I have seen this coming for decades.  The world is driven by energy and thermodynamics says that nature drives to minimise energy.  Substitute dollars for BTU's.  The improvements in communication, transportation and financing allow low energy consuming areas to become increasingly more energy consuming.  The standard of living becomes more uniform across the world.  The genie is out of the bottle; The US population needs to become more efficient with the energy available or reduce ppopulation.  The forces homogenizing the world economy are irresistable.  We must make rational decisions and havethe political will to change.  We could, for instance abandon the ill conceived ethanol program and switch to diesel.  Our transportation energy consumption drops 34-40% and the infrastructure is in place to facilitate the change.  But we won't.

In our house we pay for cable tv, cable high speed, and cable phone.  Add that too the cell bill for 2 people and we fork out $400 per month.  That is middle of the road cable tv and cell phones with out internet access.  We are looking at droping the cell phones and going back to an antenna, calling the local phone company and that alone will drop the bill to $150 per month.  My son has struggled to keep a job at 20 due to layoffs and lack of work.  Yet the first bill he pays is that cell phone bill to stay in touch.  He never had a phone until he moved out, but today it seems not just young people but older generations can not live with out it.  What happen to the days of a party line at home and you had to wait for the neighbor to get off the phone?

When I started smoking a pack of smokes cost $0.25 I worked as a bus boy for the mim. wage of $1.25 Based on this example Mim. wage should now be $30.00 since a pack of smokes now goes for $6.00 in my area today. Business pays the elected officials in the form of campaign contributions and lobbyist to keep the poor, poor, and the rich richer. And we all know when our elected officials get into bed with business it’s” We The People” who get screwed!

The problem today is it seems that everything you need costs all you have. I have no debt make nearly 50k and barely have anything left to spend on me. Very few things cost what they are reasonalbly worth. If I go to a doctor/dentist, they want all of your money regaurdless of the service provided. I was in Fred Meyer awhile back and they wanted over $14 for a 24 pack of coke.

I refused to use cable for the last 30 years and lucky to have good antenna reception. I estimate that our family savings on this is over $50K. This is money that I put into my long term savings which is worth 2X that amount now!

if you have a roof over your head and food on the table you make a living wage. period. take a little trip to a developing nation and you'll really see what it means to be "barely making it". oddly enough....many nations that are significantly poorer than the US also have higher happiness rates, mull that over for a bit! I've noticed that many people, in an effort to be more "connected" by cell phones, facebook, email, and the like, are turning out to be more socially inept (ie that dinner companion who keeps checking her iPhone and ignoring the person across the table from her). Go outside, make a friend, have a face to face conversation...you don't really need all the crap you can't afford anyways!

I earned a bachelor's and master's in economics by the age of 24, obtained entirely at public, in-state schools.  This landed me a job starting at 50k per year.  However, the debt that that was necessary to get to that point now is costing me $800 a month in payments (for a 10 year repayment plan).  My take-home pay is roughly 37k annually, and the loan payments take around 20k off of that.  After all bills, rent, insurance, credit card payments, utilities, etc., I'm usually left with $200 to cover food and gas for every two week pay period, and that is rough because my commute is nearly 25 miles each way because the rentals near my work that are affordable are in crackhouse neighborhoods.  Any wonder how people are barely getting by?  

typo, the loan payments take 10k off that, not 20k.  

There is no great mystery here. In 1960 when many households got by on one income the average rate of taxation was between 10% and 15% total. This included all taxes, sales, income, property, social security, medicade, state, sin (many of these didn't exist in 1960) etc. That figure is now between 40% and 70% so you figure it out. Our government has spent the past 50 years adding to our tax burden until the middle class has been taxed into poverty. The working american used to have 90% of his income as discretionary now it is less than half.

People had money for extras it's part of a living wage. But every business school grad has been taught by their never been in real business professor to rape thier customer every chance they get to be parastic and not symbyotic in their relationship with thier customer and their employees because tomarrow doesn't matter only todays bottom line is gonna get that big bonus, and once they have theirs who cares about the business let it crash they already jumped. Untill it is more profitable to keep emplyoees long term and pay a living wage instead of pay you congessman and screw every one else we will continue in this dark decent. I greatly fear that there is another dark age waiting at the bottom of the pit.