The Middle Class: Canary in the Gold Mine

11:45Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. Because if you're owning a factory or owning a railroad or a share of a railroad, that is a very distinct upper class. It may not be aristocracy, but aristocracy became less and less important as time went on. flash forward to like the middle of the 19th century and you had people like Karl Marx and we should say Karl Marx was trying to sell something which was Marxism but he would come along and say like hey there are really two classes there are there's the working class and then everybody else that's exploiting the working class yeah and the the exploiters or

12:27Chuck Bryant:the oppressors and the oppressed, I think he also put it. They owned the capital. They were the capitalists. They were the ones who could open a factory and employ you, and you depended on them for money, but they were exploiting your labor. And in this sense, where there's an owning class and a working class, there's really no room for a middle class. Eventually, though, a middle class still emerged because those capitalists aren't going to, like you said, do their own books. They're not going to go teach the next generation of workers to come work in their factory. So, like, there was a need for people to train the working classes to better serve the capitalist elite.

13:09Chuck Bryant:And that's where the middle class really started to emerge in the United States in particular, but also in, like, the U.K., Australia, some of the other places in the West. That's where the middle class, as we understand it now, really developed.

13:24Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And it was there during the time of Marx, but that wasn't good for Marxism to point that out. So it was very much easier for him to say, like, you're being exploited or you're the exploiter.

13:35Chuck Bryant:It is a little black and white.

13:37Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. So in the 19th century, the middle class values system started to kind of take shape, which is, you know, sort of the value system that ideally is still around today, which is the idea that, you know, if you work hard, you save up, you can be a success in the United States. You know, they agreed that people should vote more and more, like have access to voting. And of course, that started with like, hey, maybe men that aren't landowners should be able to vote. And then that kind of spread throughout the years to, you know, people of different races and then women finally. But the idea that expanding voting rights and expanding education was always sort of a middle class value.

14:25Josh Clark:And then early on, it was, you know, the role of women in society has definitely changed as far as the middle class value goes. But early on, it was, hey, women are very important to keep the home, but really be the moral center of the world of the home, you know?

14:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah, of the family, which was of utmost importance, the nuclear family, which became really important in the Victorian era and really informed the middle class values too, right? And all of those seem like so, we take them for granted so much as values typically, aside from, you know, forcing women to work in the home, whether they like it or not. That just goes to show you how effective the middle class was at spreading its, basically imposing its values on everybody else in the West.

15:11Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. Should we take an early break here? Well, it's not too early, actually.

15:16Chuck Bryant:I think so. Yeah, let's.

15:18Josh Clark:All right, we'll take a break. I think that's a good setup. Middle class is forming. Everyone's getting excited. And we'll flash forward to the 20th century right after this.

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18:43Josh Clark:All right. I promised talk of the 20th century and the middle class, and that's where we are. Specifically, you know, this is when the middle class in the U.S. really, really emerged as like a massive thing. Like the largest portion of a set of people in the U.S. became middle class in the 20th century. and really after the war. It was powered by the New Deal, of course. After World War II, the United States was in a unique position as Victor, but also Victor, who didn't have the war fought on their mainland soil. So we didn't have to do all this rebuilding after the war, so we were in a position to really hit the throttle on economic stimulus, which was brought about via the New Deal.

19:30Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and World War II, just the sheer amount of money thrown into the economy from the government for World War II helped as well, right? And we had all those technologies that we developed that gave us things like Pop-Tarts and stuff immediately after the war and completely improved the quality of life for people in the United States, especially the middle class, right? Right. So you have government policy like the New Deal, like the National Labor Relations Act that are favoring workers, this working class that is becoming the middle class. And then one of the other really, really, really big aspects of what built the middle class in the United States and elsewhere were unions, union membership.

20:14Chuck Bryant:because if you can bargain collectively, you can't be exploited nearly as easily. And that means that life is a lot more fair for you, the worker, because you're allowed to get together and say, no, you can't do that to any of us. If you do that to one of us, you do it to all of us and we'll all leave.

