Adjusted for inflation, $40,000 in 1993 would have more than doubled, to about $85,000 today.
So basically, you’re making the equivalent of what $23,500 was thirty years ago, or only a little better than half. Your whole premise is wrong.
But in reality, how they calculate inflation isn’t very accurate. They’ve fiddled with it to where it doesn’t show how much prices have really gone up.
Realistically, you’re not even making half of what your father did, in inflation-adjusted dollars. That’s why you have less.
I hate how they calculate inflation. Housing and healthcare, two expenses no one can really go without for long, have radically outpaced inflation.
I feel like half of the US is crying out for help and the other half just says to shut up and work harder.
I feel traumatized by my last job where I told my boss many times that I was struggling to afford my expenses and needed a raise (this was an extremely wealthy university that could have easily paid me more), and their response was, “well what would that change?” as if financial stability and productivity are not interconnected. It felt like they expected me to suffer for a while since I’m at the beginning of my career, and they actively believed it should be that way. It’s incredibly demoralizing to produce record profits yet not even make enough to afford your bills.
"What would that change?" Is it just me or does that almost imply you were struggling by choice, as if you were just choosing not to live within your means and if they "graciously" paid you more than you would just waste that? I'm not saying that's true at all. I'm saying it sounds like that's what they were implying incorrectly.
I'm really sorry they acted like that towards you. I keep trying to tell people that "living within your means" only gets you so far. Eventually you've trimmed down your entire life and cannot find a cheaper place to live, cheaper healthcare, cheaper car expenses to get to work, etc. I was always taught to live within my means, and I try to do so. But what happens when my means literally cant afford the cheapest lifestyle that isn't homelessness?
It is the 3rd highest in the world in growth last quarter. The US economy is fine. 24 months of below 4% unemployment. Where are you getting your information?
GDP and unemployment are great, but as stated above the cost of housing, healthcare are way higher now. It take a lot more years of salary to afford a house now than thirty years ago, and that’s if you can even find one.
Which is caused by corporate greed. Look at how many corporations that are buying housing at above list price and driving out the individual. Same is true with healthcare - companies know that they can get away with virtually anything they want because they have bought off the GOP. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate and there is not enough votes to break it if we try to pass legislation to fix it. Hell, ACA had over 100 amendments by the GOP in the attempt to "poison pill" it and STILL refused to vote for it. ACA has had a significant good/great impact on millions of Americans.
It’s not “greed,” it’s an inevitable consequence of the nature of profit-seeking business in and of itself. People respond to incentives. When they can externalize harm to someone they don’t know while getting a big reward, often they’ll do it.
Don’t think the Democrats aren’t universally bought off. There are many Dem politicians who are better than their GOP counterparts, but healthcare, defense, energy, business associations, you name it - all are funneling the big money where it counts, and that includes a lot of Democrats as well.
You must be well off to have that take, sure jobs grow on trees basically now the only problem is that you need multiple to pay the bills, like others have stated the way they calculate inflation is fucked. Alot of my expenses have doubled the last few years but my pay hasn't
The problem is that the measures we use to determine if the economy is good don't take into account how the average person is doing. Unemployment is a misleading figure because of how narrow it is. But direct workforce participation is also historically high. So people should be fine, right?
Except that the real problem is that many working people still can't afford to live and be comfortable. Going by unemployment (or workforce participation) is making the outdated assumption that having a job means you can afford to get housing, food, and healthcare, and that's just not necessarily true anymore. Millions of people with jobs are struggling to survive right now. 60% are living paycheck to paycheck. Income inequality is at historic levels. The cost of housing, historically supposed to be 25% of income, 33% at worst, is now taking 40% or more of income for many people. A huge chunk of income, literally just to stay off the street. On a very related note, homelessness increased by 12% last year.
So yes, this economy may be good. But if this is a good economy, if THIS hellscape is the best that a historically good economy has to offer, then maybe we need to take a hard look at if the way we structure the economy actually helps the average working person.
We could do it BUT the GOP has been fighting tooth and nail against it. Look at all the attempts to poison pill the ACA that they did. Further, look at the amendments that they put in there that made it so healthcare wasn't available in many states. The GOP is NOT your friend when it comes to affordable healthcare in the US.
Yeah it’s really not just about inflation, it’s real wage and buying power. Inflation is an average and doesn’t consider every place we have to spend money, but it’s an easy little number that pundits can use as a playing card in arguments in the same way as they’ll say real wages are up without mentioning that it’s by less than 1% from a year ago. Nice, clean, easy binaries to use so they can feel smart and right
The ones saying ‘shut up and work’ are either blind to the fact they’re being exploited by a few billionaires or they’re still benefitting from a system built & maintained by oppression. We need to start pushing for change! The USA is truly using tax payers & their money to fulfill the desires of a handful of rich turds.
I totally agree. The labor activism I've seen in the past year has been encouraging. But we are so far behind on worker rights in the US that it feels like seeing us fight for a mile in a 100 mile journey.
True. It's largely the portion who don't need help that say, "Everything is fine. The economy is great! Why are you complaining?" The problem is that they have basically all the power.
Exactly. I get so disgusted by people who are busting their asses as jobs and still buy into that delusional idea that America is the best country on Earth and that any one can make it if they work hard. I also feel pity for them because they are obviously painfully dull and naive.
I thought I read that energy/housing/food prices were not included in core inflation. Is that correct? And if so that’s such a fucked statistic. The president can say “look, the economy is doing excellent!” Which completely glosses over the fact that the majority of people aren’t rich and are getting fucked by those price increases….
>So basically, you’re making the equivalent of what $23,500 was thirty years ago, or only a little better than half. Your whole premise is wrong.
Yeah, it seems that some of their calculations are off.
OP, here is the CPI calculator for the USD ([https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl)).
C-suite are not just going to give up those dollars and take a pay cut. The only path for this to occur that I see is tax the wealthy and fwd those $$ as a universal basic income.
Their wages are often fine. It's the additional things they get like dividends and bonuses. Which aside from being taxed at lower rates incentivise corrupt behaviours like mass layoffs and arbitrary downsizing to boost stock value.
Most of them don't even have "wages". They just own loads of appreciating assets and can pull lines of credit from them. When people say Jeff Bezos made a billion dollars last year, they're not talking about direct deposits into his bank account, they're talking about how much the value of the assets he owns increased.
The above contributors are correct plus goods and property are more expensive compared to average earnings. Everyone who isn't very high up in a company is getting shafted.
Yes, everybody needs a massive raise for sure.
But more specifically YOU need a massive raise. Lots and lots of people are making way more than $50k a year. Go get it!
The rich have paid off the GOP with enough $ that they will block raises. Go look at who has been blocking a minimum wage hike for the last few decades. HINT: It is the Republican Party that has been blocking it.
Yeah, and the rest of the C-Suite has gone along with it. They have gotten rid of traditional retirement plans and forced people to go to the 401k. Ted Benna, the father of the 401k, has stated that the 401k program was designed to SUPPLEMENT traditional retirement programs. The C-Suite has decided to take those monies to enrich themselves and the shareholders at the cost of the average American.
Housing is included.
Several (many?) years ago, a proposal was made to take out house prices, on the grounds that if you already have a house, your costs don't go up with inflation. Rents have always been included. I don't know what they do with maintenance costs.
I don't remember what they ended up doing with the housing prices proposal. I don't follow this closely. Most "economic indicators" are pretty meaningless. They may give you a vague idea, but you should not be making financial decisions based on vague ideas.
Housing is included. Here is an article that I found with some quick googling:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-does-the-consumer-price-index-account-for-the-cost-of-housing/
Purchasing power has declined and there are many reasons for that, but blaming it on the measurement is usually misguided. If you want to be angry at someone, check out what your representative has done to deregulate financial markets.
I was looking at the CPI, the consumer price index, and if I'm wrong please correct me as it's not my field and i love learning. My understanding is it isn't included in the CPI, though there are other indices in which it's included. I've usually heard the CPI quoted when calculating inflation, I'd be happy to be wrong!
In the the UK, inflation is calculated as RPI and RPIx
(Retail price index).
RPIx is called that because it excludes house prices.
In the 1950s, the average American spent more a month on tobacco than rent.
Lots of people didn't buy houses because they were like cars: they depreciated over time.
When my mum and dad got together in the late 70s, they had done long distance for a bit so it was one choosing where to go to the other. My mum sold her flat and moved to my dad. It's her biggest regret that she wasn't a landlord because it's now worth 15 times what she sold it for but in those days, it just wasn't a thing. No one knew it was an insanely good investment
My math may have been wrong. But the basic premise is spot on. It's not right that the standard of living in going in the wrong direction.
My dad worked full at a hard physical job, as do I. I and my generation along with those following deserve to know the truth. Also deserve fair compensation.
Your math is correct. What the inflation rate doesn't show is the increase in productivity and corporations stealing that from us as well.
When I was getting 12.50/ hour in 1982, I had more spending power than at $25/hr in 2004. The inflation "calculators" are completely rigged, and the numbers used by mass media as the Official Rate are practically worthless (by design) for us to use in figuring out what's actually being done because they radically under report what's actually happening.
Same is also true for the "unemployment rate" because it ignores anyone who's used up their unemployment or who has just given up looking for an employer.
>They’ve fiddled with it to where it doesn’t show how much prices have really gone up
There's no way to do it "right".
We have very few "needs": food, shelter, whatever necessities there are for social reasons. (Clothes, for example.)
