Your standard of living over the past decade. As it become harder to maintain . Heres how were going to break down the lines. I want to show you a recent pew research poll. That is our question for all of you today. Adding an idea of your standard of living over the past decade. Has it been harder to maintain . Take a look at who the middle class blames for the economic woes. Makes in new orleans, he under 25,000. Joe, what to do and describe your standard of living. Caller i make under 26,000. I think it is just the rich. The people of the United States dont want to pay anymore. They want to drive around in cadillac trucks and porsches and they dont want to see anybody else driving these things. Labor,ing in mexican their fathers or grandfathers fought in wars for this country. They dont want to pay people when im doing labor, i also have to do skill work and im not kidding paid for. Host joe, what of your wages been like . Caller they have been horrible. Im down to 20 until i get paid again. It is horrible. Food is going up, gasoline is want to dond all you is stay inside and hold on to what you have. Really cant do anything. 80s, it seemed like my mother and father were working. In the 70s they were booming. Sudden, all i see his money on tv. But i am just looking at it. Host how old are you . I am 42. In the early 90s i was making a good living working offshore in mexico. Thatan, no one has seen type of money anymore, and you know what im saying . College . You go to caller no. Host did you parents go to college . Caller no. My father worked on an 80 days. My parents made a good living for me and my brother and sister, but my brother and sister are making good money. I am the only one that seems like im an honest guy and still i dont make any money. Louisiana. Racism in its not just economics, it is racism. I will just get off the line and listen. I appreciated. What is your standard of living like and how has it changed . This is for terry . Ive been married since 1879. I have three grown kids that are 34, 30, and 26, who live with us. They have never really been able to start their lives because of the economy. It has made it so rough for us. In 1979. Ried we live right inside the kansas Missouri School district. It is no longer a credit heard they cant give out any High School Diplomas or anything. Is in fifth grade and i stayed home instead of working. My husband was a bluecollar guy. His factory job got worse every year. We paid more and more for any kind of benefits and the raises because theyelayed claimed they couldnt give any kind of raises and it was always at the most five percent. Our standard of living never went up. , we livedad cable tv on the edge of barely making it. At that time we were even making 20,000 a year. Now we are up to even as much as 41,000 a year when we break stuff out of his 401 k , but we just cant make things meet. Living homeschooling and just barely making it, not even , and i forgot what i was going to say. Host let me ask you about the affordability of where you live. What about housing . Is it affordable their . Food . We had lived in rental property, very inexpensive rental property owned by this university of missouri kansas city. Then they obliterated a neighborhood and devastated lives of people born in that neighborhood. They leveled this lowerclass neighborhood and give us a relocation offer. And wents had some money were able to purchase a home, even though we had zero credit. When we were homeschooling and paying all the cost of education and staying home, because i did have a college degree, what we did in order to live was eventually we were able to establish some credit, Montgomery Ward letters by refrigerator, so we got some credit. That is what we lived on. The ymca so living they could have some activities like karate. We were living on credit. We kept building up all kinds of credit card bills. It has just been one of the things. Today withou in debt credit card bills . Caller oh my god, yes. Host so you make about 41,000 income and that is not enough. So youre still living on credit cards. You mind telling us what your Credit Card Debt is . Caller at this point is 40,000, but it is all low interest. It is wild. All three of my kids are bright and would have gone to really good colleges had we had any at the publicor university situation been more to our kids going into middle son is my a genius and he learned at 14 years old how to Program Video games. Host terry, have to leave it there. Washington. Oma, what is your story . A way i have gotten into lower economic situation. Can you hear me . I got laid off from my fulltime 2008. D 2008 in i get a job working parttime in earning about 60 of my previous salary. I was working parttime at a pizza restaurant. There until about six or seven months ago. I turn 62 last year and retired just because of the situation. My cousin died who resembles in me, couple years younger than me. It was august or september of last year. Really bad feeling. Im doing pretty good financially. I live in my house and my house is paid for, i have no mortgage. But i am doing a little better now a Social Security that i was making at the pizza store. A couple of tweets here. We want to get your thoughts on this. We will keep taking your phone calls. Keep diving in. You can see how we have divided the lines by income this morning. I want to show you this research that was done by redfin about middleclass incomes and how they dont add up to a home in parts of the country in the United States. If you go to redfin. Com you can find the research there. This is what they say about the analysis. Heres the breakdown of the chart. Highlight the differences inaffordability by geography. Jimmy is in atlanta, he makes between 50 and a hundred thousand dollars. Between 50,000 and 100,000. Or become harder to maintain over the last decade . Caller it has become harder to maintain. Im 67 years old and i noticed that every time we have a major ka cut, the economy goes put. I have lived through