20:31Josh Clark:Yes. I mean, we did a great episode on unions years ago. So I advise you to go listen to that now if you want to learn more about those. Me? No, no, no. Everyone else. I mean, you can if you want.

20:43Chuck Bryant:Okay.

20:44Josh Clark:A little refresher. But union membership really bloomed in the 1930s and 40s. I think at the beginning of the 20th century, it was in the low teens union membership. And then it really, really rose from there. And so did wages. Between 1940 and 1960, if you were a non-farmer, your median weekly income rose. And these, by the way, everything we're doing is in 2025 dollars just to make it easier to understand. Right. But your median weekly income for a non-farmer went from$550 to over$1 ,000, almost$1 ,100. And that was across all, you know, a lot of education levels, you know, different racial groups, different industries.

21:26Josh Clark:That was sort of a broad change. So, you know, it was an interesting time in that, you know, pay for people in what is now like a solid middle class. It was really rising. They were taxing the rich and constraining corporate power such that some people called this time the Great Compression, where the wealth levels were sort of smashed together on a graph instead of expanded vastly like we are now. We're going to have some shocking numbers for you later in this episode. Yeah.

21:57Chuck Bryant:So that that era between 1940 and I think a lot of people essentially put it at the mid 70s is when they say the party really started to end was just this economic boom golden age for the United States and the middle class. and there was a another big factor too which was home ownership we we did I remember in our racial discrimination or housing discrimination episode that we did we pointed out that owning a home has long been really important especially for the middle class because that is how you generate wealth for most people your home just appreciates some value over the years And then you can also use that home to transfer that wealth to your kids.

22:41Chuck Bryant:So it's also a form of generational wealth transfer for the middle class. So it's a really big deal to own your own home. And that was another big thing that happened after World War II. Home ownership went up quite a bit.

22:53Josh Clark:Yeah, previous, and this is going way back, but between 1890 and 1930, home ownership was under 50 % in the United States. And eventually, you know, thanks to the suspect mortgages that they were handing out like candy in 2004, that peaked at I think it was close to 70 percent, like 69 or something.

23:14Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. And then I think it dropped down to something like 65 and is basically plateaued since there. But this is the point that you could own a house. You could own a car. You could have a family of, you know, a husband and wife and two kids and live in the suburbs. And the kids would go to a nice school. And this is obviously this is the most idealized version of what we're talking about. There's a lot of disparity. There's a lot of people who are still very poor in the United States, too. But overall, if we're just focusing on the middle class, you could do all of these things and have a nice, comfortable middle class life, a pension after you retired on one salary, one income.

23:58Chuck Bryant:Because, again, one of the main values of the middle class at this time was that the mother stayed home, raised the kids and made the house the center of the nuclear family, respite from the rest of the world. One salary could do all of that.

24:15Josh Clark:Yeah, and it was, you know, people weren't as far apart as they were financially speaking. Like, you may live in the same neighborhood or maybe the neighborhood next to your boss. You know, blue collar workers and white collar workers were way more, you know, just kind of squashed together. Like, your children probably went to school. if you were like a line worker at an auto plant you know you may not have as nice of a car or as big of a house as your manager or your boss but you know it was in the same world and you know I still remember that stuff growing up in the 80s like the you watch any John Hughes movie and like all the kids at the same school they were like you know the rich kids and then the kids that lived in that neighborhood but it wasn't extreme wealth and poverty.

25:05Chuck Bryant:No. And the fact is, they were all going to the same school. Exactly. There was like a leveling from that. So, yeah, that was a really big deal. And this is going on through about to the mid-70s when things started to decline for the middle class, right? Yeah. There was the end of the post-war boom. I mean, that's really tough to keep up in the form that it was in for very long. And it's kind of astounding it stayed up that long. Part of it was that the U.S. was in that unique position, like you said. It didn't have to rebuild after World War II like Europe and Japan did. Well, after a few decades, Europe and Japan were able to rebuild and they started to catch up to the United States, which meant that they were taking more share of the United States pie with, say, like exports and manufacturing and stuff.

25:54Chuck Bryant:That was one factor, too. There was also the oil crisis.

