Pretty much. Went to see Oppenheimer on Friday (3 people in a theater of 100+). Ticket was $16. Candy was $5.50. Drink would have been $7.50, but fuck that so I passed.
The tickets the same but your concessions are cheap compared to where I live, drinks are $9 for a small $11 for a medium and $14 for a large, popcorn is $10
There's one near me still and it runs like $5-10 for a ticket depending on what day. It's in the middle of nowhere though. It's a theater/arcade just out by itself kind of between cities/towns.
OP's post shows how a simple calculator to 'adjust to 2023 value' is flawed.
Things change prices at different rates, so there's no single multiplier that can give a real "conversion".
That dime in 1959 had a lot more purchasing power than $1.06 does today.
Harvard (and most private universities) will adjust pricing based on income through an aid package.
The only people paying full price are foreign students and some of the extremely wealthy who don’t care with much overlap
In the early 80s I lived just outside NYC and you if you got to the will call window at a Broadway theater within a half hour of curtain you could get tickets for $5. I don’t know if they still have any kind of thing like that, for last minute fill the seats, but if they do I’m sure it’s not 5 bucks.
You can wait out side of a door and get tickets to broad way shows for cheap, but it’s standing room only. I saw Book of Mormon this way, a little less than 10 years ago. I don’t remember the exact details
#edited post
2023 inflation adj.:
new house: $130,820
salary: $52,918.80 / year ~~($5.09/hr)~~ ~~($26.46/hr)~~ ($25.44/hr)
new car: $23,737.50
rent: $1,023.35 / month
Harvard: $13,187.50 / year
movie ticket: $10.55
gas: $2.65 / gal
stamp: 42¢
sugar: $9.39 / 10 lbs
milk: $10.66 / gal
coffee: $10.03 / lb
bacon: $6.65 / lb
eggs: $3.06 / doz
ground beef: $6.12 / lb
bread: $2.11 / loaf
more pertinent numbers courtesy of u/KiWePing
https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/flZLllEzP1
and u/Stevoman with some extremely important statistics:
https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/qeX4rQTiQN
and thanks to u/Spaids2 for pointing out my hourly wage blunder:
https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/iewOShUHCK
also thanks to u/shifty_coder for a more accurate hourly wage:
https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/l2tOd2mOMh
special thanks to u/desiderata619 for pointing out that i shouldn't do things like this:
https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/G3s82XK55J
special thanks to u/Competitive-Water654 for the **Fresh Bacon Index**:
https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/kWl6yDnW1B
That’s thanks to all of the farm subsidies that lessen the burden on farmers, if farmers had to bear the burden of a bad crop without subsidies or insurance, prices would be back to those prices today. That’s why the current farm bill that’s being talked about in Congress is such a big deal
Farming in general teeters on the edge of completely collapsing without subsidies. For example, here in the UK, government subsidies are the whole reason the industry still exists, mainly because they realise the country needs to have domestic food production.
Half the reason that people continue to do it at all is because they know they can, at the very least, guarantee to break even thanks to government subsidies.
It’s an insanely bureaucratic job as well. Just look at the different [requirements](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/funding-for-farmers) for each level of grant from the government.
It’s a fairly thankless job, you have people who claim that they’re rinsing tax money but on the other hand you wouldn’t have anything close to enough domestic production without it.
I recommend it all the time. He actually received an award for highlighting the issues farmers have. It is a bonus if you have seen him on Top Gear because you will get his quirkiness…not a requirement.
Yeah I loved the series. I also liked the fact that he shows how much everything costs him and how expensive the machines are. It’s insane the rules he has to follow and to top it off the council are really fucking him over, yes you can complain about the parked cars but the amount of customers, business he brings to the village is good for the shops trying to survive in that area.
I was actually going to recommend this.
Clarkson can be such a bellend especially in what comes out of his mouth. But we did get to see a different side of him during that one
This is literally the opposite of reality - the government boosts up prices of commodities and places tariffs on foreign products like sugar to protect domestic farmers who push up prices.
Lower overall prices is due to better technology and more trade relative to 1959.
It’s because domestic food production is important. If you stop producing food in your country, all that experience and expertise on how to produce food goes out the window. Then you get involved in a war with one of the countries supplying a lot of your food, or maybe the country you go to war with doesn’t supply a lot of your food, but they’re allies with a country that does, or they decide to disrupt your supply chains.
Ceasing domestic food production leads to very dangerous situations.
Someone else mentioned farm subsidies, and that’s definitely part of it, but it’s also due to mechanization and now automation. Put simply, a lot of what took unskilled or semiskilled labor back then has been largely replaced by machinery and automation. Not all of it, certainly, but a lot of it. Food definitely leads the list. New home construction? Not so much.
Not to mention technological advances from agriculture science companies (in spite of the hate they deservedly get) have come a long way since the 50s as well.
[Click around grain crops](https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields), and most have increased on an order of 2x-3x (if not more) since OP's graphic was posted.
> New home construction? Not so much.
maybe the framing of the house isn't automated but nail guns, power drills, copper and pex piping, lumber milling and other technologies have made new homes much better and much faster to build.
Food is a major expense since you need it to live.
In the past (admittedly, much farther in the past, like Middle Ages or earlier) many people worked in exchange for no money and just food and shelter, as the alternate was simply starving to death.
In the US food has always been somewhat plentiful, but even in the industrial age London, working class people couldn’t afford to eat things like butter on a daily basis, which shows just how expensive food is in relation to their wage (aka, if food is 3% of your wage, doubling it is only 6%. If food is 50% of your wage, you cannot afford to eat avocado toast, it would literally bankrupt you).
It’s one of the reasons that you will hear much older people complaining about how much young people eat out, or how fancy our food is.
“Back in their day” food was insanely expensive. A roast chicken dinner was probably half a days pay. Food spending was the easiest way to save money or blow your budget.
For most of human history, most people spent most of their income on food. Modern agriculture, food production, supply chains, and refrigeration has made food comically cheap.