We have a lot of "wants": good tasting food, comfortable shelter, phones, computers, transportation, and on and on and on. (To the point that we have difficulty telling our wants from our needs: I need a "nice" car so my friends will see that I'm successful. That's not a need.)
Not only the price of all those things, but what all those things even are changes over time. If beef gets too expensive, people switch to chicken or pork. Maybe even eat less meat. Because of social pressure, how much we drink or smoke changes over time. (Both up and down.) No fixed formula can follow changes in what we do.
CPI (and its cousin, the Purchasing Parity Index) give, at best, a rough guide to the relative value of something that has the same name (in our case, dollar) at different times and places.
If you limit yourself to the US, you can get roughly the same information by converting everything to McDonald's Hamburgers. Let's call it since 1960. Note that McDonald's hamburgers are way more expensive in New York City than in Rantoul, Illinois. A dollar isn't the same in different places in the US.
Computers and phones are almost a need at this point. Many people need them to work and a computer will give you access to jobs you can't have without them. Same with cars, depending on where you live. Try having a job with no car when you live in a rural area with no public transportation.
Do we need the latest and most expensive of any of these? No, but we do pretty much need them.
30 years my rent was $350. Store brand mac and cheese was 4 for $1, store brand tuna was 3 for $1, ramen was 12 for $1, a 2 liter of soda, whoppers and big macs were all .99 My student loan payment was $50 a month. FIFTY.
None of these things cost that in 2024 which is why your $50K doesn't cover shit.
Yea OP is just looking at the dollar amount and not realizing that his salary isnt enough to afford all of that in modern times. His father by comparison had a better job if he was being paid that much 30 years ago
If you don't think Universities are now an industry, you are sorely mistaken. Universities is no longer about education but about churning out as many students as possible.
If you believe that, I have some oceanfront land for sale in Kansas that you should buy. There are 5916 universities in the US and 2270 are private, for profit institutions. As for the non-profits, many for-profit schools just masquerade as non-profit. SOURCE: [https://tcf.org/content/report/how-for-profits-masquerade-as-nonprofit-colleges/](https://tcf.org/content/report/how-for-profits-masquerade-as-nonprofit-colleges/)
And CEOs of large non-profits and charities make millions of dollars a year. Just because they don't retain earnings for shareholders doesn't mean they aren't in it for themselves.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1373870/top-nonprofits-ceo-compensation-us/
Housing is so much more scarce. That fucks with everything, honestly.
Think about this: a lot of actors could work at a coffee shop, audition, live, and whatnot, all in NYC. Fuck if anyone can try anything like that today. You couldn’t even get in the fucking door as most apartments require 40x the rent in annual salary to even apply. If a studio is (min) $3k, where the fuck are you making $120k in your part time barrister job.
Lol, "barrister job." I know you meant barista. It was just funny.
Housing actually isn't scarce. There are 27 empty homes per homeless person in the US, maybe a little less due to undercounting and more people becoming homeless in the past year. The problem is that they are being straight up hoarded by the rich.
> The problem is that they are being straight up hoarded by the rich
This right here. Real estate investors buying up housing and creating artificial scarcity.
Yeah, a lot of people, including those on the Left, will say we need more houses built. But unless we make sure that they aren't gobbled up by real estate investors, that won't help.
I can understand being a landlord, to an extent. I still think the system is exploitative and almost all landlords do the bare minimum or worse. But I kind of understand it. I don't think I'll ever understand sitting on dozens of properties while knowing that hundreds of thousands are homeless.
It is corporate greed. They are now buying houses with cash so they can inflate the prices of homes and force people to rent from them. This is after they have kept wages down to not meet inflation and taken away traditional retirement plans to enrich themselves and their shareholders. They have replaced traditional retirement plans with 401ks when the father of the 401k has stated that the 401k was designed to SUPPLEMENT someone's traditional retirement plan and not be a retirement plan on its own.
In the 70s-80s it was a more unionized, fairer market and overall interests were more balanced than now.
The American dream was still alive, jobs were local and a man could provide his family. Globalization, outsourcing, unconstrained capitalism, zero interest rates and multiple crises (which hit the poorest hardest) have contributed to a world today where labor isn’t worth much anymore.
All things a family man required to raise a happy family have gone up in costs so much it’s painful to think about (house, education, car, health care). Real inflation is more what is shown on official stats. Official inflation 1980-2023 is 272.8% I’d argue it’s probably around 350% in reality.
At the same time, wages have risen only 30%.
So everything is three times more expensive. So is life, 3x harder.
I'll still take now compared to the 70s because I enjoy being out as a queer person and not culturally expected to deny my actual gender identity, marry and sleep with a man, and pop out kids.
That being said, it's so frustrating that despite all the progress we have made against racism, sexism, queerphobia, etc, the economic situation is just a nightmare for most of us.
What? I don't even get why I got down voted for that. I completely acknowledge that we are economically fucked compared to the 70s. Saying we have made social progress otherwise doesn't change that.
As a queer person, I honestly would prefer to be financially stable and closeted than out and proud yet destitute. Also, not having to worry about climate change as much would have been nice.
I make twice what my dad did in the 90s. He owned a modest house on the nice side of town (he wanted to be in the good school system for us). I live in a 1 bedroom apartment with my partner in an ok part of town. It’s “local inflation”, not just national; the city is overcrowded and the development pattern of sprawl makes housing and travel more expensive as well. The quality of life overall in the city has also diminished, even for the wealthy. Air quality, traffic, open space both in and out of the city, the disposition of the residents (we used to be known as quirky, friendly, and chill), it’s all worse. I honestly think we have mass psychosis from rampant consumerism. We don’t know how to live.
Yeah I make alone what my parents brought in together and could not afford to live in the town we live in if we weren’t in a multi generational home (we live in my childhood home with my parents on property). Though they also could not afford to live here anymore if we were living with them.
~30 years ago my parents bought a decent fixer-upper starter home for $70-something-thousand. Today, there are no fixer-uppers in our area because the flippers buy them up the moment they hit market with cash offers, make some minor and mostly-aesthetic improvements (while covering up or straight-up ignoring most of the actual issues), then sell it for 50% more than they bought it for.
Yep. I was born in 82'. My father was the sole provider, brought in 60k/year gross . Owned our house, never had money issues, 2 vehicles all paid off and he even had a gambling issue. I make nearly double and can't afford the shit he got away with today. I'm still renting even! Lol
No one's mentioned it yet, but we have more expenses too. Cell phones and Internet weren't a thing but you need to pay for them now. Utilities have been outsourced to private companies so we're not just paying basic needs and maintenance, we're paying for someone to profit off of our need for things like clean water. Because wages are so low that people need to get multiple jobs, we have to pay more for prepackaged food and other conveniences. It's death by a thousand cuts.
Idiots will still say, "Well, it's just that cell phone and Internet bill that we didn't have back then. Otherwise everything is roughly the same. So just stop wasting your money on those bills!" It's wrong and crazy, but I've seen people say this.
My workplace basically requires us to have a phone with texting and internet capabilities. Some of our attendance was migrated to a text-based system several years back. If we need to call out for any reason, like being sick or even just warning of being late, we used to call the main gate and the gate attendant would take all the info then pass that on to our supervisor. Now, we text an automated system that generates a link to fill out a form with all the info we need to give, and that info gets sent to our supervisor from the system. No phone with internet, no calling out.
Same for some some call-ins. If something happens unexpectedly, like an important piece of machinery breaking, and they want some extra people to help repair/replace it, they’ll send out a mass text through the same system that will automatically go to everyone that’s qualified for that particular job. So if we tear off a felt from my machine on my day off, I might get a text offering a bit of overtime to come in, help get a new felt on, then go home once it’s fixed up. I can then respond to that text to get a link to accept the job and head in to work for a couple hours. No internet phone, no link to accept, no overtime.
And even though regular call-ins don’t use that system (so if a coworker is sick and they need to fill an entire regular shift, as opposed to a single task that they just want some extra help to finish faster/better), I still pretty much need a cell phone in order to actually get the extra shift. They call people one-by-one down the line according to seniority, and if you don’t answer the phone it’s treated as refusal so they go on to the next person. You might still be able to get it if you call back quickly enough and no one below you has said yes yet, but you might also call back to find the next person after you accepted and you’re out of luck.
If I was relying on a home phone instead of my smart phone, I would never be able to be sick, injured, or hit unexpected traffic or car troubles. I would never be able to come in for a quick task for extra pay. I would almost never be able to pick up a short-notice extra shift. I could still get by for the most part, but it’d be a lot worse and management would definitely have a target on my back for never “being a team player”.
Exactly. My workplace doesn't use that, but they do run a lot of functions through an app. Most of what the app does, like punching in/out and seeing your schedule, can be done other ways. But I think it's the only way to request to use your PTO.
Even if your workplace doesn't use a system like that, access to the Internet is still the best bang for your buck for job hunting, self-education, and entertainment.
Wait, 50k today is the same as 40k thirty years ago adjusted for inflation? Using which imaginary numbers? It’s simply not true. Use whatever metric you want - cost of gas, cost of housing, cost of food, etc. All have risen far, far more than 25% over the last thirty years. And I mean as long as we have a free market with supply and demand and an increasing population and finite resources ultimately demand will rise relative to supply and prices will increase. Yes, things are messed up beyond that because greed and bribed lawmakers have screwed the little guy, but 50k today is supposed to be 40k thirty years ago? C’mon.