25:58Josh Clark:Yeah.

25:58Chuck Bryant:I think that that made a bigger dent than I ever realized, that that was like a history-changing event, the OPEC oil crisis. And then also political conflicts that ultimately laid the bedwork for today's culture wars. Civil rights movement, feminism, environmentalism, LGBTQ plus rights. All of these things were marginalized groups. Previously marginalized groups came forward and said, no, there's no reason we should be treated like second class citizens. That created a tension in the United States. A lot of corporations came in and figured out how to exploit this for their own ends. And that eventually started to divide people to where there was this sense of competition is the bedrock of American capitalism.

26:52Chuck Bryant:And American capitalism is the bedrock of the middle class. It's part of the middle class. It's the new middle class value. It's where we got yuppies in the 80s.

27:00Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. Deindustrialization also happened in 1970. One out of every four non-farming jobs in the U.S. was in manufacturing. And by 2017, it was one in 11. So other countries, you know, as globalization and trade increased, other countries started making stuff super cheap. Like this isn't a big surprise to anyone listening to this. Imports from China started coming in. Imports from other, you know, Southeast Asian countries started coming in. Stuff was a lot cheaper to buy. And, you know, they started automating a lot of stuff. It was, you know, kind of the first automation boom was happening in the 1970s where factories didn't need as many people on the line to do stuff that these new machines were doing.

27:46Josh Clark:So that coupled with de-unionization really, you know, kind of dropping off was a huge factor.

27:55Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and it really definitely declined. It's below 10 percent for the entire workforce in the United States. A huge chunk of that is just from government jobs, like teaching. They tend to have a very strong union. But overall, it went from like 35, 36 percent to 10 percent. And one of the reasons that that happened is because the government basically withdrew its support for unions. Not only did it stop passing legislation or enforcing legislation that supported unions, it actually started issuing legislation that harmed and crippled unions and essentially removed their power.

28:31Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And then the last reason, you know, we can't talk about the middle class and wealth disparity without talking about Ronald Reagan. You know, he's the one that kicked it off and subsequent administrations definitely didn't do the middle class any favors. But those Reagan era policies, the trickle down economics, cutting taxes for corporations, undermining labor unions, cutting taxes on the top earners individually, really transformed the look of our nation heavily, heavily in favor of of the rich. And, you know, the top 10 percent, especially the top 1 percent. And like I said, other, you know, Democrats and Republicans since then have failed the United States and their policies.

29:17Josh Clark:I know after the economic crash and the real estate crash of 2008, there were a lot of people, especially now in hindsight, that look back and say, you know what? We really had an opportunity there and the Obama administration failed us when we bailed out those banks with not very many strings attached. We had some leverage there to sort of get some changes in place that could have helped, you know, shift the look of the financial outlook of our country and we didn't do it. No.

29:44Chuck Bryant:And what they would have been doing is undoing damage that was done during the Clinton administration where they repealed the Glass-Steagall Act that kept banks from dabbling in investments. You were either a bank or an investment company. Which one? And after that, you don't have to choose. And that's ultimately what helped lead us to that massive financial crisis, the Great Recession. So, yeah, it's really easy and fun to pick on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for kicking all this off. But they were not the only neoliberal presidents to come along after the 80s.

30:19Josh Clark:No, for sure. If you're talking about the middle class today, you really have to start with, like, how do you define the middle class? And Libya did a really great job in this section, I think. Like, there are a lot of different ways that people and pundits like to talk about what the middle class even is. some social scientists. It's just a super straightforward income based definitions, which is good in one sense, because you can adjust that depending on where you are, like in the world, like a middle class income in New York City isn't going to be the same thing as in a rural area. So they can you can adjust things economically based on just a strict income-based definition, which is kind of cool.

31:03Chuck Bryant:Also, that means that the middle class doesn't move out of reach of certain people too. Like if you just have the median income and say that's the middle class, as the median income grows, the middle class goes up and some people stay behind. This is like, here's the middle class section and you can get into it and out of it or drop out of it and go above it, but it's going to stay in the same place. And it's just going to it's going to change depending on how wages rise. It seems like a pretty good it's a good idea to me. The most widely used one comes from the Pew Research Center. And they it's an income based approach that they use.

