"My money goes way further than my mom's did when I was a kid."
Wow! So you can get a coke for a dime, a gallon of gas for a quarter and a house for $10k.
Maybe you missed post #39 proving that wages have grown faster than the cost per square foot of a home - even with all the new comforts and improvements.
Looking back 35 years and calling it the good old days is a common argument made by the protectionist doom and gloomers and it makes absolutely no sense. Look at these changes from just 1970 - 1990. How is all this possible if our buying power and incomes have been spiraling downward? (Apologies for the formatting)
Working less for More
1970 - 1990
Average Work Week (hrs): 37.1 - 34.5
Annual paid vacation days and holidays: 15.5 - 22.5
Employee benefits as a share of payroll: 29.3% - 40.2%(1992)
Average Size of a new home (sq. ft.): 1,500 - 2,080
New Homes with Central Air: 34% - 76%
People using computers: <100,000 - 75.9 million
Households with Color TV: 33.9% - 96.1%
Households with cable: 4 million - 55 million
Households with VCR's: 0 - 67 million
Households with two or more vehicles: 29.3% - 54%
Median household net worth (real): $24,217 - $46,687
Households owning a microwave oven: <1% - 76.8%
Heart transplants: <10 - 2,125
Recreation boats owned: 8.8 million - 16 million
Manufacturers shipments of RV's: 30,300 - 226,500
Recreation golfers: 11.2 million - 27.8 million
Americans finishing high school: 51.9% - 77.7%
Americans finishing 4 yrs. college: 13.5% - 24.4%
Life expectancy : 70.8 - 75.4
Things have only gotten better since 1990.
In 1969, 51 percent of individuals in families were middle class. By 1993, that share had declined to 40 percent. The decline in the middle class was primarily the result of growth in the share of individuals in upper class families. By 1993, onethird more individuals in families had incomes more than 40 percent above the U.S. median than in 1969.
It was also true, however, that many individuals in lower class families in 1993 had higher real income than individuals in middle class families had in 1969, because sizeadjusted U.S. median real family income grew by more than 20 percent between 1969 and 1993. Thus, despite the fact that these individuals were no longer part of the middle class, they and their families had greater access to goods and services than some middle class individuals and their families had in 1969. This is one reason why the continued rise in per capita consumption is a better barometer of real economic wellbeing.
The Shrinking Middle Class: More American Families Gain Than Fall Behind
In 1950, more than 30 percent of Americans were classified as poor. Today the figure is 10 percent (if you're a Republican) to 15 percent (if you're a Democrat).
"So you can get a coke for a dime, a gallon of gas for a quarter and a house for $10k."
When my dad got his first job, gas cost far more than a quarter a gallon. In 1958, fresh out of college with a bachelor's degree in accounting (and business management? Or maybe he switched to that for his Master's), he made all of 1.50 an hour. Three years later, he had a "good job" that got him $400 a month. In context, yeah, my money goes further - my husband doesn't even have a bachelor's degree, and he's supporting us at a higher standard of living than my dad did.
I am comparing the average income of one time with the average income of another; you're comparing the dollar of one time to the dollar of another, and they simply aren't the same thing. But, since my earlier statement was confusing, how about, "The average income now goes way further than the average income when I was a kid 40 years ago"?
I am not arguing against holding the amount of money in the system constant to the gold standard - I think the government "cheats" by printing more money than is returned in battered bills, and it's an outrage* - but I do argue that life has gotten better in the past fifty years, and I definitely argue that it's possible for most families to live on one income if they are willing live like one-income families of the fifties did. What has changed is our expectations, our standards, not our ability to live on one income.
*By cheating I mean that when the government prints more money and uses it to pay people and organizations that is in essence an "invisible tax" - early on the new money is "worth more" and the government can spend it at that level, then the economy adjusts to the greater supply of money and the value of dollar bills per se goes down. So far, the advances in technology in various fields have kept Americans ahead of the game despite this invisible tax.