are gold and silver money?

I trip to Canada gives some quick insight into the differences between a large middle class as opposed to the "American" system of rich and poor.

 

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http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/weidenmier.finance.confederacy.us

I find this an interesting essay on topic for this thread. I see close parallels, particularly the graphs of value of confederate money.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you have no idea how much silver is in his backyard. If it was, he probably would buy some teeth!

 

Disagree. I have lived in LA and Vancouver. Due to the influx of mega rich folks migrating from Hong Kong, I would stack the wealth of West Vancouver against Beverly Hills anyday. I would also argue that Watts is not any more depressing than the poverty and alcoholism of the First Nation people of Canada. How about the East Indian farms in BC where there are 30 family members in one house. Sounds a little like the illegals living together in LA, eh?

Canada and the US are identical in terms of having a large middle class, with groups of less fortunate. Reduce the US poverty by 90% (difference in population is roughly 10:1) and you will see we are the same.

 

I would agree with your last statement, that money is whatever the government says it is. 200 years ago gold was money, a little while after that silver was money, but neither are money today (OK sure technically you can accept face value for your silver, but who wants to do that) [excluding Utah]. What the case may be tomorrow is anybody's guess, but I am hearing a lot of talk about the need for a return to some type of gold standard, most recently by James Rickards.

 

I know for a fact that you are correct in saying that I have no idea how much silver he has in his backyard.. But I don't know about the correlation between money and teeth.. different strokes for different folks.

 

Humm.. maybe so but forty years ago I made a conscious decision to invest in the middle class in America. I famously said that the homes of the rich had topped out and the poor didn't have any money so if one was to prepare for the future one must invest in land. And not just land, but land that the middle class would want for small farmsteads and rural living.
I devoted my life and my investment strategy to a failed premise. In fact, the lakefront property, the huge homes, the exclusive properties went up in value but the cattle farm lands that were worth $1000 an acre in 1970 are still worth $1000 an acre. This to me demonstrates the demise of the US middle class. The poor still can't afford housing but section 8 makes low dollar houses an investment opportunity but the three bedroom two bath brick home is something the poor can't get and the rich don't want. And the middle class....? where for art thou middle class?

 

The middle class still thinks it's middle class, but years ago i developed the hypothesis that the line between the middle class and the poor was in the isles of the Grocery store. If you can go to the grocery store and buy what you want instead of budgeting and buying only the cheap cuts of meat and staples then you are middle class.. but if you look at something anything in the Pigley Wigley and have to put it back because "that's for rich people" then you are not middle class.

The same thing happens between the middle class and the rich at the car dealership.. if you can go onto a car lot and buy anything you want then you are not middle class either..

And if you don't own a car, and someone else does your shopping, (except in New York) you are neither middle class or rich.. you are wealthy.

 

What class a person is categorized in is largely relative. Lots of people go out and buy whatever they want, and end up in debt for it. Where as I would mostly fit into your definition of lower class, however because of those habits I can still say I am a member of the middle class. I never buy cars from a dealership, I budget my groceries, and I try to be as minimalist as I can be which is still not really worthy of that word. In any case, you are right that there is a clear decline in the middle class and unfortunately this appears to be by intent.

 

So a person living in Bolivia is middle class because people in Brazil are better off and people in Peru are worse?

Maybe. But I think there is a better definition somehow involving quality of lives. But bound by geography, a small town in Alabama in 1969 mostly was made up of middle class, meaning everyone had a TV and most had a bathtub. In 2009 everyone had a TV and a bathtub and a cellphone and a wwwdot connection, but many were in debt, and did not have the quality of food, healthcare, education, and freedom of transportation that they did in 1969. So. Their Middle class status was eroded by themselves i admit but it was none the less eroded. I made mention of the flat line income status that I have enjoyed from 1969 to 2009 but it was only with continual education and advancement that I was able to maintain. Most were not so lucky. And- if we use my 10X index I would have to be making $3000 a week to be in the same socioeconomic class that I was in in 1969. So it appears to me that The US class structure has slipped toward a very rich and very poor model and the Middle class, has to be redefined like making ketchup a vegetable, and defining auto assembly as a "service" to maintain middle class status for our citizens. If it don't fit.. change the name of it.

