The Middle Class: Canary in the Gold Mine?

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a production of "I Heart Radio." Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here to

“sit and in for a good old fashion stuff you should know,”

episode. That's right. Not one of those newfangled ones? No, no, not one of the new ones that are just like, you know, all hair gel and, you know, style, no substance.

Yeah, still has that new podcast episode smell? Yes, for sure. Speaking of "New smell," how do you feel being 55 birthday boy? He's smell. You know, it's great. I think I have actual privileges now

that come with that age. Like cheap coffee and McDonald's, that kind of stuff? Yeah, I don't know about McDonald's, but like I think I can play golf for a little cheaper now. Like, little nice. As this is the senior rate, which is, that's hysterical.

Yeah, well, I think you can get a AARP membership now too. Oh, yeah, I mean, you're probably already getting that stuff in the mail, right? They start early. No, I'm not even 50 yet. They won't let me. I keep applying and they keep denying me. Okay, maybe 50. I mean, they start sitting in that stuff years ahead.

Yeah, we used to have when you had to get it for work or something like that, but they found out, you know, what our age is and they got really mad. They said, "We've been spending sending things to spring chickens." But yeah, well, let me know how the golf thing goes and if you get cheap coffee at McDonald's

“what being a senior is like, Chuck, because, you know, I think for me and Jerry and everybody,”

we just wanted to wish you a happy birthday. Yeah, I appreciate that. People went bonkers on Instagram. Oh, yeah, was that you? Yeah, of course.

I figured, you know what, my uncle wished you a happy birthday. Did he? I'm supposed to didn't see that.

Yeah, it was pretty funny. And then those confusing series of texts where he was finally like,

"Is it your birthday?" I was like, "Those are a few days ago, sure." He said, "Who is this?" Yeah, exactly. He said, "Mug oven." Not "Mug oven."

No, "Mug oven." No, okay. All right, let's start talking, because we're talking about the middle class. And America, at least, although this definitely extends to other countries like the UK, some of the Nordic countries, Australia, there's not an obsession, but a real like

obsession with the middle class, how it's doing, how mobile it is, upwardly, downwardly. And it's essentially the middle class is like the thumbnail metric for the health, the real true health of a society and economy. Would you agree?

“Yeah, I mean, I think so. And I think that used to be a real,”

like it's always been a talking point in the United States, but I think it used to be a real

genuine talking point, whereas now I think it's like, you know, or other rich people doing great. Okay, all right, now let's talk publicly a little bit about the middle class, I guess. Right, but not everybody's following for that. There's like this whole idea that the middle class and the health of the middle class was a canary in the coal mine.

And not only is the canary dead, it caught fire at some point. Yeah. As far as a lot of people are concerned about the United States' middle class, at least, because there's this idea that it's dead, but then if you read up a little further on it, you come across other people who are like, no, no, dude, look at these statistics.

Right. Like the middle class is actually doing great way better than they used to be doing. And other people are like, that just doesn't quite add up. So when you get into it, it's really tough to define the middle class and you can monkey around with whose middle class or who's not and come up with all sorts of different profiles.

“But I think ultimately, it just matters what people who would probably self-identify”

is the middle class feel about the economy and about their prospects in life. Yeah, for sure. Like, what is that the vibe session? Yeah. What was her name? Highly Scanlan. She's a kind of a Gen Z financial

planatory journalist. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the idea of like sort of like not following for being gas lit by everything you're being told about how great it's going. And there's something called a vibe session. Am I saying that right?

Yeah, vibe session. It just sounds weird. Because a vibe session sounds like, you know, something I do a blade on Friday nights. Right. This is what the scene instead of an S. Yeah, exactly. And it's much less I read.

Yeah, oh, man. But yeah, the idea of, you know, various politicians, you know, whenever anyone's running for something, talking about typically reelection, talking about how great

“everything really is, where as everyone is like, yeah, but why doesn't it feel that way?”

That's a vibe session instead of like a true recession. Yeah, and she was pointing out like that actually can become self-fulfilling. Yeah, sure. Because if enough people start feeling like, no, things aren't going so good, they start not spending money and that actually can trigger a recession just from the fact that people

feel that way no matter what the metrics say. So yeah, we'll talk about all that.

Well, let's talk about the history of the middle class because it hasn't always been around.

