General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What is your annual family income? [View all]haele
(12,688 posts)They don't really want to pay attention to rising costs because that's just one more stresser in their lives. For the most part, they can't control the rising cost of food or fuel. People with land (and water) and/or access to alternatives to transportation can offset those costs through change of habit or planning alternatives to store-bought, but in today's reality, that's much harder to change. It's expensive and sometimes impossible to "just move" to a more affordable or economically feasible location.
Complaining can't help when you're trapped because of family responsibilities or job access or personal funds. It's less painful to ignore problems you can't control until you either get lucky and a way opens up, or you end up sliding down and losing enough that there's nothing left to deal with.
I posted in another thread that in San Diego, (the city and to some extent, the majority of the county I live in) due to the cost of living (cost of housing, fuel/transit, basic utilities, and store-bought food) no matter if you are in the "rich" part of town or the barrio, a wage of $20 an hour gives you the same quality of life that someone working the same hours making $13 an hour in, say, Huntsville, Alabama.
We make enough to keep a roof over the heads of 5 people and six critters and pay for food, utilities, medical, cable, and transit (in decreasing level of cost expenditure for our family). Our household is not at six figures, but at least 2/3rds of the way there. No vacation, no new cars, no concerts or weekend movies. Medical is keeping us from getting ahead.
Of course, in what passes for this century's "Unique American Experience", we shouldn't complain that there's no chance for us to get ahead because maybe the standard of living for someone who is working hard as a professional is not the same as it would have been 40 years ago - that because we aren't well-off, we're doing something wrong, even though we're cutting as many corners as we can.
And then there's the public mindset that because we're not scrounging out of garbage cans, we aren't "poor" enough to complain.
After 40 years of work, I can say this for certain. It's gotten to the point that in this "flat world" economy, most working people and small businesses are living on a "top" that is being spun by investors and boards of directors of the major employers, gyrating around between jobs and cost of living over a small patch-worked platform of money and resources suspended over a huge garbage can that the spinners are playing over. As the gyro tilts, workers and small businesses are thrown off, either to land in the hole or be scooped up by a player who might be interested. If you work, you can't win; you can only hope to be scooped up and set to the side to survive until the next load and spin cycle in their game.
Haele