31:42Chuck Bryant:But they basically say that if your household income is two thirds of the median household income or up to double the median household income, you are middle class. Right. And I think in 2024, that meant that your household, it's very important too, that your household made between$55 ,820 to$167 ,460. Anywhere in there, you were middle class income wise.

32:13Josh Clark:Yeah. This is all obviously like pre-tax money, right?

32:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Oh, yeah.

32:20Josh Clark:I would think so. Yeah. So under that definition, the middle class made up 61 percent of households in 1971 compared to just 51 percent in 2023. But at the same time, the upper income category went from 11 percent to 19 percent and the lower percentage rose from 27 percent to 30 percent. So what you're seeing is like the wealth gap like happening in real time, basically.

32:49Chuck Bryant:Yes, but that also suggests that 8 % of people in the middle class moved up from the core middle class to the upper income category. So that's an interpretation that a lot of people who are like, no, the middle class is fine, suggest.

33:07Josh Clark:Right. Then 3 % moved down.

33:09Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah. So that's, yeah, income is like if you're an economist, this is what you're looking at. If you're, say, an anthropologist or a sociologist, you might say, well, who considers themselves middle class? Maybe we should look at those people and then kind of study them like that, like ask people, are you middle class or not? Are you working class? You consider yourself upper class. And they usually either divide it into those three, lower class, middle class, upper class, or else they'll divide it into quintiles, lower class, working class, which they would also call lower middle class.

33:45Chuck Bryant:Core middle class, upper middle class, and then gobsmackingly rich.

33:51Josh Clark:And 1 % saying buzz off is none of your business. Quit asking me questions.

33:56Chuck Bryant:They have them arrested.

33:58Josh Clark:So 2024 was the last Gallup poll that we have where someone said, like, hey, what do you consider yourself? And in the United States, 39 % of citizens considered themselves middle class. Another 15 % said they were upper middle class, which brings that grand total to 54. 31 % identified as working class. 12 % is lower class. Just 2 % of upper class, which means a lot of those upper middle class people were lying liars and that they're really part of the upper class.

34:32Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. But I think also it's not I'm sure some people were like, I don't want to say like I feel upper class. I don't want to self-identification.

34:40Josh Clark:So it makes sense.

34:42Chuck Bryant:Sure. But at the same time, also, I think that has to do with the idea that maybe based on income, it's almost like that vibe session thing. Yeah. Like, yeah, your income would put you in the middle class, but you don't feel wealthy. You feel like you could be ruined by a health care crisis at any time. So I think especially with self-identification, that gives you a sense of that. the actual health of the economy as far as, like, consumer confidence is concerned.

35:08Josh Clark:Yeah. And there's, you know, laziness factors in. You could be in the upper middle class but also still have a car tire sitting in your side yard. For sure. Like typical markers of, you know, different classes.

35:23Chuck Bryant:For sure. Tires in your side yard. I got to get mine moved.

35:28Josh Clark:Emily got on to me for years about the car battery that I had. that I just, it's like, how do you get rid of a car battery? I know you can.

35:37Chuck Bryant:Oh, you take it to like one of the auto stores.

35:40Josh Clark:I know, but none of those feel right.

35:44Chuck Bryant:No, they take the core out and, yeah, they recycle them for real.

35:49Josh Clark:Yeah, because you've watched them do all that, right? From beginning to end.

35:52Chuck Bryant:I help on weekends as just, it's pro bono.

35:56Josh Clark:That's my point is I don't trust any of it. None of it feels right.

36:00Chuck Bryant:All right. I'm with you. Well, you want to know something that really opened my eyes and changed my life, Chuck? I realized recently that that whole like grocery store bag recycling thing is a total scam. Like Publix and all of them who have those things out that said, put your plastic bags in here. We recycle them. They don't. They don't. They throw them away. And I can't tell you how much time I've spent like taking labels off of plastic wrap, shaking out plastic wrap to make it clean. like taking it all bundled together, taking it to publics and putting it in the bin. And then the idea they just take it and throw it away and use this as just like a PR thing.