Yeah, it's interesting. If you look at, you know, the history of the middle class and the West, it generally, you can point to late medieval Europe as, you know, when things started to get cooking a little bit as far as the middle class goes and, you know, we'll walk you all the way through, you know, modern times. But as cities became a thing, you know, all of a sudden

you needed a middle class to sort of administer what the the aristocracy was asking for. And a lot of cases. So, you know, there was this distinct group kind of created that wasn't aristocracy and it wasn't the peasant class. And I think one word, and I believe even done a short stuff on the bourgeois. Yeah, didn't we? Yeah. And what it means to be bourgeoisie, that's right. But there's another word for them, burgers, too. And apparently both words, I don't,

I don't remember this, but I'm sure we talked about it in the bourgeois, short stuff that that's the name of the cities, the fortified cities where they worked, right, or where they emerged

“from. Yeah. And the burger is that's why the burger mister is called that in either”

root off or frosty or some rank-in baths. Yeah. Burger mister mister. Burger mister mister. Yeah. Burger mister means mayor. So he's like the head of the city, essentially. Anyway, those were the merchants, the bankers, professionals that emerged to kind of fill that space between the peasants

and the aristocracy. And you could call them the first middle class. Yeah, sort of, but they grew

in size and wealth and power. So they were kind of like, hey, we tricked everybody. We're not really the middle class. We're, I mean, maybe upper middle class, certainly, obviously not aristocracy, because they weren't born into that. But as people got wealthier, there was kind of a true middle class that came after that, where you needed people to do things like book, bookkeeping, and, you know, kind of handled the, the business of the people that previously had said that they

were the middle class, even though then one was using those terms, you know, we should point out. Right. No, nothing like that. There was also a lot of changes where before it was wealth and power, right? Because that's what nobility kind of based itself on. So the earliest middle class kind of based itself on those same markers. But thanks to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, other markers kind of came along. The whole idea of thrift, of saving your money, of not being

just frivolous with your money that became a really big middle class social marker,

certain tastes, certain ways you would dress. And then of course wealth, wealth has always been a

marker for the middle class, especially the upper middle class. But these, these were all like,

tease the stuff out and identify it historically. Yeah, for sure. And this was, you know,

“and Europe at the time, when the United States was born,”

livi by the way, did a great job with this article, I thought. Uh, Greed. She is a heck of a writer. So, um, the United States was, you know, as she points out, kind of a sort of a bourgeois, uh, not a, I wanted to say project or a test. It was an experiment, maybe the American experiment. Yeah. Because there were people like Thomas Jefferson who were very much believe, like, hey, we're going to build this new country on, um, and not on the backs of,

but like, uh, the middle class, these, these people that own farms and could provide for their family and that own some land, like, this is the American experiment that, like, the goal that we're striving toward. Yeah, those young and farmers were typically not slave-holding. So his idea

was to, to basically become, uh, a nation of self-sufficient farmers, growing food for their families

and themselves and then selling some in the market. And, um, that just does not how it went because the wealthy land owners who had actually had slaves, um, became essentially the power, the elite, the people actually pulling the levers. And eventually, they, as, except in the antebellum South, they kind of replaced that, um, wealthy land-owning and, um, agriculture with industry as the industrial revolution started in, uh, Europe and then spread to the U.S.,

and then we had a real disparity in power and wealth growing. Yeah, for sure, because if you're owning a factory or owning a railroad or a share of a railroad, uh, that is a very distinct upper class, it may not be aristocracy, uh, but aristocracy became less and less important. Yes, time went on, um, flash forward to, like, the middle of the 19th century and you had people like Karl Marx, and we should say Karl Marx was trying to sell something, which was Marxism, but he would

come along and say, like, hey, they're really, uh, two classes. There are, uh, there's the working class, and then everybody else that's exploiting the working class. Yeah, and the, the, the exploiters or the

“oppressors in the oppressed, I think he also put it, um, they owned the capital. They were the”

capitalists. They were the ones who could open a factory and employ you and you depended on them for money, but they were exploiting your labor. Yes. And in, in this sense, where there's an owning class and a working class, there's really no room for a middle class. Eventually, though, a middle class still emerged because those capitalists aren't going to, like, you said, do their own books. They're not going to go teach the next generation of workers to come work in their factory.

So, like, there was a need for people to train the working classes to better serve the capitalists to lead. And that's where the middle class really started to emerge in the United States in particular, but also in, like, the UK Australia, some of the other places in the West. That's where that the middle class as we understand it now really developed. Yeah, for sure. And it was there during the time of marks, but that wasn't good for Marxism to point that out.

