Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeStarr
Housing costs have not risen 5 times more than wages in the past 20 years.
When I was 18-19 minimum wage was $3.35. A movie ticket was about $3.35. It took one hour of minimum wage work to buy a ticket. Currently minimum wage is $7.25. A movie ticket is about $8ish. Not much change
When I was 18-19 gas was about $1.29 a gallon. You could buy 2.5 gallons of gas for 1 hr of minimum wage. Gas is now about $2.75ish (varies obviously). You can now buy 2.6 gallons for 1 hr of work. Not much change.
My first house in Dallas cost $140,000. My first real career type job paid $24,000 to start. That's 5.83 yrs of work to pay for the house. I sold that house for $230,000 20 years later. I was still working that same job (although I had been promoted and made much more money). The starting salary for that exact same career type job now has a starting salary of $50,000. That's 4.6 years of work. A young guy starting in my exact same career path could've bought my exact same house from me cheaper than I bought it. (inflation adjusted)
Things have not changed nearly as much as people like to think. In fact many things are cheaper now in relation to inflation adjusted prices. People would just like to make excuses and think it was so much easier for everyone else.
Lets add in how much easier and cheaper technology has made so many different facets of life and the "life was easier for you old guys" is out the window. Nice try.
Try living in Melbourne or Sydney, where the median house price is $800k and the median salary is $50k.
A few decades ago, my grandpa migrated to Australia from Italy. He never finished high school. He worked as a mechanic. He had very little in assets when he first arrived. And he managed to buy 2 houses which today are worth $1.1M each. At the time, I believe it cost him around 3 years of pay per house.
Maybe things are different in the USA, but over here, house prices are rising at a significantly faster rate than income levels are rising. It's gotten to the point where doctors, lawyers, engineers and investment bankers are competing for tiny old houses in suburbs that used to be infamous for being rough, dirty, working class suburbs. And that's why the city suburbs are going through gentrification here.
The 1980's were the golden era when the economy was booming. But we just got through the biggest global financial crisis since the 1930's great depression and we're still recovering from that. What a time to be a young adult.
The technology argument is valid, however, what's the point of living in a world which has access to a lot of technology if you're too poor to be able to afford to use any of it? And technology works against us a lot too: so many jobs have been replaced by self-serve checkout machines, poker and chess games have gotten tougher since computer programs came out, etc. Automation is a huge issue in the present and future.