Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here to us sitting in for a
Speaker 2: good old fashioned stuff you should know episode.
Speaker 3: That's right, not one of those new fangled ones.
Speaker 2: No, no, not one of the new ones that are
Speaker 2: just like you know, all hair gel and yeah, you know, style,
Speaker 2: no substance.
Speaker 3: It still has that new podcast episode smell.
Speaker 2: Yes for sure. Speaking of new Smell, how do you
Speaker 2: feel being fifty five? Birthday boy?
Speaker 3: New smell? You know, it's great. I think I have
Speaker 3: actual privileges now that come with it.
Speaker 2: That age, like cheap coffee at McDonald's that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know about McDonald's, but like I think
Speaker 3: I think I can play golf for a little cheaper now,
Speaker 3: like literally as this your rate, which is that's hysterical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I think you can get an AARP membership
Speaker 2: now too.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean you're probably already getting that stuff
Speaker 3: in the mail, right. They start early.
Speaker 2: H No, I'm not even fifty yet. They won't let me.
Speaker 2: I keep applying and they keep denying.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe fifty. I mean they start sending in that
Speaker 3: stuff years ahead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we used to have when you had to get
Speaker 2: it for work or something like that. But they found out,
Speaker 2: you know, what our age is, and they got really mad.
Speaker 3: They said, we've been spending sending things to spring chickens.
Speaker 2: But yeah, well, let me know how the golf thing goes,
Speaker 2: and if you get cheap coffee at McDonald's, and what
Speaker 2: being a senior is like, Chuck, because you know, I
Speaker 2: think for me and Jerry and everybody, we just want
Speaker 2: to wish you a happy birthday.
Speaker 3: I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: People went bonkers on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, was that you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: I figured, you know what my uncle, My uncle wished
Speaker 3: you a happy birthday?
Speaker 2: Did he on that post? I didn't see that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty funny. Then THO was a confusing series
Speaker 3: of texts where he was finally like, is it your birthday?
Speaker 3: It was like those a few days ago.
Speaker 2: Sure, he said, who is this? Yeah exactly, he said, McGovern,
Speaker 2: not mcguffin, no McGovern. Okay, all right, let's start talking,
Speaker 2: because we're talking about the middle class in America at least,
Speaker 2: although this definitely extends to other countries like the UK,
Speaker 2: some of the Nordic countries, Australia, there's not an obsession
Speaker 2: but a real like obsession with the middle class, how
Speaker 2: it's doing, how mobile it is, upwardly, downwardly, and there's
Speaker 2: it's essentially the middle class is like the thumbnail metric
Speaker 2: for the health, the real, true health of a society
Speaker 2: and economy.
Speaker 3: Would you agree, Yeah, I mean I think so. And
Speaker 3: I think that used to be a real like it's
Speaker 3: always been a talking point in the United States, but
Speaker 3: I think it used to be a real, genuine talking point,
Speaker 3: whereas now I think it's like, you know, are all
Speaker 3: the rich people doing great? Okay, all right, now let's
Speaker 3: talk publicly a little bit about the middle class, I
Speaker 3: guess right.
Speaker 2: But not everybody's fallen for that. There's like this whole
Speaker 2: idea that the middle class and the health of the
Speaker 2: middle class was a canary in the coal mine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and not only is the canary dead, it caught fire
Speaker 2: at some point as far as a lot of people
Speaker 2: are concerned about the United States middle class at least
Speaker 2: because there's this idea that it's dead. But then if
Speaker 2: you read up a little further on it, you come
Speaker 2: across other people who are like, no, no, dude, look
Speaker 2: at these statistics, like the middle class is actually doing great,
Speaker 2: way better than they used to be doing, and other
Speaker 2: people are like that just doesn't quite add up. So
Speaker 2: when you get into it, it's really tough to define
Speaker 2: the middle class. And you can monkey around with who's
Speaker 2: middle class or who's not and come up with all
Speaker 2: sorts of different profiles. But I think it just matters
Speaker 2: what people who would probably self identify as the middle
Speaker 2: class feel about the economy and about their prospects in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Like what is that the vibe session? Yeah?
Speaker 2: What was her name, Kyla Scanlon. She's a kind of
Speaker 2: a gen Z financial explanatory journalist. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's the idea of like sort of like
Speaker 3: not falling for being gas lit by everything you're being
Speaker 3: told about how great it's going. And there's something called
Speaker 3: a vibe session. Am I saying that?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Vibe session?
Speaker 3: It just sounds weird because a vibe session sounds like,
Speaker 3: you know, something I do late on Friday nights.
Speaker 2: Right, This is with a C instead of an S.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, and it's much less ire. Yeah, oh man,
Speaker 3: But yeah, the idea of you know, various politicians, you know,
Speaker 3: whenever anyone's running for something talking about typically reelection, talking
Speaker 3: about how great everything really is, whereas everyone is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: but why doesn't it feel that way. That's a vibe
Speaker 3: session instead of like a true recession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was pointing out like that actually can
Speaker 2: become self fulfilling. Yeah, sure, because if enough people start
Speaker 2: feeling like, no, things aren't going so good, they start
Speaker 2: not spending money, and that actually can trigger a recession
Speaker 2: just from the fact that people feel that way, no
Speaker 2: matter what the metrics say. So, yeah, we'll talk about
Speaker 2: all that, but let's talk about the history of the
Speaker 2: middle class because it hasn't always been around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting if you look at, you know, the
Speaker 3: history of the middle class in the West. It generally
Speaker 3: you can point to late medieval Europe as you know,
Speaker 3: when things started to get cooking a little bit as
Speaker 3: far as the middle class goes, and you know, we'll
Speaker 3: walk you all the way through you know, modern times.
Speaker 3: But as cities became a thing, you know, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, you needed a middle class to sort of
Speaker 3: administer what the aristocracy was asking for in a lot
Speaker 3: of cases. Is so you know, there was this distinct
Speaker 3: group kind of created that wasn't aristocracy, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: the peasant class. And I think one word, and I
Speaker 3: believe they've eve been done a short stuff on the bourgeois, Yeah,
Speaker 3: didn't we?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what it means to be bourgeoisie. That's right,
Speaker 2: there's another word for him burgers too, and apparently both words.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't remember this, but I'm sure we
Speaker 2: talked about it in the bourgeois short stuff. That that's
Speaker 2: the name of the cities, the fortified cities where they worked,
Speaker 2: right or where they emerged from. Yeah, and the burger
Speaker 2: is that's why the burger Meister is called that in
Speaker 2: either Rudolph or Frosty or some rankin bass something like
Speaker 2: the scary BG exactly. Yeah, Burgermeister means mayor so he's
Speaker 2: like the head of the city essentially. Anyway, those were
Speaker 2: the merchants, the bankers, professionals that emerged to kind of
Speaker 2: fill that space between the peasants and the aristocracy. And
Speaker 2: you could call them the first middle.