So, yeah, it was very much easier for him to say, like, you're being exploited or you're the exploiter. It was a little black and white. Yeah, for sure. So, in the 19th century, the middle class values system started to kind of take shape, which is, you know, sort of the the value system that ideally is still around today, which is the idea that, you know, if you work hard, you save up, you can be a success in the United States. You know, they agreed that

people should vote more and more, like have access to voting. And of course, that started with, like, hey, maybe men that aren't land to owners should be able to vote. And then that kind of spread throughout the years to, you know, people of different races. And then women, finally. And

but the idea that expanding voting rights and expanding education was always sort of the middle

class value. And then early on, it was, you know, the role of women in society is definitely

“changed as far as the middle class value goes. But early on, it was, hey, women are very important to”

keep the home, but really be the moral center of the world of the home, you know. Yeah, of the family, which was of most importance, the nuclear family, which became really important in the Victorian era and really informed the middle class values too, right? And all of those seem like, so we take them for granted so much as values typically aside from, you know, forcing women to work in the

It spreading its, basically imposing its values on everybody else in the West. Yeah, for sure.

“Should we take an early break here? Well, it's not too early, actually. I think so. Yeah,”

what? All right. We'll take a break. I think that's a good set up. Middle class is forming. Everyone's getting excited. And we'll flash forward to the 20th century right after this. [Music] You know, Rold Dal, the writer who found up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before? He wrote his stories? I must have been.

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Specifically, this is when the middle class and the U.S. really, really emerge is like a massive thing, like the largest portion of like set of people in the U.S. became middle class in the in the 20th century. And really after the war, it was powered by the new deal, of course, after World War II, the United States was in a unique position as as victor, but also victor who didn't have the war fought on their, you know, mainland soil. Right. So we didn't have to

do all this rebuilding after the war. So we were in a position to really hit the throttle on economic stimulus, which was brought about via the new deal. Yeah, and World War II, just the sheer amount of money thrown into the economy from the government for World War II helped as well, right? And we had all those technologies that we developed that gave us things like pop charts and stuff immediately after the war and completely improve the quality of life for people in the United States, especially

Relations Act that are favoring workers, this working class that is becoming the middle class,

and then one of the other really, really, really big aspects of what built the middle class and the United States and elsewhere were unions, union membership, because if you can bargain collectively,

“you can't be exploited nearly as easily, and that means that life is a lot more fair for you,”

though worker, because you're allowed to get together and say, "No, you can't do that to any of us." If you do that to one of us, you do it to all of us and we'll all leave. Yes, I mean, we did a great episode on unions years ago. So I advise you to go and listen to that now if you want to learn more about those. But, no, no, every once. I mean, you can, if you want. Okay. A little refresher.

But union membership really bloomed in the 1930s and '40s. I think at the beginning of the 20th

century, it was in the lotines union membership, and then it really, really rose from there. And so did wages. Between 1940 and 1960, if you were a non-farmor, your median weekly income rose. And these, by the way, everything we're doing is in 2025 dollars just to make it easier to understand. Right. But your median weekly income for a non-farmor went from $550 to over $1,000. Almost 1100 bucks. And that was across all, you know, a lot of education levels, you know, different racial

groups, different industries, that was sort of a broad change. So, you know, it was an interesting time in that, you know, pay for people and what is now like a solid middle class. It was really rising. They were taxing the rich in constraining corporate power such that some people called this time the great compression where the wealth levels were sort of smashed together on a graph instead of expanded vastly like we are now. We're going to have some shocking numbers

“where you later in this episode. Yeah. So, that that era between 1940 and I think a lot of people”

essentially put it at the mid 70s is when they say the party really started to end was just as economic boom goal-nage for the United States and the middle class. And there was another big factor too, which was home ownership. We did, I remember in our racial discrimination or housing discrimination episode that we did. We pointed out that owning a home has long been really important, especially for the middle class because that is how you generate wealth for most people. Your home just

appreciates and value over the years. And then you can also use that home to transfer that wealth to your kids. So, it's also a form of generational wealth transfer for the middle class. So, it's really big deal to own your own home. And that was another big thing that happened after World War II home ownership went up quite a bit. Yeah, previous and this is going way back. But between 1890 and 1930 home ownership was under 50% in the United States. And eventually, you know,

thanks to the suspect mortgages that they were handing out like Andy. In 2004, that peaked it,

“I think it was close to 70% like 69 or something. Yeah, for sure. And then I think it dropped”

down to something like 65 and is basically plateaued since there. But this is the point that you could

own a house. You could own a car. Yeah. You could have a family of, you know, a husband and wife and two kids and live in the suburbs and the kids would go to a nice school. And this was obviously this is of most idealized version what we're talking about. There's a lot of disparity. There was a lot of people who were still very poor in the United States too. But overall, if we're just focusing on the middle class, you could do all of these things and have a nice comfortable middle class life

a pension after you're retired on one salary, one income. Because again, one of the main values of the middle class at this time was that the mother stayed home, raised the kids and made the house the center of the nuclear family, respite from the rest of the world. One salary could do all of that. Yeah. And it was, you know, people weren't as far apart as they were financially speaking, like you may live in the same neighborhood or maybe the neighborhood next to your boss.