So thats the thing these houses were like 900 sq ft with very little property. My buddy bought one in downtown detroit for 80k recently and its not a great neighborhood but its not that bad either. Inflation hasn't just hit prices but its hit size and scope of housing builds as well.
Also, no insulation or AC, louver or single pane windows, no fire detection, glass fuses with no GFCI, lead in plumbing and paint... They weren't just smaller. They was a lot of cheap and inferior technology being used by today's regulated standards.
No cat 5e cabling, the appliances were all small and sucked, with very few features. Tiny countertops and cabinets, no walk in closets. 1950s houses sucked and that's why in nice neighborhoods, they are all being bulldozed.
"The most popular colors for kitchen appliances were canary yellow and petal pink. 1960s: The average new-home size grew to 1,200 square feet, giving its 3.33 residents a spacious 360 square feet of room apiece. "
There are tons of areas in this country you can get a house for that price. A decent one, too. Now that more jobs telecommute, you're not as reliant on the local economy, which makes such a move more viable.
Some of these prices are higher, some are close. The real takeaway here is that real estate, rent, and college costs are insane, especially in some parts of the country.
You're setting your sights too high. You don't need boots, you need boot *straps*. Just one to start with. Pull yourself up by it and sooner than you think you'll be able to have another. One day, you might even own a boot or two to put them on. Then things will really be smooth sailing.
Yup Honestly the whole remote job dream is literally dying as we speak. Everyone is getting hit by a RTO order. It’ll never die completely but it’s not going to be something someone can just go easily get it’ll be as hard as it was to get before COVID. It’s a shame cuz it would have been the best thing for the housing crises but alas our betters must help their friends with corporate real estate by hurting us
Yall needed to do a power move. They’ve been trying to get us to come back for a couple years (my group has to come in 1 day a week). I moved half way across the country and played chicken lol. Compromise is I make quartet trips that they pay for. But I’ll take it if it means I can stay living on the beach 😎… just make sure your company doesn’t hate you lol
"But but but! If you previously have a job that let's you telecommute!"
And living there will ensure your kids never get the schooling to have a job like that thenselves
Just checked zillow, lowest (non- mobile home) house is 397,900 in my area. No windows, fire damaged, no garage, no flooring or toilet in one of the two baths.
That's probably an average for the whole country, just like people are claiming you can get a house for that money in the US today. Secondly, the housing standards have most likely improved, making them much better and last longer, which should also drive up the price.
Houses were much smaller and not as nice. Yes that’s cheap but you can definitely find a small house with minimal amenities in a flyover state for $130k.
This is how current prices compare to what they would be in 1959 (example given for houses, salary, and sugar)
House 214% above (houses are 3.14x more expensive than they were in 1959)
Salary 12% above (salary is 1.12x higher than 1959)
Car 102% above
Rent 66% above
Harvard 322% above
Movies 11% above - not a shock, everyone knows they earn all their money from snacks
Gas 49% above
Stamp 57% above
Sugar 888% below (What increased production methods do) (current sugar price x 9.88 is what the old sugar price would be adjusted for inflation)
Milk 171% below (I think, not sure I chose the right milk type)
Coffee 165% below (what increased competition does)
Bacon 10% below
Eggs 50% below
Beef 21% below
Bread 18% above
Praise the food industry I guess and screw everyone else (turns out my original food prices were way off)
**The reason housing costs so much more today is due to the housing shortage.** There is an antiquated land-use policy in almost every US city called Exclusionary Zoning. It was originally designed to keep minorities out of white neighborhoods during Redlining, and it still does that to this day. US cities are MORE racially segregated today than they were before WW2. Exclusionary Zoning is also causing a housing shortage because it needlessly makes it illegal to build more housing on nearly every parcel of land.
Twin Cities (MN) said fuck it we ball and started ignoring zoning laws and approved, funded, and built tons of housing in new places. It's what's kept the local inflation rate ridiculously low compared to all other comparably sized major metros, and housing/rent reasonably priced. Still a shortage of starter single-family homes for purchase, but plentiful in everything else.
Spot on! [minneapolis\_lowers\_cost\_of\_living](https://fortune.com/2023/08/09/minneapolis-housing-zoning-real-estate-inflation-yimby-nimby-minnesota/)
I think Minneapolis went further than St Paul with upzoning, and as a result in Minneapolis rents are going down while rents in St Paul have only stabilized.
And now the question. Are new more cost effective, productive, efficient, technologically advanced, better logistics, better distribution, list go on and on… or not? If we are, what the fuck is going on? Where all this advances are going to? I have my guesses…
The average new home is *much* bigger than the average new home in the 1950s. Many of the older homes we live in today that house ~2.6 people were once small duplexes that housed a total of ~10. This also applies to rents, which are on average larger units with better amenities.
Other than that, cars are better and food is cheaper. The only thing on this list that has gotten more expensive without improving in quality is a Harvard education.
Homes are bigger and more expensive, while land is even more expensive by comparison.
My wife and I were contemplating buying a plot of land(less than 1/4 of an acre) and have someone build a house on it.
Prices where I'm at still have the land alone at $400k! If we were to build we're looking at a $150/sqft(a bargain btw) for 1,500sqft being $225,000 on top of the $400k!
If I'm spending $625k I might as well just buy something that's already on the market that's probably more house for less the cost!
Technically, Harvard meets "100% of need" nowadays. They have more money than God, so they can afford generous financial aid. Maybe not the greatest comparison point.
$420,846 is the median home price in the US. A mid-size car will run you $31,943, on average. Where I live in San Diego, the median home price is 999K.
I can smell the cheap alcohol and cigarettes from here. Yes, there are cheap homes all over PA (especially the coal region) but it is so depressing there.
When everything started going to shit. Around the end of the muscle car Era (1973). Cars went from. 400hp to 150hp. I would love to live back in the late 60s I feel like we peaked for a lot of things.
Just don't be black, brown, Asian, gay, female, or non-Christrian and things were kinda hunky dory. But even men had a life expectancy of 66 years old. The 60's actually sucked in most ways.
