Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Here are a few examples of how a family can think about an approximate middle class lifestyle on less than $140,000 per year.

I spent a lot of hours to find a source of beef after the local pharmacy stopped carrying their source of high quality, reasonably priced beef. Finally found a woman who is old school and has been ranching for 50 years. I think her sons run the ranch day to day now and she moved closer to the city. She said that she wants families to be able to afford healthy food. I bring cash to her house and she charges me $6 per pound. The meat is grass fed grass finished and is excellent. Her beef is about the only meat we eat nowadays. I'll buy salmon now and then when it's on sale for $13 per pound (this is Texas). For cereal, I buy 50 pound bags of organic oatmeal for $1.07 per pound plus a nominal charge of maybe $3 per bag to ship it. I have to drive about 14 miles to pick it up. I get 3 bags at a time and that's about the only cereal my kid ever eats. They have rolled rye too maybe a little cheaper and we eat that now and then, as well as a few other things they sell. As mentioned here, we grow all our own tomatoes now. I had to buy one jar of sauce before our harvest came in this year and the quality was not near as good as what we grow. It was very noticeable after eating our own for so long. As quality continues to deteriorate and prices continue to rise, more items will come exclusively from our back yard.

I have a 2001 Corolla and a 2003 Camry. I'm the original owner of the Corolla and both are paid for. I also spent a bit of time to source the Camry. It is a one owner car and I bought it from a guy who retired as some kind of technical expert from the state government agency that regulates the electrical grid. I paid him $4,200 for it, which some would say is too much but my assessment of the car was that it is likely to be good for at least another 200K miles. So far, I haven't been disappointed. I do most of the maintenance on them. My wife got into an accident with the Camry. The other driver called the police and a report was written. Before I could get there, the cop had already unnecessarily called a tow (typical scam). The next day I went to the tow yard and told them to tow it to my garage. I hadn't had an at-fault accident or a claim since 2004. The insurance company did an investigation and determined my wife was not at fault so our rates will not be going up. They also voluntarily paid for the tow. But before they did that, I told both insurance companies that I would be doing all the repairs on the Camry. The driver's side window was smashed out, the driver's side mirror, front bumper, fender, and headlight have to be replaced. Two of the lug nuts were fused on and I had to twist the stems off by hand to get the tire off. Today I got the door disassembled with no issues to get ready to replace the window. Right now I've got the second round of Valvoline Restore and Protect in the Camry. It uses about a quart of oil every 2,500 miles and I hope to improve that or at least keep it there. At 183K miles, it runs about perfect. The insurance on the cars is $606 per year for the Corolla and $635 per year for the Camry. We don't carry collision but I have an umbrella liability policy that only makes it necessary to have 100K of liability on the cars.

It probably would have been relevant at some point in this dark age hovel to say that post 1971 Toyota produced probably the best vehicles that have ever been made. If you are driving a well maintained 1998 Camry in 2026, probably you have an overall better and more reliable car than anything that could have been purchased in 1971, new or used. A couple months ago, when both Toyotas happened to be sitting out in the driveway, a Mexican woman knocked on the door and asked me if I wanted to sell them. Why would I want to?

Most middle class Americans have a spending problem. They think they need things that they flat out don't need. They can do fine on a lot less than $140,000 per year.

There is another side to that, though, and that other side is what predominates and is mostly discussed here because it is the side that currently matters.

Why $140,000 Is The New 'Poor'
Andrei Jikh
721,114 views Dec 15, 2025

The question is, what does
0:45
it mean to be poor in America? In the
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1960s, the government asked Molly
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Arshonsky to go and find out the answer
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to that question. What is poverty? which
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if you think about is really hard to
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define because one person's definition
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might be really different than someone
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else's. But here's how the government
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defined it. They started by assuming a
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couple of things. Number one, they
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assumed it was a family of four.
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Secondly, that food was the biggest and
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most predictable part of their budget
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and that if you knew the bare minimum
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cost of feeding that family, you could
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just sort of work backwards to estimate
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everything else. because food was
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consistently the biggest part of a
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family's budget back in the 1960s. But
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fast forward to today and we spend
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proportionally way less money on food
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and way way more on everything else like
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housing and health care and child care,
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transportation, insurance, debt, taxes
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and all those other things. And those
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categories did not get factored in to
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the original formula. And what that has
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done is it has created the illusion that
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poverty has barely grown. But Michael
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Green says if we apply the same original
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method and the same logic except we use
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the share of income Americans spend on
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essentials today, we would not get a
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poverty line of $31,000.
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Instead, it would be closer to $140,000.
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The simple reality is in a world in
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which in order to afford to rent or buy
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a home, you need a second income, child
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care becomes a very real component of
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it. We're actually seeing more and more
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households who are incapable of clearing
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that threshold for participation in the
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modern economy. The last 50 years has
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seen an extraordinary tax cut for the
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wealthiest Americans and an
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extraordinary tax hike for those in kind
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of the 20th to 80th percentile. Ignoring
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that is really at the core of the issue.
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And that would mean millions of people
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who consider themselves to be middle
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class by the original definition and the
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original logic of the government are
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instead actually living in the
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modern-day equivalent of poverty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3-wTqnzJvI

