When being Trailer Trash is something to aspire to
Speaking as someone who was called Trailer Trash when I was growing up, I found this article from today to be very interesting.
The delinquency rate on mobile-home loans has increased by 200 basis points, or 2 percentage points, over the past year, according to research cited by UBS. The 30-day-plus delinquency level is now about 5%, the highest level since 2005.
The increase in the number of struggling mobile-home borrowers suggests that a large chunk of these people haven't benefitted from the economic growth of the past few years, despite the low unemployment level.
As yes, that famously low unemployment rate.
That should mean that things are wonderful for the working class.
"We interpret this data to mean that these individuals have not largely benefitted from these macro-dynamics, and may also be disproportionately exposed to industries that have experienced compression — rather than expansion — in the current economic conditions, such as retail or some areas of energy extraction," UBS said.
This data represents a piece of a jigsaw puzzle of the condition of consumer finances in the US. And the picture that's emerging, according to UBS, is of a two-speed economy, with lower-income consumers and younger borrowers with substantial student debt moving at a slower pace than more affluent and established participants.
"We believe weakness in these two groups will drive higher credit losses at some stage over the next few years — particularly in credit card, installment, and student loans — with macroeconomic inflection from job growth to job loss as a likely catalyst," UBS said.
Economists have not only known that the headline economic numbers are deceptive, but they even know why.
The Chicago Fed authors argue that high inequality, unmatched in other developed nations, reinforces "the importance of thinking about borrowing constraints and marginal propensities to consume in richer frameworks in which the constraints are not simply synonymous with holding little in the way of net worth."
In practice, this means strong overall economic growth can mask substantial pockets of weakness and vulnerability among lower-income consumers.
In other words, when Bill Gates walks into a room, the average net worth suddenly jumps. But it has nothing to do with the reality of the people in the room.
I recently watched a Bill Maher episode, where he associated racism with living in a "double-wide". As if one thing meant the other (i.e. only poor people are racist).
But now it increasingly turns out that being Trailer Trash is not the lowest that you can be. Bill and his friends will need to use a different term to display their hatred of the poor.
Maybe they can reintroduce "sturdy begger".
The thing is, even the top 1% realize that crushing the life out of the bottom half of society is not a good thing.
“If you carve out that lower 40%, not only has there been no income growth, but death rates are rising because of opiate use, suicide, and because they’re losing jobs,” Dalio said. “This is the biggest issue of our time—the biggest economic issue, the biggest political issue, and the biggest social issue.”
Inequality is such a big deal that TV cable news can't stop talking about it.
Hah. Poverty constitutes less than .02 percent of lead media coverage.
Comments
I don't understand the expression "double wide"
I never watched Bill Maher for more than three minutes into anything he produced and think he is a ... (fill in what you want).
I just don't understand what that "double wide" is supposed to mean. Thanks for an explanation.
https://www.euronews.com/live
double wide trailer
They are made for living in.
thx./nt
https://www.euronews.com/live
A 'trailer' is, in this sense, is a pre-fabricated
long, narrow house on wheels. They generally are built with cheap materials so as to be affordable. They are built in a factory and towed to a normally rented plot within a larger grouping of similar trailers, called a trailer park. They are then hooked into sewer, water and electricity. People that live in these groupings are referred to as 'trailer trash' as most inhabitants are poor. A double wide is also a trailer, but it is built in two halves, narrow enough to tow on the highway. The two halves are mated on the lot to create a double wide trailer with more interior space. Living in a double wide is moving up the economic ladder a notch. Perhaps in the reference above, the pundits were indicating the upward 'mobility' of the poor? From a single wide to a double wide. Hope this helps explain it, Mimi.
More to the point
Living in a trailer is one step above being homeless. These cheeky pundits are making fun of people that are living on the second to lowest strata in this 'wealthy' land of opportunity. I'm guessing there are several millions of elderly, young and poor folks stuck in cheap, poorly constructed trailers. Once parked, these trailers do not move again. They are stuck.
@QMS Yup this is right.
Yup this is right.
My family is somewhat different in that we have lived in a trailer and then moved up into a double wide. What made us different was we live on our own land and not in a park.
Trailers aren't just relegated to trailer parks. You start going into rural areas and you will find people on their own land with all they can afford is a trailer.
They are shoddy, constructed "homes".