You know, blue color workers and white color workers were, were way more, you know, just kind of squash together, like your children probably went to school. If you were like a line worker at an auto plant, you know, you may not have as nice of a car or as big of a house as your manager or your boss. But, you know, it was in the, it was in the same world. And you know, I still remember that stuff

school, they were like, you know, the rich kids and then the kids that lived in that neighborhood.

“Right. But it wasn't extreme wealth and poverty. No. And the fact is, they were all going to the same”

school. Right. There was like a leveling from that. So yeah, that was a really big deal. And this is, this is going on through about to the mid 70s when things started to decline for the class, right? Yeah. There's, there was the end of the, the postwar boom. I mean, that's really tough to keep up in the form that it was in for very long. Yeah. And it's kind of astounding. It stayed up that long. Part of it was that the US, it was in that unique position, like you said, it didn't have to rebuild

after World War II like Europe and Japan did. Well, after a few decades, Europe and Japan were able to rebuild and they started to catch up to the United States, which meant that they were taking more share of the United States pie with, say, like exports, manufacturing and stuff. That was one

“factor too. There was also the oil crisis. Yeah. I think that that made a bigger dent than I”

ever realized that that was like a history changing event, the OPEC oil crisis. Yeah. And then also

political conflicts that ultimately laid the bedwork for today's culture wars. Civil rights,

movement, feminism, environmentalism, LGBTQ plus rights. All of these things were marginalized groups. Previously, marginalized groups came forward and said, no, there's no reason we should be treated like second class citizens that created a tension in the United States. A lot of corporations came in and figured out how to exploit this for their own ends. And that eventually started to divide people to where there was this sense of competition is the bedrock of American capitalism.

American capitalism is the bedrock of the middle class. It's part of the middle class. It's a

“new middle class value. It's where we got yuppies in the 80s. Yeah, for sure. The industrialization”

also happened in 1970. If one in out of every Ford, non farming jobs in the U.S. was in manufacturing and by 2017, it was one in 11. So other countries, you know, is globalization and trade increase. Other countries started making stuff super cheap. Like this isn't a big surprise to anyone listening to this, imports from China started coming in, imports from other South East Asian countries started coming in. Stuff was a lot cheaper to buy. And, you know, they started automating a

lot of stuff. It was, you know, kind of the first automation boom was happening in the 1970s where

factories didn't need as many people on the line to do stuff that these new machines were doing. So that coupled with de-unionization, really, you know, kind of dropping off was a huge factor. Yeah, and it really definitely declined. It's a below 10% for the entire workforce in the United States. A huge chunk of that is just from government jobs, like teaching, they tend to have a very strong union. But overall, it went from like 35-30% to 10%. And one of the reasons that that happened

is because the government basically withdrew its support for unions. Not only did it stop passing legislation or enforcing legislation that supported unions, it actually started issuing legislation that harmed and crippled unions and essentially removed their power. Yeah, for sure. And then the last reason, you know, we can't talk about the middle class and wealth disparity without talking about Ronald Reagan. You know, he's the one that kicked it off and subsequent

administrations definitely didn't do the middle class any favors. But those Reagan aeropolices, the trickle down economics, cutting taxes for corporations, undermining labor unions, cutting taxes on the top earners individually, really transformed the look of our nation heavily, heavily in favor of the rich. And, you know, the top 10% especially the top 1%. And like I said, other, you know, Democrats and Republicans since then have failed the United States and their

policies. I know after the economic crash and the real estate crash in 2008, there were a lot of people, especially now in hindsight, that look back and say, you know what, we really had an opportunity there. And the Obama administration failed us when we bailed out those banks with not very many strings attached. We had some leverage there to sort of get some changes in place that could have helped, you know, shift the look of the financial outlook of our country and we didn't do it.