36:38Chuck Bryant:Oh, my God. I'm so sick of stuff like that, man.

36:42Josh Clark:Agreed. Two quick things on that. You can't count on your large grocery store chain to do that. You got to go to like the charm. You got to go what we have here in Atlanta and Athens. Right. The Center for Hard to Recycle Materials because they really do the work. It's just a big pain. And number two, just as a quick aside, I went to Belize on winter break recently, had a great time. But the grocery store in, there was a grocery store in Placentia named Publix, P-U-B-L-I-C-S. Same exact font and coloring as Publix.

37:19Chuck Bryant:It's like Ricky Rouse in Monod Muck. That was very, very funny. It's funny. They're like, we spelled it different, what?

37:26Josh Clark:All right, so we're getting off track. Jack, one of the last ways, I guess second to the last way to look at is through education levels. Because a lot of times when you hear, you know, pundits on the news talking about the middle class, they'll say things like, you know, people with a four-year college degree, that's only about 40 percent of the population in the U.S. And it's really misleading. So I wish they'd just kind of throw this one out with the public's grocery bags because, you know, you could have a four year degree and be a college professor that also has to have a second job to make ends meet.

38:03Josh Clark:Or you could also not have a college degree and own a multimillion dollar, you know, sort of blue collar business. So I say just get rid of that one.

38:11Chuck Bryant:A multimillion dollar battery recycling business.

38:14Josh Clark:Yeah, because that's where all the money is.

38:17Chuck Bryant:So, yeah, so values also, I agree, education levels, just get rid of that, especially with college not really leading to many as many opportunities today as it used to and all of the incredible debt associated with it. That should not be a measurement for the middle class. Values is another one, too. And this one I was kind of like, what, why?

38:37Josh Clark:Yeah.

38:37Chuck Bryant:And I realized you can't measure social groups strictly on things like income. That, you know, that self-identification thing has a lot to do with values. One we talked about is the nuclear family, which has been altered dramatically since the middle of the last century. When I would say, I would argue in the United States at least, the nuclear family was like at its peak of importance. It's definitely declined. People kind of make family wherever they can find it. And that doesn't mean that like all of the values are gone, that there was a 2010 Vice President Joe Biden middle class task force.

39:19Chuck Bryant:I had no idea that existed, but it essentially went through and said, what are your values? And they came up with pretty basic stuff that I think most middle class people would agree with economic stability and security. You want a car for each of your kids as they get to driving age. You want to take a family vacation once a year. You want to send those kids to college. You want to own your home. Like really basic stuff. And the idea that all of that is up for grabs in this country right now is really alarming.

39:51Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. Should we take another break? Yes. All right. We're going to take a break. and we'll talk about what's gone wrong with the middle class and where we might be headed right after this.

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43:13Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck, so I think we've kind of said a couple of times that there's a lot of different ways you can look at things to say the middle class is doing great. Oh, no, the middle class is hollowed out in debt. One of the things that you can really kind of point to is like, how much are you getting paid? That's a pretty easy one. So you can look at average hourly wages for non-supervisory employees. So that's everybody who's not a manager or like a C-suite executive, right? Just the regular rank and file employees. There was a peak of pay in 1973 of$30. This is $20,$25, right?

43:51Josh Clark:Yeah, always. Or always on this episode.

43:55Chuck Bryant:Right. In fall of 2025, we were at$31.50. So we managed to gain an extra$1.50 in average hourly wages in 50 years. Yeah. And you might think like, okay, well, really, let's think about inflation and everything. I did. Get this. If you went back to 1973, right, $1 today buys 14 % of what it bought in 1973.

44:30Josh Clark:Yeah.

44:31Chuck Bryant:So that means that today—

44:32Josh Clark:It gets worse with inflation.