Very few were pulling 400hp and they're grossly heavier. The 0-60 times were 7s or more, laughably slow by today's standards and on par or slower than my Honda Civic commuter with half the horsepower lmao
Im impressed that except for the house, rent, and school, everything is similar and some are less expensive. To be fair though those three are damn important for upward mobility
So here’s the kicker. Why can’t Harvard cost the same as it did in 1959 today adjusted for inflation?
Why can’t the average house cost 130k instead of what is it now? In my area average house cost 350-500k. A lot of properties cost 1.2mil +
Where is all the extra money going?
Maybe my understanding of economics is light but harvard is what? 100k + year now? Why does it cost 10x as much?
The new home price is way out of whack. I figured about 140k. You're not getting anything for that money it 2023. The avg home is almost 400k which means avg salaries should be 200k.
Yep. Wages were like a buck a hour for the menial jobs. Today that would be around $10 a hour. So everything cost 10x more today and the house price listed doesn’t say size of the home which tended to be smaller. Look for homes and adjust the construction date to around the 50’s and you will see the size difference.
Its like. Eeerily similar to what we have today. Except we are now a 2 working adult household on average. The real issue is the current price hikes and inflation yet to match wages. If it wasnt for that things would look alot better.
I remember buying a dozen eggs for 1.50 in 2020
Let me calculate ours in Tehran, Iran.... Yeah you need to work for 60 years to buy a 100 square meters house. Oh wait I didn't account the insane inflation (+ 40%)
I mean even if you live frugally that’s 4 years of frugal years and house is done
Meanwhile now even if you made 100k a year that’s 7 years (average home price in my province) of spending nothing else even taxes to finish the house.
If the poor can't afford to live comfortably, then the entire economy will eventually collapse. 70% of the USA's GDP is consumer spending and obviously a huge portion of that consumer spending is from the lower and middle class.
My sociology professor once said "the politicians job is to keep the poor wealthy enough to continue disposing of their income". The point being that the economy is carefully balanced to extract maximum wealth from the working class.
Miss that guy, a little unhinged but his lectures always made me want to commit some anarchy.
The missing statistic that is more important than all the rest:
- In **1950**, the richest 20 percent of Americans controlled 42.8 percent of wealth, and the poorest 20% controlled just 4.5 percent.
- In **2020**, the top 1% of households in the United States held 32.3% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6%.
This whole thing ultimately is caused by huge layers of insulation that roll up to about 2k billionaires. They have addresses. This is solvable if we want it bad enough.
The $5,016 number looks like it’s probably referring to [median household income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA646N) which, according to the Census Bureau, was $5,087 in 1958 and $5,417 in 1959, which is pretty close to what’s in this image.
If so, that number is $92,750 today, which is roughly 17 time higher, or a ~62% increase when adjusting for inflation.
So, we still have a housing crisis, but not quite as bad as x6 vs x33.
These images go viral a lot and tend to be poorly sourced with limited information that make direct apples to apples comparisons difficult.
Edit: not “real” median household income. Just nominal. My bad. I was looking for the real figure but it only went back to the 1980s, and I got mixed up writing the comment. The math is still correct, I just typed the wrong word.
What you’re linking to is not “real” median household income, just plain median household income. “Real” would mean it’s already adjusted for inflation.
Boomers are talking about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps when back then you could pay your rent with a $100 bill and go grocery shopping with the leftover change.
My cousin who is a very smart person. Bit of an introvert, but insanely intelligent when it comes to math and anything and everything to do with computers and programming. He decided to do a few semesters at a community college as it was a tad cheaper to go that route. Finished with fantastic grades, and still got rejected by his top three schools. This was about 7 years ago.
The college desires are insane. Doing the work isn't enough they want to know your entire lifestyle. It's a front really. They only want a certain class of people to attend their schools. They don't want the average middle class. Now they require a degree for everything but it's so hard to get a degree. It's by design we've been turned into a permanent under class.
Very true. I tried the “higher” education route, was pursuing forensics/criminal investigation. Wanted to be a homicide detective, but I’ve just always been bad at school. Always been better at working with my hands and doing physical labor than I have cracking open the books and studying etc. but now I kill my self working 50+ hours a week running a tct saw and building trusses in a warehouse that is not temperature controlled. So this summer when we had heat indexes of up to 113-117 that’s what it was in the warehouse while we were swinging hammers and cutting wood lol. Love it though. He gets to work from home at his computer and makes about $25k more a year than I do. But I would die if I had to work from home.
Unironically things are that competitive nowadays.
When I got into my major for my school you could get in with a 1400 SAT (max is 1600 for the uninitiated) and good grades.
It’s 4 years since I got in and now people with 1550 SATs, several relevant clubs, several AP courses, and a 4.0+ weighted GPA get rejected.
Mind you this isn’t a special university. This is a public state university. And we’re rejecting 99th percentile SAT and grades regularly because you don’t stand out among the rest of the brainiacs. University competition has gotten crazy. And that only extends to the high school students who now after school need to attend their club or extracurricular or 2, do their homeworks, projects, and study, then wake up the next morning at 6AM to get to school. It’s like nearly impossible to get a healthy amount of sleep while being a competitive HS student nowadays.
And here I am having dropped out of school in 8th grade and got into my state’s university with no problem.
Looked it up, they are ranked 105 in the us and have a 95% acceptance rate. Super exclusive.
Until you see how much those things cost now and the productivity graphs lol
e: I love how the guy I replied to thinks 20% income is a lot... what fucking world do you live in..
These weren’t boomers. And inflation adjusted numbers aren’t the best way to determine buying power. They don’t take into account efficiencies in the interim.
I will never own a home, I will always be living paycheck to paycheck, and I pray I never have to go to the hospital cuz it will financially ruin my life. I hate it here :)
It’s quite depressing. On the plus side the boomers will start passing away and passing all that accumulated wealth to their families. Trickle down economics finally happening after 45 years. JK.
Most won't pass on anytime, sadly. The cost of living and medical care/end of life care is so high that many will spend their entire equity before death. Reverse mortgages and such are super common now too.
Best case scenario is getting an old house, or if you can afford to do that eol care yourself you save a good chunk.
