Comment by klabb3
17 days ago
Growing up poor or with money problems, seeing that struggle. One does come out different. One can potentially be more understanding when people are just continuing the lifestyle they grew up with. In this case, 2 working adults, one white collar, used to be enough to rent an apartment and eat out/ have deliveries regularly, no? That’s just a story of middle class erosion and financialization of the economy.
What makes very little sense to me is seeing people go from having very little to making a lot, and the increases in lifestyle to match income. Aka lifestyle creep. Things that 2 years ago were not even a wish are now taken for granted. And it’s all the same as everyone else.
> In this case, 2 working adults, one white collar, used to be enough to rent an apartment and eat out/ have deliveries regularly, no?
That’s not true. I grew up in the 1990s, and my dad had a white collar job working for a government contractor. I remember that he made right around the median family household income in the early 1990s, which was at the time double the income for all households. (My mom didn’t work then.) Our neighbors were professionals, white collar federal government workers, etc. Our house was 1,100 square feet. We rarely got even pizza delivery. Maybe we went to Sizzler or Pizza Hut a few times a month. We had one car until 1998 (a Toyota Camry). My dad worked right outside of DC and took a bus to the train station, and then took the Metro to the office.