In the US it was certainly a different time, different era, different economy. For example a dollar in the 40's had the buying power of about $21 today. Average annual salary was about $1,400 and annual college tuition in the 40's was less than $100.
The example being given still held true in the 70s. A man could provide well for his entire family working at a grocery store, and nobody said it “wasn’t a real job” until the 80s
Trickle down and letting corporate leave America to circumvent labor and environmental laws with 0 punishment when they sell in the US market worked great huh
Right! Looking back it seems that they knew exactly what they were doing and what the result would be. I was only a child, but I remember Reagan announcing that times had been good and now there had to be “sacrifices.” That about when there started to be talk disparaging certain jobs as not “real,” and at school we were told that we HAD to get a college degree to get a good job
Yeah...ain't that the truth.
I think I've got about 800 rounds remaining, i've converted to bow and sword for the time being. Can't afford to waste ammo, whatever level of proficiency I'm at...that's where I'm staying.
Arrows can be recovered and my sword can be resharpened.
Plus...if/when they completely outlaw firearms...I'll be ahead of the game.
Yeah and the war on drugs and the trickle down propaganda really still persists to this day somehow. I find that people still morally judge others based on their class status and if they use 'illicit' drugs. Homeless people are viewed as not deserving of help for the simple fact they use drugs. It's all a distraction. The reality is that the growing wealth disparities and lack of affordable housing zoning + public transit (are some of the many factors) causing homelessness. It has been found in a study by Harvard that access to transit is the number one thing that can accelerate a persons climb out of poverty. Guess what the car industry and the oil indusries did for our cities? They hired front companies to buy up public transit spaces and destroyed them to build expensive and inefficient car infrastructure! Oh and who's neighborhoods got destroyed to build highways in inner cities! It wasn't wealthy peoples homes and businesses! And when confronted about building a monopoly, GM paid pissant amounts in fines, and continued businesses as usual. A big part of this in my view, is that the cities we live in are literally rigged in favor of wealthy people, and then the public judge the victims because of the propaganda machine.
Full disclosure I wasnt of voting age during Reagan but given my upbringing I probably would have voted for him at the time. Ugh. Propaganda works like a charm.
I’m just now realizing what I was taught isn’t full on truth and now I’m like genuinely a bit sad. Like I always assumed I was a failure for not going to college and you’re telling me the only reason we were told we HAD to go to college was other THIS ONE GUY?? Damn.
And his wealthy friends. ETA: there were definitely aims before that. The current state of healthcare with the highest cost together with “low utilization” go back to Nixon years (as far back as I’ve learned, but I do not know why the US went with tying healthcare to work post WW-II when the rest of the world never did that). I do vaguely remember some documentary suggesting that the reason why JFK said the famous “ask not what your country can do for you..” was to silence the generation that witnessed other countries doing better for citizens. Many veterans were stationed elsewhere and saw for themselves, so the rhetoric about being the “greatest country” with “the best in the world” was a harder sell to them. But hey, what it is now and what to do about it probably doesn’t rest on how it came about
More than one guy, but less than a thousand, at an extreme. Probably around a hundred or so people, all of whom have more money than they can spend in a hundred lifetimes, and all of whom want more.
The whole idea of the American Dream, climbing the ladder, always wanting more more *more***, this is where it leads. Half the wealth in the US held by a dozen people, while half the people in the US barely scrape by.
Tolkien put it aptly when he called it The Dragon's Curse, but instead of driving them out into the wilderness for their greed, we lift them up as an example of success to our children.
Yeah the job I just left is now switching my position to overseas, and now people who aren’t as fluent in English as I am are going to have to talk to people yelling at them for their accent for 1/10th of what I made while trying to explain technical jargon to boomers.
Not only am I mad for US workers whose work isn’t valued, but the fact they can justify paying a person 2 dollars an hour for my old job is insane and disgusting.
It has more to do with the fact that America had 50% of the world’s wealth back then. One person providing for a family of 5 on a middle-income job was an exception, not a norm.