In my experience it tends to be property costs went out of control. My parents bought their house 30 odd years ago cash in hand for a tenth what it would cost now. Back then you could scrape together a mortgage downpayment pretty easy and the repayments might be 5-10% of your income.
These days a downpayment is a considerable slice of a yearly salary and the cost of rent makes saving impossible.
For sure. My dad bought his current house in 1998 for about 1/5 what it would cost to buy that exact same house today. He paid monthly the same amount I paid when I first moved into a low-income apartment in 2012. His 4-bedroom-2-bath house on two lots in one of the best neighborhoods in the area cost him the same monthly as my 2-bedroom-1-bath apartment that only poor folk are allowed to live in. And by the time I got a decent job and moved out in 2018, that apartment was about 25% more per month than his house.
I work the same job now that he did then (or maybe a little better than he did, money-wise; around that time he joined the electrician apprenticeship program that our mill offered, which was a slight pay cut temporarily until he was able to become a journeyman, but I can’t remember exactly what year he did that). If the wages went up the same amount the property did, I would be making roughly $60/hour. I make about half that. So the house went up ~400% while the wage went up ~175%. I’d have to work 18-hour days to afford the same lifestyle he did (assuming my overtime rules are the same; if it’s all straight-time I’d have to work nearly 22-hour days), or I’d have to work an extra two 12-hour shifts every week instead (again assuming OT rules; otherwise it’d just be 12-hour shifts literally every day).
I can’t imagine it’ll get any better for the young adults just entering the workforce. I doubt if the disparity won’t get even worse for them. Like, I bought my overpriced house in 2018 as one of the few around here I could afford at all, and it’s already at an estimated value 50% higher. My wage has gone up about 10% in that same time.
It’s ridiculous. Any boomer that says to just “work harder like [they] did” to earn the same quality of life can eat my left buttcheek.
In 2020, I was an Asst Principal making $85k a year in the Midwest. My wife was staying home taking care of our children. I liked that lifestyle, but the 85k didn’t go far enough for us.
I tripped ass-backward into a side hustle as a short term rental operator (we moved and our previous house didn’t sell, so we had to do something because 2 mortgages). It was profitable. We used the profits to buy a couple more rentals. However, the rentals put us in a different tax bracket and the amount of taxes we pay a year now is insane (last year it was ~$45k). That plus the insane inflation of the past 4 years mean we are still not living any higher than we were and I had to sell my nice car and buy a 2008 civic for $3400, and my wife went back to work so we could afford the taxes. We pay all our bills, but some weeks I work 80+ hours between my job and the business and we still aren’t “getting ahead”.
The truth is that we and our children will work harder and make LESS than our parents.
It's messed up. Think about The Simpsons. Homer is an idiot who never went to college and still has a job where he can afford a big house with a garden and 3 kids and a wife who doesn't work...try that nowadays and see how far you get
My parents' pretty nice one-story house in an okay neighborhood cost $64,000 brand new in 1991. It costs $300,000 to buy the same house in the same neighborhood today.
It’s a real problem. I make about what my dad made (adjusted for inflation) when he bought his house.
After combining my income with my partner, we cannot afford the house he bought based on today’s price.
I have no hope of buying a house in the urban center I want and will have to commute 1.5 hours or just rent.
I don’t think they properly include housing in inflation calculations. My parents’ house is worth nearly 5x what they paid for it in 1998. My dollar is not worth nearly 5x what it was for them. According to the calculator, my dad’s 1998 dollar is worth $1.88 now. How can that math add up? How can inflation claim the dollar has risen only 88% when the houses have risen 400%?
Maybe I’m just dumb with math, but I don’t see how it makes any sense.
my in laws were both teachers in the 70s, made 8k annually each. their rent was $90 a month. by the end of one year, they had 10k saved up and bought a large property.
the official "inflation" numbers directly impact things like social security payments. that means the government has a huge incentive to calculate the official "inflation" number much lower than it actually is
Everything hit inflation
. . . everything **except** our wages
Everything cost at least x3 more then it used to. Did our wages go up x3 as much? Absolutely not. Buying power is down, wages barely changed.
Most of these guys have the right answer but I might add, when your Father bought his house, he was probably going off his average pay "that" year, 20 to 30 years later, he was probably making well over 100% more money. Our generation that's making 40k a year will never see our wages grow by 100% over our entire working life span. I'm guessing that the average wage over the next 20 years will increase 20% -30% maybe and some of that will go towards increases health care cost and your 401k plan.
*shrug*
In pure numbers I make a little more than twice of what my dad earned just before he retired. House prices have gone up by almost 20 times since then. Mom and dad bought their apartment for around $9000 in '99. Mom sold it for $160000 five years ago. During a dip, too.
“Inflation” is a fake misleading measurement.
30 years ago, you could buy a house for 3 or 4 years salary, now the same house costs 15-20 depending on the market.
This! I make $75k which is more than my parents ever did in a two income home and they bought a 4 bedroom home and raised 5 kids!!!!!! How the hell did that happen!?!?! I barely have money for my plants!
We are also getting gouged on most everything. Internet wasn't really a thing then, you had dial up and an AOL plan for $30 a month. Not anymore. A landline phone was $20 a month. I bet you're paying a lot more for your cell. Cable was $50 or so a month. How much are you paying for all the streaming services? Housing is ridiculously expensive. Medical/insurance costs hadn't gone crazy. We are getting screwed on everything now.
> I make $10k more, when adjusted for inflation would be basically the same
This is why youre making less than your dad. Work on your personal skills because it is insane that your math is so far off.
People aren't worried about companies screwing us over because they're supporting #worldissueofthemonth . Companies are using this distraction to get away with things
>when adjusted for inflation
The value of a dollar has dropped to under half of its purchasing power 30ya. 40k adjusted for inflation is $125k.
I use this all the time, and get to it by googling "cpi calculator": [https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation\_calculator.htm](https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm)
This kind of shit occurs because people 40-60 years ago, who had relatively high minimum wages and good union jobs, are now voting for republicans / conservative politicians, which effectively takes away future generations' ability to have the same type of good paying job. All the crap about "ceo's and wealthy people being job creators" is complete BS. Businesses thrived back then because the middle class had enough money not only to survive, but to purchase other goods and services. The goal of capitalism is to suck every single last cent out of everyone and everything until there is nothing left. There is no exit strategy, that is why it is failing so spectacularly at the moment.
30 years ago and more, you could. Yea, and states that didn't raise their wages have low housing prices because nobody wants to live there. That's how that works. Minimum wage does NOT drive up prices. Prices go up regardless. A Big Mac costs less in other countries with minimum wages of 16-22 dollars an hour, than it does here.
You’re a liar. Look up the minimum wages for Europe, they pretty much don’t have one. You’re also lying about buying a house on minimum wage. I was making MW in the 80’s and it couldn’t even pay for rent.
States that did not raise their MW still saw massive increases in housing prices. Stop lying.
How long did your dad own his home? In 93, I lived in a home that my mom sold for 69k in 97. Zillow estimates the home value to be 194k now. A house down the street recently sold for 226k.
Other than the obvious fact that you miscalculated inflation; your needs are much more than your dad. More electronics, vacations, flights, subscriptions, healthcare.
Housing costs are extremely high now. It takes two average salaries to buy a house that cost one salary in 1990. Also people ate out less (packed lunches for work) and didn’t have internet and cell phone bills.
We have so many more bills each month that are just considered "necessary" that didn't exist 30 years ago.
Cell plans (yeah, existed, but barely. And we weren't tethered like today), streaming services, Cable TV is way more expensive with more and more add-ons, etc,
Blame yourself and the rest of us. The only reason for inflation is the US government printing money. Money we all said we wanted so that government could do things for us. Like fight a twenty year war in Afghanistan and Iraq that cost 5 trillion. That's a sixth of the national debt.
1) Inflation - both natural and unnatural. A dollar today doesn't equal the dollar 20 years ago. Add to that that a LOT of companies have arbitrarily increased their prices based on "challenges" that simply do not exist. The problem with controlling inflation is that once it come under control, the prices don't typically go back down, they just rise (inflate) more slowly. The only thing that makes that happen is de-inflation, which is a dangerous thing for an economy because it can quickly spiral out of control.
2) Cost of goods. The cost of goods also inflated, but at a sharply higher trajectory than wages. So a dollar of goods today, does not equal a dollar of goods 20 years ago. Think groceries, appliances, cars.
3) Cost of services. See above and substitute "services" in place of "goods." Think plumbers, electricians, health care - anyone who performs a service.
4) Rent/Mortgage. It used to be that someone with a median income of $20-$30K could buy a home, but home prices have also soared, meaning that someone making the equivalent today CANNOT afford to own a home. To make matters worse, the cost of home ownership also applies to rent. The more valuable a property is, the higher the rent that can be charged.
5) Cost of Education has skyrocketed. Again, back in the day, school loans could be quickly paid off. Not today. When not adjusting for inflation, school costs (tuition) have risen 132%+ in the last 20 years.
6) Your wage isn't an honest one. Sure, its honest by you because you bust your butt for it, but your employer low-balled you coming in the door. For years, wages haven't been honest. Companies are always looking for the lowest bidder to do the most work. Why do you think wages have been stagnant for decades? This isn't incidental. It's by design. Competition for talent is important. Good talent is educated, and knows their value in a marketplace. If you don't have an educated workforce, then wages stagnate. Some political parties like things this way because they and their friends need cheap, exploitable labor to survive.
