Stuff You Should Know - The Middle Class: Canary in the Gold Mine

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Lots of nations gauge the health of their country by how the middle class is doing. There’s just one issue with that – no one can say exactly what defines the middle class. But even when you take a guess, it seems like the health isn’t so good these days.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman helped make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. sitting in for a good old-fashioned stuff you should know episode. That's right. Not one of those newfangled ones? No, no, not one of the new ones that are just like, you know, all hair gel and, you know, style, no substance. Yeah, still has that new podcast episode smell. Yes, for sure. Speaking of new smell, how do you feel being 55 birthday boy?

New smell. You know, it's great. I think I have actual privileges now that come with that age. Like cheap coffee at McDonald's, that kind of stuff? Yeah, I don't know about McDonald's, but like I think my, I think I can play golf for a little cheaper now. Like literally as the senior rate, which is hysterical. Yeah. Well, I think you can get a AARP membership now, too.

Oh, yeah. I mean, you're probably already getting that stuff in the mail, right? They start early. No, I'm not even 50 yet. They won't let me. I keep applying and they keep denying me. Okay, maybe 50. I mean, they start sending in that stuff years ahead. Yeah. We used to have one. You had to get it for work or something like that, but they found out, you know, what our age is. And they got really mad. They said, we've been sending things to spring chickens. But, yeah, well, let me know how the golf thing goes. And if you get cheap coffee at McDonald's and what being a senior is like, Chuck, because, you know, I think for me and Jerry and everybody, we just want to wish you a happy birthday.

appreciate that. People went bonkers on Instagram. Oh, yeah. Was that you? Yeah, of course. I figured, you know what? My uncle, my uncle wished you a happy birthday. Did he? On that post, I didn't see that. Yeah, it was pretty funny. And then there was a confusing series of texts where he was finally like, is it your birthday? I was like, it was a few days ago, sure. He said, who is this? Yeah, exactly. He said, McGovern. Not McGuffin. No, McGovern. Oh, okay. All right, let's start talking, because we're talking about the middle class.

And America, at least, although this definitely extends to other countries like the UK, some of the Nordic countries, Australia, there's not an obsession, but a real, like, obsession with the middle class, how it's doing, how mobile it is, upwardly, downwardly. And essentially the middle class is like the thumbnail metric for the health, the real true health of a society and economy. Would you agree? Yeah, I mean, I think so. And I think that used to be a real, like it's always been a talking point in the United States, but I think it used to be a real genuine talking point. Yes.

Whereas now I think it's like, you know, are all the rich people doing great? Okay, all right. Now let's talk publicly a little bit about the middle class, I guess. Right. But not everybody's fallen for that. There's like this whole idea that the middle class and the health of the middle class was a canary in the coal mine. Yeah. And not only is the canary dead, it caught fire at some point. Yeah. As far as a lot of people are concerned about the United States middle class, at least, because there's this idea that it's dead. But then if you read up a little further on it, you come across other people who are like, No, no, dude, look at these statistics. Right.

Like, the middle class is actually doing great, way better than they used to be doing. And other people are like, that just doesn't quite add up. So when you get into it, it's really tough to define the middle class, and you can monkey around with who's middle class or who's not and come up with all sorts of different profiles. But I think ultimately it just matters what people who would probably self-identify as the middle class feel about the economy and about their prospects in life. Yeah, for sure. Like, what is that the vibe session?

Yeah. What was her name? Kyla Scanlon. She's kind of a Gen Z financial explanatory journalist. Yeah. Yeah, so that's the idea of like sort of like not falling for being gaslit by everything you're being told about how great it's going. And there's something called a vibe session. Am I saying that right? Yeah, vibe session. It just sounds weird because a vibe session sounds like, you know, something I do at late on Friday.

night's right this is with a C instead of an S yeah exactly it's much less I re yeah oh man uh but yeah the idea of you know various politicians when you know whenever anyone's running for something talking about typically re-election talking about how great everything really is um whereas everyone is like yeah but why doesn't it feel that way uh that's a vibe session instead of like a true recession. Yeah, and she was pointing out, like, that actually can become self-fulfilling. Yeah, sure. Because if enough people start feeling like, no, things aren't going so good, they start not spending money, and that actually can trigger a recession just from the fact that people feel that way, no matter what the metrics say. So we'll talk about all that,

but let's talk about the history of the middle class, because it hasn't always been around. Yeah, it's interesting. If you look at, you know, the history of the middle class in the West, Generally, you can point to late medieval Europe as, you know, when things started to get cooking a little bit as far as the middle class goes, and, you know, we'll walk you all the way through, you know, modern times. But as cities became a thing, you know, all of a sudden you needed a middle class to sort of administer what the aristocracy was asking for in a lot of cases. So, you know, there was this distinct group kind of created that was. aristocracy, and it wasn't the peasant class, and I think one word, and I believe we've even done a short stuff on the bourgeois, yeah, didn't we? Yeah, and what it means to be bourgeoisie?