No. And what they would have been doing is undoing damage that was done during the Clinton

dabbling investments. You were either a bank or an investment company which won. And after that,

you don't have to choose and that's ultimately what helped lead us to that massive financial crisis,

the great recession. Yeah. So yeah, it's really easy and fun to pick on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for kicking all this off, but they were not the only new liberal presidents to come along after the 80s. No, for sure. If you're talking about the middle class today, you really have to start with, like, how do you define the middle class and Libya did a really

“great job in this section? I think like there are a lot of different ways that people and”

pendants like to talk about what the middle class even is. Some social scientists is just to super straightforward income-based definitions, which is good in one sense because you can adjust that depending on where you are, like, in the world, like a middle class income in New York City, isn't going to be the same thing as in a rural area. So they can, you can adjust things, economically based on just a strict income-based definition, which is kind of cool. Also, that means

that the middle class doesn't move out of reach of certain people, too. Like, if you just have the median income and say that's the middle class, as the median income grows, the middle class goes up and some people stay behind. This is, like, here's the middle class section and you can get into it and out of it or drop out of it and go above it. But it's going to stay in the same place and it's just going to, it's going to change depending on how wages rise. Yeah. It seems

like a pretty good, it's a good idea to me. The most widely used one comes from the Pew Research

Center and they, it's an income-based approach that they use, but they basically say that if your

household income is two-thirds of the median household income or up to double the median household income, you are middle class, right? And I think in 2024 that meant that your household is very important, too, that your household made between $55,820 to $167,460. Any, anywhere in there, you were middle class income-wise. Yeah. This is all, obviously, like, pre-text money, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I would think so. Yeah. So under that definition, the middle class made up

61% of households in 1971 compared to just 51% in 2023. But at the same time, the upper income category went from 11% to 19% and the lower percentage rose from 27% to 30%. So what you're seeing

is, like, the wealth gap, like, happening in real time, basically. Yes, but then also suggests that

8% of people in the middle class moved up from the core middle class to the upper income category.

“So that's what, that's an interpretation that a lot of people who are like, no, the middle class is”

fine, suggests. Right. Then 3% moved down. Right. Yeah. So that's, yeah, income is, like, if you're an economist, this is what you're looking at. If you're, say, anthropologists or sociologists, you might say, well, who considers themselves middle class? Maybe we should look at those people and then kind of study them, like, that, like, ask people. Are you middle class or not? Are you working class? You consider yourself upper class. And they usually either divide it into

those three lower class, middle class, upper class, or else they'll divide it into twin tiles, lower class, working class, which they would also call lower middle class, core middle class, upper middle class, and then gobsmackingly rich. And 1% saying, buzz office none of your business, quit asking me questions. They have them arrested. So 2024 was the last Gallup poll that we have, where someone said, like, hey, what do you consider yourself? And in the United States, 39% of

citizens considered themselves middle class. Another 15% said there were upper, upper middle class, which brings that grand total to 54. 31% identified as working class, 12% is lower class, just 2% of upper class, which means a lot of those upper middle class people were lying,

“lie here and that they're really part of the upper class. Yeah, for sure, but I think also, it's not,”

I'm sure some people were like, I don't want to say, like, I feel upper class. I don't want to self-identification. So it makes sense. Sure, but at the same time also, I think that has to do with the idea that maybe based on income, it's almost like that vibe session thing. Like, yeah,

you could be ruined by a health care crisis at any time. So I think, especially with self-identification,

that gives you a sense of the actual health of the economy as far as consumer confidence is concerned. Yeah, and there's, you know, laziness factors in. You could, you could be in the upper middle class, but also still have a car tire sitting in your side yard. For sure, with the typical markers of what, you know, different classes. For sure, tires in your side yard. I got to get mine moved. Then we got on to me for years about the car battery that I had,

that I just, it's like, I get rid of a car battery, I know you can. How you take it to, like, one of the auto stores? I know, but none of those feel right. They, no, they take the core out,

“yeah, it's, they recycle them for real. Yeah, because you've watched them do all that, right?”

