Posted on 01/03/2024 10:19:29 AM PST by BJ1
A real estate agent on social media has given some stats comparing the costs of housing (ownership and rent), college education and gas vs. the income in years 1970 and 2023.
It sure looks like the American Dream is unattainable for a substantial portion of the Gen Z generation.
Yup. I think a lot of people just don’t see it.
Inflation has been a constant problem for decades and wages have not kept pace at all. It’s much harder to build a life today. Buying a house or renting an apartment can be very tough in a lot of locations. Many young people “get their foot in the door” with a job only to find out that there is zero chance of promotion or pay increases. It really wasn’t like that years ago (I’m a Boomer). Once upon a time, if you worked hard and played by the rules, good things would come your way. But nowadays a lot of people realize that the game is rigged and they are just wage slaves who are getting screwed by everyone.
Maybe it’s time Gen Z quit devaluing the dollar by voting in big spending politicians that print and spend money worse than my ex with a credit card.
I am a boomer as well.
This has been getting worse and worse.
The leftists have crippled average folks beneath piles of regulations which make everything more expensive and difficult to accomplish.
Developers seeking to develop new housing have an astonishing pile of hurdles to overcome—and every decade the pile got higher and higher.
Proof that elections have consequences. Vote for free stuff and it is eventually gonna bite you bigtime. Free stuff isn’t free. Imagine what it’s going to cost the next generation after the Zero Gs to buy a house or go to college when you’re competing against 35 to 50 million illegal aliens with race cards.
Gen Z doesn’t stand a chance, and not because of the differences in prices. Gen Z has totally different values and priorities. Gen Z doesn’t want a house or to save money and their biggest obstacle is by far the internet and social media which has brainwashed them into obedient sheeple who don’t know what’s good for them.
They’re getting $20.00 to flip burgers. I got $1.25.
We can genuinely thank the “Boomers” for the problems we have now. They were indoctrinated in colleges. They voted and got all these socialist programs for themselves. Then, the worst, they got in power via he bureaucracy. While the conservative “Boomers” started businesses or went in to the private sector, the liberals spread like a cancerous infection in every government agency they could.
we got diddly for raising our kids....
yep.....we put in decades of work....solid, not calling in, work...
but it wasn't govt work so I got no defined pension and my husband's company went bankrupt so he has a very limited Pension Board pension....
I did the math on that guy’s stats of an average rent of $108 and average income of $9,000 in 1970. You could pay your rent in just 3 days of work. Simple math, no taxes deducted.
It matters little how much burger flippers get paid in some states. The rent is still too high in the cities of America.
They’re ripping us all off.
In the example shared, does the poster equate the effects of political decisions, elections, policy on his individual life (income, employment, inflation, nuclear family, pursuit of happiness, freedoms, etc.).
Things have gotten more expensive but expectations have risen too. Besides that, I married in 1970. We looked at 2 bi-levels, one was a $15,000 house and the other $42,000. Hubby jumped up and down on the floor of the $15,000 and the whole house shook. We took a pass. We couldn't afford the $42,000 house. We bought a single wide, used trailer.
Hubby had college loans to pay off. It was not $500. Gas was a quarter a gallon in Ohio and income was above $9000 a year depending on the job.
Don't believe everything an anonymous poster claims. Where did the figures come from? What studies, done by whom and how many? The economy is trashed, true, but people younger than you expect more than their parents did, or their grandparents.
Wrap your head around this.
I’m a boomer and what I was paying for in 5 months for mortgage payments was the entire price of what my parents paid for a home.
While I am not a boomer, nor Gen X, I have a hard time feeling sorry for Boomers. Your generation came of age during a great economy. And your generation took the birth control pill and for a short while legitimately had twice the earning power of the prior generations. That worked for a while until all the women in the workforce pushed wages down. Now two incomes is a sad necessity for most young families.
Your generation also went wild on unconventional behavior. Right and wrong was muddled. Divorce became commoonplace in the 70s and latch key kids became a real thing.
I recall being a teenager (I was born in 1970) listening to Boomers being exasperated with their children not listening to them. As a smart mouth teen I would ask them if they would ever behave like this when they were young and they would almost always look at me like I was the most stupid person in the world. They would say of course not, my parents would have killed me. Then I would give them the look like, well why don’t you do the same. And suddenly they looked rather small.
However I can’t really hate on Boomers because there has never been a time in history when human beings could control their fertility. As we can see around the world and despite culture or religion, women went for birth control in a big way. That is imo, the most significant event that turned our culture. Women went from being nurturing moms to boss babes who can do anything a man can do. And how have the children suffered for it.
And now the youth are so strapped, they may not even have children. I guess that’s one way to make sure the rent is paid on time.
It’s been pretty obvious for a long time that the US standard of living has been steadily going down for the average Joe anyway. The elites have been doing quite well however.
I'm sure you didn't mean to imply it, but there is a difference between wage earners and salaried workers.
At my company, salaries increased each year by an average 3.5% for cost of living adjustments. Based on performance, some made more and others made less. Promotions boosted the increase substantially, but the pyramid effect eventually slows down promotions as fewer "boxes" on the organization chart become available as one climbs the career ladder.
One major thing of the past are defined pension plans that rewarded longevity at a company. If someone remained at a company for their entire career, there was a nice retirement nest-egg waiting for them when they retired.
-PJ
Numbers approximate but going off the gold standard ruined money.
Was real, now fiat.
Our debt in 1970 dollars is only 540B (don't we wish we had a bunch of those dollars).
I don’t care about the plight of those little twerps. They don’t study, and they resist the attempts of their betters to educate them.
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