Speaker 3: Class, yeah, sort of. But they grew in size and
Speaker 3: wealth and power, so they were kind of like, Hey,
Speaker 3: we tricked everybody. We're not really the middle class. We're
Speaker 3: I mean maybe upper middle class. Certainly obviously not aristocracy
Speaker 3: because they weren't born into that. But as people got wealthier,
Speaker 3: there was kind of a true middle class that came
Speaker 3: after that, where you needed people to do things like
Speaker 3: bookkeeping and you know, kind of handled the business of
Speaker 3: the people that previously had said that they were the
Speaker 3: middle class, even though no one was using those terms,
Speaker 3: you know, we should point.
Speaker 2: Out, right, no, nothing like that. There was also a
Speaker 2: lot of changes where before it was wealth and power,
Speaker 2: right because that's what nobility kind of based itself on.
Speaker 2: So the earliest middle class kind of based itself on
Speaker 2: those same markers. But thanks to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment,
Speaker 2: other markers kind of came along. The whole idea of thrift,
Speaker 2: of saving your money, of not being just frivolous with
Speaker 2: your money, that became a really big middle class social marker,
Speaker 2: certain tastes, certain ways you would dress. And then of
Speaker 2: course wealth, wealth has always been a marker for the
Speaker 2: middle class, especially the upper middle class. But these were
Speaker 2: all like, all these things seemed so normal to us
Speaker 2: and so ingrained that it seems alien almost to kind
Speaker 2: of tease this stuff out and identify it historically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And this was you know, in Europe
Speaker 3: at the time when the United States was born. Olivia,
Speaker 3: by the way, did a great job with this article.
Speaker 3: I thought, uh, greed, she is a heck of a writer.
Speaker 3: So the United States was, you know, as she points out,
Speaker 3: kind of a sort of a bourgeois not a I
Speaker 3: wanted to say, project or a test an experiment, maybe
Speaker 3: the American experiment. Yeah, because there were people like Thomas
Speaker 3: Jefferson who were very much believed like, hey, we're going
Speaker 3: to build this new country on and not on the
Speaker 3: backs of but like the middle class, these people that
Speaker 3: owned farms and could provide for their family and that
Speaker 3: own some land, like this is the American experiment, that
Speaker 3: like the goal that we're striving toward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those yamen farmers were typically not slave holding.
Speaker 2: So his idea was to basically become a nation of
Speaker 2: self sufficient farmers growing food for their families and themselves
Speaker 2: and then selling some in the market. And that just
Speaker 2: is not how it went, because the wealthy landowners who
Speaker 2: had actually had slaves became essentially the power, the elite,
Speaker 2: the people actually pulling the levers, and eventually they except
Speaker 2: in the Antebellum South. They kind of replaced that wealthy
Speaker 2: land owning and agriculture with industry as the Industrial Revolution
Speaker 2: started in Europe and then spread to the US, and
Speaker 2: then we had a real disparity in power and wealth growing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, because if you're owning a factory or
Speaker 3: owning a railroad or a share of a railroad, that
Speaker 3: is a very distinct upper class. It may not be aristocracy,
Speaker 3: but aristocracy became less and less important as time went on.
Speaker 3: Flashed forward to like the middle of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 3: and you had people like Karl Marx, and we should
Speaker 3: say Carl Marx was trying to sell something which was Marxism,
Speaker 3: but he would come along and say like, hey, they're
Speaker 3: really two classes. There's the working class and then everybody
Speaker 3: else that's exploiting the working class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the exploiters or the oppressors and the oppressed.
Speaker 2: I think he also put it, they owned the capital.
Speaker 2: They were the capitalists. They were the ones who could
Speaker 2: open a factory and employ you and you depended on
Speaker 2: them for money, but they were exploiting your labor. Yes,
Speaker 2: And in this sense where there's an owning class and
Speaker 2: a working class, there's really no room for a middle class. Eventually, though,
Speaker 2: a middle class still emerged because those capitalists aren't going to,
Speaker 2: like you said, do their own books. They're not going
Speaker 2: to go teach the next generation of workers to come
Speaker 2: work in their factory. So like there was a need
Speaker 2: for people to train the working classes to better serve
Speaker 2: the capitalist elite. And that's where the middle class really
Speaker 2: started to emerge in the United States in particular, but
Speaker 2: also in the UK, Australia, some of the other places
Speaker 2: in the West. That's where that the middle classes we
Speaker 2: understand it now, really developed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, and it was there during the time
Speaker 3: of Marx, but that wasn't good for Marxism to point
Speaker 3: that out. So yeah, it was very much easier for
Speaker 3: him to say, like you're being exploited or you're the exploiter.
Speaker 3: It was a little black and white, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: So in the nineteenth century, the middle class values system
Speaker 3: started to kind of take shape, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of this the value system that ideally is still
Speaker 3: around today, which is the idea that you know, if
Speaker 3: you work hard, you save up, you can be a success.
Speaker 3: In the United States, you know, they agreed that people
Speaker 3: should vote more and more like have access to voting.
Speaker 3: And of course that started with like, hey, maybe men
Speaker 3: that aren't land owners should be able to vote, and
Speaker 3: then that kind of spread throughout the years to you know,
Speaker 3: people of different races, and then women finally. But the
Speaker 3: idea that expanding voting rights and expanding education was always
Speaker 3: sort of a middle class value, and then early on
Speaker 3: it was you know, the role of women in society
Speaker 3: has definitely changed as far as the middle class value goes,
Speaker 3: but early on it was, hey, women are very important
Speaker 3: to keep the home, but really be the moral center
Speaker 3: of the world. Of the home, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, of the family, which was of utmost importance,
Speaker 2: the nuclear family, which became really important in the Victorian
Speaker 2: era and really informed the middle class values too, right,
Speaker 2: and all of those seem like so we take them
Speaker 2: for granted so much as values typically aside from you know,
Speaker 2: forcing women to work in the home whether they like
Speaker 2: it or not, that just goes to show you how
Speaker 2: effective the middle class was at spreading its basically imposing
Speaker 2: its values on everybody else in the West.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Should we take an early break here, Well,
Speaker 3: it's not too early, actually, I think, so, Yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: we'll take a break. I think that's a good setup.