The median wage in America today is $23.11 and I've been saying 120 hours per week is what is needed today to make a family of 4 solidly middle class. That's $144,000 per year. I would put the poverty level for a family of 4 at somewhere around $90,000.

I haven't watched all of the video yet. I saw the discussion about food being the largest part of a family's budget in 1968. Again, they weren't eating factory farmed meat back then so, comparing apples and apples, food is much more expensive than what most people actually pay today if someone is applying standards from 50-60 years ago.

Just put it up to show that my numbers might be too low in some people's opinions.

Pay is $170,000 per year.
The Work is real and committed 20 hours per week only.
The position is available full Time.
One can do the work and it is based on results.
No one can but those few who want to.
The other work is Licensed.
The root issue and fact is this.
If you make over $46,000 per year you are the Planetary Global One Percent.
They will not agree since facts are irrelevant to Leftist who refuse to work.
The work is real they are not. Rule Four applies. Stupid refuses to fathom what they actually are.
Non-stupid people always underestimate the harmful potential of stupid people.
Second place first loser.
Talk to a Farmer or a trucker right now.
As you know I also build Soil since 2019.
We will replant this Spring for we understood His Cycle.

For someone at 55 holding $1.2 million in a traditional 401(k) and expecting a 24% marginal rate in retirement,
building a separate Roth layer now creates meaningful optionality.
Withdrawals can be structured to stay below the thresholds that trigger Medicare premium surcharges,
and taxable income in any given year becomes a planning lever rather than a fixed ceiling.

Rule Five:
All human beings are included in four fundamental categories: the naive, the intelligent, the evil and the stupid […] The intelligent person knows that he’s intelligent. The evil one is aware to be evil. The naive is painfully imbued with the sense of his own candor. Unlike all these characters, the stupid doesn’t know to be stupid. This contributes to give greater strength, incidence and effectiveness to his devastating action. The stupid is not inhibited by self-consciousness”, wrote Cipolla

 Mises’s contract‑theory language, quantity fixes the size of the exchange, while quality fixes the content and conditions of that exchange. Both must be clearly defined for a contract to be enforceable and for the parties to assess whether performance has been satisfied.

Propaganda works they are not Democrats. You will be erased and have and will continue to do so.

Why does every large company believe it needs an HR department when equally large companies didn't need one in 1960?

AI Overview

Large companies rely on Human Resources departments today because complex employment laws, massive compliance risks, and specialized talent management did not exist or were far less regulated in 1960.

Most users on Quora agree that the shift toward modern HR is driven by legal mandates and operational scale.

Why 1960 Was Different

Fewer Federal Laws: In 1960, federal employment regulations regarding discrimination, safety, and family leave were minimal. Landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act (Title VII) passed later in the 1960s, drastically changing legal liabilities.

Simpler Benefits: Pensions and health benefits were standard and uniform, requiring far less individualized administration than today's complex 401(k) plans, health savings accounts, and multi-tiered insurance options.

Command-and-Control Culture: Workplaces in 1960 often relied on strict hierarchies where grievances were handled informally by line managers without formalized legal protections or dispute processes.

Why Companies Need HR Today

Massive Regulatory Risk: Crossing employee thresholds triggers complex federal and state laws covering discrimination, wages, workplace safety, and medical leave. A single compliance failure or wrongful termination lawsuit can cost millions.

Global and Remote Workforces: Managing employees across multiple states or countries introduces complex tax, legal, and payroll variations that require dedicated expertise.

Talent Acquisition and Retention: Sourcing specialized knowledge workers requires active recruitment, competitive benchmarking, and structured onboarding that line managers cannot handle alone.