That's right. There's another word for, burgers, too, and apparently both words, I don't remember this, but I'm sure we talked about it in the bourgeois short stuff. That's the name of the cities, the fortified cities where they worked, right? Or where they emerged from? Yeah. And Burger is, that's why the Burgermeister is called that in either Rudolph or Frosty or some rankin bass. Yeah.

Burger Meisterberger. Remember he's like the scary bag? Exactly. Yeah. Burger Meister means mayor. So he's like the head of the city, essentially. Anyway, those were the merchants, the bankers, professionals that emerged to kind of fill that space between the peasants and the aristocracy. and you could call them the first middle class.

Yeah, sort of. But they grew in size and wealth and power. So they were kind of like, hey, we tricked everybody. We're not really the middle class. We're, I mean, maybe upper middle class, certainly, obviously not aristocracy because they weren't born into that.

But as people got wealthier, there was kind of a true middle class that came after that where you needed people to do things like bookkeeping and, you know, kind of handled the, the business of the people that previously had said that they were the middle class, even though no one was using those terms, you know, we should point out. Right, no, nothing like that.

There was also a lot of changes where before it was wealth and power, right? Because that's what nobility kind of based itself on. So the earliest middle class kind of based itself on those same markers. But thanks to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, other markers kind of came along. the whole idea of thrift, of saving your money, of not being just frivolous with your money, that became a really big middle class social marker, certain tastes, certain ways you would dress. And then, of course, wealth. Wealth has always been a marker for the middle class, especially the upper middle class.

But these were all like, all these things seem so norm. to us and so ingrained that it seems alien almost to kind of tease this stuff out and identify it historically. Yeah, for sure. And this was, you know, in Europe at the time when the United States was born, Livia, by the way, did a great job with this article, I thought. Agreed. She is a heck of a writer. So the United States was, you know, as she points out, kind of a sort of a bourgeois, I wanted to say project or a test. It was an experiment maybe, the American experiment.

Because there were people like Thomas Jefferson who were very much believed, like, hey, we're going to build this new country on, and not on the backs of, but like the middle class, these people that own farms and could provide for their family and that own some land, like this is the American experiment that, like the goal that we're striving toward. Yeah, and those Yaman farmers were typically not slaveholding. So his idea was to basically become a nation of self-sufficient farmers, growing food for their families and themselves,

and then selling some in the market. And that just is not how it went, because the wealthy landowners who had actually had slaves became essentially the power, the elite, the people actually pulling the levers. And eventually they, except in the antebellum south, they kind of replaced that wealthy landowning and agriculture with industry as the industrial revolution started in Europe and then spread to the U.S. And then we had a real disparity in power and wealth growing. Yeah, for sure, because if you're owning a factory or owning a railroad or a share of a railroad, that is a very distinct upper class. It may not be aristocracy, but aristocracy became less and less important as time went on.

Flash forward to like the middle of the 19th century, and you had people like Karl Marx, and we should say, Carl Marx was trying to sell something, which was Marxism. But he would come along and say like, hey, there are really two classes. There are, there's the working class and then everybody else that's exploiting the working class. Yeah, and the exploiters or the oppressors and the oppressed, I think he also put it, they owned the capital. They were the capitalists. They were the ones who could open a factory and employ you and you depended on them for money, but they were exploiting your labor. Yes. And in this sense, where there's an owning class and a working class, there's really no room for a middle class. Eventually, though, a middle class still emerged because those capitalists aren't going to, like you said, do their own books. They're not going to go teach the next generation of workers to come work in their factory. So, like, there was a need for people to train the working classes to better serve the capitalist elite.

and that's where the middle class really started to emerge in the United States in particular, but also in like the UK, Australia, some of the other places in the West, that's where the middle classes we understand it now really develop. Yeah, for sure.

And it was there during the time of Marx, but that wasn't good for Marxism to point that out. So it was very much easier for him to say like you're being exploited or you're the exploiter. It is a little black and white. Yeah, for sure.

So in the 19th century, the middle class values system started to kind of take shape, which is sort of this, the value system that ideally is still around today, which is the idea that, you know, if you work hard, if you save up, you can be a success in the United States. You know, they agreed that people should vote more and more, like have access to voting. And of course, that started with like, hey, maybe men that aren't landowners should be able to vote. And then that kind of spread throughout the years to, you know, people of different races. And then women finally. And but the idea that expanding voting rights and expanding education was always sort of a middle class value. And then early on it was, you know, the role of women in society has definitely changed as far as the middle class value goes. But early on it was, hey, women are very important to.

keep the home, but really be the moral center of the world of the home, you know? Yeah, of the family, which was of utmost importance, the nuclear family, which became really important in the Victorian era and really informed the middle-class values, too, right? And all of those seem like so we take them for granted so much as values, typically, aside from, you know, forcing women to work in the home, whether they like it or not, that just goes to show you how effective the middle class was at spreading its, basically imposing its values on everybody else in the West. Yeah, for sure.