Speaker 3: Middle classes forming. Everyone's getting excited, and we'll fast forward
Speaker 3: to the twentieth century right after.
Speaker 2: This definitely about our childhood et r.
Speaker 1: Y Skur, all.
Speaker 3: Right, I promised talk to the twentieth century in the
Speaker 3: middle class, and that's where we are, uh specifically, you know,
Speaker 3: this is when the middle class in the US really
Speaker 3: really emerged as like a massive thing, like the largest
Speaker 3: portion of a like set of people in the US
Speaker 3: became middle class in the in the twentieth century, and
Speaker 3: really after the war. It was powered by the New Deal.
Speaker 3: Of course, after World War Two, the United States was
Speaker 3: in a unique position as as victor, but also victor
Speaker 3: who didn't have the war fought on their you know,
Speaker 3: mainland soil, right, so we didn't have to do all
Speaker 3: this rebuilding after the war. So we were in a
Speaker 3: position to really he hit the throttle on economic stimulus,
Speaker 3: which was brought about via the New Deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and World War two. Just the sheer amount of
Speaker 2: money thrown into the economy from the government for World
Speaker 2: War two helped as well, right, And we had all
Speaker 2: those technologies that we developed that gave us things like
Speaker 2: pop tarts and stuff immediately after the war and completely
Speaker 2: improved the quality of life for people in the United States,
Speaker 2: especially the middle class. Right, so you have government policy
Speaker 2: like the New Deal, like the National Labor Relations Act
Speaker 2: that are favoring workers, this working class that is becoming
Speaker 2: the middle class. And then one of the other, really
Speaker 2: really really big aspects of what built the middle class
Speaker 2: and the United States and elsewhere were unions. Union membership,
Speaker 2: because if you can bargain collectively, you can't be exploited
Speaker 2: nearly as easily, and that means that life is a
Speaker 2: lot more fair for you, the worker, because you're allowed
Speaker 2: to get together and say no, you can't do that
Speaker 2: to any of us. If you do that to one
Speaker 2: of us, you do it to all of us, and
Speaker 2: we'll all leave.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean we did. We did a great episode
Speaker 3: on unions years ago, So I advise you to go
Speaker 3: listen to that now if you want to learn more
Speaker 3: about those But no, no, no, everyone else. I mean
Speaker 3: you can if you want. Okay, a little refresher, But
Speaker 3: union membership really bloomed in the nineteen thirties and forties.
Speaker 3: I think at the beginning of the twentieth century, it
Speaker 3: was in the low teens union membership and then it
Speaker 3: really really rose from there, and so did wages. Between
Speaker 3: nineteen forty and nineteen sixty, if you were a non farmer,
Speaker 3: your median weekly income rose. And these by the way,
Speaker 3: everything we're doing is in twenty twenty five dollars, just
Speaker 3: to make it easier to understand, but your median weekly
Speaker 3: income for a non farmer went from five hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty dollars to over one thousand dollars, almost eleven hundred bucks.
Speaker 3: And that was across all you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: edgecation levels, you know, different racial groups, different industries. That
Speaker 3: was sort of a broad change. So, you know, it
Speaker 3: was an interesting time in that, you know, pay for
Speaker 3: people and what is now like a solid middle class,
Speaker 3: it was really rising. They were taxing the rich and
Speaker 3: constraining corporate power such that some people called this this
Speaker 3: time the Great Compression, where the wealth levels were sort
Speaker 3: of smashed together on a graph instead of expanded vastly
Speaker 3: like we are now. We're gonna have some shocking numbers
Speaker 3: for you later in this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that era between nineteen forty and I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people essentially put it at the mid
Speaker 2: seventies is when they say the party really started to end.
Speaker 2: Was just as economic boom golden age for the United
Speaker 2: States and the middle class. And there was another big
Speaker 2: factor too, which was home ownership. We did I remember
Speaker 2: in our racial discrimination or housing discrimination episode that we did,
Speaker 2: we pointed out that owning a home has long been
Speaker 2: really important, especially for the middle class, because that is
Speaker 2: how you generate wealth. For most people, your home just
Speaker 2: appreciates some value over the years, and then you can
Speaker 2: also use that home to transfer that wealth to your kids.
Speaker 2: So it's also a form of generational wealth transfer for
Speaker 2: the middle class. So it's really big deal to own
Speaker 2: your own home. And that was another big thing that
Speaker 2: happened after World War Two. Home ownership went up quite
Speaker 2: a bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah previous and this is going way back, but between
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety and nineteen thirty, home ownership was under fifty
Speaker 3: percent of the United States. And eventually, you know, thanks
Speaker 3: to the suspect mortgages that they were handing out like
Speaker 3: candy in two thousand and four, that peaked at I
Speaker 3: think it was close to seventy percent, like sixty nine
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, and then I think it dropped down
Speaker 2: to something like sixty five and is basically plateaued since there.
Speaker 2: But this is the point that that you could own
Speaker 2: a house, you could own a car. Yeah, you could
Speaker 2: have a family of you know, a husband and wife
Speaker 2: and two kids and live in the suburbs, and the
Speaker 2: kids would go to a nice school. And this was obviously,
Speaker 2: this is the most idealized version what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of disparity. There was a lot of
Speaker 2: people who are still very poor in the United States too,
Speaker 2: But overall, if we're just focusing on the middle class,
Speaker 2: you could do all of these things and have a nice,
Speaker 2: comfortable middle class life, a pension after you retired, on
Speaker 2: one salary, one income, because again, one of the main
Speaker 2: values of the middle class at this time was that
Speaker 2: the mother stayed home, raised the kids, and made the
Speaker 2: house the center of the nuclear family, respite from the
Speaker 2: rest of the world. One salary could do all of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was you know, people weren't as far
Speaker 3: apart as they were financially speaking, like you may live
Speaker 3: in the same neighborhood or maybe the neighborhood next to
Speaker 3: your boss. You know, blue collar workers and white collar
Speaker 3: workers were were way more you know, just kind of
Speaker 3: squashed together, like your children probably went to school. If
Speaker 3: you were like a line worker at an auto plant,
Speaker 3: you know, you may not have as nice of a
Speaker 3: car or as big of a house as your manager
Speaker 3: or your boss, but you know, it was in the
Speaker 3: It was in the same world. And you know, I
Speaker 3: still remember that stuff growing up in the eighties, like
Speaker 3: the watch any John Hughes movie, and like all the
Speaker 3: kids at the same school. They were like, you know,
Speaker 3: the rich kids and then the kids that lived in
Speaker 3: that neighborhood, right, but it wasn't extreme wealth and poverty.
