In 1901, when the tiny bulb was first screwed into place inside a so-called hose cart house, it cast its light on a simpler era.Back then, horse-pulled carts carried water to fires. The bulb burned day and night, hanging at eye level from a 20-foot cord. Its job: to break the darkness so firefighters responding to calls wouldn't have to fumble to light the wicks of their kerosene lanterns. Manufactured by the Shelby Electric Co. of Shelby, Ohio, the bulb soon outlived its maker, which closed in 1914.
Later, in the main firehouse, it illuminated more modern rigs as horses were replaced by gas-fed engines.
It didn't always receive kid-glove treatment.
Climbing atop their engines, firefighters returning from World War II and Korea often would give the bulb a playful swat for good luck. The next generation -- the Vietnam veterans and the younger kids -- used it as a target for Nerf basketball practice.
Then, in 1972, a local reporter checked records and interviewed old-timers to trace its history. Firefighters suddenly realized they had a treasure.
"The good-luck slaps and target practice stopped," Bramell recalls. "We figured, 'Wow, maybe we should take care of this bulb.' "
Friday, May 9, 2008
Lightbulb that's burned for 107 years
Happy Mother's Day: Woman pregnant with 18th child
It's a happy Mother's Day for an Arkansas woman - she's pregnant with her 18th child. Michelle Duggar, 41, is due on New Year's Day, and the latest addition will join seven sisters and 10 brothers. There are two sets of twins.
"We've had three in January, three in December. Those two months are a busy time for us," she said, laughing.
The Duggars' oldest child, Josh, is 20, and the youngest, Jennifer, is nine months old.
The fast-growing family lives in Tontitown in northwest Arkansas in a 7,000-square-foot home. All the children - whose names start with the letter J - are home-schooled.
Duggar has been been pregnant for more than 11 years of her life, and the family is in the process of filming another series for Discovery Health.
The new show looks at life inside the Duggar home, where chores - or "jurisdictions" - are assigned to each child. One episode of the new show involves a "jurisdiction swap," where the boys do chores traditionally assigned to the girls, and vice versa, Duggar said.
"The girls swapped jurisdictions, changing tires, working in the garages, mowing the grass," she said. "The boys got to cook supper from start to finish, clean the bathrooms," among other chores.
Duggar said she's six weeks along and the pregnancy is going well. She and her husband, Jim Bob Duggar, said they'll keep having children as long as God wills it.
"The success in a family is first off, a love for God, and secondly, treating each other like you want to be treated," Jim Bob Duggar said. "Our goal is for each one of our children to be best friends, and everybody working together to serve each other makes that happen."
The other Duggar children, in between Joshua and Jennifer, are Jana, 18; John-David, 18; Jill, 16; Jessa, 15; Jinger, 14; Joseph, 13; Josiah, 11; Joy-Anna, 10; Jeremiah, 9; Jedidiah, 9; Jason, 7; James, 6; Justin, 5; Jackson, 3; and Johannah, 2.
*****
They know what causes pregnancy now, don't they?
Think Gas is expensive ...
All these examples do NOT imply that gasoline is cheap; it just illustrates how outrageous some prices are...
You will be really shocked by the last one! (At least, I was...)
Compared with Gasoline...
Think a gallon of gas is expensive?
This makes one think, and also puts things in perspective.
Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29... $10.32 per gallon
Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19... $9.52 per gallon
Gatorade 20 oz $1.59... $10.17 per gallon
Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25... $10.00 per gallon
Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15... $33.60 per gallon
Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35... $178.13 per gallon
Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85... $123.20 per gallon
Whiteout 7 oz $1.39... $25.42 per gallon
Scope 1.5 oz $0.99... $84.48 per gallon
And this is the REAL KICKER...
Evian water 9 oz $1.49... $21.19 per gallon! $21.19 for WATER and the buyers don't even know the source.
(Evian spelled backwards is Naive.)
Ever wonder why printers are so cheap?
So they have you hooked for the ink. Someone calculated the cost of the ink at... (you won't believe it... but it is true)… $5,200 a gallon (five thousand two hundred dollars).
So, the next time you're at the pump, be glad your car doesn't run on water, Scope, Whiteout, Pepto Bismol, Nyquil or God forbid, Printer Ink!
Just a little humor to help ease the pain of your next trip to the pump...
And - If you don't pass this along to at least one person, your muffler will fall off!!
Okay, your muffler won't really fall off... but, you might run out of toilet paper.
Tornado knocks vehicles around in NC
Authorities began combing through the wreckage Friday caused by a reported tornado that killed one person and injured three others in central North Carolina.
A possible tornado touched down on the outskirts of Greensboro late Thursday as severe storms swept across the Southeast, damaging homes and businesses in at least three other states.
Earlier in the day, an apparent tornado also wrecked a shopping area in Mississippi and strong winds flipped a mobile home in Alabama. In south-central Tennessee, at least four homes and a few barns were damaged.
In North Carolina, a person in a small truck was killed after the vehicle was overturned in a parking lot west of Greensboro, said Alan Perdue, emergency services director for Guilford County. He did not have other details.
The storm also knocked down a wall at a distributing business, sending one person to the hospital, Perdue said. Two other people were hurt while in vehicles, but details were not immediately available, Perdue said. None of the injuries was considered life threatening.
The storm left numerous trees and power lines down, some on top of homes, in its wake. Authorities were also combing through wreckage in a mostly industrial area outside of Greensboro, and getting a better look at the damage as daylight broke.
The North Carolina Highway Patrol said the storm blew several tractor-trailers off Interstate 40 but could not confirm the number.
*****
Yep last night's storm was a doozey!
Classified Ads
Read the Classifieds!
Here are but a few examples of actual Classified Ads found in newspapers and newsletters:
•Free puppies: 1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbor's dog.
•Free puppies...mother, AKC German Shepherd, father, super dog, able to leap tall fences in a single bound.
•Found dirty white dog. Looks like a rat. Been out a while. Better be a big reward.
•Nordic Track: $300, hardly used, call Chubby.
•Joining nudist colony! Must sell washer and dryer, $300.
•Wedding dress for sale, worn once by mistake. Call Stephanie.
•For sale. Three canaries of undermined sex. Great Dames for sale.
•Have several very old dresses from grandmother in beautiful condition.
•Tired of cleaning yourself. Let me do it.
•Vacation special: have your home exterminated. Get rid of aunts. Zap does the job in 24 hours.
•Toaster: a gift that every member of the family appreciates. Automatically burns toast.
•For rent: six-room hated apartment.
•Man, honest. Will take anything.
•Used cars. Why go elsewhere to be cheated. Come here first.
•Christmas tag-sale. Handmade gifts for the hard-to-find person.
•Wanted: Hair cutter. Excellent growth potential.
•Wanted. Man to take care of cow that does not smoke or drink.
•Our bikinis are exciting. They are simply the tops.
•Wanted: Widower with school-age children requires person to assume general housekeeping duties. Must be capable of contributing to growth of family.
•And now, the superstore-unequaled in size, unmatched in variety, unrivaled inconvenience.
•We will oil your sewing machine and adjust tension in your home for $1.
•Illustrate? Write today for free help.
•Auto repair service. Free pick-up and delivery. Try us once, you'll never go anywhere again.
•Our experienced mom will care for your child. Fenced yard, meals and smacks included.
•Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond of children.
•Man wanted to work in dynamite factory. Must be willing to travel.
•Stock up and save. Limit: one.
•Semi-annual after Christmas sale.
•Three-year-old teacher needed for preschool. Experience preferred.
•Mixing bowl set designed to please a cook with round bottom for efficient beating.
•Girl wanted to assist magician in cutting-off-head illusion. Blue Cross and salary.
•Dinner special — turkey, $2.35; chicken or beef, $2.25; children, $2.
•For sale: antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs and large drawers.
•Now is your chance to have your ears pierced and get an extra pair to take home, too.
•We do not tear your clothing with machinery. We do it carefully by hand.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Cell Phones Alter Brain Patterns
Although this research shows that cell phone transmissions can affect a person's brainwaves with persistent effects on behavior, (Loughborough University's James) Horne does not feel there is any need for concern that cell phones are damaging. The arousal effects the researchers measured are equivalent to about half a cup of coffee, and many other factors in a person's surroundings will affect a night's sleep as much or more than cell phone transmissions.
"The significance of the research," he explained, is that although the cell phone power is low, "electromagnetic radiation can nevertheless have an effect on mental behavior when transmitting at the proper frequency." He finds this fact especially remarkable when considering that everyone is surrounded by electromagnetic clutter radiating from all kinds of electronic devices in our modern world. Cell phones in talk mode seem to be particularly well-tuned to frequencies that affect brainwave activity. "The results show sensitivity to low-level radiation to a subtle degree. These findings open the door by a crack for more research to follow. One only wonders if with different doses, durations, or other devices, would there be greater effects?"
I knew I didn't like or have one of those annoying things for a reason! What the studies didn't find was the total lack of courtesy and social decorum cell phone users have - much like smokers!
Eddie Arnold Dead At 89
Eddy Arnold, whose mellow baritone on songs like "Make the World Go Away" made him one of the most successful country singers in history, died Thursday morning, days short of his 90th birthday.
Arnold died at a care facility near Nashville, said Don Cusic, a professor at Belmont University and author of the biography "Eddy Arnold: I'll Hold You in My Heart." His wife of 66 years, Sally, had died in March, and in the same month, Arnold fell outside his home, injuring his hip.
Arnold's vocals on songs like the 1965 "Make the World Go Away," one of his many No. 1 country hits and a top 10 hit on the pop charts, made him one of the most successful country singers in history.
Folksy yet sophisticated, he became a pioneer of "The Nashville Sound," also called "countrypolitan," a mixture of country and pop styles. His crossover success paved the way for later singers such as Kenny Rogers.
"I sing a little country, I sing a little pop and I sing a little folk, and it all goes together," he said in 1970.
He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966. The following year he was the first person to receive the entertainer of the year award from the Country Music Association.
The reference book "Top Country Singles 1944-1993,'" by Joel Whitburn, ranked Arnold the No. 1 country singer in terms of overall success on the Billboard country charts. It lists his first No. 1 hit as "What Is Life Without Love," 1947, and for the following year ranks his "Bouquet of Roses" as the biggest country hit of the entire year.
Other hits included "Cattle Call," "The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me," "Anytime," "Bouquet of Roses," "What's He Doing in My World?" "I Want to Go With You," "Somebody Like Me," "Lonely Again" and "Turn the World Around."
Most of his hits were done in association with famed guitarist Chet Atkins, the producer on most of the recording sessions.
The late Dinah Shore once described his voice as like "warm butter and syrup being poured over wonderful buttermilk pancakes."
Reflecting on his career, he said he never copied anyone.
"I really had an idea about how I wanted to sing from the very beginning," he said.
He revitalized his career in the 1960s by adding strings, a controversial move for a country artist back then.
"I got to thinking, if I just took the same kind of songs I'd been singing and added violins to them, I'd have a new sound," he told The Associated Press in 2002. "They cussed me, but the disc jockeys grabbed it. ... The artists began to say, `Aww, he's left us.' Then within a year, they were doing it!"
Among his recent albums were "Looking Back," 2002, and "After All These Years," 2005.
Joe Galante, chairman of Sony BMG Nashville, which includes RCA country artists, said he was talking about making another just a few weeks ago. "There was a special kind of happiness about him whenever he talked about music, and that is how I will remember him," Galante said.
Over the years, he invested wisely, especially in real estate in the Nashville area, and was regarded as one of the wealthiest men in country music. He once had this advice for young singers: "Get a good lawyer, a good accountant and be on time."
Friends said his wife helped handle his business dealings and was the inspiration for many of his love songs.
"What hurts me more than anything else is that he died of a broken heart," said Grand Ole Opry star Jim Ed Brown, a friend. "I don't think he ever recovered from that."
Arnold was born May 15, 1918, on a farm near Henderson, Tenn., the son of a sharecropper. He sang on radio stations in Jackson, Tenn., Memphis, Tenn., and St. Louis before becoming nationally known.
Early in his career, his manager was Col. Tom Parker, who later became Elvis Presley's manager.
His image was always that of a modest, clean-cut country boy.
"You cannot satisfy all the people," he once said. "They have an image of me. Some people think I'm Billy Graham's half brother, but I'm not. I want people to get this hero thing off their mind and just let me be me."
Arnold lived in Brentwood, a Nashville suburb. Survivors include a son, Richard Edward Arnold Jr., and daughter, Jo Ann Pollard, both of Brentwood.
Oldest League Bowler Dies At 106
By the time Bill Hargrove was recognized last year as the nation's oldest league bowler, his eyesight had deteriorated so much he could hardly see the pins.
But he kept at it, armed with a mental image of them. He was still bowling last week, just before he was hospitalized and died Monday of congestive heart failure - four days shy of turning 107.
Hargrove died at Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville, a spokeswoman said Thursday. He lived nearby in Clermont.
He earned national attention in May 2007, after turning 106, when the United States Bowling Congress dubbed him "the oldest league bowler ever."
Hargrove began bowling in 1924. For decades, he played a version known as duckpin bowling. As duckpins faded, Hargrove took up the more popular form of bowling, played with a larger ball. He said it helped him cope with the 1973 death of his wife, Johnnie Ruth Carter Hargrove, and gave him something to look forward to after he retired.
"I love it," Hargrove said when the league honored his longevity. "It puts you on trial as far as your ability. And your ability comes and goes. I'm fighting it all the time."
"Bowling kept him fit, and I'm sure having something like that, something that you really love, keeps you going," said Sandra Hargrove Carnet, 59, Hargrove's only child. "But he never became retired from the world. He stayed out there, interacted with people and the world. He just really enjoyed being part of the community, and that's what ultimately contributed to his longevity."
Toilet Paper Wedding Dress
Expo manager Peta-Marie McLeod said the designers were allowed to use two four-packs of the double length Cottonsofts toilet tissue -- about 16 normal rolls -- to make their dresses.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Some China firms outsourcing to USA to cut costs
An article in the LA Times this week on businesses from China bargain-hunting on operational costs by outsourcing to the USA:
Liu Keli couldn't tell you much about South Carolina, not even where it is in the United States. It's as obscure to him as his home region, Shanxi province, is to most Americans.But Liu is investing $10 million in the Palmetto State, building a printing-plate factory that will open this fall and hire 120 workers. His main aim is to tap the large American market, but when his finance staff penciled out the costs, he was stunned to learn how they compared with those in China.
Liu spent about $500,000 for seven acres in Spartanburg -- less than one-fourth what it would cost to buy the same amount of land in Dongguan, a city in southeast China where he runs three plants. U.S. electricity rates are about 75% lower, and in South Carolina, Liu doesn't have to put up with frequent blackouts.
Craftsman's $8600 everything tool kit
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
When a girl loves a boy.
Mildred Loving, matriarch of interracial marriage, dies
Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.
Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.
Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.
They had married in Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Returning to their Virginia hometown, they were arrested within weeks and convicted on charges of "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth," according to their indictments.
The couple avoided a year in jail by agreeing to a sentence mandating that they immediately leave Virginia. They moved to Washington and launched a legal challenge a few years later.
After the Supreme Court ruled, the couple returned to Virginia, where they lived with their children Donald, Peggy and Sidney.
Richard Loving died in 1975 in a car accident that also injured his wife.
In a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, Loving said she wasn't trying to change history - she was 'just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.'
Seventeen Year Cicadas
“The 17-year cicadas are coming any day now. And there’s not much anyone should - or could - do about it, except hang on for a wild, eerie ride.”
[…]
“At night, they would be quiet, but when the sun would come up, it was like throwing a switch,” said Chief Eric Tinsley, of the Biltmore Forest Police Department, who was then a town patrolman.He also remembers the crunching sound of cars running over the dead cicadas left on streets. “It was like popcorn popping,” he said.”
[…]
“It’s a remarkable life cycle. They live many years underground. They have their last hooray, a mating frenzy. They lay their eggs and die very soon.”The show can be over in a week or two, depending on temperatures, he said.
[…]
“Imagine the sheer biomass. That’s a lot of nutrition being pumped into the ecosystem. The birds will have a field day.”Just be in the mountains during this time of year and the sound will make you think of every sci-fi film you ever saw ... and then there are the birds ...
Living On The Edge
Forum: The Middle Class on the Precipice
Rising financial risks for American families
During the past generation, the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair play to keep itself financially secure has been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Now a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a disappearing spouse can reduce a family from solidly middle class to newly poor in a few months.
Middle-class families have been threatened on every front. Rocked by rising prices for essentials as men’s wages remained flat, both Dad and Mom have entered the workforce—a strategy that has left them working harder just to try to break even. Even with two paychecks, family finances are stretched so tightly that a very small misstep can leave them in crisis. As tough as life has become for married couples, single-parent families face even more financial obstacles in trying to carve out middle-class lives on a single paycheck. And at the same time that families are facing higher costs and increased risks, the old financial rules of credit have been rewritten by powerful corporate interests that see middle-class families as the spoils of political influence.
Raising Incomes the Two-Worker Way
In just one generation, millions of mothers have gone to work, transforming basic family economics. The typical middle-class household in the United States is no longer a one-earner family, with one parent in the workforce and one at home full-time. Instead, the majority of families with small children now have both parents rising at dawn to commute to jobs so they can both pull in paychecks.
Scholars, policymakers, and critics of all stripes have debated the social implications of these changes, but few have looked at their economic impact. Today the median income for a fully employed male is $41,670 per year (all numbers are inflation-adjusted to 2004 dollars)—nearly $800 less than his counterpart of a generation ago. The only real increase in wages for a family has come from the second paycheck earned by a working mother. With both adults in the workforce full-time, the family’s combined income is $73,770—a whopping 75 percent higher than the median household income in the early 1970s. But the gain in income has an overlooked side effect: family risk has risen as well. Today’s families have budgeted to the limits of their new two-paycheck status. As a result, they have lost the parachute they once had in times of financial setback—a back-up earner (usually Mom) who could go into the workforce if the primary earner got laid off or fell sick. This “added-worker effect” could buttress the safety net offered by unemployment insurance or disability insurance to help families weather bad times. But today, a disruption to family fortunes can no longer be made up with extra income from an otherwise-stay-at-home partner.
Income risk has shifted in other ways as well. Incomes are less dependable today. Layoffs, outsourcing, and other workplace changes have trebled the odds of a significant interruption in a single generation. The shift from one income to two doubled the risks again, as both Mom and Dad face the possibility of unemployment. Of course, with two people in the workforce, the odds of income dropping to zero are lessened. But for families where every penny of both paychecks is already fully committed to mortgage, health insurance, and other payments, the loss of either paycheck can unleash a financial tailspin. Nor are such risks solely related to unemployment. Consider health-related exposures. Two wage-earners means either Mom or Dad could be out of work from illness or injury, losing a substantial chunk of the family income. Finally, the new everyone-in-the-workforce family faces higher risks for caregiving. When there was one stay-at-home parent, a child’s serious illness or Grandma’s fall down the stairs was certainly bad news, but the main economic ramification was the medical bills. Today, someone has to take off work—or hire help—in order to provide family care. At a time when hospitals are sending people home “quicker and sicker,” more nursing care falls directly on the family—and someone has to be home to administer it.
Even the economic risks of divorce have changed. A generation ago, the end of a marriage was an economic blow, but a nonworking spouse usually took a job, bringing in new income to stay afloat. Now, whatever the two-income divorcing couple earns has to cover both their old and new expenses. Evidence mounts that post-divorce, both women and men are struggling to make ends meet as they try to support two households on the same combined income. A divorced woman with children, for example, is about three times more likely to file for bankruptcy than a man or woman, single or married, without children. And men who owe child support are about three times more likely to file for bankruptcy than men who don’t.
The news is even worse for single parents. They face all the difficulties of dual-income families—all income is budgeted, there is no one at home to work if the primary earner loses a job or gets sick, and no one to take over if a child gets sick or an elderly parent needs help—and they are trying to make it on a lot less money, competing with two-income families for housing, daycare, health insurance, and all the other goods and services. As one divorced, working mother put it, “With what my ex contributes and what I earn, I can just about match what a man can make, but I can’t match what a man and woman both working can make.” The two-parent families are struggling to swallow the risk, but their single-parent counterparts are choking.
Does this mean that middle-class women should return to the home in order to reduce their families’ risk? Before jumping to that conclusion, it is important to look at the expenses middle-class families face.
Soaring Expenses— and Risk
Why are so many moms in the workforce? Surely, some are lured by a great job, but millions more need a paycheck, plain and simple.
It would be convenient to blame the families and say that it is their lust for stuff that has gotten them into this mess. Indeed, sociologist Robert Frank claims that this country’s newfound “Luxury Fever” forces middle-class families “to finance their consumption increases largely by reduced savings and increased debt.” Others echo the theme. A book titled Affluenza (by John De Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor) sums it up: “The dogged pursuit for more” accounts for Americans’ “overload, debt, anxiety, and waste.” If Americans are out of money, it must be because they are over-consuming—buying junk they don’t really need.
Blaming the family supposes that we believe that families spend their money on things they don’t really need. Over-consumption is not about medical care or basic housing; it is, in the words of Juliet Schor, about “designer clothes, a microwave, restaurant meals, home and automobile air conditioning, and, of course, Michael Jordan’s ubiquitous athletic shoes, about which children and adults both display near-obsession.” And it isn’t about buying a few goodies with extra income; it is about going deep into debt to finance consumer purchases that sensible people could do without.
But is this argument true? If families really are blowing their paychecks on designer clothes and restaurant meals, then the household expenditure data should show them spending more on these frivolous items than ever before. But the numbers don’t back up the claim.
A quick summary of the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey paints a very different picture of family spending. Consider what a family of four spends on clothing. Designer toddler outfits and $200 sneakers are favorite media targets, but when it is all added up, including the Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirts and Ray-Ban sunglasses, the average family of four today spends 33 percent less on clothing than a similar family did in the early 1970s. Overseas manufacturing and discount shopping mean that today’s family is spending almost $1,200 a year less than their parents spent to dress themselves.
What about food? Surely, families are eating out more and buying shopping carts full of designer water and exotic fruit? In fact, today’s family of four actually spends 23 percent less on food (at-home and restaurant eating combined) than its counterpart of a generation ago. The slimmed-down profit margins in discount supermarkets have combined with new efficiencies in farming to cut more costs for the American family.
Appliances tell the same picture. There is a lot of complaining about microwave ovens and espresso machines: Affluenza rails against appliances “that were deemed luxuries as recently as 1970, but are now found in well over half of U.S. homes, and thought of by a majority of Americans as necessities: dishwashers, clothes dryers, central heating and air conditioning, color and cable TV.” But manufacturing costs are down, and durability is up. Today’s families are spending 51 percent less on major appliances than their predecessors a generation ago.
This is not to say that middle-class families never fritter away money. A generation ago, big-screen televisions were a novelty reserved for the very rich, no one had cable, and DVD and TiVo were meaningless strings of letters. So how much more do families spend on “home entertainment,” premium channels included? They spend 23 percent more—a whopping extra $180 annually. Computers add another $300 to the annual family budget. But even that increase looks a little different in the context of other spending. The extra money spent on cable, electronics, and computers is more than offset by families’ savings on major appliances and household furnishings alone.
The same offsetting phenomena appear in other areas as well. The average family spends more on airline travel than it did a generation ago, but less on dry cleaning; more on telephone services, but less on tobacco; more on pets, but less on carpets. When we add it all up, increases in one category are offset by decreases in another.
So where did their money go? It went to the basics. The real increases in family spending are for the items that make a family middle class and keep them safe (housing, health insurance), that educate their children (pre-school and college), and that let them earn a living (transportation, childcare, and taxes).
The data can be summarized in a financial snapshot of two families, a typical one-earner family from the early 1970s compared with a typical two-earner family from the early 2000s. With an income of $42,450, the average family from the early 1970s covered their basic mortgage expenses of $5,820, health-insurance costs of $1,130 and car payments, maintenance, gas, and repairs of $5,640. Taxes claimed about 24 percent of their income, leaving them with $19,560 in discretionary funds. That means they had about $1,500 a month to cover food, clothing, utilities, and anything else they might need—just about half of their income.
By 2004, the family budget looks very different. As noted earlier, although a man is making nearly $800 less than his counterpart a generation ago, his wife’s paycheck brings the family to a combined income that is $73,770—a 75 percent increase. But higher expenses have more than eroded that apparent financial advantage. Their annual mortgage payments are more than $10,500. If they have a child in elementary school who goes to daycare after school and in the summers, the family will spend $5,660. If their second child is a pre-schooler, the cost is even higher—$6,920 a year. With both people in the workforce, the family spends more than $8,000 a year on its two vehicles. Health insurance costs the family $1,970, and taxes now take 30 percent of its money. The bottom line: today’s median-earning, median-spending middle-class family sends two people into the workforce, but at the end of the day they have about $1,500 less for discretionary spending than their one-income counterparts of a generation ago.
What happens to the family that tries to get by on a single income today? Their expenses would be a little lower because they can save on childcare and taxes, and, if they are lucky enough to live close to shopping and other services, perhaps they can get by without a second car. But if they tried to live a normal, middle-class life in other ways—buy an average home, send their younger child to preschool, purchase health insurance, and so forth—they would be left with only $5,500 a year to cover all their other expenses. They would have to find a way to buy food, clothing, utilities, life insurance, furniture, appliances, and so on with less than $500 a month. The modern single-earner family trying to keep up an average lifestyle faces a 72 percent drop in discretionary income compared with its one-income counterpart of a generation ago.
Combine changes in family income and expenses, and the biggest change of all becomes evident—on the risk front. In the early 1970s, if any calamity came along, the family devoted nearly half its income to discretionary spending. Of course, people need to eat and turn on the lights, but the other expenses—clothing, furniture, appliances, restaurant meals, vacations, entertainment, and pretty much everything else—can be drastically reduced or even cut out entirely. In other words, they didn’t need as much money if something went wrong. If the couple could find a way—through unemployment insurance, savings, or putting their stay-at-home parent to work—they could cover the basics on just half of their previous earnings. Given the option of a second paycheck, both could stay in the workforce for a few months once the crisis had passed, pulling the family out of their financial hole.
But the position today is very different. Fully 75 percent of family income is earmarked for recurrent monthly expenses. Even if they are able to trim around the edges, families are faced with a sobering truth: every one of those expensive items—mortgage, car payments, insurance, childcare—is a fixed cost. Families must pay them each and every month, through good times and bad; there is no way to cut back from one month to the next, as can be done with spending on clothing or food. Short of moving out of the house, withdrawing their children from preschool, or canceling the insurance policy altogether, they are stuck.