seven president s. And every time the republicans get in there with their tax cut, the economy dies. It never fails. Host lets go to susan in vermont who makes over 100,000. How far does a hundred thousand dollars get you in vermont . Caller it doesnt get me far. It is really difficult to maintain our home and pay for retirement and our taxes very im selfemployed and the selfemployment taxes are so impossible in terms of trying to make a living and also save for retirement. Now theyre telling us we are not going to have that much in terms of retirement good is very scary. Crazy because i am realizing nobody can pay for retirement. Tell us more about selfemployment taxes. Why is your difficult . Caller youre basically getting taxed for the first 15 of any income you make. 50 ofto set aside 40 what i make. If i make 100 an hour, it is really only 50. Hard toworking doubly try to get enough to pay our. Ills saving is the hardest thing. Once i pay the taxes i dont have enough left over for putting any away. Host how old are you . Caller i am 45. Host is that hundred thousand does yourur salary . Husband work . My husband is only paid a little over 30,000 a year. It is really me youre scaring the load. Host the cost of living in vermont, is it expensive . How do you see it . Yeah. when i first started living there 20 years ago i was making 19,000 a year working for a nonprofit and i was fine. I could save, i had a great life. It sounds weird now, but it is true. 300,t was only about 375 a month. Now we just bought a home for a and we hadr 250,000 to get a to family. We cant pay our mortgage because a property taxes are so high. It really is taxes. We are paying over 5,000 a year , and it added 400 to our mortgage and it is really high right now. The New York Times ran this article. Usa today has this article in their business section this morning. It says that eight out of 10 businesses said they expect ways wage growth to remain subdued in the next three years. It says the Obama Administration is beginning an aggressive new effort to foster equity in criminal sentencing by considering clemency request from as many as houses of federal inmates serving time for drug offenses. Attorney general eric holder talked about this in a video posted on the website of the Justice Department yesterday. Heres what he had to say. In 2010, president obama signed the fair sentencing act. Unfair disparities in sentences imposed on people for offenses involving different forms of cocaine. There are still too many people in federal prison who were sentenced under the old regime and who, as a result, will have to spend far more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the same crime. This is simply not right. Legislation pending in congress would help address these types of cases, but in the meantime, president obama took a sensible step toward addressing the commutationsgiving to eight men and women who each had served many years in prison for crack cocaine. Due to mandatory minimum guidelines are considered severe at the time and are profoundly out of date today, they had four others received life sentences. These stories illustrate the vital roles that the clemency process can play in americas Justice System. The white house is indicated was to consider additional clemency applications to restore a degree of justice, fairness and proportionality for deserving individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety. The Justice Department is committed to recommend the as many qualified applicants is possible for reduced sentences. Later this week, the Deputy Attorney general will announce new criteria and the department will consider applications for the president s review. Approachand improved will make the criteria for clemency recommendation or expensive. This will allow the department of justice and the present to consider requests from the larger field of eligible individuals. Once these reforms go into effect, we will expect to receive thousands of additional applications for clemency. Generalat was attorney eric holder talking about new clemency guidelines. Here is the Washington Times. President obamas lacking behind his predecessors. The front page of the Washington Post has this story. That is action by the Supreme Court today. He sat down with the ceo from that company. If you want to go to our website you can find it there as part of our communicators program. The couple more headlines for you. Vice President Joe Biden has traveled to russia. The headline there, to ukraine. The Washington Times is saying that is one big reason why the Vice President is there this week. Were getting your thoughts on your standard of living over the past decade. Richard is calling in. He makes between 26000 and 50,000 a year. Our standard of living is deathly gunned down in the past 10 years. One of the reasons is the city of minneapolis is making it almost impossible to own a home in the city. The property taxes here are almost double the surrounding suburbs. If you go right across the line in another suburb you can cut your property taxes in half. All the fees and the water are going up. They added an extra fee for water. Now they want to go to zero which isneapolis adding another fee to our recycling. One observation i made listen to this program just about every day, it seems like everybody is calling in saying that their job went overseas. Why isnt congress and the president doing something about this . Can ask about the property taxes . What is a rationale for increasing them from the state . Taxes aree property local, the biggest chunk of them. That is what i meant, what is the rationale . Wheres the money going . Caller they built a plank road green mill. Storic they replaced that for half 1 million. Put in waterted to fountains all over the city and things like that. From thetholes here freezing and melting of snow that are about a foot deep. Roadsust dont repair the and they want to have these do good, pieinthesky programs. Host here are some tweets on this