Speaker 2: No. And the fact is they were all going to
Speaker 2: the same school exactly. There was like a leveling from that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that was a really big deal. And this
Speaker 2: is this is going on through about to the mid
Speaker 2: seventies when things started to decline for the middle class. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's there was the end of the post war boom.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's really tough to keep up in the
Speaker 2: form that it was in for very long. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of astounding it stayed up that long. Part
Speaker 2: of it was that the US was in that unique position,
Speaker 2: like you said, it didn't have to rebuild after World
Speaker 2: War Two like Europe and Japan did well. After a
Speaker 2: few decades, Europe and Japan were able to rebuild and
Speaker 2: they started to catch up to the United States, which
Speaker 2: meant that they were taking more share of the United
Speaker 2: States pie with say like exports and manufacturing and stuff.
Speaker 2: That was one factor too. There was also the oil crisis. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that that made a bigger dent than I
Speaker 2: ever realized that that was like a history changing event,
Speaker 2: the OPEC oil crisis, and then also political conflicts that
Speaker 2: ultimately laid the bedwork for today's culture wars, civil rights movement, feminism, environmentalism,
Speaker 2: LGBTQ plus US rights. All of these things were marginalized groups.
Speaker 2: Previously marginalized groups came forward and said, no, there's no
Speaker 2: reason we should be treated like second class citizens. That
Speaker 2: created a tension in the United States. A lot of
Speaker 2: corporations came in and figured out how to exploit this
Speaker 2: for their own ends, and that eventually started to divide
Speaker 2: people to where there was this sense of competition is
Speaker 2: the bedrock of American capitalism, and American capitalism is the
Speaker 2: bedrock of the middle class. It's part of the middle class.
Speaker 2: It's a new middle class value. It's where we got
Speaker 2: yuppies in the eighties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. The industrialization also happened. In nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: if one in out of every four non farming jobs
Speaker 3: in the US was in manufacturing, and by twenty seventeen
Speaker 3: it was one and eleven. So other countries, you know,
Speaker 3: as globalization and trade increased, other countries started making stuff
Speaker 3: super cheap. Like this isn't a big surprise to anyone
Speaker 3: to this. Imports from China started coming in, Imports from
Speaker 3: other you know, Southeast Asian countries started coming in. Stuff
Speaker 3: was a lot cheaper to buy, and you know, they
Speaker 3: started automating a lot of stuff. It was, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of the first automation boom was happening in the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies where factories didn't need as many people on
Speaker 3: the line to do stuff that these new machines were doing.
Speaker 3: So that coupled with deunionization, really, you know kind of
Speaker 3: dropping off, was a huge factor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it really definitely declined that it's below ten
Speaker 2: percent for the entire workforce in the United States. A
Speaker 2: huge chunk of that is just from government jobs like teaching,
Speaker 2: they tend to have a very strong union. But overall,
Speaker 2: it went from like thirty five thirty six percent to
Speaker 2: ten percent. And one of the reasons that that happened
Speaker 2: is because the government basically withdrew its support for unions.
Speaker 2: Not only did it stop passing legis enforcing legislation that
Speaker 2: supported unions, it actually started issuing legislation that harmed and
Speaker 2: crippled unions and essentially removed their power.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. And then the last reason, you know,
Speaker 3: we can't talk about the middle class and wealth disparity
Speaker 3: without talking about Ronald Reagan. You know, he's the one
Speaker 3: that kicked it off. And subsequent administrations definitely didn't do
Speaker 3: the middle class any favors. But those Reagan era policies
Speaker 3: that trickle down economics, cutting taxes for corporations, undermining labor unions,
Speaker 3: cutting taxes on the top earners individually really transformed the
Speaker 3: look of our nation heavily, heavily in favor of the
Speaker 3: rich and you know, the top ten percent, especially the
Speaker 3: top one percent. And like I said, other you know,
Speaker 3: Democrats and Republicans since then have failed the United States
Speaker 3: and their policies. I know, after the economic crash and
Speaker 3: the real estate crash in two thousand and eight, there
Speaker 3: were a lot of people, especially now in hindsight that
Speaker 3: look back and say, you know what, we really had
Speaker 3: an opportunity there, and the Obama administration failed us. When
Speaker 3: we bailed out those banks with not very many strings attached.
Speaker 3: We had some leverage there to sort of get some
Speaker 3: changes in place that could have helped, you know, shift
Speaker 3: the look of the financial outlook of our country, and
Speaker 3: we didn't do it.
Speaker 2: No, And what they would have been doing is undoing
Speaker 2: damage that was done during the Clinton administration where they
Speaker 2: repealed the Glass Stegal Act that kept banks from dabbling investments.
Speaker 2: You were either a bank or an investment company, which
Speaker 2: one and after that you don't have to choose, And
Speaker 2: that's ultimately what helped lead us to that massive financial crisis,
Speaker 2: the Great Recession.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's really easy and fun to pick on
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for kicking all this off,
Speaker 2: but they were not the only neoliberal presidents to come
Speaker 2: along after the eighties.
