I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, $1.60 in January of 1968 is equivalent to $14.47 in 2024. Maybe they’re also accounting for the uncompensated increased efficiency of modern workers?
Regardless, it’s a legitimate question and getting rebuffed for legitimate questions is a pretty Reddit thing to do. Come on everyone, we’re better than this.
This thirty something an hour assertion has been going around for years. I’ve long since stopped bothering with the inflation calculators.
I was born in the early seventies, and witnessed that financial struggle existed even back then.
Yes, getting a house was more realistic (double digit mortgage interest rates notwithstanding). If you could snag a good job. The biggest difference I can remember is that a whole lot of blue collar jobs were good jobs.
Just about all of us in my age group remember food stamps and watered down frozen orange juice to stretch the food dollar and only getting five dollars of gas because filling the tank was way too ambitious.
The rose colored glasses of past financial wellness are heavily focused on the post war white new middle class that lasted what, twenty years?
I should note that I spent the seventies sharing a bedroom with my sister in a two bedroom rented duplex unit. Sharing a bedroom was quite common at the time. Even middle class houses were generally in the 1,100 square foot range, not the 3,000 square foot behemoths we’ve come to view as normal today.
Where did your values come from? I found minimum wage for 1968 at $1.60, which is about $15 an hour today. It’s about 45% lower real wages today.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, $1.60 in January of 1968 is equivalent to $14.47 in 2024. Maybe they’re also accounting for the uncompensated increased efficiency of modern workers?
Regardless, it’s a legitimate question and getting rebuffed for legitimate questions is a pretty Reddit thing to do. Come on everyone, we’re better than this.
This thirty something an hour assertion has been going around for years. I’ve long since stopped bothering with the inflation calculators.
I was born in the early seventies, and witnessed that financial struggle existed even back then.
Yes, getting a house was more realistic (double digit mortgage interest rates notwithstanding). If you could snag a good job. The biggest difference I can remember is that a whole lot of blue collar jobs were good jobs.
Just about all of us in my age group remember food stamps and watered down frozen orange juice to stretch the food dollar and only getting five dollars of gas because filling the tank was way too ambitious.
The rose colored glasses of past financial wellness are heavily focused on the post war white new middle class that lasted what, twenty years?
I should note that I spent the seventies sharing a bedroom with my sister in a two bedroom rented duplex unit. Sharing a bedroom was quite common at the time. Even middle class houses were generally in the 1,100 square foot range, not the 3,000 square foot behemoths we’ve come to view as normal today.