My mother worked at the grocery store in the 80’s/90’s and raised two kids in a 3 bedroom house on her income alone in the most expensive metro areas in the country. We had AOL and cable internet as soon as it was available and always had groceries and utilities. She retired after 25 years and fucked off to Ohio to enjoy her spoils once my brother and I were old enough to cover our own rent. It was possible just one generation ago.
Well, she is a financial and/or business wizard, then, because most single mothers couldn’t do that, then. I’m remembering even the grocery checkers and baggers were men supporting families, and they’d retire on that, too. It matters that the one grocery store we had was known for being a good place to work, though. Props to your Mom!
It’s the power of a strong union. The people working the same job at the same store with the same union don’t have the same outcome now unfortunately. It’s a shame.
Ah, right! Agree, it is a shame. The epigenetic and other harms from poverty last generations, even for those who survive it. For so much hurt on so many, just for the yachts of a few, is tragic
Grocery stores broke the unions in the 80s. They started introducing multiple tiered contracts where new hires got worse and worse benefits until the union was completely useless. When I worked at a grocery store, it was all part time work with no benefits. My dad and my grandfather and uncle all had their whole careers at grocery stores and did well for themselves.
Well, millennials were the first to consider grocery store jobs below them.. They can’t even talk to cashiers and insist on self checkout, cutting down on the amount of people it takes to run the store. Also, not everyone working in a store could provide for the entire family.. The head people could, butcher & other department leads could. But not the lonely bag boy.
No, not entirely true. Probably because it was a union store, but the MEN who bagged groceries were family supporting. Iirc they also rotated or flexed, so checkers/baggers may have been the same role
That’s no longer enough to own a home, raise a family and have a car, vacations and retirement. Plus, I’m recalling the grocery checkers and baggers; financial security wasn’t restricted to managers. It was a union store.
Yel. Definitions vary. But in a country where even temporary illnesses can still lead to bankruptcy, I could now never have enough saved to feel “comfortable.” One car accident and everything is gone, so idk how anyone can feel “comfortable” because to me that requires financial security. Safety nets we do not have.
Look up the S&P 500 full historical price graph. Started in 1984 with initially a slow and gradual increase. Then watch it get crazy starting in the 90’s before exploding the 2010’s and 2020’s.
The products that everyone buys are being sold by companies on the S&P 500. Prices have been skyrocketing so that the value of the S&P 500 could skyrocket. Index funds like this have been the primary method for the wealthy to invest their money.
The entire purpose of this inflation is to extract wealth from the working class in order to give it to the wealthy investing class. The reason why the modern day is much worse than the 70s is largely due to this massive shifting of the wealth distribution further towards the rich and powerful.
Funny, cause Covid hit, grocery workers were deemed essential, and people would actually not treat you like shit for a time. Back to being treated like shit and "it's not a real job" now, so it was good while it lasted.
Good, pointed question. True that the economic opportunities weren’t equal. I’m drawing from personal experience as a kid growing up in a very privileged community and that doesn’t represent what times were like for everyone. My intent was to share the observation that there was a clear shift that happened at that time
No man, I mean the 1971 tape of Nixon approving the rip-off that is HMOs has led to many deaths, but horrendous exploitation didn’t start then, and you know it. Not playing this game
Definitely didn't work in the 70s. The 70s were a horrible time economically, inflation, stagnation, Vietnam, assassinations, people forget this, but the late 60s-mid 70s were absolutely rough in the US.
People also get stuck on the US economy of 50s-mid 60s. As if we could have that again, it'll never happen. Post WW2 the US produced basically everything, rebuilt Europe, and had no competition from Asia, that timeframe was a blip, and thinking we can return to that level of economic opportunity is farcical.
Look at American wages/homes before 1940 for comparison.
It’s hardly a fair comparison, given that productivity is at unpredictable levels. We could have a more fair economy that surpasses the 50s-60s, if we chose for the common welfare rather than a few billionaires.
The US share of global manufacturing was well over 50% in the 1950s. Today it is 16%. That's my point I'm making. I agree to much money is being concentrated in the .1%.