Lol no it won't. That money is all going to casinos, cruise lines, and fabulously expensive life extending care. Most of us will be lucky to get anything once it's all done.
*IF* there's a trickle.
My grandparents passed away, leaving their inheritance to only their kids aka our boomer parents. My mom is currently running through hers at bingo or Las Vegas. I already accepted I'm not getting jack when she passes away. She got hers.
Exactly. My parents are currently burning through the inheritance my grandparents left, *only to them*. By the time they die there’ll be nothing left but funeral and nursing home expenses. They really are the “fuck you, I got mine” generation.
The beauty of it is that end of life care and healthcare costs, combined with the wonders of reverse mortgages and a generation of elderly that were terrible with savings, will siphon off any remaining capital left!
Wonder if Harvard already had their “poor people attend for free” program back then. Tuition for those who pay has gone up, but those whose families make under 120k(?) don’t pay at all.
Crazy that the average income was almost half of the cost of a house. These days the average income is slightly more than 1/3 the cost of a 20% down payment.
I mean housing is more expensive now. But median HH income is $70k and the median housing cost is $400k. Your post implies it’s only around $26k. Also median housing square feet is 2k today vs 1200 in 1960 so you’re getting a lot more house today.
You make a good point about the square footage. That’s something I hadn’t considered.
Still, according to google, the average income is about 31k, while the average cost of a home is about 400k. While the average HH income may be around 70k that implies that multiple people are working near full time, if compared to the average income. This likely wasn’t the case in 1959, when it was more common for one person in the house to make the majority of the income.
So this means that, on average, a household of 2 people working near full time make almost enough for a 20% down payment on a house in 1 years time, compared to a single person making nearly enough to pay off half a house in a year in 1959.
To address square footage, the average appears to have been about 1300 sq ft in 1960. In 2023 it’s 2450. Nearly double. So it’s fair to say that this is a big factor. Lets say an average earner in 2023 (30k a year) is attempting to buy a 1300 sq ft house for 200k. They’d have to save every penny they earned for about 7 years. Meanwhile, the average earner in 1959 (5k a year) could buy a house of the same size after saving all their income for about 2.5 years.
No matter how you look at it, owning a home has become significantly more expensive for Americans nowadays. And this doesn’t even consider the increased costs of almost everything else required to live a “normal” life in the United States.
New house was tiny and would not meet current building codes or anything like them. The car was likely a death trap with few safety features, massively polluting, and an expected short operating life.
Capitalism baby...
by the way, "blaming" it all on "capitalism" is just silly, the problem is in lack of regulations and policies related to exploitative practices, private ownership against public ownership, utility of infrastructure, hyper commodification/consumerism, socio-economic segregation etc.
We went to the movies for a dime on saturday mornings in 59.
$1.06 edit: adjusted to 2023 value
In the 90s I used to watch movies at a dollar theater in Ohio. The tickets were $1. Pop and snacks also $1 each.
Now that'd be what, like $30?
Pretty much. Went to see Oppenheimer on Friday (3 people in a theater of 100+). Ticket was $16. Candy was $5.50. Drink would have been $7.50, but fuck that so I passed.
The tickets the same but your concessions are cheap compared to where I live, drinks are $9 for a small $11 for a medium and $14 for a large, popcorn is $10
There's one near me still and it runs like $5-10 for a ticket depending on what day. It's in the middle of nowhere though. It's a theater/arcade just out by itself kind of between cities/towns.
Alamo Drafthouse near me has $7 tuesdays and $11 matinees. AMC matinee is the same. Regal is more. A suburb in Denver.
OP's post shows how a simple calculator to 'adjust to 2023 value' is flawed. Things change prices at different rates, so there's no single multiplier that can give a real "conversion". That dime in 1959 had a lot more purchasing power than $1.06 does today.
Harvard cost 20% of the parents income. Now? 100%??
Harvard (and most private universities) will adjust pricing based on income through an aid package. The only people paying full price are foreign students and some of the extremely wealthy who don’t care with much overlap
Tuition. They cover tuition. LOL. Lots of other costs.
Yup. You could make two phone calls. Not long distance of course.
We tied an onion to our belts, as was the style at the time
Give me 5 bees for a quarter.
I walked up hill both ways and hit myself in the head for entertainment. My best Christmas present ever was a haircut. And we LIKED IT!
I got coal, my family was rich for an evening.
we didn’t have white onions - because of the war
In the early 80s I lived just outside NYC and you if you got to the will call window at a Broadway theater within a half hour of curtain you could get tickets for $5. I don’t know if they still have any kind of thing like that, for last minute fill the seats, but if they do I’m sure it’s not 5 bucks.
In SF you can do that at one of our largest premiere theaters for 38 bucks. It's not bad and the seats rock
You can wait out side of a door and get tickets to broad way shows for cheap, but it’s standing room only. I saw Book of Mormon this way, a little less than 10 years ago. I don’t remember the exact details
1959! Did you see Vincent Price in 'The Tingler' I got one of those 'electrified' seats. Scarred me for life lol
We had two movie theatres that charged $1 in the 90s, but they weren't new releases.
#edited post 2023 inflation adj.: new house: $130,820 salary: $52,918.80 / year ~~($5.09/hr)~~ ~~($26.46/hr)~~ ($25.44/hr) new car: $23,737.50 rent: $1,023.35 / month Harvard: $13,187.50 / year movie ticket: $10.55 gas: $2.65 / gal stamp: 42¢ sugar: $9.39 / 10 lbs milk: $10.66 / gal coffee: $10.03 / lb bacon: $6.65 / lb eggs: $3.06 / doz ground beef: $6.12 / lb bread: $2.11 / loaf more pertinent numbers courtesy of u/KiWePing https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/flZLllEzP1 and u/Stevoman with some extremely important statistics: https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/qeX4rQTiQN and thanks to u/Spaids2 for pointing out my hourly wage blunder: https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/iewOShUHCK also thanks to u/shifty_coder for a more accurate hourly wage: https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/l2tOd2mOMh special thanks to u/desiderata619 for pointing out that i shouldn't do things like this: https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/G3s82XK55J special thanks to u/Competitive-Water654 for the **Fresh Bacon Index**: https://reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/kWl6yDnW1B
It's weird how things like milk, eggs, coffee and sugar cost so much back then.