Should we take an early break here? Well, that's not too early, actually. I think so. Yeah, it was. All right, we'll take a break. I think that's a good setup. Middle class is forming. Everyone's getting excited.

And we'll flash forward to the 20th century right after this. Buying or selling a home isn't just a transaction. It's a life-changing experience. And realtors bring expertise, transparency, and care to every step of the process. To learn more, listen to Ask the Experts this Saturday at 2 p.m. with the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what?

We have some big news. What's the news, dude? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it.

We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was...

This is how you guys remember it going down. Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel,

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, I promised to talk to the 20th century in the middle class, and that's where we are. Specifically, you know, this is when the middle class in the U.S. really, really emerged as like a massive thing.

Like the largest portion of like set of people in the U.S. became middle class in the 20th century. And really after the war, it was powered by the New Deal, of course. After World War II, the United States was in a unique position as Victor, but also Victor. who didn't have the war fought on their mainland soil. Right. So we didn't have to do all this rebuilding after the war. So we were in a position to really hit the throttle on economic stimulus, which was brought about via the New Deal.

Yeah, and World War II. Just the sheer amount of money thrown into the economy from the government for World War II helped as well, right? And we had all those technologies that we developed that gave us things like Pop-Tarts and stuff immediately after the war and completely improve the quality of life for people in the United States, especially the middle class, right? So you have government policy like the New Deal, like the National Labor Relations Act, that are favoring workers, this working class that is becoming the middle class, and then one of the other really, really, really big aspects of what built the middle class in the United States and elsewhere.

were unions, union membership. Because if you can bargain collectively, you can't be exploited nearly as easily. And that means that life is a lot more fair for you, the worker, because you're allowed to get together and say, no, you can't do that to any of us. If you do that to one of us, you do it to all of us and we'll all leave. Yes.

I mean, we did a great episode on unions years ago. So I advise you to go listen to that now if you want to learn more about those. Me? But no, no, no, everyone else. I mean, you can if you want. Okay. A little refresher. But union membership really bloomed in the 1930s and 40s.

I think at the beginning of the 20th century, it was in the low teens union membership. And then it really, really rose from there. And so did wages. Between 1940 and 1960, if you were a non-farmor, your median weekly income rose. And these, by the way, everything we're doing is in 2025, just to make it. easier to understand. Right. But your median weekly income for a non-farmor went from $550 to over $1,000, almost $1,100. And that was across all, you know, a lot of education levels, you know, different racial groups, different industries. That was sort of a broad change. So, you know, it was an

interesting time in that, you know, pay for people in what is now like a solid middle class. It was really rising, they were taxing the rich and constraining corporate power such that some people called this time the Great Compression where the wealth levels were sort of smashed together on a graph instead of expanded vastly like we are now. We're going to have some shocking numbers for you later in this episode. Yeah, so that era between 1940 and I think a lot of people essentially put it at the mid-70s is when they say the party really started to end was just this economic boom golden age for the United States and the middle class. And there was another big factor, too, which was home ownership. We did, I remember in our racial discrimination or housing discrimination

episode that we did, we pointed out that owning a home has long been really important, especially for the middle class, because that is how you generate wealth for most people. Your home just appreciate some value over the years. And then you've, you've, can also use that home to transfer that wealth to your kids. So it's also a form of generational wealth transfer for the middle class. So it's really big deal to own your own home. And that was another big thing that happened after World War II homeownership went up quite a bit. Yeah, previous, and this is going way back, but between 1890 and 1930, home ownership was under 50% in the United States. And eventually, you know, thanks to the suspect mortgages that

they were handing out like candy. In 2004, that peaked it, I think it was close to 70%, like 69 or something. Yeah, for sure. And then I think it dropped down to something like 65 and is basically plateaued since there. But this is the point that you could own a house, you could own a car. Yeah. You could have a family of, you know, a husband and wife and two kids and live in the suburbs. and the kids would go to a nice school.

And this is obviously, this is the most idealized version what we're talking about. There's a lot of disparity. There was a lot of people who are still very poor in the United States, too. But overall, if we're just focusing on the middle class, you could do all of these things and have a nice, comfortable middle class life,

a pension after you retired on one salary, one income. Because, again, one of the main values of the middle class at this time was that the mother, home, raised the kids, and made the house the center of the nuclear family, respite from the rest of the world. One salary could do all of that. Yeah, and it was, you know, people weren't as far apart as they were, financially speaking. Like, you may live in the same neighborhood or maybe the

neighborhood next to your boss. You know, blue-collar workers and white-collar workers were way more, you know, just kind of squashed together. Like your children probably went to school. If you were like a line worker at an auto plant, you know, you may not have as nice of a car or as big of a house as your manager or your boss. But, you know, it was in the same world. And, you know, I still remember that stuff growing up in the 80s. Like you watch any John Hughes movie and like all the kids at the same school, they were like, you know, the rich kids and then the kids that lived in that neighborhood. Right. But it wasn't extreme wealth in poverty.

