Will SH Conservatives Whine And Make Lame Excuses When President Obama Is Reelected ?

You present a false choice. All most people want as far as I can tell is the ability to work reasonable hours for a reasonable salary that allows them to pay the bills and maybe tuck a little away for the occassional vacation and such. That's becoming more and more difficult to find as companies ship middle class jobs overseas, abandon any sense of loyalty to their employees, give greater shares of their profits to fewer people while the vast majority get less and less for their work, etc.

You said: "All classes are better off today then they were 30 years ago."

My jaw hit the floor when I read this. Are you really being the slightest bit serious? Here's something I would suggest you take a look at: http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/...

An excerpt: "Incomes for 90% of Americans have been stuck in neutral, and it's not just because of the Great Recession. Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for at least a generation, while the wealthiest tier has surged ahead at lighting speed.

In 1988, the income of an average American taxpayer was $33,400, adjusted for inflation. Fast forward 20 years, and not much had changed: The average income was still just $33,000 in 2008, according to IRS data.

Meanwhile, the richest 1% of Americans -- those making $380,000 or more -- have seen their incomes grow 33% over the last 20 years, leaving average Americans in the dust."

It is unfortunate that the media and a political party has latched onto this theme about a declining middle class. First of all, that would be illogical, like Lake Wobegon "where all children are above average". There will always be a middle class because there will always be a middle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"The report found that real household income after federal taxes and including government transfers (payments from Social Security, unemployment insurance, etc.[43][44]) grew by 62%. However, income of households in the top 1 percent of earners grew by 275%, compared to 65% for the next 19 percent, just under 40% for the next 60 percent, 18% for the bottom fifth of households."

That is where I got the 18% improvement for the lowest quintile, from the CBO report. Yes, I understand the rich are getting very rich but that is not what I said. All classes are doing better. Certainly I have seen anecdotal evidence of that as my 80 yr relatives are less well off than my 50 yr old and the 50 yr olds are less well off than my 20-30 yr olds. Bigger houses earlier, more expensive cars, more travel, etc. Surprised that you haven't noticed. And with my relatives, each generation was less educated than the previous, ironically.

Maslow talked about the hierachy of needs, with physiological, safety, social/love, self esteem, and self-actualization, in order. The first 2 are related to money but basically everyone in the US has that. Only a cynic would say money is needed for social needs, love, or self-actualization. That is perhaps why it is not a "false choice", as you called it, to choose between working and leisure. We are at historically low rates of participation in the labor force as many are doing what I am doing.
http://data.bls.gov/timeserie...

The greatest possession we have is the 1,440 minutes we all get each day. Because of the diminishing utilty of money (after you have a pair of shoes and a roof over your head do you really need 3,000 pairs of shoes and seven 30,000 sq ft houses?), people are choosing to work less.
And we have historic lows in married couples. Marriage helps greatly in achieving financial security but since we already have this, many are choosing not to be married-no financial need.

Finally, it just irritates the heck out of me that we live in a world in which 2.5 billion live on less than $2/day and only the richest 700 million live on more than $10,000/year. Basically all of the US is in the top 10%. Yet the OWS crowd is whinning about the top 0.1% of the top 10% that they are all in. And they complain about jobs being shipped overseas which has contributed greatly, as Money mag noted, in improving the lives of the bottom 90% globally.
I guess that liberalism is dead.

"There will always be a middle class because there will always be a middle."

Let's not lose the point in semantics. My work frequently takes me to India, and yes, even there they have a "middle class". But it's nowhere near significant enough a demographic to drive their economy as our middle class has historically been. It is overwhelmingly poor, with a handful of obscenely wealthy people scattered throughout. You should visit some time if you've never been. Mumbai in particular is made up of a sea of slums, with new highrises and other high-end buildings popping up here and there in the middle of them. A diminishing middle class pushes us further towards this model.

As for your position that the "declining middle class" is essentially a false narrative, you're only citing one factor and drawing a broad conclusion on it when the reality is that there are MANY factors to consider here. For instance, you pointed out yourself that between 1979 and 2007, income "grew by...just under 40% for the next 60 percent" - the "next 60 percent" being, for discussion's sake, the middle class. Sounds great when considered in a vacuum. But then factor in things like the following:

"...the cost of college doubles every nine years. For a baby born today, this means that college costs will be more than three times current rates when the child matriculates in college." http://www.finaid.org/savings...

So assuming the "baby" in question is looking to attend college at 18 years old, that means college tuition has increased 300% in 18 years, while it's taken 28 years for their middle class parent's income to grow by less than 40%. And in those same 28 years, the median home prices rose over 400%. Are you starting to see an imbalanced trend here that may just support the reality of a declining middle class?

Finally, yes, U.S. incomes are higher than the vast majority of the world. But as I've been illustrating above, so is our cost of living. I've had full, high quality, restaurant meals in places like India, Thailand, etc. for only pennies. A McDonald's in the U.S. costs a fortune in comparison. So we need to consider apples to apples if we're going to be drawing conclusions about comparative quality of life and who deserves the right to complain.

Glad to see that you do have an international perspective and understand the poverty in other countries.
But don't get too carried away with the idea that life is so much cheaper in other countries. I do understand that some things, food especially, costs less. Wonder how much of that price difference is due to the types of food eaten as locals tend to eat more locally produced food, less processing and the labor costs are lower. For reference, comparing apples to apples, a $4.20 US Big Mac costs $2.46 in Thailand and $1.62 in India. So, that equivalent food cost 39% in India and 59% in Thailand, compared to the US. Per capita GDP in the US is $48,10, in India is $3,700 (8%) and in Thailand is $9,700 (20%), and so it would appear that the difference in income more than covers the higher US food prices. Meanwhile, I suspect that my $22,000 Hyundai or $700 42" Toshiba TV probably costs a little more in those countries. Gas/energy probably costs more. Housing costs seem somewhat lower but relatively close, comparing apples to apples. Most of us would probably not be happy with average Indian housing.
http://www.economist.com/blog...

https://www.cia.gov/library/p...

The price of education is interesting. Many assume that we are in a higher education bubble, produced when money is easily available and more and more are attending. US provides over 25% of the worldwide tertiary educated people. More US citizens attend college, c. 42% then the OECD average of 30%. Not sure that many of those attending college should be attending. If Germany can survive with 27% of the adult population being college grads why can't we. I read today that only 30% of the 2004 US graduates are working in jobs that require a college degree. I think that the answer is not to make money more readily available for college as colleges just seem to raise their tuition to meet available revenues. I would like to see less people in college and more government support for those truly qualified for college. There are millions of well paying jobs that don't require a college degree. There has to be some system of grading colleges on performance and rewarding those that keep costs low. Perhaps with colleges holding some responsibility, with their own chips in the game. If their Women's Studies grad can't get a degree in that field perhaps the college should lose something, like they pay the interest on the student loan until it is paid.

If qualified college students complete college in a timely manner, and actually study while in college, their earning potential should cover the costs. But, yeah, I agree with your that college costs a major concern.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/...

I think that the biggest challenge facing the young is public debt and fulfilling government promises to its citizens. We need c. $300,000 to fund Soc Sec and $500,000 to fund Medicare, per recipient (if I remember the Money mag article). With 77 million baby boomers almost done contributing, that means that $61.6 Trillion should be sitting in a bank somewhere. Or added to our $15.7 Trillion debt.