The Drew Carey Project Volume 1 - Izzit.org

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Boat Owner 1: Uh, no. Law Enforcement. Drew Carey: A cop with a big boat and a Hummer. Ah ha. Here’s an auto mechanic who must be struggling. He’s got no boat. Interviewer Voice: Yeah, do you have a boat like this or— Male 1: No. I have motorcycles. Interviewer Voice: Yeah. What kind of motorcycles do you have? Male 1: Oh, Hondas, Harleys, Suzuki. Got ‘em all. Drew Carey: The boat belongs to his buddy, a truck driver. How can guys with regular jobs afford all this? Maybe we just happened to visit the lake during the lottery winners’ reunion. Michael Cox: Well, that is America’s middleclass today. It’s amazing the amount of stuff they’re able to own and their consumption levels that they achieve today compared to the past. Drew Carey: Economist Michael Cox is co-author of Myths of Rich and Poor, Why We’re Better Off Than We Think. He says the middleclass is doing great but that’s not what we hear on TV. CNN Lou Dobbs Anchor 1: The problem is their wages are low, they… CNN Anchor 2: They’re reeling from stagnant wages. Michael Cox: So many things wrong with that. First of all, those wages don’t include the benefits that we bargain for - we demand. Drew Carey: Even if you add in benefits, how much you earn is only part of the story. How much things cost. Now, that’s another important part. Michael Cox: Is the cost of everything going down? No. Is the cost of the vast array of things that Americans purchase going down? Absolutely. Drew Carey: What? That’s not what other people say. CNN Lou Dobbs Anchor 3: It’s dangerous. It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. Everything’s going up. Drew Carey: Money is how we usually measure the cost of living, but Cox things we should use something more important to us—our time. Michael Cox: Really, the best way to measure cost is in terms of work time. How long do I have to work in order to afford to buy something? So, let’s just take a product, for example, the cell phone. Drew Carey: The classic ’80s movie “Wall Street” takes us back to the early days of the cell phone when corporate big shots went cordless with their $4,200 bricks. Male Character of Movie: My wife tells me you made a move on Darien. 8
Drew Carey: Few regular people could afford cell phones because the average worker had to sweat for 460 hours to buy one. Boy, how times have changed. Michael Cox: So this $50.00 phone is less than 3-hours of work; 460 then, 3 now. Huge declines in prices enabling these things to be afforded by the middleclass and many other products, too. Drew Carey: Only the rich owned cars a century ago, but today average Americans can afford shiny SUVs. In terms of time, the cost of a car has fallen by more than 70%. The story is the same for necessities. Food is 84% cheaper. Clothing is 87% cheaper. Michael Cox: So food’s going down. Clothing is going down. Housing is going down in cost. We look at the houses and we see that they’re much more expensive in money terms, but the houses are also twoand-a-half times as large as back then and they have all the amenities. Drew Carey: Today, the typical new home comes equipped with a dishwasher, stove, microwave, fireplace, central heat and air and a bunch of other amenities that weren't standard in homes 50 years ago, let alone a century ago. The falling cost of living allows regular Joes to own boats, vacation at lakes and fly around the world. We checked it out. The cost of a cross-country flight has plummeted by 95%. Michael Cox: When the flights first came out, they were the exclusive purview of the rich, the jet set, but now the jet set includes just you get on planes and look, there’s people there of all income levels. Drew Carey: Such progress and yet so many middleclass Americans feel lousy. CNN News Reporter: And only 19% of middleclass Americans feel they are getting ahead in life. Drew Carey: Gee, I wonder why. Maybe they’d be in a better mood if news programs weren’t packed with doom and gloom but, you see, bad news gets ratings. 4-Different Anchor Desks: whether they’ll ever have the kind of . . . all the days. . . Drew Carey: Remember the auto mechanic who collects motorcycles? Male 1: Works good. Plenty of it. Just got another raise. Everything is good. Drew Carey: Even folks who say things are going well for them are often convinced times are tough for everyone else. Male 1: Yeah. There’s some big guys and then there’s the poor people and there’s really no middleclass anyway. Michael Cox: These are things that they hear about propagated in the media. Male 1: I guess the middleclass is always getting squeezed. Drew Carey: Sure seems like he’s been watching a lot of TV. CBS Sunday Morning: …squeezed is what a lot of middleclass Americans are these days. 9
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