No. And the fact is, they were all going to the same school, right? There was like a leveling from that. So, yeah, that was a really big deal. And this is going on through about to the mid-70s when things started to decline for the middle class, right? Yeah. There was the end of the post-war boom. I mean, that's really tough to keep up in the form that it was in for very long. Yeah. And it's kind of astounding. It stayed up that long. Part of it was that the U.S. was in that unique position, like you said, it didn't have to rebuild after World War II like Europe and Japan did. Well, after a few decades, Europe and Japan were able to rebuild and they started to catch up to the United States, which meant that they were taking more share of the United States pie with, say, like, exports and manufacturing and stuff. That was one factor, too. There was also the oil crisis. Yeah.

I think that that made a bigger dent than I ever realized. that that was like a history-changing event, the OPEC oil crisis. And then also political conflicts that ultimately laid the bedwork for today's culture wars. Civil rights, movement, feminism, environmentalism, LGBTIQ plus rights, all of these things were marginalized groups, previously marginalized groups, came forward and said, no, there's no reason we should be treated like second-class citizens. that created a tension in the United States. A lot of corporations came in

and figured out how to exploit this for their own ends. And that eventually started to divide people to where there was this sense of competition is the bedrock of American capitalism. And American capitalism is the bedrock of the middle class. It's part of the middle class. It's a new middle class value. It's where we got yuppies in the 80s.

Yeah, for sure. Deindustrialization also happened. In 1970, one out of every four non-farming jobs in the U.S. was in manufacturing. And by 2017, it was one in 11. So other countries, you know, as globalization and trade increased, other countries started making stuff super cheap. Like this isn't a big surprise to anyone listening to this. Imports from China started coming in. Imports from other, you know, Southeast Asian countries started coming in.

Stuff was a lot cheaper to buy. And, you know, they started automating a lot of stuff. It was, you know, kind of the first automation boom was happening in the 1970s where factories didn't need as many people on the line to do stuff that these new machines were doing. So that coupled with deunionization really, you know, kind of dropping off was a huge factor. Yeah, and it really definitely declined. It's below 10% for the entire workforce in the United States. A huge chunk of that is just from government jobs, like teaching. They tend to have a very strong union.

But overall, it went from like 35, 36 percent to 10 percent. And one of the reasons that that happened is because the government basically withdrew its support for unions. Not only did it stop passing legislation or enforcing legislation that supported unions, it actually started issuing legislation that harmed and crippled unions and essentially removed their power. Yeah, for sure. And then the last reason, you know, we can't talk about the middle class and wealth disparity without talking about Ronald Reagan. You know, he's the one that kicked it off. And subsequent administrations definitely didn't do the middle class any favors. But those Reagan era era policies that trickle down economics, cutting taxes for corporations, undermining labor unions, cutting taxes on the top earners individually, really transformed. the look of our nation heavily, heavily in favor of the rich and, you know, the top 10%, especially the top 1%. And like I said, other, you know, Democrats and Republicans since then have failed the United States and their policies. I know after the economic crash and the real estate crash

of 2008, there were a lot of people, especially now in hindsight, that look back and say, you know what, we really had an opportunity there and the Obama administration failed us when we bailed out those banks with not very many strings attached. We had some leverage there to sort of get some changes in place that could have helped, you know, shift the look of the financial outlook of our country and we didn't do it. No. And what they would have been doing is undoing damage that was done during the Clinton administration where they repealed the Glass-Steagall Act that kept banks from dabbling investments.

You were either a bank or an investment company, which one? And after that, you don't have to choose. And that's ultimately what helped lead us to that massive financial crisis, the Great Recession. Yeah. So, yeah, it's really easy and fun to pick on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for kicking all this off. But they were not the only neoliberal presidents to come along after the 80s. No, for sure. If you're talking about the middle class today, you really have to start with, like, how do you define the middle class?

And Libya did a really great job in this section, I think. Like, there are a lot of different ways that people and pundits like to talk about what the middle class even is. Some social scientists is just a super straightforward income-based definitions, which is good in one sense because you can adjust that depending on where you are in the world, like a middle class income in New York City isn't going to be the same thing as in a rural area. So you can adjust things economically based on just a strict income-based definition, which is kind of cool. Also, that means that the middle class doesn't move out of reach of certain people, too. Like if you just have the median income and say, that's the middle class. As the median income grows, the middle class goes up and some people stay behind. This is like, here's the middle class section and you can get into it and out of it or drop out of it and go above it.

