range. I am actually at the median income range for Utah. But when the mortgage will be about $1700/month and once you consider what I take home after taxes, medical insurance and retirement savings plan results in having about half my monthly income going toward said mortgage. Then gas and insurance to get to and from work costs like another $400 a month. And utility payments cost another $400 for garbage, water, electric, internet, and phones. And then there is the grocery bill. Everyone seems to have their hands so far into my pie that there is very little disposable income left to pursue the American Dream or even devote toward things that need to be maintained or updated. I dont buy new clothes or new cars and I do not have a car payment. I am not in debt. I could move to a less expensive neighborhood where the median price of homes are $211,000. A house at that price would take mortgage payments down to about $1400 a month. Its a little better but Bo would be in schools with failing performance scores. There are even more expensive neighborhoods with good schools than the one we chose. The challenge I am finding in the median home range is they were built in the 50s and 60s and the houses are so out of date and desperately needing updates. And I really have nothing left to put toward those updates. You know I love vintage. And I can withstand some quaint design elements. It is the out of date dangerous electrical wires, sagging roofs, cracked foundations with sloped floors, messy plumbing issues, swampy drainage problems and moldy musty basements with gas leaks that are frustrating me. These types of deferred maintenance are what I do not have enough income to resolve in a home within my price range. I would love if my job paid enough to be casual about these problems. But I am at the Utah market pay-cap for my employer. And that was something that I was not aware of when I transferred from Sacramento where the cost of living was very similar.... to Utah where I cant get a raise or a break. Problem is business practices like market pay-caps and shadow wages do harm our economy. Inflation does not go away. As the division between upper class and working class grows, the American dream is being gutted and the working class becomes a slave class dependent on a job from the top 5% in control of money and power in order to live pay check to pay check. If I and others like me in the median income range do not have residual income to reinvest eventually the economy tanks. Sure the numbers might look good on paper because business culture values growth. But measuring growth at the expense of gutting the middle class is not sustainable. Just sayin... will America become an oligarchy or plutocracy?
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 04:40:53 +0000
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