U.S. Middle Class nearly gone

[RolloTheGreat]

I don't even need to save for retirement.  If I told you guys about my pension you would be shocked.  I have the best pension in all of North America.  My salary is nothing spectacular but when you factor in my pension and benefits I have a pretty amazing job.

Rollo the cost of living sounds very low where you are.  Actually from what I hear you can live quite nicely in the US in a lot of places with just a normal salary.  That is good.  All the poverty down there is very sad though.

Most people where I live who work middle class jobs and have kids really have a hard time making ends meet.  A couple of friends of ours just had to move and downsize last week because they were heavily into debt and couldn't afford to pay their bills.  I don't know the ins and outs of their finances but my rough estimate is that they earn around $150,000/year combined.  So it's hard.  I would say that their mortgage payments were probably $1200-1400/month.  Life in big cities is very expensive.  Actually I found New Orleans even more expensive than where I live.

You know why they can't live on $150K a year?

Because your fucked up taxes make them share the money they earned with people who did not.

$150K household income puts you in the top 10% of US households and you can live VERY well on that here. (everywhere except the big cities, which is 99% of the country)

http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/

Think about that 4 bedroom, 3 bath house I posted. If the guy that buys that has $150K income, here he'd keep $100K of it. If he's paying $1000/month mortgage, he can probably get by on the $88K a year he has left unless he is a coke fiend or gambling addict.