Although prices have gone up astronomically since 1964, I rather doubt that minimum wage in 1964 was the equivalent of $120K today. I know that in 1976, it wasn’t even close to “making a living”, but I earned minimum wage and slightly over as a teen in high school, so I still lived at home with the parents. It was 2.30 an hour when I first started working, and then jumped first to $2.65 and then to 2.90. After around 1979, my wages were high enough that it wasn’t a critical factor in my income any more.
How much silver did a 1964 quarter have in it? I think 90%, but one year later, a quarter had NO silver. And in 1964, the value of the silver within wasn’t considered by most people. It was a quarter, and in 1965, it was still a quarter and 4 of them equalled a dollar. A few years later, people really started thinking about the actual silver content of coins. I have a couple of bags of 90% “junk” silver now that are clearly worth more than their face value, as you note in your post.
Dollar vs precious metals is a good scale to use to gauge actual inflation, but there are spikes and dips, ebbs and flows that make singling out any individual point in time possibly questionable.
Another good scale of inflation is the cost of a home vs. income. Which has increased a great deal since 1984, but was somewhat flat prior to that. The “affordability index” showed a pretty big spike in home price-to-income in 2005, just before the big lending crisis (which was caused, in part, by the government forcing lenders to loan to non-creditworthy borrowers with next to nothing down), and it is again very high since around 2020. I will note that this varies a great deal by area. Also, regulations have reportedly cost new home buyers (new construction) about $120,000 on average per house. Some useful rules, some real nonsense since the “regulators” have run out of real demons to attack so they invent new ones.
I’ll also make note that today’s ridiculous price-to-earnings spike is mostly caused by having too many people versus the amount of housing stock. Why are there too many people? Because the democrat’s will to import half the third world and thus dilute our standard of living. People are moving farther out of the cities because the cities are turning into third world s-holes. Which is just what the ‘rats want for various reasons.
But the thing is, people that lived in inner-ring suburbs, close to the main city, are moving farther away because of the living conditions in the inner city. The crime that used to be isolated to various neighborhoods is creeping outward as we import thugs and don’t police them.
My own neighborhood was a golf course 4 or 5 years ago. Shouldn’t even have needed to be built but people that can get out of the danger zone are doing so and that means building and sprawl. Get rid of the invaders and that problem will go away and housing will drop back to the 2.5 to 3.5 X income ratio where it belongs.
YES! You've made my point. To answer the first question:
Here's the breakdown: A 1964 U.S. quarter weighed 6.25 grams (about 0.2009 troy ounces).
Metal Breakdown
Silver: 90% of the coin, equal to 5.625 grams (0.1808 troy ounces) of pure silver.
Copper: 10% of the coin, equal to 0.625 grams
0.1808 x 5 = 0.904 troy ounce
Today's value of 0.904 ounce of silver = $58.15
To the second point, you're also correct. Post 64 decoupling our currency from real value, silver, allowed the excess 'spend-print-repeat' cycle.
The value of dollars was diluted like a watered-down bottle of booze - far faster than any increase in wages. At least when measured against silver.