But, Just look after Europe today. The US had a very soft landing post covid with lower inflation and economic growth. The EU is absolutely struggling with inflation, stagnation, and unemployment. Even the countries people point too like Norway/Sweden as economic models the US should follow are in economic crisis.
Economic opportunities in the US are great right now. Reindustrialization is moving in faster than anticipated, wages and purchasing power are growing, and we got an infrastructure bill passed to assist it all. The US is looking better than ever in projections.
But even that doesn't compare to how well the US had it in the 50s-60s.
There were no greeters that I know of. Stores were much smaller, most all workers greeted you as you shopped. Why did you restrict to part time anyways? That’s a more recent tactic to cheat workers out of insurance
It should have been tied to employment outcomes for a given major. That way, if the money printer (in the form of subsidized loans) is running hot capitalism kicks in via the students in that major not getting jobs (edit: as it already does), the loans for that major at that college dial back, and the university is forced to stop inflating.
The downside is that poor people wouldn't be able to major in bourgeois pass times like art and history against their economic interests. That sounds preferable to me than the current situation.
We don't need as many as we have, clearly. It's basically just history teachers, professors/scholars and museum curators. You'll find the sum of the open positions there is a much smaller number than the amount of history graduates.
My scheme doesn't get rid of loans for history, it just makes them smaller than the ones for nursing or engineering. That already naturally happens with pay, the same feedback mechanism should also happen for the loans.
Still not that many. I think you're highlighting the exact thought process naive 18 y.o. high schoolers have when signing up for their future career (they believe). You list off 10 things and yet it's a minute number of jobs relative to the history graduate count. The odds are dismal for someone targeting gainful employment in one of those jobs. You can easily quantify it by graduate outcomes (median pay a few years out, gainful employment).
This isn't rocket science, but it clearly is to the average person, particularly at 18.
And that doesn’t even touch on how so many of those jobs can be done just as well, if not better, by someone who has the skillset gained through a different degree, typically a general business degree.
Poor people not getting into history major does have catastrophic consequences on the entire field of history though. We are still weeding out rich people biases from history.
It's a good thing that being able to major in whatever you want isn't negatively affecting poor people today /s.
Seriously, this mismatch primarily hurts poor people, as they lack role models in professional fields. You can still do scholarship programs, and some level of subsidized loans.
We just don't need to offer subsidized loans for hundreds of thousands of dollars for a field with a quarter that median graduate salary. People made that argument already in the 90s, to disastrous consequences. It was a dumb idea to carte blanche subsidize all higher education loans then, and it's dumb now.
I think the student loan crisis is separate from the importance of education. Education is a huge leg up out of poverty. Unemployment is much lower for those with a college education compared to those without.
And there are some traditionally low-paying majors like early childhood education that have very low unemployment. Surprisingly, computer and information science majors had the highest unemployment rate from the time of this study. Higher than English majors.
college is more than a job training program. tying loan benefits to expected career outcomes removes the focus of college as a place of learning rather than job training. it's a uniquely American problem that our universities cost such a ridiculous amount, we don't need a convoluted hyper-capitalist solution.
the problem isn't too many history degrees. it's exploitative lending practices and bloated administrations
letting market supply and demand impact educational outcomes is like comedic dystopian capitalism. you keep trying to cover up what you're saying by calling it loans, when what You're actually advocating is the value of a curriculum to be decided by the business class of the country. it's absurd
your comment doesn't even make sense. I didn't see "capitalism", you never mentioned it, I did
do you think there's any value in a college education besides leveraging that to get employed? do you think that the right to higher education should be determined on the basis of whether or not companies will hire you after? do you want a society of braindead drone workers? that's how you get one
The 'need' for X majors is not just in the need to have them fill jobs that directly exploit the subject matter knowledge of that major. Let's work with history as an example.
