What's new

A New Record!

According to some cost of living calculator I found online, it appears the cost of living has risen 2,500% since 1975. I’m not even sure that can be accurate.

Another site which calculates data has inflation having risen almost 500%. That seems right to me.

Based on that, have salaries increased accordingly?

Salaries match inflation. That's pretty much a guarantee of the math. The questions come around quintiles and so forth. Also, our inflation measurement does a very terrible job of calculating and capturing any remotely close picture of standard of living delta. Basically what I mean by that is wages are measured as stagnant in real terms yet standard of living has skyrocketed. Look at the math behind the stagnant wages myth and you'll see that it's impossible for wages not to stagnate in the context of our current measurement of inflation, yet living standards dont. And if you want to break that out into class warfare, well, take the entire income rise of the rich and divvy it up among the rest. Now we all get a few hundred bucks a year more. That's stagnant all the same, especially after adding in the inflation it would produce.
 
According to some cost of living calculator I found online, it appears the cost of living has risen 2,500% since 1975. I’m not even sure that can be accurate.

Another site which calculates data has inflation having risen almost 500%. That seems right to me.

Based on that, have salaries increased accordingly?

Long run average was roughly 4%/yr last I calculated it about 10 years ago. It should be slightly lower now since inflation has trended down since the Reagan reset, but I still use 50% every 10 years as an easy rule of thumb.
 
Based on what? Try living like people did in the '60's. Dual income life is badass. DINKs, even better (yes, that's where the term dink came from). But single income never was easy, on average anyway.
Agree to disagree



Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
 
According to some cost of living calculator I found online, it appears the cost of living has risen 2,500% since 1975. I’m not even sure that can be accurate.

Another site which calculates data has inflation having risen almost 500%. That seems right to me.

Based on that, have salaries increased accordingly?
My Dad bought the house I grew up in in 1972 for less than $10,000. When he sold it in the early 90s he got almost $200,000.
 
My Dad bought the house I grew up in in 1972 for less than $10,000. When he sold it in the early 90s he got almost $200,000.

Yep. Ours was built and sold in 1973 for $29,000 iirc. It’s now about $600,000.
 
One with out dirty diapers, sippy cups, car seats and being thrown up on.

One full of sleep and adult conversation.

It’s a life I’m glad I don’t have.

I was being semi sarcastic I guess, I'm 36, still not married and still undecided....
 
I was being semi sarcastic I guess, I'm 36, still not married and still undecided....
It's OK, we live in a gender-fluid world. No judgment here whatever your decision.
 
Im doing it currently. Yet im working more than just about anyome to the point that my overtime is kinda like a second income i guess. Yet im still always broke and always living paycheck to paycheck. And im actually quite frugal and good with money. It sucks. Im scared of retirement and will probably work right up until the day i die. I would like to have a second child so my daughter could have a sibling but i cant afford another child.

We're paying too much for food, healthcare and insurance (car and home) here, I know that much.
 
And yes, wages have been stagnant or regressed while housing has increased.

So what else has changed (with regards to inflation).

Food is cheaper.
Benefits are higher (this includes 401k, healthcare, childcare, PTO, etc).

It’s hard to categorize non-wage benefits, but Human Progress has estimated that it could be as much as 30-40% of our current wages. So that’s significant.

If you compare the average products purchased in the 70’s to now, they are cheaper. For example, the time cost of a typical fridge fell by 50% while using 33% of the electricity. So that’s a savings in two ways.

It’s not all bad. It’s not all great. We’re still capable of living a damn great life. So stop complaining you miserable misers.
 
Are you sure benefits are higher? Maybe higher than they were back generations ago, but almost every company I am aware of has reduced benefits in some ways.
 
And yes, wages have been stagnant or regressed while housing has increased.

So what else has changed (with regards to inflation).

Food is cheaper.
Benefits are higher (this includes 401k, healthcare, childcare, PTO, etc).

It’s hard to categorize non-wage benefits, but Human Progress has estimated that it could be as much as 30-40% of our current wages. So that’s significant.

If you compare the average products purchased in the 70’s to now, they are cheaper. For example, the time cost of a typical fridge fell by 50% while using 33% of the electricity. So that’s a savings in two ways.

It’s not all bad. It’s not all great. We’re still capable of living a damn great life. So stop complaining you miserable misers.

Housing has gotten too expensive, and a lot more residences need to be built. It's becoming almost as bad as Europe.
 
And yes, wages have been stagnant or regressed while housing has increased.

Another common myth. We have plenty of data on this. Read Robert Shiller, or just read the wiki on him.

Same home sales have fluctuated in an affordability range. Besides, if this asset price has indeed outpaced other [non-asset] things then it's because we can afford the higher prices. That would point to the opposite of the complaints about affordability, logically.

Also, while benefits have increased so has the effectiveness of healthcare (tremendously), giving another double benefit like your refrigerator example. We can't compare straight cost to cost here. The complaint should be that it has gotten so good that it's hard to afford. Sign me up for that world please.
 
According to some cost of living calculator I found online, it appears the cost of living has risen 2,500% since 1975. I’m not even sure that can be accurate.

Another site which calculates data has inflation having risen almost 500%. That seems right to me.

Based on that, have salaries increased accordingly?

Well Social Security is gonna go up 2.8%.

Close enough lol
 
Top