But it's going to stay in the same place, and it's just going to change depending on how wages rise. Yeah. It seems like a pretty good, it's a good idea to me. The most widely used one comes from the Pew Research Center. And it's an income-based approach that they use, but they basically say that if your household income is two-thirds of the median household income or up to double the median household income, you are. middle class, right? And I think in 2024, that meant that your household, it's very important, too, that your household made between $55,820 to $167,460. Anywhere in there, you were middle class income-wise. Yeah. This is all obviously like pre-tax money, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I would think so, yeah.

So under that definition, the middle class made up 61% of households in 1971 compared to just 51% in 2023. But at the same time, the upper income category went from 11% to 19% and the lower percentage rose from 27% to 30%. So what you're seeing is like the wealth gap happening in real time, basically. Yes, but that also suggests that 8% of people in the middle class moved up from the core middle class to the upper income category. So that's an interpretation that a lot of people who are like, no, the middle class is fine, suggest. Right. Then 3% moved down. Right. Yeah. So that's, yeah, income is like if you're an economist, this is what you're looking at. If you're, say, an anthropologist or a sociologist, you might say, well, who considers themselves middle class?

Maybe we should look at those people and then kind of study them like that, like ask people. Are you middle class or not? Are you working class? You consider yourself upper class. And they usually either divide it into those three lower class, middle class, upper class, or else they'll divide it into quintiles, lower class, working class, which they would also call lower middle class. middle class, upper middle class, and then gobsmackingly rich. And 1% saying buzz off is none of your business.

Quit asking me questions. They have them arrested. So 2024 was the last Gallup poll that we have where someone said like, hey, what do you consider yourself? And in the United States, 39% of citizens considered themselves middle class. Another 15% said there were upper middle class, which brings that grand total to 54. 31% identified as working class, 12% is lower class, just 2% of upper class, which means a lot of those upper-class people were lying liars and that they're really part of the upper class. Yeah, for sure. But I think also it's not, I'm sure some people were like, I don't want to say like I feel upper class.

Well, it's self-identification, so it makes sense. Sure. But at the same time also, I think that has to do with the idea that maybe based on income, it's almost like that vibe session thing. Like, yeah, your income would put you in the middle class, but you don't feel wealthy. You feel like you could be ruined by a health care crisis at any time. So I think, especially with self-identification, that gives you a sense of the actual health of the economy as far as, like, consumer confidence is concerned. Yeah. And there's, you know, laziness factors in.

You could be in the upper middle class, but also still have a car tire sitting in your side yard. For sure. With a... Like typical markers of, you know, different classes. For sure. Tires in your side yard. I got to get mine moved. Emily got onto me for years about the car battery that I had.

That I just, it's like, how do you get rid of a car battery? I know you can. Oh, you take it to, like, one of the auto stores. I know, but none of those feel right. No, they take the core out and, yeah, they recycle them for real. Yeah, because you've watched them do all that, right? From beginning to end. I help on weekends as just, it's pro bono.

That's my point is I don't trust any of it. None of it feels right. All right. I'm with you. Well, you want to know something that really opened my eyes and changed my life, Chuck? I realized recently that that whole, like, grocery store recycling. bag recycling thing is a total scam, like Publix and all them who have those things out that said, put your plastic bags in your, we recycle them. They don't. They don't. They throw them away.

And I can't tell you how much time I spent like taking labels off of plastic wrap, shaking out plastic wrap to make it clean, like taking it all bundled together, taking it the publics and putting it in the bin. And then the idea they just take it and throw it away and use this as just like a PR thing. Oh, my God, I'm so sick of stuff like that, man. Agreed. Two quick things on that. You can't count on your large grocery store chain to do that. You've got to go to, like, the charm.

You've got to go what we have here in Atlanta and Athens, the Center for Hard to recycle materials because they really do the work. It's just a big pain. And number two, just as a quick aside, I went to Belize on winter break recently, had a great time. but the grocery store in, there was a grocery store in Placentia named Publix, P-U-B-L-I-C-S,

same exact font in coloring as Publix. It's like Ricky Rouse and Mottled Muck. That was very, very funny. It's funny. They're like, we spelled a different what? All right, so we're getting off track. One of the last ways,

I guess second to the last way to look at is through education levels because a lot of times when you hear, you know, pundits on the news talking about the middle class, they'll say things like, you know, people with a four-year college degree, that's only about 40% of the population in the U.S. And it's really misleading. So I wish they'd just kind of throw this one out with the public's grocery bags because, you know, you could have a four-year degree and be a college professor that also has to have a second job to make ends meet. Or you could also not have a college degree and on a multi-million dollar, you know, sort of blue-collar business. So I say just get rid of that one.