Speaker 3: No, for sure, if you're talking about the middle class today,
Speaker 3: you really have to start with like how do you
Speaker 3: define the middle class? And Libya did a really great
Speaker 3: job in this section. I think like there are a
Speaker 3: lot of different ways that people and pundits like to
Speaker 3: talk about what the middle class even is. Some social
Speaker 3: scientists it's just a super straightforward income based definitions, which
Speaker 3: is good in one sense because you can adjust that
Speaker 3: depending on where you are in the world, Like a
Speaker 3: middle class income in New York City isn't going to
Speaker 3: be the same thing as in a rural area, so
Speaker 3: they can you can adjust things economically based on just
Speaker 3: a strict income based definition, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 2: Also, that means that the middle class doesn't move out
Speaker 2: of reach of certain people too. Like if you just
Speaker 2: have the median income and say that's the middle class,
Speaker 2: As the median income grows, the middle class goes up
Speaker 2: and some people stay behind. This is like here's the
Speaker 2: middle class section, and you can get into it and
Speaker 2: out of it, or drop out of it and go
Speaker 2: above it. But it's going to stay in the same place,
Speaker 2: and it's just going to it's going to change depending
Speaker 2: on how wages rise. Yeah, it seems like a pretty
Speaker 2: good it's a good idea to me. The most widely
Speaker 2: used one comes from the Pew Research Center, and they
Speaker 2: it's an income based approach that they use, but they
Speaker 2: basically say that if your household income is two thirds
Speaker 2: of the median household income or up to double the
Speaker 2: median household income. You are middle class, right, and I
Speaker 2: think in twenty twenty four that meant that your household
Speaker 2: is very important too. That your household made between fifty
Speaker 2: five thousand, eight hundred and twenty dollars to one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty seven thousand, four hundred and sixty dollars any
Speaker 2: anywhere in there, you were middle class income wise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is all obviously like pretext money.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, oh yeah, I would think so. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So under that definition, the middle class made up sixty
Speaker 3: one percent of households in nineteen seventy one, compared to
Speaker 3: just fifty one percent in twenty twenty three. But at
Speaker 3: the same time, the upper income category went from eleven
Speaker 3: percent to nineteen percent and the lower percentage rose from
Speaker 3: twenty seven percent to thirty percent. So what you're seeing
Speaker 3: is like the wealth gap like happening in real time, basically.
Speaker 2: Yes, But that also suggests that eight percent of people
Speaker 2: in the middle class moved up from the core middle
Speaker 2: class to the upper income category. So that's what that's
Speaker 2: an interpretation that a lot of people who are like, no,
Speaker 2: the middle class is fine, suggest.
Speaker 3: Right, then three percent moved down.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so that's yeah. Income is like, if you're
Speaker 2: an economist, this is what you're looking at. If you're
Speaker 2: say anthropologists or sociologists, you might say, well, who considers
Speaker 2: themselves middle class? Maybe we should look at those people
Speaker 2: and then kind of study them like that, like ask
Speaker 2: people are you middle class or not? Are you working class?
Speaker 2: You consider yourself upper class? And they usually either divide
Speaker 2: it into those three lower class, middle class, upper class,
Speaker 2: or else they divide it into quintiles lower class, working class,
Speaker 2: which they would also call lower middle class, core, middle class,
Speaker 2: upper middle class, and then gob smackingly rich.
Speaker 3: And one percent saying buzz office, none of your business.
Speaker 3: Quit ask any questions.
Speaker 2: They have them arrested.
Speaker 3: So twenty twenty four was the last Gallop poll that
Speaker 3: we have where someone said, like, hey, what do you
Speaker 3: consider yourself? And in the United States, thirty nine percent
Speaker 3: of citizens considered themselves middle class. Another fifteen percent said
Speaker 3: there were upper middle class, which brings that grand total
Speaker 3: to fifty four. Thirty one percent identified as working class,
Speaker 3: twelve percent is lower class, just two percent of upper class,
Speaker 3: which means a lot of those upper middle class people
Speaker 3: were lying liars and that they're really part of the
Speaker 3: upper class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, But I think also it's not I'm
Speaker 2: sure some people were like I don't want to say,
Speaker 2: like I feel upper class.
Speaker 3: And self identification, so it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Sure, But at the same time, also I think that
Speaker 2: has to do with the idea that maybe based on income,
Speaker 2: it's almost like that vibe session thing like, yeah, your
Speaker 2: income would put you in the middle class, but you
Speaker 2: don't feel wealthy. You feel like you could be ruined
Speaker 2: by a healthcare crisis at any time. So I think,
Speaker 2: especially with self identification, that gives you a sense of
Speaker 2: the actual health of the economy as far as like
Speaker 2: consumer confidence is concerned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's you know, laziness factors in. You could
Speaker 3: be in the upper middle class but also still have
Speaker 3: a car tire sitting in your sideyard for sure, with
Speaker 3: like typical markers of you know, different glasses.
Speaker 2: For sure, tires in your side Jock, I gotta get
Speaker 2: mine moved.
Speaker 3: Emily got onto me for years about the car battery
Speaker 3: that I had that I just it's like, got to
Speaker 3: get rid of a car battery. I know you can, Oh,
Speaker 3: you take it to like one of the auto stores,
Speaker 3: I know, but none of those feel right.
Speaker 2: They know they take the core out and yeah it's
Speaker 2: they recycle them for real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you've watched them do all that right from
Speaker 3: beginning to help.
Speaker 2: I help on weekends as just as pro bono.
Speaker 3: That's my point is, I don't I don't trust any
Speaker 3: of it. None of it feels right.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm with you. Well, you want to know
Speaker 2: something that really opened my eyes and changed my life, Chuck,
Speaker 2: I realized recently that that whole like grocery store recycle
Speaker 2: bag recycling thing is a total scam. Like publics and
Speaker 2: all them who have those those things out that said
Speaker 2: put your plastic bags in your we recycle them. They don't.
Speaker 2: They don't. They throw them away. And I can't tell
Speaker 2: you how how much time I've spent, like taking labels
Speaker 2: off of plastic wrap, shaking out plastic crap to make
Speaker 2: it clean, like taking it all bundled together, taking it
Speaker 2: to publics and putting it in the bend. And then
Speaker 2: the idea they just take it and throw it away
Speaker 2: and use this as just like a pr thing. Oh
Speaker 2: my god, I'm so sick of stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Man agreed two quick things on that. You can't count
Speaker 3: on your large grocery store chain to do that. You
Speaker 3: got to go to like the Charm. You got to
Speaker 3: go what we have here in Atlanta and Athens, the
Speaker 3: Center for Hard to recycle Materials, because they really do
Speaker 3: the work. It's just a big pain. And number two,
Speaker 3: just as a quick aside, I went to Belize on
Speaker 3: winter break recently, had a great time, but the grocery
Speaker 3: store in there was a grocery store in Placentia named Publics.
Speaker 3: Publics same exact font and coloring as Publics.
Speaker 2: It's like Ricky Rouse and moneld Muck thought it was very,
Speaker 2: very funny. It's funny. They're like, we spell it different.
