Jeff Stahler for January 27, 2015

Not if they both work at Wal*Mart or McDonalds.

…………When I graduated from high school in 1962, my husband and I owned a three bedroom two bath house and two cars within two years. Most of the men who graduated with my class had similar paying jobs right out of high school. I didn’t work, didn’t need to. Most women didn’t, and those that did actually chose to work. Today, it’s not a choice for most families, and when those families break up, everyone lives in poverty. When I did decide to go back to college, I paid $79 tuition for 15-18 hours of credit at Southern Illinois U and we paid a $20 fee to rent whichever books we needed. Everyone could go to college, paying for it with a part time job…………….. …………Since then American productivity and GNP have skyrocketed. But, Middle Class people don’t have anywhere near the advantages we did. All the money is going to the top 1-5% of earners. And, with the cost of college, it’s darn near impossible to get a start, you already owe the cost of a house before you graduate. If the American worker is the most productive in the world, and all the stats say they are, the prospects for the young people of today should be better than they were for us. Instead, we produce the highest quality goods in the world—and can’t afford to buy them.

Stop whining! Get back to flipping burgers, OK!?

Dream on.

Ahh..the 70’s: Talkin’ it over, just the two of us, Workin’ together day to day, together, together..we’ve only just begun." – The Carpenters.

It’s basic economics. Most things cost about 15 times what they did in 1965. However, pay has not gone up 15 times, otherwise I’d be making $140,000 a year for an entry-level job.

In the 1990’s the salary of the Fortune 500 CEO was 50 times the average salary of the company.

In the 2000’s that had gone up to 500 times.

I haven’t seen recent figures but it would not surprise me if it’s now 5,000 times.