A multi-million dollar battery recycling business. Yeah, because that's where all the money is. So, yeah, so values also, I agree, education levels, just get rid of that, especially with college not really leading to as many opportunities today as it used to and all of the incredible debt associated with it. That should not be a measurement for the middle class. Values is another one, too. And this one I was kind of like, what, why? Yeah. And I realized you can't measure social groups strictly on things like income.

That, you know, that self-identification thing has a lot to do with values. One, we talked about as a nuclear family, which has been altered dramatically since the middle of the last century, when I would say, I would argue in the United States, at least, the nuclear family was like at its peak of importance. It's definitely declined. People kind of make family wherever they can find it. And that doesn't mean that like all of the values are gone that there was a 2010 vice president Joe Biden middle class task force. I had no idea that existed. But it essentially went through and said, what are your values? And they came up with pretty basic stuff that I think most middle class people would agree with economic stability and security. You want to. a car for each of your kids as they get to driving age. You want to take a family vacation once a year. You want to send those kids to college. You want to own your home. Like really basic stuff. And the idea that all of that is up for grabs in this country right now is really alarming.

Yeah, for sure. Should we take another break? Yes. All right. We're going to take a break and we'll talk about what's gone wrong with the middle class and where we might be headed right at. after this. Renno Mishap? Renno mishap? That's embarrassing. You know what's not embarrassing? Using FIG for Home Improvement Loan. A quick, simple, and transparent offer in minutes. Borrow better with FIG. Visit fig.ca. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, name?

Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend.

But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. And, well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this.

We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel. Help an

a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is S-Y-S-K. Okay, Chuck, so I think we've kind of said a couple of times that there's a lot of different ways you can look at things to say, the middle class is doing great. Oh, no, the middle class is hollowed out in debt. One of the things that you can really kind of point to is, like, how much are you getting paid?

That's a pretty easy one. So you can look at average. hourly wages for non-supervisory employees. So that's everybody who's not a manager or like a C-suite executive, right? Just the regular rank and file employees. There was a peak of pay in 1973 of $30. This is $2025, right? Yeah, always.

Or always on this episode. Right. In fall of 2025, we were at $31.50. cents. So we managed to gain an extra dollar 50 in average hourly wages in 50 years. Yeah. And you might think like, okay, well, really, let's think about inflation and everything. I did. Get this. If you went back to 1973, right, $1 today buys 14% of what it bought in 1973. Yeah. So that means that means. that today... It gets worse with inflation. It does. So you can, you could buy using the same hourly wage today, 14% of your groceries

if you went from 1973 to today. So we are definitely worse off because things have gotten more expensive, but wages have stagnated. If anyone ever tells you that wages have not stagnated, they are lying or they're dumb or both, and just tell them so. Yeah. I've been trying really hard not to get worked up, man. I'm trying to keep it together right now. Here we go, everybody. I'm keeping it together. The idea of the middle class, though, around the 1960s was about, wasn't just about getting to a spot and hitting it. It was about everybody continuing to grow and the overall economy of the United States continuing to grow. And that has happened, but compensation hasn't happened along with it. From 1979 to 2025, productivity in the United States rose 80.

But that hourly compensation rose by 33% for non-supervisory workers. Right. And there's two ways you can interpret that if you're like, well, unions are gone. You could say if you're an owner, well, you get rid of the unions, productivity increases. Unions make lazy workers. Another way to put it is that without the unions, you can exploit workers more easily and get them to work harder because they're afraid of losing their job, right? Yeah. regardless of how you look at it, like there's no way to interpret it differently. If your wages have increased 33%, but productivity increased 87%. That means that that extra wealth that was generated had to go somewhere.

And it didn't go to the workers. It went to the wealthiest people. And there are just, like, if you want to just look at eye-popping numbers, just look up income inequality in the 20. 21st century because it has gotten completely out of control compared to how it used to be. And I mean how it used to be like, I'm talking the 80s. As Sam Jackson would say, hang on to your butts? What do you say in Jurassic Park?

Hang on to your butts, yep. Hang on to your butts. You need a cigarette sticking out of your mouth then. Oh, I've got it, pal. All right, so these numbers are going to be slightly depressing and slightly eye-popping. Annual wages of the bottom 90% of Americans rose by 20%. 29% from 79 to 2021. For the top 1% over that same time period,

they rose 206%. And the Forbes 400 list, it's a list that we put out in, or Forbes magazine puts out, about the 400 wealthiest Americans. They should probably just stop doing this altogether. I know. It ruins society. But you mentioned the 1980s,

1982, that it was the initial Forbes 400, it had 13 billionaires on it. Now, everybody on the Forbes list is a billionaire, and there's another 500 billionaires that don't get on the list. Wow. So in 1982, there were 13 billionaires. There are more than 900 billionaires in the United States right now who have a collective worth of $6.6 trillion. I'm sorry, that's just the Forbes 400 had $6.6 trillion.

