▪️This meme makes it seem like 60% of Americans are destitute, but that’s not what lies beneath the headline. This comes from an analysis from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), which is an activist group for low and middle income families. Their reason for existence is to be a perennial Debbie Downer on the plight of the middle class, so keep that in mind, although they do make some fair points.
▪️LISEP has a metric they call Minimal Quality of Life Index (MQL) which imo is misleading. I’d call it the decent quality of life index. It’s the income they consider necessary to afford a reasonable standard of living in America, beyond just essentials.
▪️For a couple with 2 kids, the MQL is $120,302, which doesn’t appear to include taxes, so would equate to a salary of ~$130-150K. Now, that’s probably what it takes for a family to have a decent QOL today, but it’s certainly not a poverty line or minimum standard.
▪️For example, this allots $27,875 ($2,322 per month) for transportation. One could certainly eclipse this with a few family airline trips, but this budget should easily provide for 2 decent cars with gas, insurance and maintenance. The MQL also budgets for college savings. This is comfortable middle class territory.
▪️LISEP likes to highlight that the MQL has declined since 2001, but it’s also risen considerably from the lows in 2011-13. So one could spin this to say things are considerably better than a decade ago.
▪️Basically, the MQL got steadily better from 2013 until peaking around 2018-19. Then there was a downturn in 2022-23, where the data ends. This was during the high inflation in the early-to mid part of the Biden years so not surprising. However, inflation moderated in the last Biden year and through Trump’s first months so it’s likely the MQL has leveled or reversed trend since.
▪️This headline should read, “A majority of Americans unable to afford a comfortable middle class lifestyle.” Which has always been the case here, and everywhere else in the world.
Link to the MQL, graphs in comments:
https://www.lisep.org/mql
So many of these right wing accounts are just whiners now, this is a diatribe about automatic sinks and towels, the horror! As I explained in a prior post, most of the newer terminals have great bathrooms, some now have completely private stalls and plenty of them. The worst and most crowded airport bathrooms are invariably found in aging terminals that are decades old. It’s a reminder that airports were usually drab and uncomfortable.
I think the heyday of the air hand-dryers was like 15-20 years ago, where often you couldn’t find real towels. Now you can at least usually get real paper towels in airport bathrooms. Remember those old cloth roller towels that would go in a loop and somehow “clean” themselves? Yuck! Public bathrooms have always been gross, it seems some are deliberately having selective memories.
Airport food and drinks were always expensive, but now practically everyone brings those huge cooler flasks with them and fills them up. So not sure what he means that ...
I first critiqued this terrible take by looking at how food has actually improved substantially. Even though I said the same could be done in every category, people said “you’re only doing food.” So let’s do air travel and see why it’s not gotten better, not worse.
▪️Aircraft have greatly improved. Just 15-20 years ago, many domestic routes (~15%) were flown by turboprops like the Brasilia, Dash 8 or Saab. Now, almost everything is in jets, and most aircraft have WiFi. Some even have Starlink, where you probably have faster WiFi than your home. Most major airlines offer dozens or hundreds of movies and shows to watch.
▪️Newer designs like the 787 have lower cabin altitudes and improved humidity, which make a huge difference in passenger comfort on long haul flights. The first/business class international market has gotten very competitive globally, with many carriers offering excellent service and amenities. Pods, suites, showers, etc. Coach still sucks but is dramatically cheaper ...
This is the complete opposite of an empirical fact. The right has now joined the left in being pessimistic about the modern world and completely unappreciative of the amazing abundance we now have. I’ll just focus on food here, but you could do it for almost every category.
▪️Fresh produce used to be available only in season. In the winter it was canned or frozen. People used to send fruit for Christmas gifts, it was that much of a luxury good. Now, you can get giant, sweet berries year around in every grocery store. Corn on the cob in February. Not to mention once rare items like dragon fruit, heirloom tomatoes or baby bok choy.
▪️If you didn’t live on the coast, seafood was either not available, frozen, or extremely expensive. If you lived in the Midwest and traveled to coastal locales you would quite literally be able to eat food you had never seen. Salmon has become much more abundant and accessible. You can get fresh ahi at Walmart today. Sushi and oyster bars exist everywhere ...
