Guest Post by
The impact of America’s putrid and corrupt oligarchy continues to make its destructive presence felt across the land. As we learned earlier this month in the post, Pew Research Study – The American Middle Class Declined in 90% of Metro Areas From 2000-2014:
The Pew Research Center recently released a fascinating study which showed what many of us already suspected, that the U.S. middle class has declined in 90% of metropolitan areas from 2000-2014, or in 203 of 229 areas studied.
It’s what I like to call the Hunger Games economy. You’re thrown into the woods with a diminishing capacity to work hard and earn a middle income, and if you fail to enter the upper echelons you’ll be reduced to poverty. The result is insecurity, stress and ultimately resentment, which before too long bubbles to the surface in all sorts of unwelcome ways. A strong and vibrant middle class has always provided a buffer to truly nasty civil unrest and revolution in these United States. As it goes extinct, the probability of those things rises exponentially.
Yesterday, the Pew Research Center returned to the headlines, with a detailed analysis of another disturbing trend. You know something big is happening when you start breaking records going back to the 19th century.
Pew reports:
The year 2014 appears to be a milestone in the unfolding living arrangements of the nation’s young adults. For the first time since 1880, young adults are more likely to be living with a parent than they are to be living with a romantic partner in their own household. In 2014, 32.1% of 18- to 34-year-olds lived in their parents’ home, eclipsing the 31.6% of young adults who were married or cohabiting and living in their own separate dwelling. Prior to 2014 the most common living arrangement for young adults was to be in a romantic coupling (either married or cohabiting) living in their own household.
This turn of events is fueled primarily by the dramatic drop in the share of young Americans who are choosing to settle down romantically before age 35. Dating back to 1880, the most common living arrangement among young adults has been living with a romantic partner, whether a spouse or a significant other. This type of arrangement peaked around 1960, when 62% of the nation’s 18- to 34-year-olds were living with a spouse or partner in their own household, and only one-in-five were living with their parents.
By 2014, 31.6% of young adults were living with a spouse or partner in their own household, below the share living in the home of their parent(s) (32.1%).
In addition, trends in both employment status and wages have likely contributed to the growing share of young adults who are living in the home of their parent(s), and this is especially true of young men. Employed young men are much less likely to live at home than young men without a job, and employment among young men has fallen significantly in recent decades. The share of young men with jobs peaked around 1960 at 84%. In 2014, only 71% of 18- to 34-year-old men were employed. Similarly with earnings, young men’s wages (after adjusting for inflation) have been on a downward trajectory since 1970 and fell significantly from 2000 to 2010. As wages have fallen, the share of young men living in the home of their parent(s) has risen.
For more on the oligarch thieving spree marketed as a recovery, see:
The Status Quo Plan – Convince the American Public to Accept Serfdom
America’s Road to Serfdom – 51% of Home Renters Are Over 40 Years Old
Middle Class Destitution – A Devastating Tale From America’s Heartland
Pew Research Study – The American Middle Class Declined in 90% of Metro Areas From 2000-2014
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
Reverting to mean.
Lots and lots of things are going to revert to mean, it is inevitable and how this planet operates.
My goodness the next few years are going to be stressful and eye-opening – by force – to so many.
Question: What ever happened to roommates? Most of these freeloading young folks could get an apartment and share rent every month.
Granted that is not living with a member of the opposite sex, but it could be. I guess it is just easier to be a Dindu and let mommy and daddy foot the bill while the freeloader works a fifteen hour week at Starbucks, right?
So why do the unemployed need us to have wide open borders and to import muslims secretly at night by the plane load?
I wonder how many of these children living with their parents will vote for Hillary (or Sanders)?
I’m guessing most of them.
It won’t occur to them that the Democrat’s policies that they have been promoted since the Clinton administration -and mostly with the cooperation of the Republicans- are responsible for their condition and that only Trump is really standing at all against those policies.
Well good ,at least these horny little bastards are living in Sin.You do remember when living in Sin was the really living in Sin.?
My friends for over 30 years have a 29 year old daughter living in their finished attic. She has 2 master degrees, one from a college in England.
She is a self proclaimed social democrat, has not had a job since she was 19, has no friends and
eats salmon and kale every day(paid for by mom and dad). She’s been home from the UK for almost 2 years and does nothing. Her college majors are useless and she won’t take a job unless it
pays her at least $90,000 to start, because she’s worth it.
Shit, when i was 29 i was married and owned a house!
And i didn’t finish fucking college.
Igor,
Same here, 29 married and owned a house albeit with a mortgage at 10 1/8%, but we still had 20 % down which even back then was over $30,000. Still live in the same house and it will be paid for next year. That said number one son moved back in after finishing college last year, but he has a good paying job as a quality engineer 10 minutes away and is saving up. He has a very modest college loan that will be paid shortly and I don’t mind having him around so long as he is working.
Bob.
You knuckleheads worked when the dollar still had value. My dad was the same .Fought the war in Vietnam .Had a job with Westinghouse before he got back home .Move mom and myself into a house all by the age of 25 .This was in the early 70s.Dad worked and mom took care of us kids and home.This was right after the Nixon administration took us off the Gold standard.
I don’t know if a young man could do that now.The dollar have been so debased .
bb,
With absurd prices of homes up hear in the northeast, especially the greater Boston area you need two wage earners each with an income of over $50,000 to begin to look at the least expensive homes in all but the least desirable areas. Even in the less desirable suburbs you will end up buying a house that needs a lot of work and more money to fix it up. It always frustrates me because you can build reasonably priced housing if the government wanted us to and would let us. Between having a strangle hold on the excess land and passing thousands of extremely expensive laws and regulations, housing construction is a very expensive and risky business. I should know I have been doing it for over 25 years.
With the government it is all about control and as we have witnessed it always serves to make the things they control more expensive. They want their vig and they are going to get it one way or another. Expensive houses only serve to drive up rents and around here rents tend to be very high again except in the crappiest towns where you see a high concentration of of minorities and immigrants. Subsidized housing also serves to drive up rents also as these vouchers/dollars compete against the average wage earner who does not get the voucher, but must pay the same inflated rent.
The system will not be “fixed” any time soon. It will probably blow up first.
Bob.
With the degradation of the culture, I would not rule out the possibility that living with Mom and Dad doesn’t involve “romance”.
Bostonbob,
House price in central nj 1979, $49,900 fha 3% down. Adjustable rate mortgage starting
at 11.5%.
All of this is the result of peak population. Don’t have kids.
Yancey Ward, what a smart ass. I resemble that.