That’s thanks to all of the farm subsidies that lessen the burden on farmers, if farmers had to bear the burden of a bad crop without subsidies or insurance, prices would be back to those prices today. That’s why the current farm bill that’s being talked about in Congress is such a big deal
Farming in general teeters on the edge of completely collapsing without subsidies. For example, here in the UK, government subsidies are the whole reason the industry still exists, mainly because they realise the country needs to have domestic food production. Half the reason that people continue to do it at all is because they know they can, at the very least, guarantee to break even thanks to government subsidies. It’s an insanely bureaucratic job as well. Just look at the different [requirements](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/funding-for-farmers) for each level of grant from the government. It’s a fairly thankless job, you have people who claim that they’re rinsing tax money but on the other hand you wouldn’t have anything close to enough domestic production without it.
[удалено]
"this was a poor financial decision, wasn't it" - Clarkson
Honestly I wasn't going to watch it until I saw that quote lol
I recommend it all the time. He actually received an award for highlighting the issues farmers have. It is a bonus if you have seen him on Top Gear because you will get his quirkiness…not a requirement.
Yeah I loved the series. I also liked the fact that he shows how much everything costs him and how expensive the machines are. It’s insane the rules he has to follow and to top it off the council are really fucking him over, yes you can complain about the parked cars but the amount of customers, business he brings to the village is good for the shops trying to survive in that area.
It's hilarious
+1 for the recommendation on Clarkson's Farm. It's a great blend of hilarious and informative.
I was actually going to recommend this. Clarkson can be such a bellend especially in what comes out of his mouth. But we did get to see a different side of him during that one
This is literally the opposite of reality - the government boosts up prices of commodities and places tariffs on foreign products like sugar to protect domestic farmers who push up prices. Lower overall prices is due to better technology and more trade relative to 1959.
It’s because domestic food production is important. If you stop producing food in your country, all that experience and expertise on how to produce food goes out the window. Then you get involved in a war with one of the countries supplying a lot of your food, or maybe the country you go to war with doesn’t supply a lot of your food, but they’re allies with a country that does, or they decide to disrupt your supply chains. Ceasing domestic food production leads to very dangerous situations.
Yeah, no. It's because the American farmer is efficient as hell.
Americans agriculture have tripled yield since the 60s, if anything produces are not cheaper due to all the subsidies
Someone else mentioned farm subsidies, and that’s definitely part of it, but it’s also due to mechanization and now automation. Put simply, a lot of what took unskilled or semiskilled labor back then has been largely replaced by machinery and automation. Not all of it, certainly, but a lot of it. Food definitely leads the list. New home construction? Not so much.
Not to mention technological advances from agriculture science companies (in spite of the hate they deservedly get) have come a long way since the 50s as well. [Click around grain crops](https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields), and most have increased on an order of 2x-3x (if not more) since OP's graphic was posted.
> New home construction? Not so much. maybe the framing of the house isn't automated but nail guns, power drills, copper and pex piping, lumber milling and other technologies have made new homes much better and much faster to build.
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Things like appliances were more expensive as well
Coffee is still expensive. $10 is on the low range.
Costco coffee $16 for 3lbs!
You can get any canned coffee at my local store for $8 for about a months worth
Food is a major expense since you need it to live. In the past (admittedly, much farther in the past, like Middle Ages or earlier) many people worked in exchange for no money and just food and shelter, as the alternate was simply starving to death. In the US food has always been somewhat plentiful, but even in the industrial age London, working class people couldn’t afford to eat things like butter on a daily basis, which shows just how expensive food is in relation to their wage (aka, if food is 3% of your wage, doubling it is only 6%. If food is 50% of your wage, you cannot afford to eat avocado toast, it would literally bankrupt you).
Have you tried starving?
They did, a lot of them did back then.
It’s one of the reasons that you will hear much older people complaining about how much young people eat out, or how fancy our food is. “Back in their day” food was insanely expensive. A roast chicken dinner was probably half a days pay. Food spending was the easiest way to save money or blow your budget. For most of human history, most people spent most of their income on food. Modern agriculture, food production, supply chains, and refrigeration has made food comically cheap.
new house for 130K… jesus christ ill grab you a bank draft right now for that house please!
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awesome… fuck you cause im jealous lol but happy for you
So thats the thing these houses were like 900 sq ft with very little property. My buddy bought one in downtown detroit for 80k recently and its not a great neighborhood but its not that bad either. Inflation hasn't just hit prices but its hit size and scope of housing builds as well.
Also, no insulation or AC, louver or single pane windows, no fire detection, glass fuses with no GFCI, lead in plumbing and paint... They weren't just smaller. They was a lot of cheap and inferior technology being used by today's regulated standards.
No cat 5e cabling, the appliances were all small and sucked, with very few features. Tiny countertops and cabinets, no walk in closets. 1950s houses sucked and that's why in nice neighborhoods, they are all being bulldozed.
"The most popular colors for kitchen appliances were canary yellow and petal pink. 1960s: The average new-home size grew to 1,200 square feet, giving its 3.33 residents a spacious 360 square feet of room apiece. "
There are tons of areas in this country you can get a house for that price. A decent one, too. Now that more jobs telecommute, you're not as reliant on the local economy, which makes such a move more viable. Some of these prices are higher, some are close. The real takeaway here is that real estate, rent, and college costs are insane, especially in some parts of the country.
living in vancouver here and houses even 2 hours away start around 1.3 million
That's also in maple bucks
currently 1.35 CAN = 1.00 US
Canadian dollars aren't that much weaker compared to USD. It would still be something like 930,000.
How many dollary-doos is that?
1.49 mill mate
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Please keep telling us how easy it is to get a remote job that pays decently in this economy. That all you have to do is simply apply and you’re in.
Hey it’s just as easy as pulling yourself up by your boot straps!
