I think your discussion of then-versus-now middle class lifestyles suffers from the fact that the definitions of “middle-class” and “basic needs” have changed a lot in the last 60 years.

The kind of middle-class worker who could afford to support a family AND have a servant on one income was a professional person (doctor, lawyer, CPA), moderate-sized business owner, or middle to upper management level white collar worker. Those kinds of people today are more likely to be considered “rich” and can still afford to support a family’s basic needs and keep a servant on one income.

A factory line worker (even union), postal worker, skilled tradesperson, or lower-level white collar worker could support a family on one income then only because the stay-at-home wife performed many duties that today are outsourced and the standard of living was more modest, and he sure couldn’t afford a servant or college for the kids (unless they could earn scholarships) or often, even a car. Those people were called working class back then, but today often are considered and consider themselves middle class.

My uncle was the classic “working class” man – worked in a pulp-mill as a factory worker for 40 years before he retired at age 65. They owned their own home (1000 square feet that last sold in 2006 for $79,000). My aunt never worked outside the home, they bought their first car when they were in their mid-50s, and they raised two children who both obtained advanced degrees on full scholarships. (Actually, they could have afforded a servant, since on my aunt’s death it turned out they had saved up some $250,000 in CDs – what would today be about $500,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars from when she died.)

Clearly they met their basic needs, but very few people today would consider their lifestyle tolerable. Their vacations were spent roofing the house, cutting wood for the wood furnace that heated the house and for the wood cookstove, or maybe taking a short drive to the beach to go clamming or fishing. I doubt they went out to dinner or a movie more than once or twice a year; recreation was the weekly dance and pot-luck at the Polish Hall. My aunt sewed all their clothes, packed everybody’s lunch boxes every day, canned fruits, vegetables, clams and fish, etc.

Someone earning today’s equivalent of my uncle’s wage could probably afford to live much as he did; they just wouldn’t want to, and they sure wouldn’t want to work at pretty hard labor for 40 years to do it. His house is still affordable, full scholarships can still be obtained, you can still get a permit to cut wood. The only inescapable expense that would have increased in real terms is taxes – FICA/Medicare, property and sales tax rates all have tripled or quadrupled.

I think your argument that housing has outstripped inflation is location-dependent. It is not true in many locales, at least not adjusted for square footage.

I believe that they worked both harder and smarter. It takes a lot of hard work to become a skilled and efficient hunter. That hard work allowed them to work smarter.

Servants, I’d categorize them as “the poor”. Servants were doing difficult work, no question. Are the poor better off as you go through the 19th century? Yes, but I don’t really know enough about it, especially from the 50′s on.

I’m not sure if you replied before or after I clarified my answer that hunters in hunting society work ‘smart, not hard’ – and yes, that includes Native American societies.

But, simply put, best =/= hardest working.

Also, to add clarity to my “you also haven’t studied anthropology and are just making guesses on how you ‘think’ those societies would work.”

Your statement “In societies where hunting was a major food source those hunters who worked hardest, became the best hunters, and brought in the most meat ate better.” is just not reflective of reality of hunting-based cultures. Hunting in those cultures is really the equivalent of Trent’s “someone with a job that they’ve made so efficient that they have time to surf the internet most of the day, I see someone who works smart but not hard” – that’s just the reality.

In the not so distant past, middle class Americans could afford to have a servant (live-in or daily) and meet basic needs on ONE income. Now that is no longer true. To meet basic needs for a family takes TWO incomes, and I don’t know many middle class homes with servants. Though dishwashers, laundry machines, etc. take over some of that labor.

The expenses that have made the two income family necessary are not disposable consumer goods, they are big ticket items like child care, college, and housing. For example housing has completely outstripped inflation, even adjusting for square footage and the recent down-turn. In part this has been due to a competition for good school districts (education.) Job income has not kept up with these big ticket items.

(iPods, designer jeans, etc – expenses like this has not changed over the past 100 years for families because consumer goods used to be really, really expensive. They were hand made, with different materials, we had different standards for dress, etc.)

Another problem with the two family income home is that if something happens to one income (job loss, health problems) the other parent cannot then take a job to buffer the family income. Now BOTH jobs are required for a middle class standard of living (more often than not.) So the family suffers from more inherent RISK than families used to under a one income scenario.

Given that families are facing more risk in the past, I think if the country wants things to be “as good as they were in our parent’s generation” then we need to make policies that mitigate that risk. IMHO.

- I got this info above from several sources, including one by Elizabeth Warren and a series of LA Times articles by Peter Gosselin

Ecclesiastes 9:11

These aren’t new concepts. We want the world to be fair, and we should work to make it as such, but we also shouldn’t let that blind us to the reality of the situation. And no, preferential treatment to slaves was probably not usually meted out based on how hard the slave worked.

And no, I don’t think we’re misunderstanding Trent’s point – it’s a direct follow-up to his previous (also wrong) post on hard work.

Also, it’s very clear from your statement that you also haven’t studied anthropology and are just making guesses on how you ‘think’ those societies would work.

I don’t think that Trent is suggesting that physical laborers have always been paid highly. Money isn’t the only unit of value. In fact, I would argue that money as a unit of value is a relatively recent (few hundred years) thing.

In societies where hunting was a major food source those hunters who worked hardest, became the best hunters, and brought in the most meat ate better. They also were able to trade excess for other goods.

In agriculture societies those who worked hardest at learning and then applying farming skills either ate better or traded excess for other goods.

Slavery has been referenced a few times. Do you not think that the hardest working slaves likely were treated somewhat better than slaves who were lazy or got less done than the others? I’m not suggesting that slaves were well treated, but I’m sure that slave owners valued the harder working slaves more, even if they only showed it by beating them less.

Back to Trent’s quote. I think the key phrase is “…in some way…”. Given two people in exactly the same situation, do you believe that throughout history the one who worked harder did not get some value or advantage through the hard work? Sure, a serf worked harder than a king, but that is an apples and oranges comparison. Do you believe that the hard working serfs received not benefits over their less hardworking neighbors?

Yep. That’s why “working class” is synonymous with “rich.”

“Physical labor was once highly valued, but has dropped somewhat in value in recent years simply because many physical jobs are now completed by machinery. ”

Highly valued? Only for an extremely small (unionized) portion of history. For much of it, physical labor was highly important but also highly exploited. Farm workers (slaves, sharecroppers, serfs, and all the iterations) worked *extremely* hard and were paid extremely little, if they were paid anything other than food. The bulk of what they produced didn’t belong to them. Factory workers during the industrial revolution worked hours that seem unbelievable today (or would seem unbelievable except for the multitude of people being forced to work two and three low paying jobs today to survive) in exchange for bare wages. Or how about the plight of miners and company stores? Maybe Trent remembers that from his apparently-failed history class?

Trent’s ‘hard work has paid off through history’ is a naive and ridiculous myth.

Money and power through history has historically (hah!) been accumulated through either war and the spoils-of or by the exploitation of OTHER people’s hard work. And yes, that happens to include ‘farmers in Mesopotamia’ *rolls eyes*

“What are you going to do about it, starting today?”

Ugh, I HATE these faux-motivational posts in general but this one is worse than usual.

Good point #7…unskilled manual labour hasn’t really been rewarded throughout history at ALL until labour unions in the 20th century made factory work a middle class thing (and then bankrupted most of them). And it’s not very valued today in the 21st Century (asian factory workers anyone? child labour? etc)

Skilled hard work probably has always been though, and hopefully always will be.