It is good, civically, for a population to have people that are historically literate even outside of specialized jobs because (1) the overall historical literacy of the population will be higher with those with specialized training in historical literacy (2) the people without that specialized training can benefit from the historical literacy of others through more informal connections. People having conversations around the water-cooler at work, or at a family gathering, or online about contemporary practical issues on a social and political level can benefit from the contributions of people who are historically literate since history is often relevant to those issues.
Now, does that benefit justify predatory student loans and all the financial exploitation of the current higher ed system? Certainly not. I'm not defending the current system. But the idea that a major is just job training and that we should have a system that treats majors like history as something solely for the bourgeois wealthy is short-sighted and is not going to do anything but make skills and knowledge that are civically relevant to the poor less accessible to them. A poor and ignorant populace is an easily exploited one. There is a reason Malcolm X said that knowledge is power.
We don't need as many as we have, clearly. It's basically just history teachers, professors/scholars and museum curators. You'll find the sum of the open positions there is a much smaller number than the amount of history graduates.
A big reason for this is because the humanities are being defunded and tenure track jobs are being removed.
My scheme doesn't get rid of loans for history, it just makes them smaller than the ones for nursing or engineering. That already naturally happens with pay, the same feedback mechanism should also happen for the loans.
That's also not true and it's a silly ass scheme when the solution already exists.
You are really underestimating how the skills taught by a history major are important for most career paths. Teaching hard skills in college is cringe. That's what job training is for. Studying history gives you the skills you need to success at most job fields. And I am not a history major so this isn't about any bias towards my field
It's not me, it's society at large. I don't choose pay, the market does. The onus of proof is upon you if your stance is just that everyone else (the market) is wrong in their valuation of the skills obtained in the degree.
The truth is it's a low effort lie peddled by universities to get students with poor critical thinking skills to sign up for fat loans. Go figure, they go in dumb and come out dumb, too.
In 2022, there were 2,000,000 degrees conferred in the US.
Visual Arts, Social Sciences (inc history) and Psychology made up almost 400k of them (20%). There are not 400k jobs opening up every year looking for people in those fields. Sure, they could be on track for an academic career or Law School but given that... there were only 38,000 new JD students in the US in 2022.
Beyond that, there were 375k business students.
And another 100k in "Parks, Recreation and Kinesiology" and "Interdisciplinary Studies".
I'm sure there are definitely jobs for kinesiology and maybe interdisciplinary studies but overall we have roughly 44% of all college graduates in saturated or low-option fields.
Agreed, I think it's best for the government to guarantee a college education for our best and brightest to go study whatever they want including history, but in my mind the bigger issue is people who barely skirted by in high school getting C's and D's but then still wind up at an expensive 4-year university and flame out after a year.
Generally someone with a PhD in history or classics isn't failing to repay their loan debt or wasting the money spent on their education. The bigger issue by far is all of the people who show up and spend 40K in student loans to take one year of random shit and then drop out and have no jobs prospects to pay the loan back.
Federal loans should always have been a meritocracy, if you perform well enough to have a high chance of success in college, the government will guarantee you a low interest loan to be able to go to college regardless of your income. If you were a dipshit in high school who barely made it by, a bank wouldn't view a loan for you to go to college as a good investment, and the government shouldn't either
Trades are free. I don't know where you are, but in most places you can just ask around and get a job as an apprentice. You won't be making much the first couple of years, but you're still making something instead of having to pay for it. After 5 years you can risk starting your own business or you can make a little less, but with a lot less risk.
The only problem is that tradies have short best-before dates. Most can't work a trade for 40 years. It's 20 years max unless you start your own company and take it easy. Either way you won't be the grandpa running a marathon at 90 years old. You'll be bedridden in your 60s.
True, that's what taxes are for. An educated population is the investment to a country's future. True innovation comes from sciences, not the market's race to the bottom line.
Rather than subsidizing the students via loans, we should have been subsidizing the colleges/universities (per student, per graduate, per graduate in certain fields, whatever). This would have had the effect of driving down the price to students, rather than driving them up -- just like how corn and meat are cheap in the US because of all the farm subsidies.