Speaker 3: What all right? So we're getting off track. The one
Speaker 3: of the last ways, I guess, second to the last
Speaker 3: ways to look at it is through education levels, because
Speaker 3: a lot of times when you hear you know, pundits
Speaker 3: on the news talking about the middle class, they'll say
Speaker 3: things like, you know, people with a four year college degree,
Speaker 3: that's only about forty percent of the population in the US,
Speaker 3: and it's really misleading. So I wish they'd just kind
Speaker 3: of throw this one out with the Public's grocery bags
Speaker 3: because you know, you could have a four year degree
Speaker 3: and be a college professor that also has to have
Speaker 3: a second job to make ends meet. Or you could
Speaker 3: also not have a college degree and on a multimillion
Speaker 3: dollar you know, sort of blue collar business. So I say,
Speaker 3: just get rid of that one.
Speaker 2: A multimillion dollar battery recycling.
Speaker 3: Business, yeah, because that's where all the money is.
Speaker 2: So yeah. So values also, I agree education levels, just
Speaker 2: get rid of that, especially with college not really leading
Speaker 2: to many as many opportunities today as it used to
Speaker 2: and all of the incredible debt associated with it, that
Speaker 2: should not be a measurement for the middle class. Values
Speaker 2: is another one too, And this one I was kind
Speaker 2: of like, what why, Yeah, and I realized you can't
Speaker 2: measure social groups strictly on things like income. That self
Speaker 2: identification thing has a lot to do with values. One
Speaker 2: we talked about is a nuclear family, which has been
Speaker 2: altered dramatically since the middle of the last century. When
Speaker 2: I would say, I would argue in the United States
Speaker 2: at least the nuclear family was like at its peak
Speaker 2: of importance. It's definitely declined. People kind of make family
Speaker 2: wherever they can find it. And that doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: like all of the values are gone that there was
Speaker 2: a twenty ten Vice President Joe Biden middle Class task
Speaker 2: Force had no idea that existed, but it essentially went
Speaker 2: through and said what are your values and they came
Speaker 2: up with pretty basic stuff that that I think most
Speaker 2: middle class people would agree with. Economic stability and security.
Speaker 2: You want a car for each of your kids as
Speaker 2: they get to driving age. You want to take a
Speaker 2: family vacation once a year. You want to send those
Speaker 2: kids to college. You want to own your home, like
Speaker 2: really basic stuff. And the idea that all of that
Speaker 2: is up for grabs in this country right now is
Speaker 2: really alarming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Should we take another break? Yes, all right,
Speaker 3: we're going to take a break and we'll talk about
Speaker 3: what's gone wrong with the middle class and where we
Speaker 3: might be headed right after this.
Speaker 2: Definitely large holds of each o.
Speaker 1: Y s k.
Speaker 2: Is okay, Chuck. So, I think we've kind of said
Speaker 2: a couple of times that there's a lot of different
Speaker 2: ways you can look at things to say the middle
Speaker 2: class is doing great. I know the middle classes hauloed
Speaker 2: out in debt. One of the things that you can
Speaker 2: really kind of point to is like, how much are
Speaker 2: you getting paid. Right, that's a pretty easy one. So
Speaker 2: you can look at average hourly wages for non supervisory employees.
Speaker 2: So that's everybody who's not a manager or like a
Speaker 2: C suite executive, right, just the regular rank and file employees.
Speaker 2: There was a peak of pay in nineteen seventy three
Speaker 2: of thirty dollars. This is twenty twenty five dollars, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, always or always on this episode.
Speaker 2: Right in fall of twenty twenty five, we were at
Speaker 2: thirty one dollars and fifty cents. So we managed to
Speaker 2: gain an extra dollar fifty in average hourly wages in
Speaker 2: fifty years. Yeah, and you might think like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: well really, let's think about inflation and everything. I did.
Speaker 2: Get this if you went back to nineteen seventy three, right,
Speaker 2: one dollar today buys fourteen percent of what it bought
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy three. Yeah, so that means that today
Speaker 2: it does. So you can you could buy, using the
Speaker 2: same hourly wage today fourteen percent of your groceries if
Speaker 2: you went from nineteen seventy three to today. So we
Speaker 2: are definitely worse off because things have gotten more expensive,
Speaker 2: but wages have stagnated. If anyone ever tells you that
Speaker 2: wages have not stagnated, they are lying or they're dumb
Speaker 2: or both, and just tell them so. Yeah, I've been
Speaker 2: trying really hard not to get worked up, man, and
Speaker 2: I'm trying to keep it together. Rre we go, everybody,
Speaker 2: I'm keeping it together.
Speaker 3: The idea of the middle class, though, around the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: was about wasn't just about getting to a spot and
Speaker 3: hitting it. It was about everybody continuing to grow and the
Speaker 3: overall economy of the United States continuing to grow. And
Speaker 3: that has happened, but compensation hasn't happened along with it.
Speaker 3: From nineteen seventy nine to twenty twenty five, productivity in
Speaker 3: the United States rose eighty seven percent, but that hourly
Speaker 3: compensation rose by thirty three percent for non supervisory workers.
Speaker 2: Right. And there's two ways you can interpret that. If
Speaker 2: you're like, well, unions are gone, you could say if
Speaker 2: you're an owner, well you get rid of the union's
Speaker 2: productivity increases. Unions make lazy workers. Another way to put
Speaker 2: it is that without the unions, you can exploit workers
Speaker 2: more easily and get them to work harder because they're
Speaker 2: afraid of losing their job. Right, Yeah, regardless of how
Speaker 2: you look at it, like, there's no way to interpret
Speaker 2: it differently. If your wages have increased thirty three but
Speaker 2: productivities increased eighty seven percent, that means that that extra
Speaker 2: wealth that was generated had to go somewhere, and it
Speaker 2: didn't go to the workers. It went to the wealthiest people.
Speaker 2: And there are just like, if you want to just
Speaker 2: look at eye popping numbers, just look up income inequality
Speaker 2: in the twenty first century, because it has gotten completely
Speaker 2: out of control compared to how it used to be.
Speaker 2: And I mean how it used to be. Like I'm
Speaker 2: talking the eighties.
Speaker 3: As Sam Jackson would say, hang on your butts. What
Speaker 3: do you say, Jurassic Park?
Speaker 2: Hang on your butts?
Speaker 3: Yep, hang on your butt.
Speaker 2: You need a cigarette sticking out of your mouth?
Speaker 3: Oh, I've got it, pal, all right, So these numbers
Speaker 3: are going to be slightly depressing and slightly eye popping.
Speaker 3: Annual wages of the bottom ninety percent of Americans rose
Speaker 3: by twenty nine percent from seventy nine to twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: For the top one percent during over that same time period,
Speaker 3: they rose two hundred and six and the Forbes four
Speaker 3: hundred lists it's a list that we put out in
Speaker 3: or Forbes magazine puts out about the four hundred wealthiest Americans.