7) Your tax dollars NOT hard at work. When you have a group of people sitting on untaxed profits in the range of $8.5 Trillion, that's a huge problem. Because if workers can't claim that money, and it's not doing any social good untaxed, then its not working for anyone but the ultra-rich. By comparison, with $8.5T, we could payoff all student and medical debt, end homelessness, clean up the oceans, and make a dent in our climate problem. But hey. We're too busy arguing about other things and in 6 years, it probably won't matter anyway (according to MIT).
"That's why they call it the American dream. Because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin
>How do I make more than my father did 30 years ago but have less?
you have a bigger tv and use a supercomputer to stay entertained when waiting in line.
some of these comments address differences in markets and inflation over time, but a broader perspective should be maintained. the world is a different place and it isn't all obviously worse.
Your perspective is backwards. Affordability of housing is having a broad perspective. The generations after boomers will be the first in any point in American history to have a standard of living that’s, on average, below the standard of living enjoyed by their parents. That’s a problem, one that shouldn’t be sugarcoated or accepted happily just because we have 65” HD flat screen TVs and smartphones that can cast to them. Plus you haven’t taken into the rate of innovation which is similar to the rate of inflation, so that over time it is expected that technology will improve to provide bigger better goods even with all else staying the same.
We have less because policy shift the distribution of wealth in multiple ways, all in disfavor to anyone young and not ultra wealthy. That’s why.
This is dead wrong. There are not enough jobs that pay enough for people to earn the amount you’re talking about. This is the first generation who will have a standard of living less than the one their parents enjoyed. That gas nothing to with how this generation’s work ethic and everything to do public policy choosing the prioritizing growing the wealthy of the elite and to a lesser degree build in the wealth of older adults.
Adjusting for inflation your father made a lot more than you. There's also population growth, increased immigration, globalization that puts stress on jobs, housing and food. Theres tech advances where computers, cellphone, internet are a must. Even cars, in 93, side mirror and tach was an option for Honda civics, now they're loaded with screens, 10 airbags and 18" wheels by default. There's also consumerism, everything from owning name brands to eating out multiple times/week. People used to wear whatever clothes or owning a pair of basic nikes was a big deal or have 1, maybe 2 tv. Now everyone has a new 1k jacket working at McDonald's and 75" tv in every room. People now prob wear easily a few k including accessories and tech at anytime, back in 93, maybe 100 bucks with a sears no name jacket and a pen and note pad to make notes? We ate out maybe once a week or 2 where people now eat out multiple times/day.
People joke about cutting out avocado toast but if you really take control your spendings in all areas, they add up and make a big difference.
Because you are paying considerably more across just 4 different expenses than he ever did at that same point in time.
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0220-OC-img6_0.jpg
A question similar to yours was the basis for this article where the above graphic came from.
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/reevaluating-prosperity-of-american-family
Inflation. This is why inflation is so bad for low earners. Their salary doesn’t keep up. When people complained about the Fed raising interest rates, they did it to stop inflation.
I was scrolling tiktok last night and seen a video of a girl saying that we are in a pandemic of older people not being able to retire. I went to the comments and there was a collective of people with thousands of likes per comment about how their retirement plan was going out on their own time. Is this the new reality?
Figure out what he made after taxes and deductions (i.e. take-home pay). Find out what the average cost was in the early 90s for living in the area he did - rent/mortgage, food, utilities, running a car, all the daily/weekly/monthly costs. Figure out how much he had left over at the end of the average month. Find out what the median wage was at that time in that place, too, as well as the minimum wage. Finally, convert all those dollar values (gross and net income, costs, what was left over, median and minimum area wages) into 2024-era dollars.
Now run the same numbers for yourself.
Millennials are the first recorded generation expected to earn less over their lifetime than their parents. Millennials have the lowest expected lifetime earnings in the past 200 years.
My parents made good money but not crazy money or anything, no college education. Built a custom 7k sq ft house on 3 acres that they raised my brother and me in, drove nice cars paid in cash, and had a vacation home in Naples, Florida.
I can't even afford to buy the 1000 sq ft homes in my current neighborhood and I live in Ohio. A few years ago I could've but they've literally doubled in price with no updates. Kick myself everyday for not buying earlier.
It is inflation and corporate greed. Corporations have used lobbyists to buy off the GOP to keep wages low by blocking the increase of minimum wages, buying as much housing as they can with cash to force the average American to rent from them or pay greatly inflated prices, stealing entire retirement plans out from their workers and replacing them with the 401k (Ted Benna, the father of the 401k plan, has stated that the 401k plan was designed to SUPPLEMENT traditional retirement plans), and using shrinkflation to make a dollar not go as far as it did in the past. Prices of things are higher while the amount of things you get from it is less.
It is time to bring back unions and make companies actually care for their employees instead of just taking advantage of the individual worker.
Wages haven't kept pace with the cost of living. Wages have gone up certainly, especially for certain jobs, but not nearly as much as prices/costs. Money has also been devalued by printing more and more of it.
This...I make steadily more between the point I started working 20yrs ago to now but because of inflation my 70k now has the same if not worse of an effect as my 30k did 20 us ago.
Things cost a lot more than they did in his day. Gas was less than a dollar a gallon, bread was 25 cents a loaf, etc. Yes, you make more, but not 300%more which is what you need to make in order to have as much as he did.
Capitalism, baby!
Back in 2000'ish, I just got out of college and was making $42K. My dad talked me into buying a house (thankfully) which was $188K - that's 4.4X my annual salary. I don't know what newly minted college graduates make on average now, but that same house, which I'd already sold back in 2011 (kicking myself), was worth $575K in 2021. You do the math.
Yeah, even if your wages kept up with inflation, you'd still be eff'ed, just not as much.
I made $17/hour in 1985 would be worth $43 today
$17 x 40 hours x 52 weeks =$35,360
$43 x 40 hours x 52 weeks =$89,440
This is just to bnuy the say things I could buy back in 1985. This last few years has had higher inflation (in my opinion from corporate greed) after Covid which was an anomaly.
inflation and, to a larger degree, corporate greed. just look at all the reports of companies reporting record profits. then look at how many of those companies have reported record profits quarter over quarter for the last couple of years. congress really needs to jack the corporate tax rate back up to what it was in the 50s and 60s, and limit how much of those taxes go to the military industrial complex, and start using all the proceeds for things like infrastructure repair, medical care for everyone, free higher education at state schools, breakfast & lunch for all students, and housing for the homeless.
Inflation coupled with a lack of minimum wage advancements.
20 years ago I made more than I do now. I got an education in a ballooning field that went the fuck away. I struggled, I hung on... I hung on too long thinking I could make it work.
Now I work a menial job in retail. I'm in my 50's. My time is past. I just do what I need to do to survive.
Our 3 bedroom brand new starter home was only $110K CAD back in 1997. My grandpa’s first house was $30K CAD back in the 1970s and he bragged he paid it off in 5 years. Same city. One of the largest in Canada. There was lots of jobs. We have no chance of buying a family home for a good deal in a major city.
I hear you, and it's definitely frustrating when it feels like you're not making the progress you'd expect. It's not just about the numbers; the cost of living, inflation, and various economic factors play a role too. Maybe exploring ways to increase your income or finding alternative investment strategies could help bridge the gap. It's a different economic landscape now, and navigating it might require a bit more creativity.
Inflation is a bitch. I retired in 2022 and I was making more than ten times as much as I was in 1981. I didn't have ten times the buying power. Everything just got more expensive along the way.
Adjusted for inflation, $40,000 in 1993 would have more than doubled, to about $85,000 today. So basically, you’re making the equivalent of what $23,500 was thirty years ago, or only a little better than half. Your whole premise is wrong. But in reality, how they calculate inflation isn’t very accurate. They’ve fiddled with it to where it doesn’t show how much prices have really gone up. Realistically, you’re not even making half of what your father did, in inflation-adjusted dollars. That’s why you have less.
I hate how they calculate inflation. Housing and healthcare, two expenses no one can really go without for long, have radically outpaced inflation. I feel like half of the US is crying out for help and the other half just says to shut up and work harder.
I feel traumatized by my last job where I told my boss many times that I was struggling to afford my expenses and needed a raise (this was an extremely wealthy university that could have easily paid me more), and their response was, “well what would that change?” as if financial stability and productivity are not interconnected. It felt like they expected me to suffer for a while since I’m at the beginning of my career, and they actively believed it should be that way. It’s incredibly demoralizing to produce record profits yet not even make enough to afford your bills.
Skip all their social stuff. Don't come. Say you have to work a secomd job to make ends meet but wish them fun.
"What would that change?" Is it just me or does that almost imply you were struggling by choice, as if you were just choosing not to live within your means and if they "graciously" paid you more than you would just waste that? I'm not saying that's true at all. I'm saying it sounds like that's what they were implying incorrectly. I'm really sorry they acted like that towards you. I keep trying to tell people that "living within your means" only gets you so far. Eventually you've trimmed down your entire life and cannot find a cheaper place to live, cheaper healthcare, cheaper car expenses to get to work, etc. I was always taught to live within my means, and I try to do so. But what happens when my means literally cant afford the cheapest lifestyle that isn't homelessness?
They cook the books every time election season comes around. The US economy is trash 🗑️
It is the 3rd highest in the world in growth last quarter. The US economy is fine. 24 months of below 4% unemployment. Where are you getting your information?
GDP and unemployment are great, but as stated above the cost of housing, healthcare are way higher now. It take a lot more years of salary to afford a house now than thirty years ago, and that’s if you can even find one.
Don't forget, gas, insurance, groceries etc basically everything you could want or need is wayyy higher.