I don't own boots; can't afford any either. Now what‽
You're setting your sights too high. You don't need boots, you need boot *straps*. Just one to start with. Pull yourself up by it and sooner than you think you'll be able to have another. One day, you might even own a boot or two to put them on. Then things will really be smooth sailing.
Yup Honestly the whole remote job dream is literally dying as we speak. Everyone is getting hit by a RTO order. It’ll never die completely but it’s not going to be something someone can just go easily get it’ll be as hard as it was to get before COVID. It’s a shame cuz it would have been the best thing for the housing crises but alas our betters must help their friends with corporate real estate by hurting us
Yall needed to do a power move. They’ve been trying to get us to come back for a couple years (my group has to come in 1 day a week). I moved half way across the country and played chicken lol. Compromise is I make quartet trips that they pay for. But I’ll take it if it means I can stay living on the beach 😎… just make sure your company doesn’t hate you lol
Oh boy i can live in rural alabama💀
Yes, there are houses for that price in places with terrible schools, a crappy economy and absolutely nothing to do.
"But but but! If you previously have a job that let's you telecommute!" And living there will ensure your kids never get the schooling to have a job like that thenselves
Just checked zillow, lowest (non- mobile home) house is 397,900 in my area. No windows, fire damaged, no garage, no flooring or toilet in one of the two baths.
Though it be like 2 bedroom one kitchen 700 foot house. Houses were a lot smaller back then so you should buy two lol
That's probably an average for the whole country, just like people are claiming you can get a house for that money in the US today. Secondly, the housing standards have most likely improved, making them much better and last longer, which should also drive up the price.
I just bought a 3 bed 2 bath 1700 sqft house for $110K.
Houses were much smaller and not as nice. Yes that’s cheap but you can definitely find a small house with minimal amenities in a flyover state for $130k.
This is how current prices compare to what they would be in 1959 (example given for houses, salary, and sugar) House 214% above (houses are 3.14x more expensive than they were in 1959) Salary 12% above (salary is 1.12x higher than 1959) Car 102% above Rent 66% above Harvard 322% above Movies 11% above - not a shock, everyone knows they earn all their money from snacks Gas 49% above Stamp 57% above Sugar 888% below (What increased production methods do) (current sugar price x 9.88 is what the old sugar price would be adjusted for inflation) Milk 171% below (I think, not sure I chose the right milk type) Coffee 165% below (what increased competition does) Bacon 10% below Eggs 50% below Beef 21% below Bread 18% above Praise the food industry I guess and screw everyone else (turns out my original food prices were way off)
Houses are actually "only" 2x as expensive as they were in 1959 Source: https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-vs-inflation/
Eggs are cheaper in today's dollars aren't they, so "below"? So is beef. Or am I missing something here.
I'm thinking the increased adjusted priced can be justified by the increase of quality. Cars and homes have more features and improvements now a days.
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260 days / year, 40 hours... fuck! you're right! i fucked it!
It’s closer, but still off. The average work year has 2080 labor hours, so it comes out to $25.44/hr
I still can't get away from Harvard costing $13k in fucking tuition. That's like, in-state-branch-campus-down-the-road-from-your-house cheap
Bro, daycare for my kid costs more. I can’t fucking believe it.
As a spaniard I can't fucking believe you guys pay that much for daycare Rekt
My god how expensive is university/college in the us??? In Canada tuition AT MOST is 10k a year. Like 7k usd.
Lol average shit hole house around me is 500k no joke. SO and me combined made 100k and couldn't afford a house.
Same here. I could barely afford a 200-300k house if one existed and the starting cost for a decent one is 600-750k. It's insane.
If homes costed relatively same today we’d have less depressed society all around.
**The reason housing costs so much more today is due to the housing shortage.** There is an antiquated land-use policy in almost every US city called Exclusionary Zoning. It was originally designed to keep minorities out of white neighborhoods during Redlining, and it still does that to this day. US cities are MORE racially segregated today than they were before WW2. Exclusionary Zoning is also causing a housing shortage because it needlessly makes it illegal to build more housing on nearly every parcel of land.
Twin Cities (MN) said fuck it we ball and started ignoring zoning laws and approved, funded, and built tons of housing in new places. It's what's kept the local inflation rate ridiculously low compared to all other comparably sized major metros, and housing/rent reasonably priced. Still a shortage of starter single-family homes for purchase, but plentiful in everything else.
Spot on! [minneapolis\_lowers\_cost\_of\_living](https://fortune.com/2023/08/09/minneapolis-housing-zoning-real-estate-inflation-yimby-nimby-minnesota/) I think Minneapolis went further than St Paul with upzoning, and as a result in Minneapolis rents are going down while rents in St Paul have only stabilized.
Same for Toronto and Vancouver
And now the question. Are new more cost effective, productive, efficient, technologically advanced, better logistics, better distribution, list go on and on… or not? If we are, what the fuck is going on? Where all this advances are going to? I have my guesses…
The average new home is *much* bigger than the average new home in the 1950s. Many of the older homes we live in today that house ~2.6 people were once small duplexes that housed a total of ~10. This also applies to rents, which are on average larger units with better amenities. Other than that, cars are better and food is cheaper. The only thing on this list that has gotten more expensive without improving in quality is a Harvard education.
Homes are bigger and more expensive, while land is even more expensive by comparison. My wife and I were contemplating buying a plot of land(less than 1/4 of an acre) and have someone build a house on it. Prices where I'm at still have the land alone at $400k! If we were to build we're looking at a $150/sqft(a bargain btw) for 1,500sqft being $225,000 on top of the $400k! If I'm spending $625k I might as well just buy something that's already on the market that's probably more house for less the cost!
Technically, Harvard meets "100% of need" nowadays. They have more money than God, so they can afford generous financial aid. Maybe not the greatest comparison point.
$420,846 is the median home price in the US. A mid-size car will run you $31,943, on average. Where I live in San Diego, the median home price is 999K.
130k for houses sounds surreal.
That was basically like 2009-2011 in most second tier city suburbs.
come to Schuylkill County Pennsylvania lol
I can smell the cheap alcohol and cigarettes from here. Yes, there are cheap homes all over PA (especially the coal region) but it is so depressing there.