Speaker 3: They should probably just stop doing this altogether.
Speaker 2: I know it ruins society.
Speaker 3: But you mentioned the nineteen eighties, nineteen eighty two that
Speaker 3: it was the initial Forbes four hundred. It had thirteen
Speaker 3: billionaires on it. Now everybody on the Forbes list is
Speaker 3: a billionaire, and there's another five hundred billionaires that don't
Speaker 3: get on the list.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So in nineteen eighty two there were thirteen billionaires. There
Speaker 3: are more than nine hundred billionaires in the United States
Speaker 3: right now who have a collective worth of six point
Speaker 3: six trillion dollars. I'm sorry, that's just the Forbes four
Speaker 3: hundred have six point six trillion. Forget the other five
Speaker 3: hundred billionaires.
Speaker 2: Okay. So another thing that that Forbes list pointed out
Speaker 2: is that the total wealth in all of the United
Speaker 2: States is one hundred and forty trillion dollars. The bottom
Speaker 2: fifty percent owns four trillion of that. That means the
Speaker 2: top fifty percent owns one hundred and thirty six trillion
Speaker 2: compared to four trillion. Ah Man, there was one other
Speaker 2: statistic I found too, between nineteen seventy five and twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, there was a wealth transfer upward to the
Speaker 2: top percent that totaled fifty trillion dollars. So, however you
Speaker 2: want to put it, however you want to look at it,
Speaker 2: the middle class and the lower class have been held
Speaker 2: back while the wealth that they have been producing has
Speaker 2: moved upward. And a big problem with that is when
Speaker 2: you have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few,
Speaker 2: they're making the decisions about what happens with that money,
Speaker 2: rather than hundreds of millions of people all making individual
Speaker 2: decisions and collectively making decisions that are like market signals
Speaker 2: that tell people, I'm going to go make this, I'm
Speaker 2: going to stop making this, I'm going to make this
Speaker 2: price that all these people are upset because they don't
Speaker 2: have good healthcare, we better do something about that. None
Speaker 2: of that matters because they don't have money, so they
Speaker 2: don't have power, and they're afraid of losing their jobs.
Speaker 2: So you can do basically whatever you want to them.
Speaker 2: That's what happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, politically speaking, the wealth and the
Speaker 3: powers is who controls everything. They obviously via campaign donations
Speaker 3: is the most clear cut way, but all kinds of
Speaker 3: interventions to basically let the top one or two percent
Speaker 3: make the decisions for the majority. There's a social scientist
Speaker 3: and this isn't us railing on stuff. This is just
Speaker 3: how it is. Like, if you're saying this isn't the case,
Speaker 3: then you're lying. Like you said, there's a social scientist
Speaker 3: named Richard Reeves who said that the top twenty percent
Speaker 3: of earners are basically have been completely successful in pushing
Speaker 3: zoning regulations and tax policies that benefit them all at
Speaker 3: the expense of the middle class. They gain the systems
Speaker 3: to pass that you know, wealth down to their children
Speaker 3: or to get their kids into the better It's just
Speaker 3: the way things have gone in the United States.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the problem, one of the big problems is
Speaker 2: people are going to be all over our iTunes reviews
Speaker 2: being like, these guys are liberal idiots. You don't know
Speaker 2: what they're talking about. It's not liberal and conservative, and
Speaker 2: it's not Republican and democrat. This is strictly a class issue,
Speaker 2: and the idea that you are defending a class beyond
Speaker 2: yours that is exploiting your own class, including you. That's
Speaker 2: a problem because it's presented as a political thing, and
Speaker 2: we're so tribal when it comes to political affiliations that
Speaker 2: you will defend against your own self interest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's.
Speaker 2: Being presented to you as a political issue, and it's.
Speaker 3: Not happens every voting season. That happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's true. And I'm not picking just on
Speaker 2: conservatives or Republicans like Democrats do it too, like tr
Speaker 2: tribal and toxic and unhealthy. And if, oh man, if
Speaker 2: we could ever come to get there and break down
Speaker 2: those lines, oh my gosh, people are so ripped up
Speaker 2: right now that it would just be magnificent, the sweeping
Speaker 2: changes that would happen. A new renaissance, Yes, renaissance too,
Speaker 2: the sequel to h Yeah.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing. You know, Goods have gotten cheaper though,
Speaker 3: if you want to look at again, comparing in today's dollars,
Speaker 3: groceries are generally cheaper than they were in the mid
Speaker 3: seventies because the mid seventies, as we said, was pretty bad.
Speaker 3: Things like you know, clothing and furniture, electronics, all that
Speaker 3: stuff is way cheaper than it used to be. If
Speaker 3: you look at you know, back when you bought a VCR,
Speaker 3: when those first came out, and they were like a
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, you know, stuff like that is all like
Speaker 3: the bottom has fallen out on those kind of prices.
Speaker 3: But that hasn't happened in the housing market, which is
Speaker 3: a big deal for the middle class. Like you said
Speaker 3: in Act one, that median sales price of a house
Speaker 3: and again in today's dollars, it was three hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars in nineteen seventy nine. It's more than four four
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars today. And I think we said it
Speaker 3: was sixty nine point two percent at its peak of
Speaker 3: home ownership in two thousand and four. As of I
Speaker 3: think twenty twenty two. You know, what's happened is that
Speaker 3: you know, I think you said if it was about
Speaker 3: sixty five percent, so it's not that big of a difference,
Speaker 3: but it's that age of buying your first house has
Speaker 3: just gotten older and older and older. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: only sixty two percent of forty year olds own their home,
Speaker 3: whereas the Boomer generation sixty nine percent of forty year
Speaker 3: olds owned. And the same can be said for rent
Speaker 3: and childcare, in college and healthcare. It's just all these
Speaker 3: things are outpacing earnings.
Speaker 2: Plus also that sixty two and sixty nine percent is
Speaker 2: a little misleading because there are way more boomers than
Speaker 2: there are Gen x who are forty now, So that
Speaker 2: so sixty nine percent of boomers is a new manically
Speaker 2: a much bigger group than sixty two percent of gen.
Speaker 3: Xers, right, which also means that that's a greater number
Speaker 3: of houses that are now locked up right being passed
Speaker 3: on to their kids. And you know, not saying that
Speaker 3: you shouldn't own a house and pass along your kids,
Speaker 3: but that as far as the housing market goes, that's
Speaker 3: just a lot, right.