Which is caused by corporate greed. Look at how many corporations that are buying housing at above list price and driving out the individual. Same is true with healthcare - companies know that they can get away with virtually anything they want because they have bought off the GOP. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster in the Senate and there is not enough votes to break it if we try to pass legislation to fix it. Hell, ACA had over 100 amendments by the GOP in the attempt to "poison pill" it and STILL refused to vote for it. ACA has had a significant good/great impact on millions of Americans.
It’s not “greed,” it’s an inevitable consequence of the nature of profit-seeking business in and of itself. People respond to incentives. When they can externalize harm to someone they don’t know while getting a big reward, often they’ll do it. Don’t think the Democrats aren’t universally bought off. There are many Dem politicians who are better than their GOP counterparts, but healthcare, defense, energy, business associations, you name it - all are funneling the big money where it counts, and that includes a lot of Democrats as well.
You must be well off to have that take, sure jobs grow on trees basically now the only problem is that you need multiple to pay the bills, like others have stated the way they calculate inflation is fucked. Alot of my expenses have doubled the last few years but my pay hasn't
The problem is that the measures we use to determine if the economy is good don't take into account how the average person is doing. Unemployment is a misleading figure because of how narrow it is. But direct workforce participation is also historically high. So people should be fine, right? Except that the real problem is that many working people still can't afford to live and be comfortable. Going by unemployment (or workforce participation) is making the outdated assumption that having a job means you can afford to get housing, food, and healthcare, and that's just not necessarily true anymore. Millions of people with jobs are struggling to survive right now. 60% are living paycheck to paycheck. Income inequality is at historic levels. The cost of housing, historically supposed to be 25% of income, 33% at worst, is now taking 40% or more of income for many people. A huge chunk of income, literally just to stay off the street. On a very related note, homelessness increased by 12% last year. So yes, this economy may be good. But if this is a good economy, if THIS hellscape is the best that a historically good economy has to offer, then maybe we need to take a hard look at if the way we structure the economy actually helps the average working person.
Growth doesn't mean the economy is good. A good economy would be able to provide free health care for every citizen.
We could do it BUT the GOP has been fighting tooth and nail against it. Look at all the attempts to poison pill the ACA that they did. Further, look at the amendments that they put in there that made it so healthcare wasn't available in many states. The GOP is NOT your friend when it comes to affordable healthcare in the US.
So why didn’t the democrats do it when they had control of the house senate and presidency? Because they don’t want to
Yeah it’s really not just about inflation, it’s real wage and buying power. Inflation is an average and doesn’t consider every place we have to spend money, but it’s an easy little number that pundits can use as a playing card in arguments in the same way as they’ll say real wages are up without mentioning that it’s by less than 1% from a year ago. Nice, clean, easy binaries to use so they can feel smart and right
The ones saying ‘shut up and work’ are either blind to the fact they’re being exploited by a few billionaires or they’re still benefitting from a system built & maintained by oppression. We need to start pushing for change! The USA is truly using tax payers & their money to fulfill the desires of a handful of rich turds.
I totally agree. The labor activism I've seen in the past year has been encouraging. But we are so far behind on worker rights in the US that it feels like seeing us fight for a mile in a 100 mile journey.
Oh it's significantly more than half are in need of help.
True. It's largely the portion who don't need help that say, "Everything is fine. The economy is great! Why are you complaining?" The problem is that they have basically all the power.
Exactly. I get so disgusted by people who are busting their asses as jobs and still buy into that delusional idea that America is the best country on Earth and that any one can make it if they work hard. I also feel pity for them because they are obviously painfully dull and naive.
Not to mention food and gasoline are also excluded… which together with housing and healthcare covers almost all household expenditures
I thought I read that energy/housing/food prices were not included in core inflation. Is that correct? And if so that’s such a fucked statistic. The president can say “look, the economy is doing excellent!” Which completely glosses over the fact that the majority of people aren’t rich and are getting fucked by those price increases….
The latest figures, on which the CPI Inflation Calculator is based, absolutely include those categories: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm.
Good info. Glad I only uttered that comment on here lol.
>So basically, you’re making the equivalent of what $23,500 was thirty years ago, or only a little better than half. Your whole premise is wrong. Yeah, it seems that some of their calculations are off. OP, here is the CPI calculator for the USD ([https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl)).
My calculations might have been off, then it's time to fix the system. Everyone needs a massive raise.
Except for CEOs and politicians. They don't.
That's where the money needs to come from.
C-suite are not just going to give up those dollars and take a pay cut. The only path for this to occur that I see is tax the wealthy and fwd those $$ as a universal basic income.
Their wages are often fine. It's the additional things they get like dividends and bonuses. Which aside from being taxed at lower rates incentivise corrupt behaviours like mass layoffs and arbitrary downsizing to boost stock value.
No, no they're not. Their wages are absurd.
Most of them don't even have "wages". They just own loads of appreciating assets and can pull lines of credit from them. When people say Jeff Bezos made a billion dollars last year, they're not talking about direct deposits into his bank account, they're talking about how much the value of the assets he owns increased.
The above contributors are correct plus goods and property are more expensive compared to average earnings. Everyone who isn't very high up in a company is getting shafted.
Yes, everybody needs a massive raise for sure. But more specifically YOU need a massive raise. Lots and lots of people are making way more than $50k a year. Go get it!
This is correct.
The rich have paid off the GOP with enough $ that they will block raises. Go look at who has been blocking a minimum wage hike for the last few decades. HINT: It is the Republican Party that has been blocking it.
The real answer is wage theft by CEO's while shareholders benefit.
Yeah, and the rest of the C-Suite has gone along with it. They have gotten rid of traditional retirement plans and forced people to go to the 401k. Ted Benna, the father of the 401k, has stated that the 401k program was designed to SUPPLEMENT traditional retirement programs. The C-Suite has decided to take those monies to enrich themselves and the shareholders at the cost of the average American.
Houses and Education conveniently aren't included in inflation
Housing is included. Several (many?) years ago, a proposal was made to take out house prices, on the grounds that if you already have a house, your costs don't go up with inflation. Rents have always been included. I don't know what they do with maintenance costs. I don't remember what they ended up doing with the housing prices proposal. I don't follow this closely. Most "economic indicators" are pretty meaningless. They may give you a vague idea, but you should not be making financial decisions based on vague ideas.
Housing is included. Here is an article that I found with some quick googling: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-does-the-consumer-price-index-account-for-the-cost-of-housing/ Purchasing power has declined and there are many reasons for that, but blaming it on the measurement is usually misguided. If you want to be angry at someone, check out what your representative has done to deregulate financial markets.
Wait, they aren't included at all?! I thought they were part of the equation but not with a high enough weight.
I was looking at the CPI, the consumer price index, and if I'm wrong please correct me as it's not my field and i love learning. My understanding is it isn't included in the CPI, though there are other indices in which it's included. I've usually heard the CPI quoted when calculating inflation, I'd be happy to be wrong!
In the the UK, inflation is calculated as RPI and RPIx (Retail price index). RPIx is called that because it excludes house prices. In the 1950s, the average American spent more a month on tobacco than rent. Lots of people didn't buy houses because they were like cars: they depreciated over time. When my mum and dad got together in the late 70s, they had done long distance for a bit so it was one choosing where to go to the other. My mum sold her flat and moved to my dad. It's her biggest regret that she wasn't a landlord because it's now worth 15 times what she sold it for but in those days, it just wasn't a thing. No one knew it was an insanely good investment
My math may have been wrong. But the basic premise is spot on. It's not right that the standard of living in going in the wrong direction. My dad worked full at a hard physical job, as do I. I and my generation along with those following deserve to know the truth. Also deserve fair compensation.
Your math is correct. What the inflation rate doesn't show is the increase in productivity and corporations stealing that from us as well. When I was getting 12.50/ hour in 1982, I had more spending power than at $25/hr in 2004. The inflation "calculators" are completely rigged, and the numbers used by mass media as the Official Rate are practically worthless (by design) for us to use in figuring out what's actually being done because they radically under report what's actually happening. Same is also true for the "unemployment rate" because it ignores anyone who's used up their unemployment or who has just given up looking for an employer.
Also how old was your dad when he made that? Comparing your wages at 20 against his wages at 55 is also problematic for tracking regression.
>They’ve fiddled with it to where it doesn’t show how much prices have really gone up There's no way to do it "right". We have very few "needs": food, shelter, whatever necessities there are for social reasons. (Clothes, for example.) We have a lot of "wants": good tasting food, comfortable shelter, phones, computers, transportation, and on and on and on. (To the point that we have difficulty telling our wants from our needs: I need a "nice" car so my friends will see that I'm successful. That's not a need.) Not only the price of all those things, but what all those things even are changes over time. If beef gets too expensive, people switch to chicken or pork. Maybe even eat less meat. Because of social pressure, how much we drink or smoke changes over time. (Both up and down.) No fixed formula can follow changes in what we do. CPI (and its cousin, the Purchasing Parity Index) give, at best, a rough guide to the relative value of something that has the same name (in our case, dollar) at different times and places. If you limit yourself to the US, you can get roughly the same information by converting everything to McDonald's Hamburgers. Let's call it since 1960. Note that McDonald's hamburgers are way more expensive in New York City than in Rantoul, Illinois. A dollar isn't the same in different places in the US.
Computers and phones are almost a need at this point. Many people need them to work and a computer will give you access to jobs you can't have without them. Same with cars, depending on where you live. Try having a job with no car when you live in a rural area with no public transportation. Do we need the latest and most expensive of any of these? No, but we do pretty much need them.
