Concerning the discussion about who is "middle class"....

[FredStembottom]

.... I am a blue-collar worker. Always have been. But my parents weren't. Both were unlucky to be highly paid professionals in careers supplanted entirely by computers.

I took blue-collar work as a "temporary" position as I tried to establish a professional career. I was unable to.
I was disappointed and blamed myself for years.

Then I began to to see my blue-collar co-workers begin to change. Soon, nearly everyone around me was a college-educated chronically unemployed "technocrat". The high-school only guys were disappearing (where to?).

Soon, I was clinging to my temporary job as it began to look like a fairly stable island that could not be out-sourced (a phone-banker in Mumbai still can't drive my truck... though I'm sure someone is working on that).

The Middle Class has slid down, folks. And I can only assume that the former working class are the guys standing on the off-ramps of America with the "Homeless. Please help." signs.

New models may be needed. History is different this time.

[lunatica]

1. Those of us who live one paycheck away from disaster

are the lucky ones for now. But our luck can run out very quickly and then we'll be in the streets too. I've already exhausted all my options. I've declared bankruptcy after going through a layoff which didn't last long before I was hired again. The bankruptcy bought me some time and then I went through the foreclosure process when I couldn't pay my equity mortgage payment which was high because I had to keep using my equity line over the years. I applied for a loan modification for my mortgage and equity line and to my surprise was granted one. Now I can pay my mortgage but at the end of the month I have to borrow money to put gas in my car so I can get to work.

So I'm right there at that invisible line between having a salary that keeps me in the lower middle class and being poor. And at my age (63) things can get very ugly very fast.

And when you're on that invisible line you tend to keep slipping into that hole. Little things like having to pay for getting the car's grinding brakes fixed can mean a month of beans and pasta meals and having to choose between getting the car's registration tags or fixing the passenger window which was busted by punks, well the window doesn't get fixed. I want to keep my car in case I need it to sleep in someday as much as for transportation.

We do live in interesting times.

[FredStembottom]

2. I'm so sorry to read that, lunatica.

i know many people who are in your position - or will get there with another dip in the Recession tank.

:hug: