What's Middle-Class?

On another blog, I saw a naive blogger making the claim that $160,000/year was "middle-class," and that she didn't understand this claim that "people like her" weren't middle class. After all, her family only took a few "very modest" vacations* a year, and only ate out a few times a week. The claim, she said, that people making $40,000/year were middle class had to be nonsense. That was abject poverty! (For the record, up until a few years ago, I made just over $50,000/year. Since I became a full professor I make somewhat more than that.)

What Could Be The Cause of All This Disrespect for Teachers?

Over at his blog, Rod Dreher cites an amusing little anecdote  (from the Daily Mail -- there's a reliable source, Rod! almost as good as Steven Sailer!) where some Chinese teachers come into a British classroom, spend some time teaching some British kids, and improve their test scores -- by a whole 10%!

The Chinese teachers comment with amazement on the unruly behavior behavior of the British kids and blame -- what else! -- the "generous" benefits of the British social safety net.  Having welfare available made kids rude and lazy, one Chinese teacher claimed, since they knew they had the dole to fall back on.

Rod expresses some doubt about this theory.  He thinks it's more cultural -- you know, some cultures teach people to respect education (he doesn't come right out and say white culture, but you know who he means) and some don't.

Slightly Related Thoughts...

...in lieu of an actual post:

• Today I applied for two jobs I really want to get and one I sort of would like


• Applying for jobs takes an astounding length of time


• Which really annoys me, because I haven't got any spare time these days


• But I guess it's like that marshmallow thing they do with toddlers


• By which I mean, if I can delay gratification (WTF that means, in my situation, where I'm not seeming to get much gratification these days) by suffering now...


• Future happiness!


• Though when, I would like to know. When? One of my students was exalting about gas prices being "only" $3.31/gallon yesterday. Ai.


• Protests on Wall Street continue. I try to be cheered by this. Revolution now?


• 22nd of the month and we are already out of money.


• But! My novel is going well and besides applying for jobs I have submitted 3 stories this week.


• So!


• Upwards and onwards.


• And!


• The kid wrote a fan-fic of my novel. My first fan-fic! It is very funny and I will share it with you soon.

What, Already?

It's the first day of Summer II. I'm only doing one class this semester, but it's WLIT II, so very dense on the reading. Lighter on the essays. Eh, it's a trade-off.

We went up to Fayetteville yesterday and visited my parents. Also saw Uncle Charger and went to the movies (lots and lots and lots of theaters in Fayetteville, including a massive new stadium theater called the Malco Razorback with a giant fountain in its center, like something out of the Roman Empire, which is where we went). We saw Midnight in Paris, in one of those tiny little auditoriums that seat like 75 people, all of them exactly like us -- i.e. liberals and probably English professors or at least Art History majors who wish they could live in Paris. We all laughed in delight as Gil, our hero, met one of our old friends after the next. My kid, who was sitting next to me, kept leaning over to whisper to me, confirming her guesses about who each person was. And, when the movie was over, she said, wistfully, "Let's move to Paris."

I wish, kid.

Then we left the theater to go out into the blistering 101 degree Arkansas July, blasting sunlight, a huge field-sized parking lot filled with SUVs, to drive down College Avenue, a highway filled with car dealerships, liquor stores, fast-food shops, and strip malls. The closest we'll ever come to Paris is Paris, Arkansas.

Which is, among other reasons, why this solemn little apology for our betters and why it isn't right that they pay their share of running this country really got down my neck this morning. Oh, it's so sad that Mr. and Mrs. Jones can barely make ends meet on $250, 000.00/year -- after, you know, socking away $8000.00/per kid in college savings a year, and investing the maximum amount in their 401(k) accounts, mind you -- they're so poor, what with the high cost of living in Manhattan, they can't afford expensive vaccations, it's tragic.

Though of course if they moved to Texas or Alabama (the horror) they'd have plenty of money, the article adds. But who can actually do that, the article hints.

I can't afford a dentist, much less to sock away $8000.00 for college savings for my kids. ($8000.00/year is my rent.) I don't have a house. I don't put any money in my 401(k). If you don't count TIAA-CREF, I don't have a 401(k) -- and my university puts money in that, I can't afford to match it. I haven't gone anywhere on a vacation, if you don't count the odd trip up to Fayetteville to see a movie, in almost three years now. And mind you, I count myself well off enough, because I can look around me and see my students, who are living on, probably, a fourth of what I make. They're the actual poor. I'm doing all right, even if I feel kind of desperate toward the end of the month (okay, by the third week in the month, usually, these days).

But it's Mr. and Mrs. Jones we're supposed to feel sorry for?

Shit. The idiots who write these articles don't have a clue.

And neither, frankly, sad as I am to say it, does Woody Allen. Move to Paris? Like that's a choice most people in America even have.

No Jobs

This article details exactly what's happening everywhere around me.  

I know so many people caught in this wrecked economy (not just me and Herr Dr. Delagar, in other words--although, yes, us:  he hasn't had a full-time work in over three years).

Bad Economy Blues Part II

Krugman's column in the NYTimes today is worth reading -- well, it almost always is, but today especially.  He's talking about the need for more stimulus.  The bit that's been done already has helped some, and, as Krugman admits in the column, that's nice; but nowhere near enough.

What I keep hearing from Washington is one of two arguments: either (1) the stimulus has failed, unemployment is still rising, so we shouldn’t do any more, or (2) the stimulus has succeeded, G.D.P. is growing, so we don’t need to do any more. The truth, which is that the stimulus was too little of a good thing — that it helped, but it wasn’t big enough — seems to be too complicated for an era of sound-bite politics.

Of course, we've got the Teabag fringe, wailing (now, not when Bush was running us into debt paying for that useless war) about how our grandchildren will be SADDLED with DEBT!!!1!; but, as Krugman also notes, this is classic pennywise thinking.

Deficit hawks like to complain that today’s young people will end up having to pay higher taxes to service the debt we’re running up right now. But anyone who really cared about the prospects of young Americans would be pushing for much more job creation, since the burden of high unemployment falls disproportionately on young workers — and those who enter the work force in years of high unemployment suffer permanent career damage, never catching up with those who graduated in better times.

And, as I'll point out, to anyone who isn't living in that Winger alt.world (we'll just make up the planet we want to live in, where global climate change isn't happening, and the Iraq War is being won, and Reagan Was a Great President), things are dire out here in the actual world. Yesterday I had the third student of this semester alone drop out of school b/c she could no longer afford to be a student.  This one was a junior -- the other two had been underclassmen.

Rent and debt and food and health costs and fuel prices are so high these students are not able to stay in school.  It's not tuition.  It's the cost of living.  My freshman who quit mid-semester said he just couldn't spare the time off work.  (He works at Sonic, by the way.)

We're eating our seed corn.  For what?  To pay for a useless war?  To make health insurance executives even richer?  To prop up some demented old white guy's notion of what this country should be?

When will this be enough?

Hard Times

In the mail today I got

• a chain letter from some woman in Montana, urging me not to break the chain: mail two dollars to each of these addresses, she said (ten addresses listed below) and add my address to the bottom, and we'd all make some gignormous amount of money some gignormous time in the future
  
• an advertisement from a lawyer, advising me that if I had been in a wreck or had been injured at work I could probably sue for big bucks
• An offer from a company in South Dakota, offering me a pre-approved loan, from five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars, at -- get this -- 96% interest.  WTMFF.  36 months to pay back a thousand dollars, at 96% interest.  And this shit is legal?
• Two separate threatening notices from two different medical clinics -- one of whom I owe $236 dollars to, one of whom I owe just under $800 dollars to, both threatening to turn me over to collections.  Again, WTF?  I note, for those who are interested, that I have been paying both of these institutions at a steady rate of $50/month, and that both were paid 80% of their fees by my insurance company.  (This is what's left on the bill for my shoulder surgery, done in December -- one is the anesthesia bill, the other is the surgeon's bill.)  Did I consider taking the $1000 dollars from the loan shark in SD, paying off my medical bills, and defaulting on the loan shark?  Ooo, did I ever.  What's the SD loan shark going to do?  Come break my legs?  Threaten to ruin my already ruined credit? But no, I will not do that.  That would be unethical.  (Unlike loaning money to desperate people at 96% interest, which, as we know, is entirely fucking ethical.)

My country: ready for a socialist revolution?  You make the call.

Money Money Money

If you're like the delagar household, you've noticed that things which used to cost, at your local Harps, two bucks or a two-fifty, like a box of Triscuits or a dozen eggs or a gallon of milk, now -- yikes, when did this happen? -- cost three-fifty, three-ninety-five. And let's not get into meat! We bought chickens for Passover last night. Remember when chicken was cheap? Nearly eight dollars each for the chickens we paid.

So what's up with the food prices? I've been blaming Bush, because, you know, I hate him.

Also he started that stupid war which has helped to make gas prices, what are they in your area now? Here they're 3.40 a gallon, and diesel even higher, and I reckoned that had to be doing something to the cost of food.

But maybe it's more complex.

See this post at Crooked Timber.