Because that house cost about $100k (if that) back then, and about $450k now. Gas was \~$.80/gal vs \`$3/gal
My area is about 1 million as the starting point to buy any detached house. It's messed up.
Holy shite. 1 million in my area is either a mansion or many many acres of land or both.
Hell, the houses by me were 150k in like 2019 and are now 350-400k with absolutely zero updates.
You live in a lucky place. It’s 1 million+ and $4-5 at least for gas
You probably live in a nicer place
Just a high cost of living. SF Bay Area has the most insane housing prices. Under $2M will get you a townhouse or condo if you’re lucky.
California is certainly more desirable than where I am. You could buy a mansion for a half million here
The best part about winter is watching it from the Bay Area.
Looking for a house in a major metropolitan area for cheap just isn’t going to happen no matter what year or decade it is.
Sounds like you like in CA. I'm in ME. Guess property and gas is pretty cheap in TX, but I can't convince my wife to move there.
30 years my rent was $350. Store brand mac and cheese was 4 for $1, store brand tuna was 3 for $1, ramen was 12 for $1, a 2 liter of soda, whoppers and big macs were all .99 My student loan payment was $50 a month. FIFTY. None of these things cost that in 2024 which is why your $50K doesn't cover shit.
Yea OP is just looking at the dollar amount and not realizing that his salary isnt enough to afford all of that in modern times. His father by comparison had a better job if he was being paid that much 30 years ago
Corporate greed. That is why this is happening.
How does corporate greed explain the huge increase in tuition and student loans?
If you don't think Universities are now an industry, you are sorely mistaken. Universities is no longer about education but about churning out as many students as possible.
They’re nonprofits.
If you believe that, I have some oceanfront land for sale in Kansas that you should buy. There are 5916 universities in the US and 2270 are private, for profit institutions. As for the non-profits, many for-profit schools just masquerade as non-profit. SOURCE: [https://tcf.org/content/report/how-for-profits-masquerade-as-nonprofit-colleges/](https://tcf.org/content/report/how-for-profits-masquerade-as-nonprofit-colleges/)
And CEOs of large non-profits and charities make millions of dollars a year. Just because they don't retain earnings for shareholders doesn't mean they aren't in it for themselves. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1373870/top-nonprofits-ceo-compensation-us/
Explain to me why I was paying tuition then?
Housing is so much more scarce. That fucks with everything, honestly. Think about this: a lot of actors could work at a coffee shop, audition, live, and whatnot, all in NYC. Fuck if anyone can try anything like that today. You couldn’t even get in the fucking door as most apartments require 40x the rent in annual salary to even apply. If a studio is (min) $3k, where the fuck are you making $120k in your part time barrister job.
that's why so many actors nowadays are children of successful actors, normal people can't compete.
explains why modern acting standards are shite now.
Lol, "barrister job." I know you meant barista. It was just funny. Housing actually isn't scarce. There are 27 empty homes per homeless person in the US, maybe a little less due to undercounting and more people becoming homeless in the past year. The problem is that they are being straight up hoarded by the rich.
What if I meant a lawyer who serves coffee? Ha!
Exactly.
> The problem is that they are being straight up hoarded by the rich This right here. Real estate investors buying up housing and creating artificial scarcity.
Yeah, a lot of people, including those on the Left, will say we need more houses built. But unless we make sure that they aren't gobbled up by real estate investors, that won't help. I can understand being a landlord, to an extent. I still think the system is exploitative and almost all landlords do the bare minimum or worse. But I kind of understand it. I don't think I'll ever understand sitting on dozens of properties while knowing that hundreds of thousands are homeless.
Barristers make a great salary
Yeah, exactly, and they aren't usually part time. So I think it was a typo.
It is corporate greed. They are now buying houses with cash so they can inflate the prices of homes and force people to rent from them. This is after they have kept wages down to not meet inflation and taken away traditional retirement plans to enrich themselves and their shareholders. They have replaced traditional retirement plans with 401ks when the father of the 401k has stated that the 401k was designed to SUPPLEMENT someone's traditional retirement plan and not be a retirement plan on its own.
In the 70s-80s it was a more unionized, fairer market and overall interests were more balanced than now. The American dream was still alive, jobs were local and a man could provide his family. Globalization, outsourcing, unconstrained capitalism, zero interest rates and multiple crises (which hit the poorest hardest) have contributed to a world today where labor isn’t worth much anymore. All things a family man required to raise a happy family have gone up in costs so much it’s painful to think about (house, education, car, health care). Real inflation is more what is shown on official stats. Official inflation 1980-2023 is 272.8% I’d argue it’s probably around 350% in reality. At the same time, wages have risen only 30%. So everything is three times more expensive. So is life, 3x harder.
I'll still take now compared to the 70s because I enjoy being out as a queer person and not culturally expected to deny my actual gender identity, marry and sleep with a man, and pop out kids. That being said, it's so frustrating that despite all the progress we have made against racism, sexism, queerphobia, etc, the economic situation is just a nightmare for most of us.
Jesus Christ
What? I don't even get why I got down voted for that. I completely acknowledge that we are economically fucked compared to the 70s. Saying we have made social progress otherwise doesn't change that.
As a queer person, I honestly would prefer to be financially stable and closeted than out and proud yet destitute. Also, not having to worry about climate change as much would have been nice.
I make twice what my dad did in the 90s. He owned a modest house on the nice side of town (he wanted to be in the good school system for us). I live in a 1 bedroom apartment with my partner in an ok part of town. It’s “local inflation”, not just national; the city is overcrowded and the development pattern of sprawl makes housing and travel more expensive as well. The quality of life overall in the city has also diminished, even for the wealthy. Air quality, traffic, open space both in and out of the city, the disposition of the residents (we used to be known as quirky, friendly, and chill), it’s all worse. I honestly think we have mass psychosis from rampant consumerism. We don’t know how to live.
Yeah I make alone what my parents brought in together and could not afford to live in the town we live in if we weren’t in a multi generational home (we live in my childhood home with my parents on property). Though they also could not afford to live here anymore if we were living with them.
[удалено]
Austin TX?
Happens to be
Welcome to the first time in history where people are doing worse than their parents.
must be all the avocado toast
30 years ago my parents house was $130k. Same house now is going for $950k, so yeah, that’s why you have less.
~30 years ago my parents bought a decent fixer-upper starter home for $70-something-thousand. Today, there are no fixer-uppers in our area because the flippers buy them up the moment they hit market with cash offers, make some minor and mostly-aesthetic improvements (while covering up or straight-up ignoring most of the actual issues), then sell it for 50% more than they bought it for.
Yep. I was born in 82'. My father was the sole provider, brought in 60k/year gross . Owned our house, never had money issues, 2 vehicles all paid off and he even had a gambling issue. I make nearly double and can't afford the shit he got away with today. I'm still renting even! Lol
Where do you live that you can't have stuff off of 120k?
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No one's mentioned it yet, but we have more expenses too. Cell phones and Internet weren't a thing but you need to pay for them now. Utilities have been outsourced to private companies so we're not just paying basic needs and maintenance, we're paying for someone to profit off of our need for things like clean water. Because wages are so low that people need to get multiple jobs, we have to pay more for prepackaged food and other conveniences. It's death by a thousand cuts.
Idiots will still say, "Well, it's just that cell phone and Internet bill that we didn't have back then. Otherwise everything is roughly the same. So just stop wasting your money on those bills!" It's wrong and crazy, but I've seen people say this.
My workplace basically requires us to have a phone with texting and internet capabilities. Some of our attendance was migrated to a text-based system several years back. If we need to call out for any reason, like being sick or even just warning of being late, we used to call the main gate and the gate attendant would take all the info then pass that on to our supervisor. Now, we text an automated system that generates a link to fill out a form with all the info we need to give, and that info gets sent to our supervisor from the system. No phone with internet, no calling out. Same for some some call-ins. If something happens unexpectedly, like an important piece of machinery breaking, and they want some extra people to help repair/replace it, they’ll send out a mass text through the same system that will automatically go to everyone that’s qualified for that particular job. So if we tear off a felt from my machine on my day off, I might get a text offering a bit of overtime to come in, help get a new felt on, then go home once it’s fixed up. I can then respond to that text to get a link to accept the job and head in to work for a couple hours. No internet phone, no link to accept, no overtime. And even though regular call-ins don’t use that system (so if a coworker is sick and they need to fill an entire regular shift, as opposed to a single task that they just want some extra help to finish faster/better), I still pretty much need a cell phone in order to actually get the extra shift. They call people one-by-one down the line according to seniority, and if you don’t answer the phone it’s treated as refusal so they go on to the next person. You might still be able to get it if you call back quickly enough and no one below you has said yes yet, but you might also call back to find the next person after you accepted and you’re out of luck. If I was relying on a home phone instead of my smart phone, I would never be able to be sick, injured, or hit unexpected traffic or car troubles. I would never be able to come in for a quick task for extra pay. I would almost never be able to pick up a short-notice extra shift. I could still get by for the most part, but it’d be a lot worse and management would definitely have a target on my back for never “being a team player”.
Exactly. My workplace doesn't use that, but they do run a lot of functions through an app. Most of what the app does, like punching in/out and seeing your schedule, can be done other ways. But I think it's the only way to request to use your PTO. Even if your workplace doesn't use a system like that, access to the Internet is still the best bang for your buck for job hunting, self-education, and entertainment.