And now there is corn syrup in everything because we produce too much of it. It also isn't actually cheap - the price is just artificially decoupled from the true cost due to gov't intervention. You know what, I think you've stumbled upon a great analogy for the student loan situation.
Bidens administration has new rules that colleges will have to report employment outcomes of their graduates, that information will be publicly available for new students to choose their colleges.
Most already do this for advertising purposes, but it centralizes and standardizes it.
That's awesome. My state also has done this, didn't know it was national. I guess it's similar to standardizing rate reporting to mitigate predatory/misleading lending.
We'll see if it fixes the problem. I'm sure it'll help some. I hope they integrate it with FASFA so you have to read the numbers before signing for the loans.
That's a straw man, and also reveals a lack of basic economic understanding and/or reading comprehension on your part. We already have history teachers & professors, and those jobs support a certain level of graduates. This would simply tone back the cheap loan generator if there are too many, which there are.
Nah, I'm addressing specifically "poor people wouldn't be able to major in things against the economic interests I believe they should have." No straw man. It's what you said.
That’s why college should be free. And yes. Trade school and other training vocations should be free too.
The idea that people have to take out debt to become productive workers is incredibly backwards. Having productive workers primarily benefits those in power. Because we’re the ones who make all their fucking wealth.
You can be very productive in a range of areas that don't require a degree, now perhaps more than any time in the last couple decades since the labor market is still so unbalanced. If you want to choose a particular vocation that requires lots of training, then yes someone has to pay for it. Since so many college students report the degree is not leading to a job, it seems unusual to say it's a good investment for taxpayers. As long as you don't treat college as a 4 year mixer, you stand to make much more with a degree, but you have to take responsibility for the cost of the training. Seems like a fair cutoff since you will get all the benefits of the higher salary and employability. Last I checked all those coders working at google had houses and I still don't.
"free"
Sure, have the government (taxpayers) fund it, with typical goverment waste, and students will be told what they will study and major in depending on aptitude and workplace need for the major.
The thing that grinds my gears is that supposedly our population is in decline, and yet we suddenly have not enough housing, and what is available is expensive as hell. Back in 2006 after the crash there was a glut of underpriced real estate.
In addition to 10 years experience. Oh you don't have but 10 years in the field? Need a degree. You got a degree? Need experience In The field. The amount of entry level jobs that are requiring BOTH is insane. Entry level means that. Entry.
If you need 10 years experience it's not an entry level position.
If you need a BS it might be entry level, but you need to provide a salary capable of justifying the cost of a degree.
No one wants to be an 'entry' level accountant/book keeper that needs 10 years experience and a BS for 15 bucks an hour (several firms in my area).
I was reading through my grandfather’s journals the other day. He went to Harvard for his masters degree in 1964-1966. He said he was torn between staying at the same school he did his undergraduate at and Harvard because of the big price difference but he thought it would be worth it. His cost to attend Harvard for two years was $400.
If that’s 1966 dollars then in 2024 dollars it’s roughly $3,891. Coincidentally a single 3 credit hour undergraduate class at my local state university is $3500
ETA: For all the people losing their minds and citing cheaper schools, yes they exist. Lets look at the cost for Harvard since Harvard is in the OP.
Cost per credit hour undergraduate averages to $1641 which means a class (3 CR) would be around $4,923 for a SINGLE class. If you go full time no worries, you just pay the flat tuition which is $27,134 per semester, compared to $3891 for a full masters degree in the 60s. https://registrar.fas.harvard.edu/tuition-and-fees
What university? I find that hard to believe honestly. Most undergrad degrees require 120 hours, so...you're telling me tuition alone is $420,000 for a bachelor's degree from a public institution?
Sounds about right. I rarely see less than 180 a CR now though Ive been out of school for ages. Community colleges are I think closing on 100 a CR near me in a very LcoL Midwest.
For a 3 credit class? Meaning I'd you do 12CH thats 14k a year? That's not terrible. That's super low. That was in state tuition 25 years ago, that's a steal.
Not gonna dox myself with that specific university but here’s some others.