From beginning to end. I help on weekends as just as pro bono. That's my point is I don't,

I don't trust any of it. None of it feels right. All right, and with the, well, you want to know something that really opened my eyes and changed my life. Chuck, I realized recently that that whole, grocery store, recycling, bag recycling thing is a total scam. Like, publics and all of them who have those, those things out, they said, put your plastic bags in your, we recycle them. They don't, they don't, they throw them away. And I can't tell you how much time I spent, like,

taking labels off a plastic wrap, shaking out plastic wrap to make it clean, like, taking it all bundle together, taking it the publics and putting it in the bin. And then the idea they just take it and throw it away and use this is just like a PR thing. Oh, my God, I'm so sick of stuff,

“like that, man. Uh, agreed two quick things on that. Uh, you can't count on your,”

great large grocery store chain to do that. Uh, you got to go to like the charm. You got to go what we have here in Atlanta and Athens, uh, the center for hard to recycle materials because they really do the work. Uh, it's just a big pain. And number two, uh, just as a quick aside, I went to Belize on winter break recently had a great time, but the grocery store in, uh, those are grocery store in Placencia, name publics, PU, BL, ICS, same exact font and coloring. It's publics. It's like

Ricky Rouse and model muck. That was very, very funny. It's funny. They're like, we spelled it different what? Uh, all right. So we're getting off track. Uh, the one of the last ways, um, I guess second to the last ways to look at it, um, is through education levels because a lot of times when you hear, you know, pundits on the news, talking about the middle class, they'll say things like, you know, people with a four year college degree, that's only about 40% of the population in the U.S.

And it's really misleading. So I wish they'd just kind of throw this one out with the, the publics, uh, grocery bags because, um, you know, you could have a four year degree and, uh, be a college professor that also has to have a second job to make ends meet or you could also not

have a college degree and own a multi-million dollar, uh, you know, sort of blue-collar business. So

I say just get rid of that one. A multi-million dollar battery recycling business. Yeah, because that's where all the money is. So, um, yeah. So values also, I agree. Education levels just get rid of that, especially with college not really leading to many as many opportunities today is that used to in all of the incredible debt associated with it. That should not be a measurement for the middle class. Values is another one too. And this one I was kind of like, what? Why? Yeah.

And I realize you can't measure social groups strictly on things like income that, you know, that self-identification thing has a lot to do with values. Um, one we talked about is a nuclear family, which, um, has been altered dramatically since the middle of the last century when I would say would argue in the United States at least the nuclear family was like, at its peak of importance. Mm-hmm. It's definitely declined. People kind of make family, uh, um, wherever they can find it.

And, um, that doesn't mean that like all of the values are gone that there was a, uh, 2010, uh, Vice President Joe Biden middle class task force had no idea that existed. But it essentially went through and said, what are your values? And they came up with, um,

“pretty basic stuff that I think most middle class people would agree with, economic stability and”

security. You want to car for each of your kids as they, um, get to driving age. You want to take a family vacation once a year. You want to send those kids to college. You want to own your home, like really basic stuff. And the idea that all of that is up for grabs in the, this, this country right now is really alarming. Yeah. For sure. Uh, should we take another break?

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“Okay Chuck, so I think we've kind of said a couple of times that there's a lot of different ways”

you can look at things to say the middle class is doing great. One of the middle class is all it out and dead. One of the things that you can really kind of point to is like how much are you getting paid? That's a pretty easy one. So you can look at average hourly wages for non-supervisory employees. So that's everybody who's not a manager or like a seasweet executive, right? Just the regular rank and file employees. There was a peak of pay in 1973 of $30. This is a

$20.25, right? Yeah, always or always on this episode. Right. In fall of 2025 we were at $31.50

so we managed to gain an extra $1.50 in average hourly wages in 50 years. Yeah and you might think like okay well really let's think about inflation and everything. I did get this. If you went back to 1973, right? You won $1 today buys 14% of what it bought in 1973. Yeah. So that means that today works with inflation. It does. So you can you could buy using the same hourly wage today,

things have gotten more expensive but wages have stagnated. If anyone ever tells you that wages

“have not stagnated, they are lying or they're dumb or both and just tell them so. Yeah. I've been”

trying really hard not to get worked up. Man now I'm trying to get together right now. There we go, everybody keep in it together. The idea of the middle class though around the 1960s was about wasn't just about getting to a spot in hitting it. It was about everybody continuing to grow and the overall economy of the United States continuing to grow and that has happened but compensation hasn't happened along with it. From 1979 to 2025, productivity in the United States

rose 87% but the hourly compensation rose by 33% for non-supervisory workers. Right and there's

two ways you can interpret that if you're like well unions are gone. You could say if you're owner, well you get rid of the unions productivity increases. Unions make lazy workers. Another way to put it is that without the unions you can exploit workers more easily and get them to work harder because they're afraid of losing their job right? Yeah. Regardless of how you look at it like there's no way to interpret it differently if your wages have increased 33% but productivity is increased 87%.

