[swatcoder]

> It’s a lot more complicated financially for. You used to not have to rely on dual incomes just to survive.

This is a toxic myth and acts as excuse to blame extrinsic factors that won't see change by the time you'll need them to, even if they can be fixed. Economic life today can be a lot more complicated for middle class professionals and skilled laborers, but they were only ever a fraction of the population in the first place, and families in tougher circumstances than today's middle class folk figured out how to navigate the cards they were dealt.

Emotionally, it legitimately sucks if you come from a comfy middle class background, and have a career that you believed should have been good enough to deliver the life you remember your parents or grandparents having and now doesn't seem to be. It feels unfair and disorienting, maybe. But the fact is that middle class lifestyle is gone for now, and if it does manage to get restored, that restoration will take a generation or two to come.

In the meantime, you have to figure out how to adapt and live that more modest and "more complicated financially" lifestyle. It can be done. Lots of people have been doing it for a long time. Along the way, you'll probably discover that lower class folk who never had the luxuries of your parents and grandparents in the first place were not seeing the world as something they had to "suffer in": they lived in homes, but often with more people in them. They traveled, but more infrequently, less glamorously, and with more pragmatic rationale like "visiting family" than "seeing the world". They had parties, but served simpler dishes on less fancy platters. They had "child care" when two parents worked, but got it by exchanging favors with family or neighbors instead of sending half a paycheck to a prestigious daycare. They laughed, they drank, they had kids. It's not a world of suffering to just not have some luxuries.

[SoftTalker]

Yes and I think many of us remember childhood with rose-colored glasses. My 1970s "middle-class" parents had one car. My mom had to drive my dad to work and pick him up so that she could have a car during the day. When my brother and I were older and in school she worked part time. We lived in a simple ranch-style house. We almost never ate out or went anywhere out of town. Entertainment was going outside and finding something to do. Something like going to a movie was a rare treat. I think of it all fondly today, never with a sense that I had missed out on anything.

Today many young people would consider that life to be stifling, boring, or "suffering" but it was fine. Kids really don't care as long as they feel secure.

[dpark]

> Today many young people would consider that life to be stifling, boring, or "suffering" but it was fine.

There’s major inflation in middle class expectations. People earning median income are expecting a very upper-middle-class lifestyle. A house bigger than their parents owned with nicer finishes, two new cars, frequent travel, eating out constantly, etc.

My parents were on the upper end of middle class when I grew up and we lived in a home with carpet and laminate countertops. Now everyone wants hardwood floors and quartz and more square footage, too. A lot of folks are driving cars that cost a year of their take home pay. Cost of living is too high but expectations seem to have risen even faster.

[groundzeros2015]

> Now everyone wants hardwood floors and quartz and more square footage, too.

What you’re sensing is that things that were luxuries are now not. It’s not a big deal to pay $500 for the quartz countertops when your house is $800k.

What has gone up is the cost of essentials and the base level of goods to participate in society: housing, transportation, medicine, and education.

So yeah a TV you thought was untouchable is 3 days of minimum wage work. But it’s orthogonal to why people feel economically disposssed.

[sharadov]

Capitalists figured out they needed a consumption-driven economy to keep the engine running.

Unfortunately, the music has to stop, and that's where we are now

[weakfish]

This comment is harsh, but I think important to remember for a lot of people who don’t realize that yeah maybe the hand we’re dealt sucks, but you can find joy regardless. People dance, sang, drank and found life and love through all of history, it won’t stop now.