issue. Rand paul tweeted this out. Robin oxford, michigan, between 26000 and 50,000. We have an opportunity in this country to stop paying that trillion dollars by becoming energyefficient. We can get our plants back working. Uaw plant in tennessee wont help. There are only 250 people in the plant. The chinese have to work on their line. The thing is, we have to get off this keynesian thinking where the government for its money and demonizes people. Im a small businessman. I came from canada. I am sad that the government talks about these people. Im 66 years old. I believe this is the greatest country in the world, but i think people have to determine that there is nowhere to go and we have to take care of ourselves. No one is going to take care of this country except the americans. Oil. Start moving the we will have to deal with the oil. We need it right now until we come up with something better. Thousandsusands and of windmills and. Theyre fine, but they cant produce a power that we need. We have to think smart. That is my feeling. The unions, the afl cio are putting up a pay watch over the years. This from afl cio in their executive pay watch. Hollywood, florida, makes between 50,000 and 100,000. Caller today is my birthday. I listen to every i listen to cspan on every day that im off. Florida which is right outside of miami. My boyfriend is a construction worker. I am 47 and he is 53. 100,000 and 110 thousand dollars. Even with that it is a complete struggle. Every month or so we are reanalyzing our bills and are things. It is not adding up. We are making the money. A normal person would say well, youre making 100 thousand dollars, you have a lot of money. But we do not have a lot of money. We are living from paycheck to paycheck like everyone that is calling in. I feel so much better hearing other peoples stories because it is really a struggle for middleclass to just make it every day with two cars, two teenagers, trying to do one or two activities just a glass came from time to time. It is very expensive everywhere you go. It is not as miami, it is atlantic, it is everywhere you go. The middleclass is failing. What are some of your big bills every month . Vehicles, have three so our insurance total is 600. Imately this is my home, so i am in the process of trying to refinance, but i still pay on that. That is about 1300 a month. Area areties in this about 750 a month with cable, power, gas and water. Month, and this is for living expenses. Even though we make more than that, it is still not enough. , it is not adding up, just like most people that are calling them, it is still not adding up. Elaborately, we dont eat out a lot. We have teenagers so the mcdonalds and things like that. We dont go to red lobster that much. Every once in a while, but it is still not having a. Every month and put that adding a. Host what about taxes . Where we live, this is a little more expensive. Year,es are maybe 3000 a less than the later from her is then the lady from vermont. We got our tax returns back whattly and we were like, in the world . How are we making this kind of money and we are living paycheck to paycheck and write about poverty . Host how old are you and did you go to college . Caller caller i went to college, i am an rn. My husband works for the union my boyfriend works for the union. Yes a steady salary. , you doing ok on the books see . In reality, it is not ok. Ok. heres a gallop poll that was taken recently. Glenin louisiana, in louisiana, under 25,000. I would just like to say that your life everything, education, health care, wages, and in. , and ourer, air governor, if you want to call him a governor, seems to think that everyone under 20,000 ought to be paying more taxes and the people that are making 50,000 and 100,000. We have not a chance over here. The Oil Companies which to stick is 80 of all the oil that they find, they get to keep it, and they give the taxpayer, the people that own the oil 20 . The jobs of these to create in the Oil Companies, lisa pay a lot of money, dont they and they dont hire any more. Though Companies Use other Companies Contractors to hire you know. Arewages that you get there slim to none. He willrnor continues to reject theues money for health care. The politics of the world right now, i would like to say and collaborate with joe that were suffering down here. If you are making a hundred grand in your herding, youre to come live down here where the health care is three times what it is in texas and three times what it is in new york. We have the worst outcomes, but the doctors get paid the most. Tweet. Another take a look at this Pew Research Center data that they put together at the u. S. Workforce. Were getting your standard of living over the last decade. Wall street journal has this one. Mark feels will become the new ceo of ford motor. Also, president obama is naming a new white house counsel, this in the New York Times. Charlie savage reports. You have probably heard a lot about elizabeth warrens new book. Heres a full ad in the New York Times this morning. This is elizabeth warrens new book talking about the middleclass. We told you president obama is starting today his swing through asian countries, beginning with japan. It says here that the president will be in japan on wednesday. On thursday he will be meeting with the prime minister. On friday to visit seoul south korea. He goes to malaysia. Of International Section the New York Times. On that same issue, the New York Times reports this. This is in many of the papers this morning. This is what the Financial Times reports. We will go to kenneth in marianna, arkansas who makes less than 25,000. Caller i have several points i like to make if you would allow me to make those. One of the key problems, what is happening here is half of the house of representatives, those people are millionaires. But they do is pat laws and rules to help their millionaire partners. You have duped and hoodwinked american public, thinking that they are representing them. Theyre