Speaker 2: So Chuck, what do you what are we going to
Speaker 2: do about this? What are some things we can do?
Speaker 3: Oh? Man, let's solve it right now on the spot. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know, man, It's not like this
Speaker 3: all over the world. If you look in Europe that
Speaker 3: there is a middle class there, but it's not quite
Speaker 3: the same. They aren't maybe don't have the kind of
Speaker 3: wealth that upper middle class does here, but they have
Speaker 3: the income and quality isn't as great generally, they have
Speaker 3: stronger social welfare programs, like the danger of falling into
Speaker 3: a desperate life straits isn't as great over there. I
Speaker 3: saw I think on Instagram recently. It was an interview
Speaker 3: with a guy that was a had a good job.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It was one of those stories where the guy was
Speaker 3: on the streets and he had a degree in chemistry
Speaker 3: and he had a good job, and you know, I
Speaker 3: read the comments because I was curious if people were
Speaker 3: going to be like bashing this dude or what. And hearteningly,
Speaker 3: a lot of the people were like, Hey, I worked
Speaker 3: in shelters for the un House for years and we
Speaker 3: saw all kinds of people come through here. We saw
Speaker 3: doctors and attorneys and people you know that just you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes you're a bad circumstance or two away from that
Speaker 3: kind of situation, and it's just not like that in
Speaker 3: Europe generally speaking.
Speaker 2: I remember during the two thousand and eight recession of
Speaker 2: reading some statistic that something like at the time like
Speaker 2: forty percent or something like that of Americans were one
Speaker 2: paycheck away from being homeless. Like that's how little savings
Speaker 2: and cushion that most Americans had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or having to make you know, healthcare decisions like
Speaker 3: that aren't good for your life because you can't afford it,
Speaker 3: because it will bankrupt your family. You're having to put
Speaker 3: yourself and your family in peril physically.
Speaker 2: Right, That's part of that why the European middle class
Speaker 2: is much more secure because most of them have universal
Speaker 2: health care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not bankrupted by a diagnosis.
Speaker 2: Right, But even on more day to day pedestrian stuff.
Speaker 2: So the lower income you are, the more inflation affects you.
Speaker 2: Where Like if your higher income and you go gas
Speaker 2: up your car and you're like, wow, gas went up
Speaker 2: twenty cents today, that sucks, and you just don't think
Speaker 2: about it from that point on. If your lower income,
Speaker 2: you might roll up to the gas station and be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I can't afford to drive my car to work today
Speaker 2: because gas went up twenty cents a gallon. So that's
Speaker 2: another issue with the whole thing too. It makes it
Speaker 2: tougher to get a head when you can't afford the
Speaker 2: basic necessities because they're growing out of your reach day
Speaker 2: by day.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean when I was a snot nosed, no
Speaker 3: at all college kid working at Golden Pantry in Athens, Georgia,
Speaker 3: I used to and you know, I was working at
Speaker 3: Golden Pantry, so it's not like I was making any
Speaker 3: kind of money, but for a college kid, it was like, hey,
Speaker 3: that's great. I had everything I needed making that seven
Speaker 3: dollars an hour or whatever, because my parents were generally
Speaker 3: paying for my education and it's like easy street. I
Speaker 3: would I would wonder why someone would come in and
Speaker 3: buy like seven dollars worth of gas. I aloud be like,
Speaker 3: what a weird number? Why are you putting seven dollars
Speaker 3: worth of gas? Because it didn't occur to me that's
Speaker 3: all that they could afford. It's like, why don't you
Speaker 3: just fill your car up? And it's like because it
Speaker 3: couldn't afford to dummy? Right, I was a dummy, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I know exactly what to mean. I've been
Speaker 2: on both sides of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know the night abitab a college kid,
Speaker 3: So in a way.
Speaker 2: Was that the golden pantry at Alps?
Speaker 3: Uh No, I worked on the college station road.
Speaker 2: Okay side, gotcha. So we didn't figure out how to Yeah,
Speaker 2: I had the same kind of job, and it is
Speaker 2: a very weird job. So we didn't figure out how
Speaker 2: to fix anything. Chuck, you got any ideas, I think
Speaker 2: that you could learn a lot from Europe expanding social
Speaker 2: safety nets. We could stop making that a political thing
Speaker 2: and be like, no, actually, this can help everybody. I
Speaker 2: saw that in New Mexico has started free childcare for all,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter what your income level is, doesn't matter, Like
Speaker 2: you can put your kid into childcare for free, and
Speaker 2: that's a huge expense that save for the average person.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think New York is trying to do that, like
Speaker 2: Mom Donnie is trying to to institute that in New
Speaker 2: York City too, So that could be a huge trend.
Speaker 2: Just free childcare, Universe childcare could make a huge difference
Speaker 2: in people's income.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and all of that is because people want to
Speaker 3: go out and work their job to make money for
Speaker 3: the man.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, well put man, you got anything else?
Speaker 3: Got nothing else?
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't either, which means it's time for listener man.
Speaker 3: It is a quick correction. We heard from people from
Speaker 3: Tennessee because we stole their college. Hey guys, longtime listener here.
Speaker 3: Your show has fueled many runs and chores over the years.
Speaker 3: Quick Nashville nitpick from a proud local. In the Flexner
Speaker 3: Report episode, you mentioned Maharry being right here in Georgia.
Speaker 3: Nashville would like to gently reclaim that, guys, Mahary medical
Speaker 3: College has been proudly in Nashville since eighteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: and we're pretty attached to it. Totally understand how geography
Speaker 3: gets slippery mid podcasts, but just wanted to defend a
Speaker 3: hometown institution and that is from Bridget Chevron or Shavaine.
Speaker 3: And we heard from a lot of people, Bridget, So
Speaker 3: I don't know how we screwed that up, but we did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got it screwed up royally. I even went
Speaker 2: back and was like, surely there's a Mahary College in
Speaker 2: Georgia too. Nope, Nope, it's just the one in Tennessee.
Speaker 2: So sorry everyone in Tennessee who took offense to that,
Speaker 2: because we did hear from a lot of you.
Speaker 3: For sure, that's right, But we're neighbors and we like
Speaker 3: to think that we're all the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, we all shared your medical college. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in the Tri state area. If you want to be
Speaker 2: like Bridget and send us a really nice email correcting us,
Speaker 2: we love that kind of thing. You can send it
Speaker 2: off to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.