From the time the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in 1620 until the 1970s, every generation of Americans took it for granted that their generation would have a higher standard of living than their parents. Sometimes, a war or a depression interrupted that progress, but only for a short time. But then, something started to go wrong in the 1970s. The real, inflation-adjusted income of working-class Americans started going down, slowly but steadily, and this has been going on now for over 50 years. Today…..

– 40% of Americans have no savings. Every year, the Federal Reserve conducts a survey. They ask people what they would do if they had an unexpected expense of $400, like a refrigerator repair or a trip to a hospital emergency room. 40% of respondents said that they would only be able to pay such an expense by borrowing the money or selling something they owned.
– The poor are much poorer. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, that is 40% lower than it was in 1970. Think about what that means. It means that somebody who was working at a job in 1970 that paid the lowest wage allowed by law now has to make ends meet with 40% less income. The federal minimum wage would almost have to double to get back to where it was in 1970. 20 states have laws prohibiting local governments from raising the minimum wage above $7.25 an hour, and some politicians think that $7.25 is too high. In Georgia and Wyoming, the state minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, but the federal minimum wage law forces employers in those states to pay $7.25 an hour.  I believe that there is a direct connection between the rise in homelessness in the United States and the fact that the poor are much poorer than they used to be. The last time that we had large homeless encampments in the United States was during the Great Depression.
– College graduates are buried in debt. The cost of attending college in the U.S. has been rising at a rate higher than the overall inflation rate for decades. The U.C. Berkeley website currently advises out-of-state and foreign undergraduate students to budget $70,000 a year to attend UCB. (It is actually $69,801, but I added a couple of hundred dollars for trips to Peet’s Coffee.) In 2000, total student debt in the U.S. was $230 billion. It is now $1.7 trillion. That’s a 700% increase. Numerous studies have concluded that both men and women are more likely to postpone getting married, having children, or buying their first home if they have student debt, and it can take a long time to pay off student debt. While the standard repayment term for federal student loans is 10 years, it takes anywhere between 13 and 20 years to pay off $100,000 in student loans.
– More old people are living in poverty. In 1970, most people who worked for big companies in the United States got pension checks after they retired, but not anymore. In 1980, 60% of U.S. workers had jobs with defined pension plans. It is now 4%. As pension checks disappeared, senior citizens became more and more dependent on Social Security. Today, 40% of senior citizens in the United States rely entirely on Social Security for their retirement income. Social Security payments are not as large as most people imagine. The average Social Security retirement benefit is around $1,500 a month, and most poor people get less than that. That is because Social Security retirement benefits are not based on the needs of the retiree but rather how much the person earned.

One of the great lessons of history is that desperate people do desperate things. It is at times of economic desperation that people turn to demagogues, politicians who offer simple solutions to complex problems and who blame their country’s troubles on unpopular minorities. Things have usually ended badly for those societies. In the 1780s, people in France were going hungry. After a very harsh winter in 1788, there was widespread starvation in the French countryside and bread riots in Paris. This led to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror in which countless thousands of people were beheaded, including children, the elderly, and priests. In the early 1930s, Germany’s economy collapsed. The major banks failed. Money became worthless. Thousands of children died of malnutrition. It was because of this economic crisis that Hitler came to power.

So, what explains the rise of political extremism in the United States? The rise of political extremism in the United States is due to the economic pain of the working class. I think it is just that simple. I do not understand why so many smart people don’t see the connection.

WHY AREN’T MY OMELETS AS GOOD AS THE ONES IN RESTAURANTS?

Well, now on to a less depressing subject…..Last month, I covered the subject of how to make fluffy scrambled eggs. A lot of people commented on that article, so this is a follow-up. It is easy to make omelets at home that are as good as the ones in restaurants.

About cheese. Cheese is the most popular omelet filling, but that is where most people go wrong.You have to select omelet cheese carefully.
Don’t use pre-shredded cheese in an omelet. The reason why pre-shredded cheese doesn’t stick together in the bag and turn into one big clump is because pre-shredded cheese is coated with sawdust. Yes, you read that right – sawdust. Read the ingredients label. Nearly all brands of pre-shredded cheese list ‘cellulose’ as an ingredient, but what they really mean is sawdust. Cheese doesn’t melt well in an omelet if the cheese is covered with sawdust.
Use pre-sliced cheese instead of pre-shredded cheese. When making an omelet, your best options are to buy a block of cheese and shred it yourself or buy pre-sliced cheese without cellulose. Pre-sliced cheese is usually sold right next to the pre-shredded cheese in supermarkets. If there is a thin sheet of paper between the slices, that’s a good sign. That means that they are using paper instead of sawdust to keep the cheese from sticking together.
Use cheese that melts at a low temperature. Cheeses that melt well on top of a pizza may not melt well inside an omelet. It is not as hot inside an omelet as it is in a pizza oven. Cheeses that melt well in omelets include cheddar, mozzarella, and muenster. My favorite is pepper jack.
A few other omelet tips: Use the right size pan. An 8 or 9 inch pan is the best size for a 1 or 2 egg omelet. To get the fluffiest omelet, separate your eggs and beat the whites before adding the yolks. That’s what Julia Child did, but I don’t do that. It’s too much work.

Is sawdust safe to eat? I don’t know. Cellulose is a fiber that is found in many fruits and vegetables, and we need fiber in our food. That’s why people eat bran cereal. However, human beings cannot digest sawdust. We’re not termites.
What other foods contain sawdust? The list is very long! I don’t want to name specific products (my lawyer wouldn’t like that), but you can easily find that out on Google. Food processors have been putting sawdust in ground beef, sausages, and bread for centuries because sawdust is cheap. In 1901, New York City food inspectors reported that half the bread sold in the city contained sawdust. I have never seen bread or cheese for sale in a supermarket that listed sawdust as an ingredient, but I did once see a loaf of bread that listed as an ingredient ‘cellulose from a natural woody source.’ Now tell the truth – before you read this article, had you ever heard that pre-shredded cheese is covered with sawdust?

I would appreciate your comments. If you want to comment on any article in this newsletter, you can do so at: Mark Tarses Newsletter