Both parties hate me because I'm poor. And neither one of them cares whether I live or die.
Most second and third generation families
of once self sustaining farms in the rural area where I was grown lived in trailers on the land once used to grow crops. The families had land, but needed to work in factories or other businesses outside to pay the bills. After I left 'the farm', I noticed more trailer parks, as the family plots were lost to death, illness and debt. The sheer size of trailer parks in places like Arizona and Florida would make them cities by population in less densely midwestern states. It is the shadowy ever present poverty parks that I notice out side of the smaller cities and towns that I tried to describe. Have been doing pro bono social work for years. This segment of the population is hidden, for the most part, from polls, services and awareness. When was the last time you saw a survey of the number of inadequately housed, fed and clothed populations in any county? Pretty rare and ignored by most, from my experience.
Those invisible people.
Yah, I doubt many people see beyond the boundaries of the country roads they travel while going on vacation, etc. It seems to me that people in poverty are getting lost everywhere now. Like when over 5 million families lost their homes due to foreclosures, where did they go? Average 4 people for each family and you have 20 million homeless refugees.
It seems to me that there are cities now which are forcing poor people into outer fringe suburbs bordering the rural areas you talk about. Why? Cities are becoming too expensive for poor people to work and live in. I was reading some notes from a high school where some adminstrators were wondering why they were losing students as the school had a high reputation. The answer: Hispanic student/families were forced to move to less expensive outer areas of the county.
Almost happened to me. After an extended layoff, looking at having to sell the house. But where then to move to. We began to look at surrounding smaller towns. But lucky I found a job at the last minute.
poors
More evidence that the Rs and the Ds are really all Rs.
Note well what happened when Bernie Sanders tried to run for President as a real D, recognizable as such by Ds in continually-loyal States in 1975.
We got shenanniganed into "Trump in a girl suit" instead.
And you're right: neither one of them cares whether we poors live or die.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
thank you, QMS, Strife Delivery, earthling1, for the comments
what you describe I have noticed, the only thing missing was the word "trailer" after the "double wide" in gjohnsit's original article and therefore I didn't get it when reading through it.
The issue of living in a trailer (double wide or single wide) on your own land is important for me to understand with regards to the Hawaiian islands. I should write this out in story. But I have no stomach to dig into the research of it. It would take me weeks and I would be worried to write something that I may not have understood well enough.
Needless to say that there is 'public land' and 'public beaches' and public 'forest areas' in Hawaii that are 'very interesting' for mainland's poor people to dream of, because of the climate and the belief that you could feed yourself through the plants naturally growing in paradise islands and the certainty that you can't freeze to death as it could happen in the mainland's climate zones.
The question is, on what kind of land are you allowed to camp on, where are you allowed to park your car to sleep in your car, if you became homeless, what's the difference between houseless and homeless, for example.
All I heard is that you are not allowed to bring camping trailers to the islands (I guess I understand by now why that is). I know that the 'rich oligarchs of the banking and IT industries', who buy up the land as if there is no tomorrow, 'rent out tent space' to folks, who either work as half-slave 'farm-hands' on their land to pay the rent for those tent spaces, or pay rent that is not much cheaper than the usual hostel rates, which of course people either out of work or losing their minds to drugs etc, can't afford.
So, there is the question, if you are able today to buy a piece of land on the islands, are you allowed to live in a camping trailer or tent on your own land (paid off) and that as long as you scrape together enough money to build your own house on your land? Apparently that is also not a given. I heard you have to be afraid of your neighbors 'complaining with the authorities' if a house-less person lives in a tent or camping car on his own land. Which I think is quite cruel, if it is true.
So, it seems, whatever you do, even if you could buy a piece of land without a structure on it, you may not be allowed to live on it without a house. Next problem is that the land often has no water and the list to get water meters on your lot is a very long one and you may have to wait for years and years to get one. (or may be be rich enough to 'bribe' someone?). I know of cases where people have carried water to their piece of land with huge water-tank trucks. Others try to build water catchment systems, but very few land areas have enough rain for those catchment systems to work.
Meanwhile all the land has been bought up by the "American, Russian, Argentinian and other Latin-American or European oligarchs and billionaires or millionaires". It's a new game in my mind: "My oligarchs are better than your Oligarchs" I call it. And if my laws can't kick your behind, I make sure to put laws through your state's government, to make your life miserable on your own land, which you also will not be able to own for a long time to come. The idea that all people have to live somewhere and should have equal capabilities to have a place on this planet, seems to be non-existent.
