https://theconversation.com/jd-vance-is-no-pauper-hes-a-classic-example-of-poornography-in-which-the-rich-try-to-speak-on-behalf-of-the-poor-236209 His mom was a nurse. A nurse makes more than a teacher. |
My neighbor retired at age 60 to provide childcare for his 3 grandchildren. Both his daughter and son-in-law are MCPS teachers. |
Same. I remember thinking I was going to use a daycare near work in Arlington.... until we took a tour. The facility and staff were beyond mediocre but tuition was $2200 per kid! Most other places in the US would be providing Montessori plus extra at that price but in Arlington you got the EconoLodge of daycares. Ended up paying $1200 per child at an even shabbier Alexandria daycare instead, but at least we could afford it. |
Ironically Vance’s grandparents were solid stable middle class because of UNION jobs. The irony. |
There was a recession in the early 1990s with significant unemployment and a housing crash in the late 80s. It's not like the boomers had it "easy" at all. |
Vance's grandparents were just the next step up from poor. If they were middle class, it was just barely and entirely due to a low cost region. |
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| Wow OP, you are REALLY out of touch with reality. This is not third world country-level poverty, this is AMERICA. A lot of people live this way and a lot of people make these choices. Just because you didn't, and because you don't know anyone like this, doesn't mean people (MOST PEOPLE) don't live like this. Grow up and learn more about the country you live in, you damn elitist. |
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I grew up in the 1970s in upstate NY in a middle-class neighborhood. We had plenty of larger families (Irish Catholics and Italians!) in small houses. 5 kids for a 2-bedroom house would not have been unusual, although very likely as the kids got older, they would bump out the house or renovate an attic space or garage to add another bedroom.
So it certainly is one way that working class or middle class families can afford a large family- kids share bedrooms and you don't save for college. |
So housing prices crashed when boomers were mid 30s, ie went on sale at the peak time to buy. The recession in 1990s was famously short and shallow. Followed by one of greatest job markets in history, maybe even better than post COVID https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/12/13/two-recessions-two-recoveries/ |
Really, one step up from poor don’t usually own stock and a pension: “ But Vance himself was never actually impoverished. His family never had to worry about money; his grandfather, grandmother and mother all had houses in a suburban neighborhood in Middletown, Ohio. He admits that his grandfather “owned stock in Armco and had a lucrative pension.”” |
My point was WSJ was showing this as a exemplary tale of how to have a large family on working class income, but I depends upon buying when houses were cheap, a union job, and govt hand outs to health insurance — all of which are vanishing. Not to mention the weird 15 year age gap! |
Who cares? |
Well I was in the Bronx in the 1970s it was a dangerous shithole. My building had crackheads in lobby |
| If they're relying on government handouts to survive, they don't have a modest income. They're poor. |