Employee Well-being and Culture: Modern organizations use industrial psychology and specialized engagement strategies to reduce turnover and foster productivity.

This isn't so complicated in my mind that it's necessary to get down in the weeds regarding this specific reasoning. I would just put it this way (and did many years ago):

Higgenbotham wrote: Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:24 pm "Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil." --Solzhenitsyn

I've read a lot of Solzhenitsyn and, if I interpret him correctly, he would be looking at what kinds of social and political arrangements allow the balance to be shifted toward excessive use of law and inappropriate use of the law. In Gulag, Volume I, he has 3 successive chapters - "The Law as a Child", "The Law Becomes a Man", and "The Law Matures".

It would be interesting to go back and review those chapters through the lens of the current discussion.

"Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil."

This famous quote is from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian novelist and dissident, spoken during his commencement address at Harvard University on June 8, 1978. In this speech, titled "A World Split Apart," Solzhenitsyn criticized Western society's heavy reliance on legal frameworks to regulate human behavior. His core argument was that a society built entirely on the letter of the law, rather than a moral code, loses its spiritual strength. When people only do what is legally permissible, they stop striving for what is morally right, making society vulnerable to moral decay ("the corrosion of evil").

aedens wrote: Sat Sep 19, 2026 8:30 am Even with the video proving his innocence He was fired.
The DEI brain dead cannibals have assured collapse as HR drills more holes in the rotted hull.
They cannot handle questions or accountability.

Whether on purpose or not, you've nailed part of the reason why a middle class lifestyle now requires about 120 hours per week. As far as dealing with HR, most of the people I've known as the breakdown has gained momentum were either seeing a therapist, on high blood pressure or other medication, maintaining documentation to cover their asses, consulting an employment attorney, or maybe several of these things if it had gone on long enough. Those all have to be tacked on as maintenance costs in a declining civilization. There was even one coworker who did several hours of what he called "sanity maintenance" each week as he got ready for the next battle with management and HR, which can be thought of as management's front line attack dogs in his case. That type of thing was rare in the early 1970s, but, yes, it did happen. We even knew of one individual in my father's workplace who had a sex change operation; well, I think that was mid 1970s and it was a big workplace with thousands of employees. It created quite a stir. I heard a lot about it. Management sent memos out telling people to be respectful. People would talk about how "she" should be crossing her legs instead of sitting in the chair like a man. I was maybe 14 at the time. The way I understood it was people weren't building aeroplanes or whatever their job was if they were talking about that.

U.S. lawyers 1900 - 2024 Source: ABA National Lawyer Population Survey



https://www.americanbar.org/news/profil ... ographics/

Now more than 320,000 members strong, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) began in 1948 with a handful of dreamers—and a twist of fate.



https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/ ... on-shrm-hr

Growth of Lawyers and Human Resource Managers has gone hand in hand as the US entered the maintenance phase of a declining civilization circa 1971 or so. If you have a Human Resource Manager in your workplace who is taking an interest in you, you may need a Lawyer, and that time and cost needs to be tacked on.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 9:49 pm Also, during the early stages of this breakdown, there were economic losers and beneficiaries. The beneficiaries were the corporations who could cookie cutter their outlets across a previously interesting and varied landscape, producing the forlorn, bland, and ugly architectural landscape that now exists across America. McDonalds perhaps being one of the first and best examples.

To capture this concept correctly, I would have needed to get the McDonald's, a tattoo parlor, a hole in the wall church, a dollar store and a billboard for a personal injury lawyer all in one photo. It wouldn't have been too difficult except that traffic was moving (slowly).

Even with the video proving his innocence He was fired.
The DEI brain dead cannibals have assured collapse as HR drills more holes in the rotted hull.
They cannot handle questions or accountability.

Higgenbotham wrote: Wed Sep 09, 2026 12:09 pm For example, the middle class only needed one job at 40 hours per week to support a family in 1971. During the maintenance phase, the hours required to support a middle class family at the same level as in 1971 were increased to approximately 120.

I realized when posting this that it is debatable. If it's just the number of hours per week to be considered middle class in 2026, that is probably more like 70.

But if it's the number of hours to be on an equivalent middle class standard to 1971, that is more like 120. To be on an equivalent middle class standard to 1971, a family might either need to live in an upper class neighborhood to get the equivalent of a middle class public school education in 1971 or pay private school tuition. As far as food goes, a lot of it might have to be organic or biodynamic to be equivalent to 1971 standards. That entails extra money and time in sourcing. Or maybe take the time to grow it yourself. Anyway, that was the reason for that number.