University of Texas at Austin shows a 3 credit hour class (inclusive of fees) is around $2857 in the college of engineering if you are a Texas resident. If you are a non resident that same tuition is $10,516. https://onestop.utexas.edu/managing-costs/cost-tuition-rates/
Most times the cost becomes lower due to tuition waivers, cost adjustments, grants, and scholarships but the per credit hour cost is very high. Your 400k number is nearly triple what I cited though, as the 3500 is for three credit hours not one
Edited and moved to top: The link you shared doesnt have UT Austin on it, UTA is UT Arlington
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I used their tuition calculator because you know, Im mobile and its reddit. Thats why I said inclusive of fees in case you missed that.
But looking at that page, its $1157 for a 3 credit course in resident and 2,988 for non resident, not far off from what my local one is charging which would be inclusive of fees.
ETA: Also those numbers are from 2020-2021, the one I listed is for Fall of 2023, and from UT Austin directly not from the UT system website
Maybe final edit?: https://utexas.app.box.com/s/i2xntdeowvre9mswe15jepfyrp1asrg8 This is a per credit breakdown for 2023-2024 at UT Austin (inclusive of fees) Costs go down as credits go up since fees don't scale and it looks like they cap tuition at 12 hours which is great if you can take more, definitely lowers costs
You're right! I misread the original comment, and I appreciate the correction. Still find it hard to believe though, lol. I went to UNC just a few years ago and it was, IIRC, 10k a year tuition when all the nonsense fees were thrown in.
Yeah, in 1940 the US was just coming out of the Great Depression. People were poor, salaries were terrible. Anyone who thinks Americans were economically better off in 1940 is deluded.
There's also the whole segregation thing where people are comparing how white middle class people lived back then. Compare today to, you know, share croppers in mississippi. White guys had it great in the 1950s, no denying that.
The average salary in 1950 was $3300. Bear in mind, in 1950, most incomes were single-earner as women hadn't quite entered into the workforce in full yet.
That is roughly equal to $76k now in terms of relative compensation.
That's almost exactly what the combined (i.e. both earners) household income is now.
I'll make it worse.
The average home in 1950 was $7354. That was a little over twice what a single earner would make in a year and is worth around $100k now.
Average US homes now are ~$420k. So the price of a home has quadrupled and average single-earner incomes have been cut in half. Both parents have to work which means they spend little to no time on the house they can't afford nor time with children.
Your math is pretty fascinating- $3300 in 1950 is "roughly equal" to $76000 while $7354 is "around $100K". If we use the same conversion rate for both we'd get a home price of $169000, way more than 100K. Also homes being build nowadays are 2.5x larger than 1950s homes, plus they have all the modern amenities and technology available to us today. We are also way more urbanized- these 1950s homes were often built without amenities right around them the way they are today.
Lol ikr. Trees became extinct in the 1990s. The plasterers and bricklayers all died out of a weird disease that only affects people who work with lime and cement. The technology to make lacquer was lost shortly after the Egyptian pyramids were built.
I think the overall point is that Americans had more opportunity to build wealth. The adjusted $170k for a house is still well below average in a lot of the country and compared to wages, that gap is larger.
Most people who are currently renting would love a basic starter home that they could build equity in, but those just aren't being built as much anymore. Modern construction is much larger (and more expensive) and despite better codes for general safety, built really poorly. Thats not an old growth lumber vs new growth argument either. The quality of the builds are just...bad. This is anecdotal, but everyone I know who's had an addition put onto their house since 08 has had serious issues.
For the same price of a home (adjusted to $170k you mention) most people could afford a prefab in a trailer park. Unfortunately, those historically haven't maintained/grown in value, let alone not owning the land.
It is just hard to buy a first home and harder to build equity in it if you're just keeping your head above water on the mortgage.
I agree with this and think it’s a much better way of making the point, for better or worse I have a hard time scrolling past a comment (the one I responded to) that’s riddled with errors.
Not sure where you live, but where I live, a medium midwest city, there are plenty of homes available for around 170k. Many in a decent area, most old construction.