Forget the other 500 billionaires. Okay, so another thing that that Forbes list pointed out is that the total wealth in all of the United States is $140 trillion. The bottom 50% owns $4 trillion of that. That means the top 50% owns $136 trillion compared to $4 trillion. Oh, man. There was one other statistic I found, too. Between 1975 and 2024, there was a wealth transfer

upward to the top percent that totaled $50 trillion. So, however you want to put it, however you want to look at it, the middle class and the lower class have been held back while the wealth that they have been producing has moved upward. And a big problem with that is when you have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, they're making the decisions about what happens with that money, rather than hundreds of millions of people all making individual decisions and collectively making decisions that are like market signals that tell people, I'm going to go make this, I'm going to stop making this,

I'm going to make this price that. All these people are upset because they don't have good health care. We better do something about that. None of that matters because they don't have money, so they don't have power. And they're afraid of losing their job so you can do basically whatever you want to them. That's what happened. Yeah. And politically speaking, the wealth and the power is who controls everything. They, obviously via campaign donations is the most clear-cut way. But all kinds of interventions to basically let the top one or two percent make the decisions for the majority.

There's a social scientist, and this isn't us railing on stuff. This is just how it is. Like, if you're saying this isn't the case, then you're lying, like you said. There's a social scientist named Richard Reeves who said that the top 20 percent of earners are basically have been completely successful in pushing zoning regulations and tax policies that benefit them all at the expense of the middle class. They game the systems to pass that, you know, wealth down to their children or to get their kids into the better colleges.

It's just the way things have gone in the United States. Yeah. And the problem, one of the big problems is people are going to be all over our iTunes reviews being like, these guys are liberal idiots. They don't know what they're talking about. It's not liberal and conservative. No. It's not Republican and Democrat.

This is strictly a class issue. And the idea that you are defending a class beyond yours that is exploiting your own class, including you, that's a problem. Because it's presented as a political thing and we're so tribal when it comes to political affiliations that you will defend against your own self-interest. Yeah. Because it's being presented to you as a political issue and it's. not. Happens every voting season that happens. Yeah.

People vote against their own interest. It's true. And I'm not picking just on conservatives or Republicans, like Democrats do it too. Oh, sure. It's tribal and toxic and unhealthy. Oh, man, if we could ever come together and break down those lines, oh, my gosh. People are so ramped up right now that it would just be magnificent, the sweeping changes that would happen. A new renaissance.

Yes. Renaissance 2, the sequel. 2.0. Yeah. Here's the thing, you know, goods have gotten cheaper, though. If you want to look at, again, comparing in today's dollars, groceries are generally cheaper than they were in the mid-70s, because the mid-70s, as we said, was pretty bad.

Things like, you know, clothing and furniture, electronics, all that stuff is way cheaper than it used to be. If you look at, you know, back when you bought a VCR when those first came out, and they were like $1,000, you know, stuff like. that is all like the bottom has fallen out on those kind of prices, but that hasn't happened in the housing market, which is a big deal for the middle class, like you said in Act 1, that median sales price of a house. And again, in today's dollars, it was $300,000 in 1979. It's more than $400,000 today. And I think we said it was 69.2% at its peak of home ownership in 2004. As of, I think

2022, you know, what's happened is that, you know, I think you said it was about 65%, so it's not that big of a difference, but it's that age of buying your first house has just gotten older and older and older. Right. In 2022, only 62% of 40-year-olds own their home, whereas the boomer generation, 69% of 40-year-olds owned. And the same can be said for, really. and child care and college and health care. It's just all these things are outpacing earnings.

Plus also that 62 and 69% is a little misleading because there are way more boomers than there are Gen X who are 40 now. So 69% of boomers is numerically a much bigger group than 62% of Gen Xers. Right, which also means that that's a greater number of houses that are now locked. up being passed on to their kids and, you know, not saying that you shouldn't own a house and pass along to your kids. But as far as the housing market goes, that's just a lot. Right. So, Chuck, what are we going to do about this? What are some things we can do? Oh, man. Let's solve it. Bring me on the spot. Well, I mean, I don't know, man. It's not like this

all over the world. If you look in Europe, there is a middle class there. But, it's not quite the same. They aren't, maybe don't have the kind of wealth that upper middle class does here, but they have the income and quality isn't as great. Generally, they have stronger social welfare programs. Right. Like the danger of falling into a desperate life straits isn't as great over there. I saw a, I think on Instagram recently, it was an interview with a guy that was a, he had a good job. You know, it was one of those stories where the guy was on the streets and he had a degree in California. chemistry and he had a good job and you know I read the comments because I was curious if people

were going to be like bashing this dude or what and hearteningly a lot of the people were like hey I worked in in shelters for the unhoused for years and we saw all kinds of people come through here yeah we saw doctors and attorneys and people you know uh that just you know sometimes you're a bad um circumstance or two away from that kind of situation and uh it's just not like that in Europe, generally speaking. I remember during the 2008 recession of reading some statistic that something, like at the time, like 40% or something like that of Americans were one paycheck away from being homeless. Like, that's how little savings and cushion that most Americans had. Yeah.