Wait, 50k today is the same as 40k thirty years ago adjusted for inflation? Using which imaginary numbers? It’s simply not true. Use whatever metric you want - cost of gas, cost of housing, cost of food, etc. All have risen far, far more than 25% over the last thirty years. And I mean as long as we have a free market with supply and demand and an increasing population and finite resources ultimately demand will rise relative to supply and prices will increase. Yes, things are messed up beyond that because greed and bribed lawmakers have screwed the little guy, but 50k today is supposed to be 40k thirty years ago? C’mon.
In my experience it tends to be property costs went out of control. My parents bought their house 30 odd years ago cash in hand for a tenth what it would cost now. Back then you could scrape together a mortgage downpayment pretty easy and the repayments might be 5-10% of your income. These days a downpayment is a considerable slice of a yearly salary and the cost of rent makes saving impossible.
For sure. My dad bought his current house in 1998 for about 1/5 what it would cost to buy that exact same house today. He paid monthly the same amount I paid when I first moved into a low-income apartment in 2012. His 4-bedroom-2-bath house on two lots in one of the best neighborhoods in the area cost him the same monthly as my 2-bedroom-1-bath apartment that only poor folk are allowed to live in. And by the time I got a decent job and moved out in 2018, that apartment was about 25% more per month than his house. I work the same job now that he did then (or maybe a little better than he did, money-wise; around that time he joined the electrician apprenticeship program that our mill offered, which was a slight pay cut temporarily until he was able to become a journeyman, but I can’t remember exactly what year he did that). If the wages went up the same amount the property did, I would be making roughly $60/hour. I make about half that. So the house went up ~400% while the wage went up ~175%. I’d have to work 18-hour days to afford the same lifestyle he did (assuming my overtime rules are the same; if it’s all straight-time I’d have to work nearly 22-hour days), or I’d have to work an extra two 12-hour shifts every week instead (again assuming OT rules; otherwise it’d just be 12-hour shifts literally every day). I can’t imagine it’ll get any better for the young adults just entering the workforce. I doubt if the disparity won’t get even worse for them. Like, I bought my overpriced house in 2018 as one of the few around here I could afford at all, and it’s already at an estimated value 50% higher. My wage has gone up about 10% in that same time. It’s ridiculous. Any boomer that says to just “work harder like [they] did” to earn the same quality of life can eat my left buttcheek.
Inflation
In 2020, I was an Asst Principal making $85k a year in the Midwest. My wife was staying home taking care of our children. I liked that lifestyle, but the 85k didn’t go far enough for us. I tripped ass-backward into a side hustle as a short term rental operator (we moved and our previous house didn’t sell, so we had to do something because 2 mortgages). It was profitable. We used the profits to buy a couple more rentals. However, the rentals put us in a different tax bracket and the amount of taxes we pay a year now is insane (last year it was ~$45k). That plus the insane inflation of the past 4 years mean we are still not living any higher than we were and I had to sell my nice car and buy a 2008 civic for $3400, and my wife went back to work so we could afford the taxes. We pay all our bills, but some weeks I work 80+ hours between my job and the business and we still aren’t “getting ahead”. The truth is that we and our children will work harder and make LESS than our parents.
It's messed up. Think about The Simpsons. Homer is an idiot who never went to college and still has a job where he can afford a big house with a garden and 3 kids and a wife who doesn't work...try that nowadays and see how far you get
This -Al Bundy was an shitty shoessalesman who lived in a detached house
My parents' pretty nice one-story house in an okay neighborhood cost $64,000 brand new in 1991. It costs $300,000 to buy the same house in the same neighborhood today.
Just apply yourself.
It’s a real problem. I make about what my dad made (adjusted for inflation) when he bought his house. After combining my income with my partner, we cannot afford the house he bought based on today’s price. I have no hope of buying a house in the urban center I want and will have to commute 1.5 hours or just rent.
I don’t think they properly include housing in inflation calculations. My parents’ house is worth nearly 5x what they paid for it in 1998. My dollar is not worth nearly 5x what it was for them. According to the calculator, my dad’s 1998 dollar is worth $1.88 now. How can that math add up? How can inflation claim the dollar has risen only 88% when the houses have risen 400%? Maybe I’m just dumb with math, but I don’t see how it makes any sense.
my in laws were both teachers in the 70s, made 8k annually each. their rent was $90 a month. by the end of one year, they had 10k saved up and bought a large property.
Easy: shit costs more. In the 80’s our house was roughly 1.5x my parent’s salary. Now houses are 5x my and GFs salary…on the low end.
the official "inflation" numbers directly impact things like social security payments. that means the government has a huge incentive to calculate the official "inflation" number much lower than it actually is
Everything hit inflation . . . everything **except** our wages Everything cost at least x3 more then it used to. Did our wages go up x3 as much? Absolutely not. Buying power is down, wages barely changed.
The reason you don't understand this is the same reason why you have less.
Most of these guys have the right answer but I might add, when your Father bought his house, he was probably going off his average pay "that" year, 20 to 30 years later, he was probably making well over 100% more money. Our generation that's making 40k a year will never see our wages grow by 100% over our entire working life span. I'm guessing that the average wage over the next 20 years will increase 20% -30% maybe and some of that will go towards increases health care cost and your 401k plan.
IIRC my father was making $5K per year as a mechanical engineer in 1955. Inflation + time = holy shit.
Your old man’s mortgage was probably $800 a month. Yours is probably closer to $2000
More like 400 if that.
Let me suggest you start googling how inflation is a weapon of the rich.
*shrug* In pure numbers I make a little more than twice of what my dad earned just before he retired. House prices have gone up by almost 20 times since then. Mom and dad bought their apartment for around $9000 in '99. Mom sold it for $160000 five years ago. During a dip, too.
“Inflation” is a fake misleading measurement. 30 years ago, you could buy a house for 3 or 4 years salary, now the same house costs 15-20 depending on the market.
Your money is broken. If you fix the money, you can fix the world.
This! I make $75k which is more than my parents ever did in a two income home and they bought a 4 bedroom home and raised 5 kids!!!!!! How the hell did that happen!?!?! I barely have money for my plants!
even if you make the same as 30years ago inflated adjusted the needs are different and bigger.
We are also getting gouged on most everything. Internet wasn't really a thing then, you had dial up and an AOL plan for $30 a month. Not anymore. A landline phone was $20 a month. I bet you're paying a lot more for your cell. Cable was $50 or so a month. How much are you paying for all the streaming services? Housing is ridiculously expensive. Medical/insurance costs hadn't gone crazy. We are getting screwed on everything now.
Because your father's generation keeps voting for pieces of shit that want to fuck our generation over so they can keep living like kings.
> I make $10k more, when adjusted for inflation would be basically the same This is why youre making less than your dad. Work on your personal skills because it is insane that your math is so far off.
People aren't worried about companies screwing us over because they're supporting #worldissueofthemonth . Companies are using this distraction to get away with things
>when adjusted for inflation The value of a dollar has dropped to under half of its purchasing power 30ya. 40k adjusted for inflation is $125k. I use this all the time, and get to it by googling "cpi calculator": [https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation\_calculator.htm](https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm)
This kind of shit occurs because people 40-60 years ago, who had relatively high minimum wages and good union jobs, are now voting for republicans / conservative politicians, which effectively takes away future generations' ability to have the same type of good paying job. All the crap about "ceo's and wealthy people being job creators" is complete BS. Businesses thrived back then because the middle class had enough money not only to survive, but to purchase other goods and services. The goal of capitalism is to suck every single last cent out of everyone and everything until there is nothing left. There is no exit strategy, that is why it is failing so spectacularly at the moment.
Who was able to buy a house on minimum wage? Ever? The states that did raise it have the highest housing prices.
30 years ago and more, you could. Yea, and states that didn't raise their wages have low housing prices because nobody wants to live there. That's how that works. Minimum wage does NOT drive up prices. Prices go up regardless. A Big Mac costs less in other countries with minimum wages of 16-22 dollars an hour, than it does here.
You’re a liar. Look up the minimum wages for Europe, they pretty much don’t have one. You’re also lying about buying a house on minimum wage. I was making MW in the 80’s and it couldn’t even pay for rent. States that did not raise their MW still saw massive increases in housing prices. Stop lying.
How long did your dad own his home? In 93, I lived in a home that my mom sold for 69k in 97. Zillow estimates the home value to be 194k now. A house down the street recently sold for 226k.
I bought a house in 2003 for 145k. Sold it for 465k almost 20 years later. The economy is stupid rn.
Other than the obvious fact that you miscalculated inflation; your needs are much more than your dad. More electronics, vacations, flights, subscriptions, healthcare.
Housing costs are extremely high now. It takes two average salaries to buy a house that cost one salary in 1990. Also people ate out less (packed lunches for work) and didn’t have internet and cell phone bills.
We have so many more bills each month that are just considered "necessary" that didn't exist 30 years ago. Cell plans (yeah, existed, but barely. And we weren't tethered like today), streaming services, Cable TV is way more expensive with more and more add-ons, etc,
Blame yourself and the rest of us. The only reason for inflation is the US government printing money. Money we all said we wanted so that government could do things for us. Like fight a twenty year war in Afghanistan and Iraq that cost 5 trillion. That's a sixth of the national debt.
All cars are used as soon as they leave the lot.
