[MilesVeritatis]

Excerpt:

"Even today, after the election, the Washington establishment still hasn’t processed or properly dissected its [Black Monday's] effects. Economic experts predicted that the service industry would be the employment of the future. Steelworkers were retrained to fill jobs in that sector, which was expected to sustain the middle class in the same way that manufacturing did.

It did not. According to a study done by the Midwest Center for Research, the average salary of a steelworker in the late 1970s was $24,772.80. Today, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the median household income in the Mahoning Valley is $24,133."

[Myrddin]

The present value of $24,000 in 1970 US Dollars has vastly different purchasing power. The USD was pegged to a gold standard at $35 per oz. Expressed as a ratio of the $1311 per oz price this evening, the present value would be $899,000 per year. Except the buying power went the other way. The $24000 in 2017 USD buys what $640 would buy in 1972. The profligate tax, spend and printing of the US Dollar has vastly reduced the value of that fiat currency. If it was not the world's "reserve currency", that printing press game would have sunk the US economy long ago. That sword of Damocles could still fall on our heads at any time.

[PAR35]

$24,772.00 in September, 1977 (when the layoff in question occurred) would be

$99,055

now.

[tinamina]

Selling the public on that “service industry” future was ridiculous. I couldn’t believe they snookered the folks into believing it. Common sense would say such an idea was never credible.
Are the American citizens born to be servants to each other with no prospects to achieve more? No dreams there!