My husband and I have spent our twenty-plus years together striving to rise the economic ranks from working class poor to middle class. Both of us experienced meager living during our childhood years, but believed that hard work and perseverance assured us a more comfortable lifestyle than we, or our parents, had known in the past. A middle class lifestyle. You know, the American Dream. So in our early years together, as our parents cheered us on, we took on well-paying jobs, became homeowners in our 20's, housed two cars in the garage, and attempted to educate our children while providing them some of the material possessions we lacked while growing up.
Now middle-aged, we can proclaim that we are, by some definitions, indeed middle class. We live in a nice home in a safe neighborhood. We provide our school-aged son with access to a good school district. We dress decent enough, drive cars that are paid for, take a small vacation every year, and our annual income falls well above the national median. Isn't this middle class America? Are we not living the American Dream?
Yes, we are. But it is ironic that in the daily struggle to remain middle class and keep the Dream alive for ourselves, we are merely repeating the lifestyle our parents knew so well as the working class poor. As they struggled to put food on the table, so do we. As they struggled to educate their children, so do we. Yes, we have bigger homes, more possessions. But still, we struggle. Take a closer look at our family. We live in a home we can no longer afford, we can't meet our financial obligations on a timely basis, we live from paycheck to paycheck. We have nothing in savings, no education fund for our son, our oldest child has no health insurance, and our kitchen cupboards are all but bare. We live on the brink of financial disaster, and the next unexpected crisis will be the proverbial straw to break the camel's back.
We have become the middle class poor.
Polsterbett Hohes Kopfteil
5 years ago
2 comments:
Well here it is the daily grind that has become life in america. I to wanted more, i wanted to provide for family and have a good life. I currently live paycheck to paycheck as well and with tax season rapidly approching i may be able to afford something for us. However since i am in my 30's and have not reached the american dream i will be taxed unfairly for the rest of my days if i manage to stay in the middle class. witch is becoming harder and harder. (i have no kids doctors say it is not possible, no home, and not currently a collage student there for i have no tax breaks this is the tax that i am talking of) Due to the rise in the price of pretty much everything these days and a gross of approximatly 60,000 a year i do not think that i am going to be able to keep up my current life stile and am considering a big move in one of 2 directions. Either the simple life witch i have been reading up on witch means become self saficiant or out of the country where the skills i have are valued and the cost to maintain a life is not as stupidly high. Come on now i wanted to buy a house when i got back here from my stay in japan but with houses in the area starting at 250,000+ it is unrealistic. Anyway i don't think the american dream exsists anymore, do you? Unless you are at the top or at the bottom where you qualify for every break this country has to offer you are just here bust'in your butt to live what you belive to be a good life what whould happen if we all just exsepted the fait of the middle class and stopped working and started sucking up those goverment programs then what? I am tired of paying for the less fortanate when i myself have to fight to keep food on the table.
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