Or having to make, you know, health care decisions, like, that aren't good for your life because you can't afford it, because it will bank. your family, you're having to put yourself in your family in peril physically. Right. That's part of that why the European middle class is much more secure because most of them have universal health care. Yeah, they're not bankrupted by a diagnosis. Right. But even on more day-to-day pedestrian stuff, so the lower income you are, the more inflation affects you, where like if you're higher income and you go gas up your car and you're like, wow, gas went up 20 cents today. That sucks. And you just don't think about it from that point on. If you're lower income, you might roll up to the gas station and be like, oh, I can't afford to drive my car to work today because gas went up 20 cents a gallon.

So that's another issue with the whole thing, too. It makes it tougher to get ahead when you can't afford the basic necessities because they're growing out of your reach day by day. Yeah, I mean, when I was a snot-nosed, know-it-all college kid working at Golden Pantry in Athens, Georgia, I used to, and, you know, I was working at Golden Pantry, so it's not like I was making any kind of money, but for a college kid, it was like, hey, it was great. I had everything I need making that $7 an hour or whatever, because my parents were generally paying for my education, and it's like Easy Street. I would I would wonder why someone would come in and buy like $7 worth of gas. I always be like, what a weird number. Why are you putting $7 worth of gas?

Because it didn't occur to me. That's all that they could afford. I was like, why don't you just fill your car up? And it's like, because it couldn't afford to, dummy. Right. I was the dummy. That's right. Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean.

I've been on both sides of that. Yeah, I mean, you know, the naivete of a college kid, so in a way. Was that the Golden Pantry at Alps? No, I worked on the College Station Road side. Gotcha. So we didn't figure out how to... Yeah, I had the same kind of job, and it is a very weird job.

Yeah. So we didn't figure out how to fix anything, Chuck. You got any ideas? I think that you could learn a lot from Europe, expanding social safety nets. We could stop making that a political thing. and be like, no, actually, this can help everybody. I saw that New Mexico has started free child care for all. Doesn't matter what your income level is.

It doesn't matter. Like, you can put your kid into child care for free. And that's a huge expense that save for the average person. Yeah. I think New York is trying to do that. Like, Mom Dani is trying to institute that in New York City, too. So that could be a huge trend. Just free child care, universal child care, could make a huge.

difference in people's income. Yeah, and all of that is because people want to go out and work their job to make money for the man. Yep. Yeah, well put, man. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay, I don't either. Which means it's time for listener mail.

There is a quick correction. We heard from people from Tennessee because we stole their college. Hey, guys, a longtime listener here. Your show has fueled many runs and chores over the years. Quick Nashville nitpick from a proud local in the Flexner Report episode. You mentioned Mahary being right here in Georgia. Nashville would like to gently reclaim that, guys. Meherry Medical College has been proudly in Nashville since 1876 and we're pretty attached to it.

Totally understand how geography gets slippery mid-podcasts, but just wanted to defend a hometown institution. And that is from Bridgette, Chavon, or Chavain. And we heard from a lot of people, Bridget. So I don't know how we screwed that up, but we did. Yeah, we got it screwed up royally. I even went back and was like, surely there's a Meherry College in Georgia, too. Nope, nope, it's just the one in Tennessee. So sorry everyone in Tennessee who took offense to that because we did hear from a lot of you for sure.

That's right, but we're neighbors and we like to think that we're all the same. Yeah, for sure. We all shared your medical college. Yeah. In the tri-state area. If you want to be like Bridget and send us a really nice email correcting us, we love that kind of thing. you can send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio.

For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, guys, it's us and the Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas.

We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to our first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick. and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but, you know, tired and sick. Tired and sick.

Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Canada. We're coming to see you guys. For the first time in a while, we're going to be back this June and this July.

That's right. We're going to places we've been before like Toronto and Vancouver, but we're also adding a lot of new places on the list and we're super excited. Yeah. Like Montreal, Auto, and, and we're super excited. Calgary, Winnipeg, and we're going to be there starting June 25th, 26th, and 27th. We're going to take a little break, recover from the giant party that our Stuff You Should Know shows. And then hit it again on July 23rd, 24th, and 25th.

And if you want to find out what date aligns with your city, you can just go to stuff you should know.com, click on the tour button, and that'll give you all the important deeds. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.