Edit: When I wrote this, I thought North Dakota was the most efficient state for public education (outcomes per dollar). It seems some of the most efficient states are Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin, and Nebraska.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked ... n-dollars/

Getting back to Anthropic, there's one thing I've learned from being on the inside of an organization that people on the outside looking in had a big stake in knowing what was going on "in there". That is that it's impossible to know what is really going on "in there". I watched them guess and they couldn't do it, despite their best efforts.

So I'll just say I don't know why the CEO of Anthropic is going on shows like Face the Nation and saying the things he is saying at this time, or, as Alexander Haig used to say, "at this juncture of maturation," which seems appropriate in this case. A list of guesses is the best I'd be able to do. I suppose there'll be a whole social media sub-industry of people springing up to offer the surefire explanation.

About the only thing I can say is that their secretive program to obtain pre-2022 books, cut the spines off, and scan and shred them shows they've got a problem. I would suspect all of the AI model developers have a similar problem, which could be why Altmann and Musk so quickly and readily agreed with what Mr Amodei proposed. But that's just a guess too.

Given all the foregoing, I'll give a slight edge to Door Number Three...

However, some observers suggested that Amodei's post was less about safety than about consolidating control over AI technology.

"Dario makes the case to stop open source and concentrate enormous technological and economic power with Anthropic," wrote Chamath Palihapitiya, an investor and co-host of the tech podcast "All-In".

Notions of slowing down or even pausing AI development have long been met with cynicism in certain corners of Silicon Valley, with critics accusing leading AI developers of hyping their technology as a marketing ploy.

Anthropic and OpenAI are both reportedly preparing for potentially record-setting initial public offerings.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c14dpgm0rg4o

...even though I think Chamath is a used car salesman (too).

Then there was Trumps' response, which is consistent with Door Number Three.

Limited image curation has always been necessary for social cohesion. For example, if someone in a small town or village has done something found to be slightly irritating and well under the threshold of intolerance, it's usually been best to smile and say good morning than to say we had a mildly shitty day yesterday because of you. As stated previously, I think the point at which image curation became excessive was when people were uprooted from their small towns and villages and began to move from place to place for economic advantages.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Dec 25, 2022 6:28 pm I said there are two opposite modes of living in the United States. The first is an expectation that you will spend your entire life in one area with other people who will spend their entire lives in that area. The second is an expectation that you will go to high school in one place, college in another place, then career in several places (no longer at one company) with sole focus on that. Everything else is something in between. The first mode engenders real connections while the second mode engenders transactional relationships. An example of a transactional relationship would be something like, "I have a buddy who is also 420 friendly. He finds me really good dope cheap and I fix all his computers." The best example of a transactional encounter I can think of is prostitution. Also, in a big city, encounters are briefer. That's not to say there isn't some overlap.

I told her in the second mode of living, people are taught from an early age to look to the next step in their progression and to primarily engage in transactional relationships as a means to get to that next step. A high school kid might be told to be friendly to the teachers because they will be writing college recommendations or whatever. They would not be encouraged to be friendly to teachers they genuinely like and not be friendly to teachers they genuinely do not like. And so on when the kid gets to college.

With the advent of social media, it was taken to an ugly extreme.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Aug 09, 2026 11:35 am People had a strong sense of meaning in their lives. But then something happened. The
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percentage of the population, especially young adults, saying my life feels meaningless. It started to creep up and
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then and then explode. Something happened very recently, really only in
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the past 15 years, that made life feel meaningless. And meaninglessness, the
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lack of meaning in life, lies behind the explosion of depression and anxiety.
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So some people find meaning more easily than other people do. The number one
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predictor of your life feeling meaningful is is living your life in
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real life. It's relationships. It's living kind of in the old way. As a matter of fact, it wasn't that long ago
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that almost nobody said, "My life feels meaningless." But having distance between you and other people, or having
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technological mediation between you and other people, for example, having a screen between you and your friends, you
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and your loved ones, you and your family. Well, that changes life. It takes it from in real life to something
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more like, I don't know, a simulation of real life, which is exactly what a lot of young people say today. When I
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interview them, they'll say, "My life feels fake. It feels like something's missing. It feels like I'm living in a
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simulation."

We cured boredom — and created a meaning crisis | Arthur Brooks: Full Interview
Big Think 53,388 views Aug 7, 2026

https://youtu.be/WP3wl1rsXjg?t=62