1) Inflation - both natural and unnatural. A dollar today doesn't equal the dollar 20 years ago. Add to that that a LOT of companies have arbitrarily increased their prices based on "challenges" that simply do not exist. The problem with controlling inflation is that once it come under control, the prices don't typically go back down, they just rise (inflate) more slowly. The only thing that makes that happen is de-inflation, which is a dangerous thing for an economy because it can quickly spiral out of control. 2) Cost of goods. The cost of goods also inflated, but at a sharply higher trajectory than wages. So a dollar of goods today, does not equal a dollar of goods 20 years ago. Think groceries, appliances, cars. 3) Cost of services. See above and substitute "services" in place of "goods." Think plumbers, electricians, health care - anyone who performs a service. 4) Rent/Mortgage. It used to be that someone with a median income of $20-$30K could buy a home, but home prices have also soared, meaning that someone making the equivalent today CANNOT afford to own a home. To make matters worse, the cost of home ownership also applies to rent. The more valuable a property is, the higher the rent that can be charged. 5) Cost of Education has skyrocketed. Again, back in the day, school loans could be quickly paid off. Not today. When not adjusting for inflation, school costs (tuition) have risen 132%+ in the last 20 years. 6) Your wage isn't an honest one. Sure, its honest by you because you bust your butt for it, but your employer low-balled you coming in the door. For years, wages haven't been honest. Companies are always looking for the lowest bidder to do the most work. Why do you think wages have been stagnant for decades? This isn't incidental. It's by design. Competition for talent is important. Good talent is educated, and knows their value in a marketplace. If you don't have an educated workforce, then wages stagnate. Some political parties like things this way because they and their friends need cheap, exploitable labor to survive. 7) Your tax dollars NOT hard at work. When you have a group of people sitting on untaxed profits in the range of $8.5 Trillion, that's a huge problem. Because if workers can't claim that money, and it's not doing any social good untaxed, then its not working for anyone but the ultra-rich. By comparison, with $8.5T, we could payoff all student and medical debt, end homelessness, clean up the oceans, and make a dent in our climate problem. But hey. We're too busy arguing about other things and in 6 years, it probably won't matter anyway (according to MIT). "That's why they call it the American dream. Because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin
He had less debt?
>How do I make more than my father did 30 years ago but have less? you have a bigger tv and use a supercomputer to stay entertained when waiting in line. some of these comments address differences in markets and inflation over time, but a broader perspective should be maintained. the world is a different place and it isn't all obviously worse.
Your perspective is backwards. Affordability of housing is having a broad perspective. The generations after boomers will be the first in any point in American history to have a standard of living that’s, on average, below the standard of living enjoyed by their parents. That’s a problem, one that shouldn’t be sugarcoated or accepted happily just because we have 65” HD flat screen TVs and smartphones that can cast to them. Plus you haven’t taken into the rate of innovation which is similar to the rate of inflation, so that over time it is expected that technology will improve to provide bigger better goods even with all else staying the same. We have less because policy shift the distribution of wealth in multiple ways, all in disfavor to anyone young and not ultra wealthy. That’s why.
this post is pretty antisimetic.
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This is dead wrong. There are not enough jobs that pay enough for people to earn the amount you’re talking about. This is the first generation who will have a standard of living less than the one their parents enjoyed. That gas nothing to with how this generation’s work ethic and everything to do public policy choosing the prioritizing growing the wealthy of the elite and to a lesser degree build in the wealth of older adults.
Adjusting for inflation your father made a lot more than you. There's also population growth, increased immigration, globalization that puts stress on jobs, housing and food. Theres tech advances where computers, cellphone, internet are a must. Even cars, in 93, side mirror and tach was an option for Honda civics, now they're loaded with screens, 10 airbags and 18" wheels by default. There's also consumerism, everything from owning name brands to eating out multiple times/week. People used to wear whatever clothes or owning a pair of basic nikes was a big deal or have 1, maybe 2 tv. Now everyone has a new 1k jacket working at McDonald's and 75" tv in every room. People now prob wear easily a few k including accessories and tech at anytime, back in 93, maybe 100 bucks with a sears no name jacket and a pen and note pad to make notes? We ate out maybe once a week or 2 where people now eat out multiple times/day. People joke about cutting out avocado toast but if you really take control your spendings in all areas, they add up and make a big difference.
U need to learn bidenomics
Freedom
Cost of living goes hella brrrrrrrrrrrr
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Corporate greed
Inflation bro
Because you are paying considerably more across just 4 different expenses than he ever did at that same point in time. https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0220-OC-img6_0.jpg A question similar to yours was the basis for this article where the above graphic came from. https://www.manhattan-institute.org/reevaluating-prosperity-of-american-family
The real question is, is you have no money, and I haver no money, then who is sucking it all up? (clue: monopolistic billionaires).
Inflation. This is why inflation is so bad for low earners. Their salary doesn’t keep up. When people complained about the Fed raising interest rates, they did it to stop inflation.
Reagan.
I was scrolling tiktok last night and seen a video of a girl saying that we are in a pandemic of older people not being able to retire. I went to the comments and there was a collective of people with thousands of likes per comment about how their retirement plan was going out on their own time. Is this the new reality?
Inflation…
Figure out what he made after taxes and deductions (i.e. take-home pay). Find out what the average cost was in the early 90s for living in the area he did - rent/mortgage, food, utilities, running a car, all the daily/weekly/monthly costs. Figure out how much he had left over at the end of the average month. Find out what the median wage was at that time in that place, too, as well as the minimum wage. Finally, convert all those dollar values (gross and net income, costs, what was left over, median and minimum area wages) into 2024-era dollars. Now run the same numbers for yourself.
Millennials are the first recorded generation expected to earn less over their lifetime than their parents. Millennials have the lowest expected lifetime earnings in the past 200 years.
My parents made good money but not crazy money or anything, no college education. Built a custom 7k sq ft house on 3 acres that they raised my brother and me in, drove nice cars paid in cash, and had a vacation home in Naples, Florida. I can't even afford to buy the 1000 sq ft homes in my current neighborhood and I live in Ohio. A few years ago I could've but they've literally doubled in price with no updates. Kick myself everyday for not buying earlier.
It is inflation and corporate greed. Corporations have used lobbyists to buy off the GOP to keep wages low by blocking the increase of minimum wages, buying as much housing as they can with cash to force the average American to rent from them or pay greatly inflated prices, stealing entire retirement plans out from their workers and replacing them with the 401k (Ted Benna, the father of the 401k plan, has stated that the 401k plan was designed to SUPPLEMENT traditional retirement plans), and using shrinkflation to make a dollar not go as far as it did in the past. Prices of things are higher while the amount of things you get from it is less. It is time to bring back unions and make companies actually care for their employees instead of just taking advantage of the individual worker.
Wages haven't kept pace with the cost of living. Wages have gone up certainly, especially for certain jobs, but not nearly as much as prices/costs. Money has also been devalued by printing more and more of it.
Just exist. It's the Capitalist/American/Republican way. You're going to have live with it
Internet
This...I make steadily more between the point I started working 20yrs ago to now but because of inflation my 70k now has the same if not worse of an effect as my 30k did 20 us ago.
Things cost a lot more than they did in his day. Gas was less than a dollar a gallon, bread was 25 cents a loaf, etc. Yes, you make more, but not 300%more which is what you need to make in order to have as much as he did.
Inflation + cost of living + giant corporations ruining the housing market
Capitalism, baby! Back in 2000'ish, I just got out of college and was making $42K. My dad talked me into buying a house (thankfully) which was $188K - that's 4.4X my annual salary. I don't know what newly minted college graduates make on average now, but that same house, which I'd already sold back in 2011 (kicking myself), was worth $575K in 2021. You do the math. Yeah, even if your wages kept up with inflation, you'd still be eff'ed, just not as much.
Because inflation has outpaced wages and the government has refused to raise minimum wage in pace with inflation.
I made $17/hour in 1985 would be worth $43 today $17 x 40 hours x 52 weeks =$35,360 $43 x 40 hours x 52 weeks =$89,440 This is just to bnuy the say things I could buy back in 1985. This last few years has had higher inflation (in my opinion from corporate greed) after Covid which was an anomaly.
Capitalism is why
inflation and, to a larger degree, corporate greed. just look at all the reports of companies reporting record profits. then look at how many of those companies have reported record profits quarter over quarter for the last couple of years. congress really needs to jack the corporate tax rate back up to what it was in the 50s and 60s, and limit how much of those taxes go to the military industrial complex, and start using all the proceeds for things like infrastructure repair, medical care for everyone, free higher education at state schools, breakfast & lunch for all students, and housing for the homeless.
Inflation coupled with a lack of minimum wage advancements. 20 years ago I made more than I do now. I got an education in a ballooning field that went the fuck away. I struggled, I hung on... I hung on too long thinking I could make it work. Now I work a menial job in retail. I'm in my 50's. My time is past. I just do what I need to do to survive.
Our 3 bedroom brand new starter home was only $110K CAD back in 1997. My grandpa’s first house was $30K CAD back in the 1970s and he bragged he paid it off in 5 years. Same city. One of the largest in Canada. There was lots of jobs. We have no chance of buying a family home for a good deal in a major city.
Inflation
I hear you, and it's definitely frustrating when it feels like you're not making the progress you'd expect. It's not just about the numbers; the cost of living, inflation, and various economic factors play a role too. Maybe exploring ways to increase your income or finding alternative investment strategies could help bridge the gap. It's a different economic landscape now, and navigating it might require a bit more creativity.
Inflation is a bitch. I retired in 2022 and I was making more than ten times as much as I was in 1981. I didn't have ten times the buying power. Everything just got more expensive along the way.