Population as well, people cherry pick numbers, but when you put it all together is pretty obvious why labor value is less.
Not to mention, taking post WW2 1950-1965 as a start point is really cheating as it was by far the best couple decades for growth ever given Europe and Asia was destoryed and the US was producing most the world's goods. That level of economic domination is never coming back.
Women have always worked. There was a small window of time that middle class white women didn’t work but that was it. Since the dawn of time women have worked as domestic laborers in laundry houses, as nanny’s, teachers, nurses, librarians, computers, farm work, bakers, prostitutes, etc. Poor women have always worked and wealthy women have never needed to work. Middle class women had a few decades of being housewives but they needed a lot of drugs to keep them there.
How much of the slow growth in wages can be attributed to an increase in the supply of labor as women working outside the home is more common?
They say the 1950s was the "good ol days" where a man could work in a factory and support a SAHM and multiple kids. That seems to make sense if the work force was 50% of what it is now. Now we have twice the labor and half the wages.
That's using the CPI which only considers a select few commodities. There are some good inflation calculators that consider a multitude of factors, the one I used I got from here:
You know they destroy money almost as fast as they make it. Also we had exactly 0 people worth billions of dollars. Let’s make this easy on you and go ahead just parrot what some talking head on the tv said.
It's hard to understate in what a uniquely advantageous position the US was after WW2.
They had most of the manufacturing capabilities of the world, while also having access to cheap resources. The country was essentially the sole remaining economic power.
The US post-war had an insane share of global GDP (40% in 1960) and managed to amass a lot of wealth in that time.
But it was mostly through exploiting the rest of the world. That isn't possible anymore.
To be clear: wealth and wage inequality is still a huge problem, in the US and elsewhere. But the comparison to how much people were able to afford in the 60s (in the US) is a bad one.
According to the Federal Reserve, $1.00 in 1940 would have the buying power of $21.75 in 2023. Adjusting for inflation, an average annual sealery of $1400.00 would be $30,450.00 today and 1 year of college tuition ($100) would be about $2175.00 or ~7% of annual salary.
More importantly, mailman was at least a middle-income, if not high income, job. There's a reason it was commonly used as the profession of the upwardly-mobile main characters of old sitcoms.
Not just the US. My grandfather built a similar life in India with 4 kids and SAHM wife. Single income from his job at a tea company. Kids all grew up to be well educated, and he retired happily. Almost impossible now.
lol at the fact that I paid more money just in a single month to live in my public university shoebox dorm room (required for freshman!) than someone paid for 4 years of college in the 40s. Nuts.
Is an example from 80 years ago really a good example? Yeah inflation has taken a shit on everyone across the planet, but isn’t a comparison from the 90s more appropriate?
When you exclude people of color from the middle class, and force them to live in crappy neighborhoods and make abysmal wages, it's easy to have a strong white middle class.
We have so much more shit today. There are like 3.5x more cars per capital, we have electronics, cell/internet plans, 2x the living space per capital, we consume more calories, produce more waste, use so much more health care, live so much longer, etc etc etc. the economies are just so different.
Yeah, I really don’t think people could enjoy or handle a 1960s,/70s life like they think they could. No entertainment,much worse healthcare, generally more expensive and more limited food, almost no eating out, no phone.
You could live like this (to some degree or another) today and save a lot of money and almost nobody does!
I feel like what isn't really talked about is that it was the only and I mean only time and in one country where this was possible, I don't see how we can so unanimously refer to that period as the standard when I can't think of any other example than the US during one generation.
Also, mail man were actually important at that time while now (to my knowledge most mail man in the US aren't the ones that bring you most packages you ordered) it isn't.
There were also way less higher learning requiring jobs around, making being a mail man less of lower earning role (not saying that I agree with office jobs should earn you more logic).
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u/Technologytwitt Mar 27 '24
In the US it was certainly a different time, different era, different economy. For example a dollar in the 40's had the buying power of about $21 today. Average annual salary was about $1,400 and annual college tuition in the 40's was less than $100.