44:33Chuck Bryant:It does. So you could buy, using the same hourly wage today, 14 % of your groceries if you went from 1973 to today. So we are definitely worse off because things have gotten more expensive, but wages have stagnated. If anyone ever tells you that wages have not stagnated, they are lying or they're dumb or both. And just tell them so. I've been trying really hard not to get worked up, man. And I'm trying to keep it together right now. Here we go, everybody. I'm keeping it together. there.

45:07Josh Clark:The idea of the middle class, though, around the 1960s was about wasn't just about getting to a spot and hitting it. It was about everybody continuing to grow and the overall economy of the United States continuing to grow. And that has happened, but compensation hasn't happened along with it. From 1979 to 2025, productivity in the United States rose 87 percent. but that hourly compensation rose by 33 % for non-supervisory workers.

45:40Chuck Bryant:Right. And there's two ways you can interpret that if you're like, well, unions are gone. You could say if you're an owner, well, you get rid of the unions, productivity increases. Unions make lazy workers. Another way to put it is that without the unions, you can exploit workers more easily and get them to work harder because they're afraid of losing their job, right?

45:59Josh Clark:Yeah.

46:00Chuck Bryant:Regardless of how you look at it, like, like there's no way to interpret it differently. If, if your wages have increased 33%, but productivity has increased 87%. That means that that extra wealth that was generated had to go somewhere and it didn't go to the workers. It went to the wealthiest people. and there are just, like, if you want to just look at eye-popping numbers, just look up income inequality in the 21st century because it has gotten completely out of control compared to how it used to be. And I mean how it used to be, like, I'm talking the 80s. As Sam Jackson would say, hang on to your butts?

46:41Chuck Bryant:What did he say in Jurassic Park? Hang on to your butts, yep. Hang on to your butts. You need a cigarette sticking out of your mouth.

46:47Josh Clark:Oh, I've got it, pal. All right. So these numbers are going to be slightly depressing and slightly eye-popping. Annual wages at the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose by 29 percent from 79 to 2021. For the top 1 percent over that same time period, they rose 206 percent. And the Forbes 400 list, it's a list that we put out in or Forbes magazine puts out about the 400 wealthiest Americans. They should probably just stop doing this altogether.

47:23Chuck Bryant:I know it ruins society.

47:26Josh Clark:But you mentioned the 1980s, 1982, that it was the initial Forbes 400. It had 13 billionaires on it. Now, everybody on the Forbes list is a billionaire. And there's another 500 billionaires that don't get on the list. So in 1982, there were 13 billionaires. There are more than 900 billionaires in the United States right now who have a collective worth of$6.6 trillion. I'm sorry, that's just the Forbes 400 have$6.6 trillion. Forget the other 500 billionaires.

48:00Chuck Bryant:Okay, so another thing that that Forbes list pointed out is that the total wealth in all of the United States is$140 trillion. dollars, the bottom 50 percent owns four trillion of that. That means the top 50 percent owns 136 trillion compared to four trillion. Oh, man. There was one other statistic I found, too. Between 1975 and 2024, there was a wealth transfer upward to the top percent that totaled $50 trillion. So however you want to put it, however you want to look at it, the middle class and the lower class have been held back while the wealth that they have been producing has moved upward.

48:47Chuck Bryant:And a big problem with that is when you have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, they're making the decisions about what happens with that money rather than hundreds of millions of people all making individual decisions and collectively making decisions that are like market signals that tell people, I'm going to go make this. I'm going to stop making this. I'm going to make this price that. All these people are upset because they don't have good health care. We better do something about that. None of that matters because they don't have money, so they don't have power. And they're afraid of losing their job, so you can do basically whatever you want to them.

49:18Chuck Bryant:That's what happened.

49:20Josh Clark:Yeah. And, you know, politically speaking, the wealth and the power is who controls everything. Obviously, via campaign donations is the most clear-cut way, but all kinds of interventions to basically let the top 1 % or 2 % make the decisions for the majority. There's a social scientist, and this isn't us railing on stuff. This is just how it is. Like, if you're saying this isn't the case, then you're lying, like you said. There's a social scientist named Richard Reeves who said that the top 20 % of earners are basically, have been completely successful in pushing zoning regulations and tax policies that benefit them all at the expense of the middle class.