That means that that extra wealth that was generated had to go somewhere and it didn't go to the

“workers. It went to the wealthiest people and there are just like if you want to just look at”

eye-popping numbers just look up income inequality in the 21st century because it has gotten completely out of control compared to how it used to be and I mean how it used to be like I'm talking the 80s. Let's say I'm Jackson would say hang on your butts. What do you say Jurassic Park? Hang on your butt. Hang on your butt. You need a cigarette sticking out of your mouth. I've got it pal. All right so these numbers are going to be slightly depressing and slightly eye-popping.

Annual wages at the bottom 90% of Americans rose by 29% from 79 to 2021 for the top 1% during over that same time period. They rose 206% and the Forbes 400 list it's a list that we put out in or Forbes magazine puts out about the 400 wealthiest Americans that they should probably just stop doing this all together. I know it's ruined society but you mentioned the 1980s. 1982 that it was the initial Forbes 400 it had 13 billionaires on it. Now everybody on the Forbes list is

a billionaire and there's another 500 billionaires that don't get on the list. Wow so in 1982 there were 13 billionaires there were more than 900 billionaires in the United States right now who have a collective worth of $6.6 trillion. I'm sorry that's just the Forbes 400 had 6.6 trillion and forget the other 500 billionaires. Okay so another another thing that that Forbes list pointed out is that the total wealth in all of the United States is $140 trillion. The bottom 50% owns 4 trillion

of that. That means the top 50% owns 136 trillion compared to 4 trillion man. There was one other statistic I found to between 1975 and 2024. There was a wealth transfer upward to the top percent that totaled $50 trillion. So however you want to put it, however you want to look at it, the middle class and the lower class have been held back while the wealth that they have been producing has moved upward and a big problem with that is when you have wealth concentrated in

the hands of a few, they're making the decisions about what happens with money rather than hundreds of millions of people all making individual decisions and collectively making decisions that are like markets signals that tell people I'm going to go make this. I'm going to stop making this. I'm going to make this price that. All these people are upset because they don't have good health care. We better do something about that. None of that matters because they don't have money so

they don't have power and they're afraid of losing their jobs so you can do basically whatever you want

“to. That's what happened. Yeah and you know politically speaking the wealth in the powers is”

who controls everything. They obviously be a campaign donations is the most clear cut way but all kinds of interventions to basically let the top one or two percent make the decisions for the majority. There's a social scientist and this isn't us railing on stuff. This is just how it is.

There's a social scientist named Richard Reeves who said that the top 20% of earners are basically

“have been completely successful in pushing zoning regulations and tax policies that benefit them”

all at the expense of the middle class. They game the systems to pass that you know wealth down to their children or to get their kids into the better colleges. It's just the way things have gone in the United States. Yeah and the problem one of the big problems is people are going to be all over our iTunes reviews being like these go through liberal idiots who don't know what they're talking about. It's not liberal and conservative. No. Not Republican and Democrat. This is strictly

a class issue and the idea that you are defending a class beyond yours that is exploiting your own

class including you. That's a problem because it's presented as a political thing and we're so tribal when it comes to political affiliations that you will defend against your own self-interest because it's being presented to you as a political issue and it's not happens every voting season that happens. Yeah and it's true. And I'm not picking just on conservatives or Republicans like Democrats do it too. I'm sure tribal and toxic and unhealthy and if oh me and if we could

ever come together and break down those lines oh my gosh people are so ramped up right now that it would just be magnificent the sweeping changes that would happen. I knew Renaissance.

“Yes. Renaissance to the sequel. Yeah. Here's the thing, you know, goods have gotten cheaper though.”

If you want to look it again comparing in today's dollars, groceries are generally cheaper than they were in the mid-70s because the mid-70s as we said was pretty bad. Things like clothing and furniture, electronics, all that stuff is way cheaper than it used to be. If you look at

back when you bought a VCR when those first came out and they were like $1,000 stuff like

that is all like the bottom is falling out on those kind of prices but that hasn't happened in the housing market which is a big deal for the middle class like you said in act one. That median sales price of a house and again in today's dollars it was $300,000 in 1979 more than $400,000 today. And I think we said it was 69.2% at its peak of home ownership in 2004. As of I think 2022