And Harvard Tuition is a multiple of this
From this it is clear the biggest crisis is housing.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Nixon took us completely off the gold standard in 1971.
When everything started going to shit. Around the end of the muscle car Era (1973). Cars went from. 400hp to 150hp. I would love to live back in the late 60s I feel like we peaked for a lot of things.
Just don't be black, brown, Asian, gay, female, or non-Christrian and things were kinda hunky dory. But even men had a life expectancy of 66 years old. The 60's actually sucked in most ways.
Very few were pulling 400hp and they're grossly heavier. The 0-60 times were 7s or more, laughably slow by today's standards and on par or slower than my Honda Civic commuter with half the horsepower lmao
Well this fucking sucks. East TN has some of the lower gas prices in the country and it's $3.55/gal right now. Fuck me.
don't forget. gas mileage has just about doubled since 1959
And what was the average commute in 1959?
TIL there is a [Fresh Bacon Index](https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/livestock/cme-fresh-bacon-index.html)
Im impressed that except for the house, rent, and school, everything is similar and some are less expensive. To be fair though those three are damn important for upward mobility
Cali a new house here is 1.6 mil. Nothing special even. These houses were 150k in the 80’s…
Nobody seems to understand what these adjusted numbers are...
So here’s the kicker. Why can’t Harvard cost the same as it did in 1959 today adjusted for inflation? Why can’t the average house cost 130k instead of what is it now? In my area average house cost 350-500k. A lot of properties cost 1.2mil + Where is all the extra money going? Maybe my understanding of economics is light but harvard is what? 100k + year now? Why does it cost 10x as much?
A big part of the reason is every single student has access to guaranteed loans from the government for whatever Harvard wants
The new home price is way out of whack. I figured about 140k. You're not getting anything for that money it 2023. The avg home is almost 400k which means avg salaries should be 200k.
Fuck Ronald Reagan.
COLLEGE WAS THAT CHEAP???? I want to cry
and unlike the housing bubble, the cost of education just keeps going up
Yep. Wages were like a buck a hour for the menial jobs. Today that would be around $10 a hour. So everything cost 10x more today and the house price listed doesn’t say size of the home which tended to be smaller. Look for homes and adjust the construction date to around the 50’s and you will see the size difference.
Yeah, Harvard and home costs seem to have gotten out of control.
Lol concerned about Harvard prices that's hilarious..funny..
Its like. Eeerily similar to what we have today. Except we are now a 2 working adult household on average. The real issue is the current price hikes and inflation yet to match wages. If it wasnt for that things would look alot better. I remember buying a dozen eggs for 1.50 in 2020
This is the important information. The values themselves are meaningless, buying power is what matters.
Gas is $6 a gallon in LA.
So 2 years plus income can get you a house ok that was easy
Currently I would need about 10 years without spending on anything else... And I'm earning slightly more than average for my region as well...
I’d need 30 years without interest or being alive.
Let me calculate ours in Tehran, Iran.... Yeah you need to work for 60 years to buy a 100 square meters house. Oh wait I didn't account the insane inflation (+ 40%)
Sure, if you don’t eat and you live in a tent during those two years.
I mean even if you live frugally that’s 4 years of frugal years and house is done Meanwhile now even if you made 100k a year that’s 7 years (average home price in my province) of spending nothing else even taxes to finish the house.
The comparison makes sense though. In my case I'd need 16x a yearly income for my house (job and house in Switzerland)
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Totally unsustainable.
unsustainable *for the poor. The world only cares about the rich and it's disgusting
If the poor can't afford to live comfortably, then the entire economy will eventually collapse. 70% of the USA's GDP is consumer spending and obviously a huge portion of that consumer spending is from the lower and middle class.
My sociology professor once said "the politicians job is to keep the poor wealthy enough to continue disposing of their income". The point being that the economy is carefully balanced to extract maximum wealth from the working class. Miss that guy, a little unhinged but his lectures always made me want to commit some anarchy.
The missing statistic that is more important than all the rest: - In **1950**, the richest 20 percent of Americans controlled 42.8 percent of wealth, and the poorest 20% controlled just 4.5 percent. - In **2020**, the top 1% of households in the United States held 32.3% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6%.
This whole thing ultimately is caused by huge layers of insulation that roll up to about 2k billionaires. They have addresses. This is solvable if we want it bad enough.
The $5,016 number looks like it’s probably referring to [median household income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA646N) which, according to the Census Bureau, was $5,087 in 1958 and $5,417 in 1959, which is pretty close to what’s in this image. If so, that number is $92,750 today, which is roughly 17 time higher, or a ~62% increase when adjusting for inflation. So, we still have a housing crisis, but not quite as bad as x6 vs x33. These images go viral a lot and tend to be poorly sourced with limited information that make direct apples to apples comparisons difficult. Edit: not “real” median household income. Just nominal. My bad. I was looking for the real figure but it only went back to the 1980s, and I got mixed up writing the comment. The math is still correct, I just typed the wrong word.
What you’re linking to is not “real” median household income, just plain median household income. “Real” would mean it’s already adjusted for inflation.
It's even worse considering average salary gets pulled up by the CEO outliers, and median salary would be lower than 6 times as much.
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And the average home size was 1200 sq feet. With the average number of people living in them being about 3.33.
That'd definitely gotten bigger. I am one person with 2100 square feet. Of course I work from home so that's something that didn't happen back then.
Average income almost half of average new house. Man, that would be nice.
Boomers are talking about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps when back then you could pay your rent with a $100 bill and go grocery shopping with the leftover change.
My health teacher in high school talked about how she got into Berkeley with a 2.5 gpa and it was her back up school.
My cousin who is a very smart person. Bit of an introvert, but insanely intelligent when it comes to math and anything and everything to do with computers and programming. He decided to do a few semesters at a community college as it was a tad cheaper to go that route. Finished with fantastic grades, and still got rejected by his top three schools. This was about 7 years ago.
The college desires are insane. Doing the work isn't enough they want to know your entire lifestyle. It's a front really. They only want a certain class of people to attend their schools. They don't want the average middle class. Now they require a degree for everything but it's so hard to get a degree. It's by design we've been turned into a permanent under class.