 

The way you live is the "right way" and it is the way i am force to live as well but economists don't like you.. you are supposed to freely buy a new car every three years, constantly yearn for a newer and bigger home, and leave those outside lights on.. I still have a the memory of a jaw dropping moment when one economist stated " The economy of the US would have been a lot worse in 2005 if not for the impact of Katrina"

 

I think too much and since i am convinced that little or nothing has improved since 1969 that is my reference but as to my friend in the scrap business and the two million. I believe it is there. 1) he denies it. 2) if he has been in the scrap business since 1969 and has made enough money to buy his basic goods but has failed to pay taxes for 50 years and invested it in silver instead he should have 2M in the backyard.

 

I will be the first to commisurate with you Jim that access to education is becoming harder, and being able to be middle class as a high school dropout, (or even graduate), is becoming harder every day. Those things are completely true. Always remember we were coming off of WWII as the "factory of the world" so had tremendous demand for production labor then. The world has grown up, and the bar is continually being raised. Every year the demand for education is increasing just to stay where you are. This makes the fact we have let our education systems run up 2 decades worth of double digit price increases all the more troubling. If we wish to maintain a middle class, access to affordable education nationwide is key, and the self discipline to actually attend those classes. I taught undergraduate and graduate school, and even those students hardly put much effort into their education.

Short of further education and training, the current middle class will be slipping backwards every year.

Just as full disclosure, I put myself through undergraduate, and then graduate school. The only help I got was my employer for graduate school. I simply do not know if a kid today could possibly afford college like I was able to without massive student loans. Yes, I worked 40 hours a week and was in the guard, but I graduated with $1500 in debt.

Chris

 

Exactly so, I paid for all my classes.. Except for those first semesters my poor mother paid for and I failed. But I have no idea how a student working minimum wage and trying to feed a family could possibly make it through school today without help. My complaint is that Pell pays what the college charges and the college charges what pell pays. The result is a constant upward spiral of costs and fewer and fewer of the middle class can pay the 5-10K per year of college costs. If you are rich it doesn't matter what college costs. If you are poor it doesn't matter either. If you are in the middle.. fuggitaboutit..

 

That's probably the key difference. When I was in college, just about everyone [who graduated] worked hard and was pretty stressed out about doing well. If a kid wants an education today, they'll find a way to get it. The route might be different due to cost [e.g., community college followed by state school], but I believe a degree is still within reach of everybody who really wants it. But you have to really want the education and not just 4 more years of parties.

 

I like your comment because of the mentality behind it but I think you fail to realize that some professions require more than a state school degree for entry into companies/firms/ blah blah... It is true that you should keep your nose up and get things done no matter the circumstances but what they doing is putting certain professions out of reach with the increases in tuition. UCLA was like 600 a semester in 1970 and now it's above 13,000 CSULA $3500 per semester. Where as wages have decreased along with jobs. not only that but the cost of living was way lower... it costs more now for a head of broccoli than a double cheese burger from mcd.

 

It seems to me that a college degree is most representative of a person's ability to achieve. I would agree that it is attainable by anyone who wants it badly enough, although sometimes at the expense of large amounts of debt which may or may not offset since many people don't even get jobs in what they major in.

 

Someone told me several years ago that a college degree only measured your ability to sit still for four years. A little oversimplified, as Shakespeare said "if it don't have a grain of truth it ain't funny" . (He liked to use local colloquialisms) the comments on college put me to thinking. As a product of the state college systems' the idea of going to UCLA or Emory a new England Ivy league school is not something that I was ever allowed to consider. I know Brown graduates can't comprehend that but 90% of Americans are not Ivy League material. When I see a movie about the heroine trying to get into Brown I think "If they are trying to get the viewer to identify with the heroine, all they are doing is demonstrating their disconnect". Don't get me wrong, I wish I had been private school material, but alas I was not.

My rambling point is that this is yet another case of caste in America.

 

There are two types of colleges, Colleges like community colleges and smaller state colleges that engage in education, and the larger colleges that engage in degree by selection. Harvard Graduates are smarter graduating because they are smarter applying.

I am very aware of the contributions Princeton has made to the US of A .. and the world.. but they are able to do that because they keep people like me out of the way.

 

I've worked with Ivy League grads. I had a Harvard grad work for me. They are good employees but not necessarily better than state college grads. The state college grads who went there due to economics and not ability are not at a great disadvantage. It's mostly a matter of who wants it more. If the graduates from better colleges have an advantage, it's probably due more to the motivation they received from their parents than the course content at school. It isn't like Harvard teaches the "real" economics and state schools teach some other version. Better schools make it easier to get a foot in the door, but people who want success, expect success and settle for nothing less tend to find it.