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The cheap entry level car of today just isn't a VW, it is a Hyundai or a Chevy Cobalt or some such. With a lot more features than a typical car had then. Also, the amount you give was quite high for that time, not at all a typical entry level wage. The average worker has seen a dramatic expansion is lifestyle in the last 30 years - I've seen it with my own eyes, as well as knowing it from all the statistics. It is simply not possible to maintain the absurd thesis that Americans are getting poorer, when they are enjoying the greatest prosperity in human history. It is just utter nonsense.

My experience says different. The 5-10 year engineers working around me are considerably less than I was 20 years ago, in real terms. They may make $50K now, I was hired at $30K in 1979 with about 5 years experience. My house on one acre was 2.5 times my salary. You cannot touch anything like it for $125k these days. My brother in law bought a brand new souped up Camero in 1966 for approximately $3000. I owned a few used cars in that period, most cost less than $500. In '67 I bought a 10 year old BelAire for $200 - worked fine. In '71 I bought a 5 year old Malibu convertible for $500. In '72 electric bills were $30, for 3 months worth of electricity (they billed quarterly then). Phone bills were exorbitant, since Bell was still a monopoly.

My father was an engineer, raised seven children on his salary (my mother did not work); he bought a new car every 4 or 5 years, a sailboat, nice house, and after 30 years a comfortable retirement. Can you imagine the costs of raising seven children? I raised two, and know they aren't cheap. In the past 15 years I've only had two new cars. Good ones, a 91 Maxima, and a 91 Corolla (for wife). I've saved a reasonable sum for retirement, and vested in pension, but except for an unexpected windfall, my retirement would have me scrimping.

My manager thinks very highly of me, I'm very high on retention totem, usually get above "merit" pool raises. The project managers that I work for seek me out and are very happy with my work. My skills, productivity and ability to perform have grown tremendously over the past 20 years, but my pay has not kept up with the cost of living, and my coworkers get much less in real pay than their peers did 20 years ago. Certainly middle level, white collar workers in the US are being reduced in economic status.

The cheap entry level car of today just isn't a VW, it is a Hyundai or a Chevy Cobalt or some such. With a lot more features than a typical car had then. Also, the amount you give was quite high for that time, not at all a typical entry level wage. The average worker has seen a dramatic expansion is lifestyle in the last 30 years - I've seen it with my own eyes, as well as knowing it from all the statistics. It is simply not possible to maintain the absurd thesis that Americans are getting poorer, when they are enjoying the greatest prosperity in human history. It is just utter nonsense.

Well, you got to consider that a new car you mention is the standard of a 2006 world, naturally a 1950's era car or even 1970's era car might not match. Even so, they even had cars in the 1950's like a 1959 Chrysler and DeSoto that had cruise control, automatic climate control system, scanning radio and even memory seats and a mechanical computer that tracked average speed and gas mileage IIRC.

It's like a TRS-80 computer may be quaint and underpowered today but in the late 1970's, it was state of the art and did the jobs admirably that we set it to. You can't really judge 1950's or 1970's standards with a 2000 outlook or vice versa. It is like judging the Founding Fathers as slave owners even though they were 18 and 19th Century men with a 20th and 21st Century outlook. There are some flaws in that logic.

Still though, we can't avoid the fact that in the 1960's and 1970's, you can buy a new car with only a few months pay whereas you cannot today.