In other words, today’s family has no margin for error. There is no leeway to cut back if one earner’s hours are cut or if the other gets sick. There is no room in the budget if someone needs to take off work to care for a sick child or an elderly parent. Their basic situation is far riskier than that of their parents a generation earlier. The modern American family is walking a high wire without a net.
The Rules Have Changed
The one-two punch of income vulnerability and rising costs has weakened the middle class, at the same time that the revision of the rules of financing delivers a death blow to millions of families each year. Since the early 1980s, the credit industry has rewritten the rules of lending to families. Congress has turned the industry loose to charge whatever it can get and to bury tricks and traps throughout credit agreements. Credit-card contracts that were less than a page long in the early 1980s now number 30 or more pages of small-print legalese. In the details, credit-card companies lend money at one rate, but retain the right to change the interest rate whenever it suits them. They can even raise the rate after the money has been borrowed—a practice once considered too shady even for a back-alley loan shark. When they think they have been cheated, customers can be forced into arbitration in locations thousands of miles from home. Some companies claim that they can repossess anything a customer buys with a credit card.
Credit-card issuers are not alone in their boldness. Home-mortgage lenders are writing mortgages that are so one-sided that some of their products are known as “loan-to-own” because it is the mortgage company—not the buyer—who will end up with the house. Payday lenders are ringing military bases and setting up shop in working-class neighborhoods, offering instant cash that can eventually cost the customer more than a thousand percent interest.
For those who can stay out of debt, the rules of lending may not matter. But the economic pressures on the middle class are causing more families to turn to credit just to make ends meet. When something goes wrong the only place to turn is credit cards and mortgage refinancing. At that moment, the change in lending rules matters very much indeed. The family that might manage $2,000 of debt at 9 percent discovers that it cannot stay afloat when interest rates skyrocket to 29 percent. And the family that refinanced the home mortgage to pay off other debts suddenly faces escalating monthly payments and may find itself staring at foreclosure. Job losses or medical debts can put any family in a hole, but a credit industry that has rewritten the rules can keep that family from ever climbing back.
A Politics of Living on the Edge?
Every day, middle-class families carry higher risks that a job loss or a medical problem will push them over the edge. Although plenty of families make it, a growing number who worked just as hard and followed the rules just as carefully find themselves in a financial nightmare. The security of middle-class life has disappeared. The new reality is millions of families whose grip on the good life can be shaken loose in an instant.
Although my own work, on bankruptcy and credit, has focused on the specifics of families’ household finances, I cannot help but think that their changed circumstances during the past generation have larger echoes for public policy.
During the same period, families have been asked to absorb much more risk in their retirement income. In 1985, there were 112,200 defined-benefit pension plans with employers and employer groups around the country; today their number has shrunk to 29,700 such plans, and those are melting away fast. Steelworkers, airline employees, and now those in the auto industry are joining millions of families who must worry about interest rates, stock market volatility, and the harsh reality that they may outlive their retirement money. For much of the past year, President Bush campaigned to move Social Security to a savings-account model, with retirees trading much or all of their guaranteed payments for payments contingent on investment returns. For younger families, the picture is not any better. Both the absolute cost of healthcare and the share of it borne by families have risen—and newly fashionable health-savings plans are spreading from legislative halls to Wal-Mart workers, with much higher deductibles and a large new dose of investment risk for families’ future healthcare. Even demographics are working against the middle class family, as the odds of having a frail elderly parent—and all the attendant need for physical and financial assistance—have jumped eightfold in just one generation.
From the middle-class family perspective, much of this, understandably, looks far less like an opportunity to exercise more financial responsibility, and a good deal more like a frightening acceleration of the wholesale shift of financial risk onto their already overburdened shoulders. The financial fallout has begun, and the political fallout may not be far behind.