“you know what's happened is that you know I think you said it was about 65% so it's not that big”

of a difference but is that age of buying your first house has just gotten older and older and older in 2022 only 62% of 40 year olds own their home whereas the boomer generation 69% of 40 year olds own and the same can be said for rent and childcare and college and health care it's all these things are outpacing earnings. Plus also that 62 and 69% is a little misleading because there are way more boomers than there are Gen X who are 40 now so that so 69% of boomers is a

numerically a much bigger group than 62% of Gen Xers. Right which also means that that's a greater number of houses that are now locked up right being passed on to their kids and you know not seeing that you shouldn't own a house and pass along to your kids but that as far as the housing market goes that's just a lot. Right so Chuck why do you what are we going to do about this where are some things we can't do oh man let's solve it right man let's buy

well I mean I don't know man it's not like this all over the world if you look in Europe there is a middle class there but it's not quite the same they aren't maybe don't have the kind of wealth that upper middle class does here but they have the income equality isn't is great generally they have stronger social welfare programs right like the danger of of falling into a desperate lifestraights isn't as great over there I saw a thing on Instagram recently it was an interview

with a guy that was a hit a good job you know it's one of those stories where the guy was on the streets and he had a degree in chemistry and he had a good job and you know I read the comments because I was curious if people were going to be like bashing this dude or what and hearteningly a lot of the people are like hey I worked in in shelters for the end house for years and we saw all kinds of people come through here we saw doctors and attorneys and people you know that just you know

sometimes you're a bad circumstance or two away from that kind of situation and it's just not

statistic that something like at the time like 40% or something like that of Americans were one

“paycheck away from being homeless like that's how little savings and cushion that that most Americans”

had yeah or having having to make you know healthcare decisions like that aren't good for your life because you can't afford it because it will bank rupt your family you're having to put yourself and your family in peril physically right that's part of that why the European middle class is much more secure because most of them have universal healthcare they're not bankrupted by a diagnosis right but even even on more day-to-day pedestrian stuff so the the lower income you are the more

inflation affects you where like if you're higher income and you go gas up your car

and you're like wow gas went up 20 cents today that sucks and he just don't think about it

from that point on if your if your lower income you might roll up to the gas station and be like oh I can't afford to drive my car to work today because gas went up 20 cents a gallon so that's another issue with the whole thing too it makes it tougher to to get ahead when you can't afford the basic necessities because they're growing out of your reach day by day yeah I mean when I was a Snot knows know it all college kid working at golden pantry in Athens Georgia I used to and you know

I was working at golden pantry so it's not like I was making any kind of money but for a college kid it was like hey it's great I had everything I need making that $7 an hour or whatever

because my parents were generally paying for my education and it's like easy street I would

I would wonder why someone would come in and buy like $7 worth of gas would be like what a weird number why are you putting $7 worth of gas because it didn't occur to me that's all that they could afford it's like why don't you spill your car up and it's like because it couldn't afford to dummy right I was the dummy that's right yeah no I know exactly it to mean I've been on both sides of that yeah I mean you know the naivetea of a college kid so

in a way was that the golden pantry at Alps now I worked on the um college station road okay side so we didn't figure out yeah I had the same kind of job and it is a very weird job yeah

“so we didn't figure out how to fix anything Chuck you got any ideas I think that you could”

learn a lot from Europe expanding social safety nets we could stop making that a political thing and be like no actually this can help everybody that's a new Mexico has started free child care for all doesn't matter what your income level is doesn't matter like you can put your kid into child care for free and that's a huge expense that save for the average person yeah I think New York is trying to do that like mom Donnie is trying to uh to institute that in New York City too so that could

be a huge trend just free child care universal child care could make a huge difference in people's income yeah and all of that is because people want to go out and work their job to make money for the man yep yeah well put man you got anything else got nothing else okay I don't either uh which means it's time for listener mail it is a quick correction we heard from people from Tennessee because we stole their college

hey guys long time listener here um your show has fueled many runs in charge of the years quick Nashville nitpick from a proud local in the Flexner report episode you mentioned uh maheri being right here in Georgia Nashville would like to gently reclaim that guys uh maheri medical college has been proudly in Nashville since 1876 when we're pretty attached to it totally understand how geography gets slippery mid podcast but just wanted to defend a hometown institution and that is from uh

bridge it uh shaban or shabane and we heard from a lot of people bridge it so I don't know how we screw that up but we did yeah we got it screwed up royally I even went back I was like surely there's a maheri college in Georgia too nope nope there's just the one in Tennessee so sorry everyone in Tennessee you took offense to that because we did hear from a lot of you for sure that's right but we're neighbors and we like to think that we're all the same yeah for sure we all shared your medical

“college yeah uh in the tri-state area uh if you want to be like Bridget and send us a really nice email”

correcting us we love that kind of thing you can send it off to stuff podcast did iheartradio.com stuff you should know is a production of iheart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the

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