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I was checking stats and notice that during the mid-1970's, the average wage was about 16.8k and currently it is about 46k which is about 2.7X increase...
Brand new houses then were 44k but the average NEW house is 246k... an increase by 5.6X... That's going up twice as fast as wages... a 100% inflation? What happened to the 2-4% inflation rates? Maybe the high cost is because of the housing bubble? Does that mean houses would have to fall to 120k? I don't think that is ever going to happen... Perhaps its for all the extras in a 2008 home compared to a 1970's home? Anyone know what the extras are?
Brand new car was 4.6k and a brand new car now is about 22k... a 4.9X increase... no wonder Americans are living on debt... I guess all the fancy stuff is costing us with new gadgets and technology...
Food has also seen a significant increase... about 5.9X... As far as I know, there are no "extras" in food... quantity being held constant that is...
If everything was to increase in-sync with wages, the average wage should be 94k... imagine that... somebody stoled the average middle class family by about 48k dollars....
But then we did have a housing bubble that did overinflate homes prices... Perhaps current prices still reflect a way overinflated price...
We are also in an energy crisis with rising gas prices and
increasing food prices as well...
Car prices have gone too high, we aren't having a car bubble... corrected for "wage" inflation, the proper car should cost 12k (which can be still found)... I suppose the other 10k is for "extras"??
Perhaps then nobody is really stealing $48k from middle class families, we are just getting more of a house and car which justifies the price increases. We pay for our own luxuries but even then... food prices have gotten out of control for a long time and nobody noticed? Are farmers ripping us off??? Did we decrease subsidies to farmers since the 1970's?? Why is food price so overinflated?? Is it just the energy crisis at work? I took away the increased costs before the energy crisis with gas prices and it still shows a way overinflated price?? What is going on? Is food cleaner than before?? What is justifying the marked jump in food price for the last several decades? Anyone know?
I'd say corporate greed and enough lobbying to get government to put corporate interests over that of the citizens.
With credit so easy these past years, no one really noticed that wages have NOT kept up. People were tapping into overinflated house values for extra money.
I'd say corporate greed and enough lobbying to get government to put corporate interests over that of the citizens.
With credit so easy these past years, no one really noticed that wages have NOT kept up. People were tapping into overinflated house values for extra money.
Of course it is corporate greed. I see it everyday in the work I do!
I wonder if its because individually, food doesn't cost a "lot" of money so nobody notices it doubling each time... and when it grew beyond what people earned it was still only a small fraction of what they were making so they didn't notice it considering rent or mortgage, car payments, retirement, etc cost a lot more...
Or is the government trying to subsidize it so that more people go into farming to bring competition to the area... unfortunately, the subsidies seem to mostly benefit large corporations..
Well the new farm bill is even high er subsidses how;it just passed. But then food prices have been very cheap in thsi country for centuries. Go to a foreign contry and you will see.Don't kid yourself the subsideses benefit all farmers and even peole that aren't farmers but own land.A examp0le is that I had a uncles in the 70's that was a dairy farmer. For years the goivernamnt bought milk to guarantee a certin price. Then they decided that it would be cheaper to buy the dairymens cows at a high price than keep onpaying. My uncle sold his cow to governamnt was allowed to sale them for beef. The he bought new cows with no restriction.Crazy . The farmers are proably the most powerful looby and have both parties in their hip pocket. The farm bill thaty just passed was veto by presdient because of increased expense at a time farmers are doing well but was eaily overturned by congress.
This is interesting because I have been trying to show others similar stats. I am convinced that people today are a lot less sensible than their predecessors and have been willing to go into debt to make ends meet. Since 1971 inflation has been underrreported and people have been too distracted to notice.
I was checking stats and notice that during the mid-1970's, the average wage was about 16.8k and currently it is about 46k which is about 2.7X increase...
Brand new houses then were 44k but the average NEW house is 246k... an increase by 5.6X... That's going up twice as fast as wages... a 100% inflation? What happened to the 2-4% inflation rates? Maybe the high cost is because of the housing bubble? Does that mean houses would have to fall to 120k? I don't think that is ever going to happen... Perhaps its for all the extras in a 2008 home compared to a 1970's home? Anyone know what the extras are?
Brand new car was 4.6k and a brand new car now is about 22k... a 4.9X increase... no wonder Americans are living on debt... I guess all the fancy stuff is costing us with new gadgets and technology...
Food has also seen a significant increase... about 5.9X... As far as I know, there are no "extras" in food... quantity being held constant that is...
If everything was to increase in-sync with wages, the average wage should be 94k... imagine that... somebody stoled the average middle class family by about 48k dollars....
But then we did have a housing bubble that did overinflate homes prices... Perhaps current prices still reflect a way overinflated price...
We are also in an energy crisis with rising gas prices and
increasing food prices as well...
Car prices have gone too high, we aren't having a car bubble... corrected for "wage" inflation, the proper car should cost 12k (which can be still found)... I suppose the other 10k is for "extras"??
Perhaps then nobody is really stealing $48k from middle class families, we are just getting more of a house and car which justifies the price increases. We pay for our own luxuries but even then... food prices have gotten out of control for a long time and nobody noticed? Are farmers ripping us off??? Did we decrease subsidies to farmers since the 1970's?? Why is food price so overinflated?? Is it just the energy crisis at work? I took away the increased costs before the energy crisis with gas prices and it still shows a way overinflated price?? What is going on? Is food cleaner than before?? What is justifying the marked jump in food price for the last several decades? Anyone know?
Great post! I think this is the reason we saw all these "fancy" mortgages drawn up in order to help people afford homes. Back in the day you had to put 20% down with much higher interest rates. It wasn't easy for everyone to do that, but I would guess that it was much easier back then, then what it is today. People's expenses have went up much higher than their incomes. This is not one presidents fault and not one parties fault...this is our countries fault and we need to figure out some way to fix it. Although with today's global economy things are much different then they were in the past, which is not to say that a global economy is bad.
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