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Re:TV’s Dwindling Middle Class by logfromblammo on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @10:42AM (#11621097)
That time when the Conners started a sandwich business was sort of middle class. Even though it failed, entrepreneurship is mostly out of reach for working class. They might get one chance to try it, from an inheritance, insurance, personal injury settlement, or lottery windfall.

Middle class Americans don't get two foreign holidays a year. They get two foreign holidays per lifetime. One if they also decide to visit Hawaii. I consider myself lucky if I can spend an entire 40 hours of PTO at once on one 9-day vacation at a U.S. beach town or national park. It isn't just the money. The U.S. is huge, and much of it is undeveloped land. Getting anywhere more interesting than where you already are takes an inconveniently large investment in time and travel aggravation, and that time could have been spent relaxing instead.

And remember, the U.S. median only gets about $54k in gross household [edit] income. If two working parents have 2 kids, they are likely taking one week every year, to somewhere cheap and close, and maybe visiting a theme park cluster city such as Orlando, Florida, only once per decade. If you are upper-middle class, you also get to visit Europe once, and Hawaii once. Anybody who needs their passport more often than that is likely going to countries having less infrastructure with their religious group, to proselytize by example.

Re:TV’s Dwindling Middle Class by nommm-nommm on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @11:02AM (#11621253)
>And remember, the U.S. median only gets about $54k in gross individual income

Actually that number is median -household- income, not individual income.