50:02Josh Clark:They game the systems to pass that, you know, wealth down to their children or to get their kids into the better colleges. It's just the way things have gone in the United States.

50:13Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and the problem, one of the big problems is people are going to be all over our iTunes reviews being like, Like these guys are liberal idiots. They don't know what they're talking about. It's not liberal and conservative. It's not Republican and Democrat. This is strictly a class issue. And the idea that you are defending a class beyond yours that is exploiting your own class, including you, that's a problem. Because it's presented as a political thing and we're so tribal when it comes to political affiliations that you will defend against your own self-interest. Yeah. Because it's being presented to you as a political issue and it's not.

50:52Josh Clark:Happens. Every voting season that happens. Yeah. People vote against their own interests.

50:57Chuck Bryant:It's true. And I'm not picking just on conservatives or Republicans. Like Democrats do it too. Like it's tribal and toxic and unhealthy. Oh, man. If we could ever come together and break down those lines, oh, my gosh. People are so ramped up right now that it would just be magnificent, and the sweeping changes that would happen.

51:18Josh Clark:A new Renaissance.

51:20Chuck Bryant:Yes. Renaissance 2, the sequel. 2.0. Yeah.

51:26Josh Clark:Here's the thing. You know, goods have gotten cheaper, though. If you want to look at, again, comparing in today's dollars, groceries are generally cheaper than they were in the mid-'70s because the mid-'70s, as we said, was pretty bad. Things like, you know, clothing and furniture, electronics, all that stuff is way cheaper than it used to be. If you look at, you know, back when you bought a VCR when those first came out and they were like$1 ,000, you know, stuff like that is all like the bottom has fallen out on those kind of prices. But that hasn't happened in the housing market, which is a big deal for the middle class.

51:59Like you said in Act One, that median sales price of a house, and again, in today's dollars, it was$300 ,000 in 1979.

52:08Josh Clark:It's more than$400 ,000 today. and I think we said it was 69.2 % at its peak of home ownership in 2004. As of, I think, 2022, you know, what's happened is that, you know, I think you said it was about 65%, so it's not that big of a difference, but it's that age of buying your first house has just gotten older and older and older. In 2022, only 62 % of 40-year-olds own their home. whereas the boomer generation, 69 % of 40-year-olds owned. And the same can be said for rent and child care and college and health care. It's just all these things are outpacing earnings.

52:56Chuck Bryant:Plus also that 62 % and 69 % is a little misleading because there are way more boomers than there are Gen X who are 40 now. So 69 % of boomers is numerically a much bigger group than 62 % of Gen Xers.

53:14Josh Clark:Right, which also means that that's a greater number of houses that are now locked up being passed on to their kids. And, you know, not saying that you shouldn't own a house and pass along to your kids. But as far as the housing market goes, that's just a lot.

53:29Chuck Bryant:Right. So, Chuck, what are we going to do about this? What are some things we can do?

53:37Josh Clark:Oh, man. Let's solve it. Put me on the spot. Well, I mean, I don't know, man. It's not like this all over the world. If you look in Europe, there is a middle class there, but it's not quite the same. They maybe don't have the kind of wealth that upper middle class does here, but they have the income equality isn't as great. Generally, they have stronger social welfare programs. Right. Like the danger of falling into desperate life straits isn't as great over there. I saw, I think on Instagram recently, it was an interview with a guy that was a, he had a good job, you know, it was one of those stories where the guy was on the streets and he had a degree in chemistry and he had a good job.

54:21Josh Clark:And, you know, I read the comments because I was curious if people were going to be like bashing this dude or what. And hearteningly, a lot of the people were like, hey, I worked in shelters for the unhoused for years and we saw all kinds of people come through here. We saw doctors and attorneys and people, you know, that just, you know, sometimes you're a bad circumstance or two away from that kind of situation. And it's just not like that in Europe, generally speaking.

54:51Chuck Bryant:I remember during the 2008 recession reading some statistic that something like at the time, like 40 percent or something like that of Americans were one paycheck away from being homeless. Like that's how little savings and cushion that that most Americans had. Yeah.