I also apologize to gjohnsit, because I didn't realize the many comments to my first question here and it looks like I had hijacked the thread with it. It's Sunday morning here in Germany and I slept while you were commenting. I am sorry that the 'conversation' gets so difficult as to comment 'on time'. It's related to the 'time zone differences' which mess up my inner clock. I literally sleep with my laptop running and I dream of the days when 'that is behind me'.
I somehow hope that someone better equipped to dig into the legislative parts of the special problems homeless or houseless people face in Hawaii may write about it.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Agree. But it also probably
Agree. But it also probably has something to do with the fact that Buffet owns most of the mobile home manufacturing, sales and financing. No one else will touch mobile homes in relation to mortgages. The interest rates on mortgages are often double or more, than for a stick-built. Besides the fact that they depreciate rather than appreciate in price, and most never own the land. It is basically temporary housing and I think poorer people are "forced" into that option just as POC have been "forced" into poorer neighborhoods. It's a great racket.
In life, as in dance, grace glides on blistered feet. ~Alice Abrams
In my travels, those I meet living in the outskirts
tend to fall off the polls. A broken down car in the driveway, one or more of the parents in jail or rehab, kids truant, most families either ineligible for assistance or unable to navigate the system without help. Social services budgets are cut, law enforcement agencies are distrusted and feared. What kind of life is this? The wealthy are aware of it, but care not to address the systemic causes. Corporate types hire debt collectors to deal with it.
I lived in trailer parks as a kid.
Try living right by a race track, especially at night when they hold drag races and destruction derby type events. Bithlo in particular is known for that.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
OT: Polls
Poll: Voters say health care top issue in midterms
Poll: Support For Teachers Sustained 5 Days Into Walkout
There's a new hierarchy
A step below double-wide is single-wide. And below that is motorhome and travel trailer parks. Three of my aunts and uncles lived out their remaining years in fifth wheelers.
Of course, below that is the homeless living in tents, my own son subjected to that for months at one time.
Many local state and BLM campgrounds are havens for homeless people in te ts that travel into town to work or panhandle.
Some are living on derelict boats with no motors and barely float off remote beaches up and down the Columbia River.
America is slowly morphing into 3rd world and nobody seems to notice the creeping transition.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Trailer parks aren't cheap either.
The rent on the lot is somewhere around $500/mo, and you still have the mortgage on the trailer, utilities, and other expenses to pay. As usual, the people who can afford it least get screwed the most.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
There is a difference
between a mobile home park and a travel trailer park.
TT parks are much seedier and rundown, and accept aged motorhomes, camping trailers, and even pickup trucks w/ campers.
These types of parks are beginning to proliferate nationwide. Even former nightly private campgrounds are providing monthly rates to whole families in camp trailers, once the provinence of construction workers moving from job to job.
I have encountered many at National Forrest campgrounds where they would rotate every 14 days (the official limit) around differing campsites. $30 a night is still much cheaper than a motel, even the dumpiest ones.
In my 13 years of retirement traveling in a motorhome I've notice a big uptick in this kind of living. It is getting worse.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
yes, huge difference in the two.
My BIL & SIL sold everything, bought a new fifth wheel and a new truck. They live in a campground on a lake in MI during the summer and park in their daughter's yard by Lake Havasu for the winter. Tuning in and dropping out.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
hierarchy of homes- two stories,
Two stories to share- I have friends in Appalachia, they aspire to a double wide. This level of living requires two things- one, finding a lot that has enough flat space to set a double wide, that is on a road that is drivable enough to tow it into the space. Then you need enough flat space to park two cars. And secondly they need enough income to pay for the double wide. Often the first hurdle is more challenging then the second.
And some friends in Sun City area talk about the hierarchy of homes. In their community the lowest level of living is having a home that still has wheels on it. Mid level living is having a home that arrived on wheels but has had them removed-single wide or double. And the upper crust folks live in homes that were built on site.
Way to go Amerikuh- aim high.
Everyday we are approaching the dystopias of near future fiction
Doesn't it feel like that? Ruthless class divisions enforced by hereditary privledges, technology, and an armed police state--with the mass of people living short, brutal, and poverty striken lives.