A segment of DU is very invested in painting a dystopian picture of the US

[cascadiance]

16. I think that you don't understand that many of us are still screwed with today's "jobs"...

Last edited Wed Jun 24, 2015, 11:06 AM - Edit history (1)

When you have people still making less money than they did 15-20 years ago for decent permanent jobs they had then.

That in today's economy many have to settle for short term contract jobs that make it harder for people to build expertise up in certain types of technologies, etc. when they have to switch so often. Many people's savings have been wiped out by foreclosures, being unemployed, and their salaries are still in the toilet where they will hardly ever catch up on paying off their debts that they've accumulated, and they still will wind up paying off 10% penalties (that rich people don't really have to pay!) to take early distributions on their retirement funds to make ends meet. Some of us who were unemployed TWICE during the year in previous years miss out on one of those means to avoid 10% penalties when we weren't unemployed for 3 straight months instead of two different occasions for less than 3 months each.

And we have things like health insurance adjusted these days to increase the amount of deductibles that we have to pay instead of having reasonable coverage of larger medical expenses. I have to find a bunch of money this week to pay completely out of pocket to do some sleep apnea tests that by the way is an ailment that killed a DUer here a week ago or so! Had I had health insurance for some time, some earlier medical expenses would have used up that deductible instead of just being applied to the older plan.

I also can't get a newer 401k as a contractor to roll over my older 401k so that I can qualify for one of those exceptions that would let me avoid the 10% penalty tax if I needed more money next year to pay off some of the added tax and penalties for withdrawals I had this year.

And 1994 was about the time where we had another economic dip where people's wages would have been a bit lower then, which would account for greater rise between then and now and less increase between 1974 and then. You can cherry pick those years to provide a "story", but you can't change the fact that many people are hurting more than they did in earlier times, no matter how many statistics and message spin meisters you might have.