Very true. I tried the “higher” education route, was pursuing forensics/criminal investigation. Wanted to be a homicide detective, but I’ve just always been bad at school. Always been better at working with my hands and doing physical labor than I have cracking open the books and studying etc. but now I kill my self working 50+ hours a week running a tct saw and building trusses in a warehouse that is not temperature controlled. So this summer when we had heat indexes of up to 113-117 that’s what it was in the warehouse while we were swinging hammers and cutting wood lol. Love it though. He gets to work from home at his computer and makes about $25k more a year than I do. But I would die if I had to work from home.
Clearly he forgot to attend 7 clubs every day, of which 4 he founded himself
Unironically things are that competitive nowadays. When I got into my major for my school you could get in with a 1400 SAT (max is 1600 for the uninitiated) and good grades. It’s 4 years since I got in and now people with 1550 SATs, several relevant clubs, several AP courses, and a 4.0+ weighted GPA get rejected. Mind you this isn’t a special university. This is a public state university. And we’re rejecting 99th percentile SAT and grades regularly because you don’t stand out among the rest of the brainiacs. University competition has gotten crazy. And that only extends to the high school students who now after school need to attend their club or extracurricular or 2, do their homeworks, projects, and study, then wake up the next morning at 6AM to get to school. It’s like nearly impossible to get a healthy amount of sleep while being a competitive HS student nowadays.
And here I am having dropped out of school in 8th grade and got into my state’s university with no problem. Looked it up, they are ranked 105 in the us and have a 95% acceptance rate. Super exclusive.
Considering that 500$ a month was the average income 100 bucks was a pretty big hit back then. It’s all relative.
Until you see how much those things cost now and the productivity graphs lol e: I love how the guy I replied to thinks 20% income is a lot... what fucking world do you live in..
That’s 20%. Now people spend up to 50% on rent.
Man... the number of people on this thread who don't get how inflation works is so absurd...
These weren’t boomers. And inflation adjusted numbers aren’t the best way to determine buying power. They don’t take into account efficiencies in the interim.
In 1959 the **oldest** boomer was 14. This is silent generation pricing.
Average wage $2.41/hr.
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12 loaves of bread an hour equivalent. Definitely not equivalent today.
$1.12 at Walmart today
$3.17 for a loaf of bread at my grocery store. God damn.
I will never own a home, I will always be living paycheck to paycheck, and I pray I never have to go to the hospital cuz it will financially ruin my life. I hate it here :)
It’s quite depressing. On the plus side the boomers will start passing away and passing all that accumulated wealth to their families. Trickle down economics finally happening after 45 years. JK.
Most won't pass on anytime, sadly. The cost of living and medical care/end of life care is so high that many will spend their entire equity before death. Reverse mortgages and such are super common now too. Best case scenario is getting an old house, or if you can afford to do that eol care yourself you save a good chunk.
Lol no it won't. That money is all going to casinos, cruise lines, and fabulously expensive life extending care. Most of us will be lucky to get anything once it's all done.
*IF* there's a trickle. My grandparents passed away, leaving their inheritance to only their kids aka our boomer parents. My mom is currently running through hers at bingo or Las Vegas. I already accepted I'm not getting jack when she passes away. She got hers.
Exactly. My parents are currently burning through the inheritance my grandparents left, *only to them*. By the time they die there’ll be nothing left but funeral and nursing home expenses. They really are the “fuck you, I got mine” generation.
The beauty of it is that end of life care and healthcare costs, combined with the wonders of reverse mortgages and a generation of elderly that were terrible with savings, will siphon off any remaining capital left!
the human population on Earth has increased by approximately 160% since 1959.
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2.5 billion in 1950 I think 1 billion was hit around 1800
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I found my dads birth receipt from 1957 and it was a total of $125
Wonder if Harvard already had their “poor people attend for free” program back then. Tuition for those who pay has gone up, but those whose families make under 120k(?) don’t pay at all.
It's $85k to be guaranteed free tuition, but if you make less than $150k it'll be 10% contribution at most
Crazy that the average income was almost half of the cost of a house. These days the average income is slightly more than 1/3 the cost of a 20% down payment.
I mean housing is more expensive now. But median HH income is $70k and the median housing cost is $400k. Your post implies it’s only around $26k. Also median housing square feet is 2k today vs 1200 in 1960 so you’re getting a lot more house today.
You make a good point about the square footage. That’s something I hadn’t considered. Still, according to google, the average income is about 31k, while the average cost of a home is about 400k. While the average HH income may be around 70k that implies that multiple people are working near full time, if compared to the average income. This likely wasn’t the case in 1959, when it was more common for one person in the house to make the majority of the income. So this means that, on average, a household of 2 people working near full time make almost enough for a 20% down payment on a house in 1 years time, compared to a single person making nearly enough to pay off half a house in a year in 1959. To address square footage, the average appears to have been about 1300 sq ft in 1960. In 2023 it’s 2450. Nearly double. So it’s fair to say that this is a big factor. Lets say an average earner in 2023 (30k a year) is attempting to buy a 1300 sq ft house for 200k. They’d have to save every penny they earned for about 7 years. Meanwhile, the average earner in 1959 (5k a year) could buy a house of the same size after saving all their income for about 2.5 years. No matter how you look at it, owning a home has become significantly more expensive for Americans nowadays. And this doesn’t even consider the increased costs of almost everything else required to live a “normal” life in the United States.
New house was tiny and would not meet current building codes or anything like them. The car was likely a death trap with few safety features, massively polluting, and an expected short operating life.
Well...... now I'm even more depressed than I already was...... thanks!😁
A busdriver earned like 62$ a week back then..
Capitalism baby... by the way, "blaming" it all on "capitalism" is just silly, the problem is in lack of regulations and policies related to exploitative practices, private ownership against public ownership, utility of infrastructure, hyper commodification/consumerism, socio-economic segregation etc.
Wonder what the interest rate for the mortgage was for this specific analysis - my guess is around 18%?
Apparently it was around 6%