55:09Josh Clark:Or having to make, you know, health care decisions like that aren't good for your life because you can't afford it because it will bankrupt your family. You're having to put yourself and your family in peril physically.

55:24Chuck Bryant:Right. That's part of that why the European middle class is much more secure because most of them have universal health care.

55:32Josh Clark:Yeah, they're not bankrupted by a diagnosis.

55:35Chuck Bryant:Right. But even on more day-to-day pedestrian stuff, so the lower income you are, the more inflation affects you. Where, like, if you're higher income and you go gas up your car and you're like, wow, gas went up 20 cents today. That sucks. And you just don't think about it from that point on. And if you're lower income, you might roll up to the gas station and be like, oh, I can't afford to drive my car to work today because gas went up 20 cents a gallon. So that's another issue with the whole thing, too. It makes it tougher to get ahead when you can't afford the basic necessities because they're growing out of your reach day by day.

56:18Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, when I was a snot-nosed, know-it-all college kid working at Golden Pantry in Athens, Georgia, I used to – and, you know, I was working at Golden Pantry, so it's not like I was making any kind of money. But for a college kid, it was like, hey, it was great. I had everything I need making that$7 an hour or whatever because my parents were generally paying for my education, and it's like easy street. I would I would wonder why someone would come in and buy like seven dollars worth of gas I would be like what a weird number why are you putting seven dollars worth of gas because it didn't occur to me that's all that they could afford I was like why don't you just fill your car up and it's like because they couldn't afford to dummy

57:00Chuck Bryant:I was the dummy that's right yeah no I know exactly what you mean I've been on both sides of that

57:07Josh Clark:yeah I mean you know the naivete of a college kid so in a way

57:11Chuck Bryant:Was that the golden pantry at Alps?

57:15Josh Clark:No, I worked on the College Station Road side.

57:20Chuck Bryant:Gotcha. Weird job. Yeah, I had the same kind of job, and it is a very weird job. So we didn't figure out how to fix anything, Chuck. You got any ideas? I think that you could learn a lot from Europe, expanding social safety nets. We could stop making that a political thing and be like, no, actually, this can help everybody. I saw that New Mexico has started free child care for all. Doesn't matter what your income level is. Doesn't matter. Like you can put your kid into child care for free. And that's a huge expense that save for the average person. I think New York is trying to do that. Like Mom Donnie is trying to institute that in New York City, too.

58:04Chuck Bryant:So that could be a huge trend. And just free child care, universal child care could make a huge difference in people's income.

58:13Josh Clark:Yeah. And all of that is because people want to go out and work their job to make money for the man.

58:20Chuck Bryant:Yep. Yeah. Well put, man. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay. I don't either. Which means it's time for listener mail.

58:31Josh Clark:This is a quick correction. We heard from people from Tennessee because we stole their college. Hey, guys, longtime listener here. Your show has fueled many runs and chores over the years. Quick Nashville nitpick from a proud local in the Flexner Report episode. You mentioned Meharry being right here in Georgia. Nashville would like to gently reclaim that, guys. Meharry Medical College has been proudly in Nashville since 1876, and we're pretty attached to it. Totally understand how geography gets slippery mid-podcast, but just wanted to defend a hometown institution. And that is from Bridget Chavon or Chavane.

59:08Josh Clark:And we heard from a lot of people, Bridget. So I don't know how we screwed that up, but we did.

59:13Chuck Bryant:Yeah, we got it screwed up royally. I even went back and was like, surely there's a Meharry College in Georgia too. Nope, nope, it's just the one in Tennessee. So sorry, everyone in Tennessee who took offense to that because we did hear from a lot of you for sure.

59:26Josh Clark:That's right. But we're neighbors and we like to think that we're all the same.

59:29Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. Sure. We all shared your medical college.

59:32Josh Clark:Yeah.

59:33Chuck Bryant:In the tri-state area. If you want to be like Bridget and send us a really nice email correcting us, we love that kind of thing. You can send it off to StuffPodcasts at iHeartRadio.com.

59:47Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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