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It’s hard not to resent the boomers. We shouldn’t, but it’s hard.
They pulled up the ladder and then went magat and set fire to the first floor. Fuck em
Mimimum wage in 1970 bought approximately 84 ounces of gold in Canada (roughly similar in the US.) Worth roughly $160 000 pre gold spike, and roughly double that after gold went crazy recently.
Minimum
Wage
What do you mean by minimum wage in 1970? Do you mean an entire year of 40-hour per week, minimum wage earnings, saved in a piggy bank?
For reference, minimum wage in 1970 was $1.50 in Canada, and $1.60 in USA. 2026 equivalent would be around $13/hour.
Gross earnings for the whole year bought in gold at that same year as a reference. An ounce of gold was $35 in the same time period. That’s 89 ounces of gold at $1.5/hr working 40 hours a week.
And yes, I know the US went off the gold standard which made the ratio of dollars to gold go haywire. What’s interesting is whatever amount of gold it took to buy a house in 1970 is roughly what you needed to buy it before gold prices skyrocketed recently.
A person in Canada making a 6-figure income today is earning a minimum of 17.55 ounces of gold in gross income
Well, about the same percentage is what you get paid of the value you provide to your employer.
Like I have a house, but I dream of just living in a van or an RV.
I never understood that dream as someone who lives in an area with real winters.
You can insulate your stuff lol. Don’t worry, I know what real winters are. -40 is a cakewalk for me. There’s a lot of cool solutions now for that.
Have any cool info or resources? Curious what inside temps are like and what is being used for heating.
Kind of how you wear sleep wear and jeans (with the sleepwear lining lol). Overall the main thing is layering. Aluminum and insulation (can be a composition, even using cardboard between layers). Piss tanks and water tanks are to be inside instead of underneath unless you like piss Popsicles. Shit is best dealt–your on your own with that one lol. Heating is fun, I’d go for a wood or a gas system, they’re like tiny boxes. The upside to gas systems is that they can be modded for wood gas.
This is for climates.
Otherwise it’s all about AC lol
Ehh, we used to live in caves and even tents in those same winters.
I think a lot of people who have never owned a home don’t realize how much of a hassle it is.
You don’t even really get much equity out of it. If your houses value increases because of the market, so does all the other housing. All the money you have to spend on maintaining it just keeps from dropping in value.
I know at least a half dozen people who have sold their house and gone back to renting.
That’s what I try to get across to my friends. It’s like we’re all getting older. If you can’t get down and fix your sink drainage, don’t get a house. It’s one thing after another. I’m lucky I can do a lot of stuff myself.
You don’t even really get much equity out of it. If your houses value increases because of the market, so does all the other housing.
Wrong, so very wrong. First you get to keep 30-60% of your payment as principle, as opposed to rent where you keep 0. Second, the mortgage payment stays the same while rent goes up. Even during modest times this makes a noticeable impact but over the last 15 years the effect has been insane. Even just looking at equity your logic is wrong. Assume I buy a house worth $100k (to keep math easy) and pay $0 down. Now assume it doubles in value, the house is worth $200k and the mortgage is worth $100k. You just made $100k or in real growth close to $50k.
If you plan on staying in one spot for 4+ years, buying is essentially always the correct move. Renting gives you the ability to move as you desire but you’re paying in unseen ways.
You don’t even really get much equity out of it
You do get more than if you rent, and pay someone else’s mortgage.
Except if you rent you don’t have the same financial risk. A new roof or HVAC can easily be over $20k.
A new roof or HVAC
But then you own a home with a new roof or Hvac. Not disputing these are very expensive (and that wages have been left in the dust by inflation for decades), but my parents didn’t get HVAC until 3 years ago. And when you rent you only get a place to live, no equity.
This shows how young people don’t want to marry anymore, smh.
Trickle-down economics at work
Why is ‘married’ still a lifegoal…
It’s code for “you are not only well off enough to care for yourself, you’re well off enough to care for another adult and at least one child.”
Hence the need for a house.
That’s my point though. Marriage is no that. You don’t care for a partner like you did in the 50s
It’s even worse then, because back then a single income household was all that was needed.
The point is that you should have the financial freedom to support a family on a single income. The “marriage” part isn’t what’s important.
Double income, no kids, used to be a trope where the couple had all kinds of time and money to do whatever. Now it’s almost the minimum to not be homeless.
I think it’s more a metric of stable life/happiness.
… Not saying it’s a good metric…
Happiness would be a much stronger metric
How do you measure that?
Marriage… house… kids
~And avocado toast.~
Every year, they make lists of the happiest countries I’m the world.
If they can measure this by asking people, then I guess they should be able to measure the individual person’s happiness too by using the same or similar questions
Sure, that’s a subjective way to measure. Marriage is an objective metric, so it’s probably more reliable to gauge things off of.
Dollars.
The avocado toast of today is what a cheeseburger used to be (back in the day when it was well-made), just healthier. Boomers used to gorge themselves on ingredients that were much more expensive than fucking avocado and bread, they can stfu.
Logic makes their brains hurt. I think that’s why this type of ring doesn’t work on them.
It’s not about minimum wage. In 1950 US Federal minimum wage was $0.75/hr which is equal to $10.38/hr in 2026. $10.38 is lower than the current minimum wage in 29 states.
and what is the median wage, or even the 20th percentile wage?
where did you come up with 10.38/hr? If you go by m2 supply from 1950, minimum wage today would be $58.97 which is very close to OPs number.
from some online inflation calculator webpage.
What was it in 1960?
$1/hr
You’re right, it’s about maximum worth.
J. Paul Getty was the richest person in the 50s and he was worth about a billion dollars. Adjusted for inflation, thats about $14 billion now.
Elon Musk is 70x richer than that.
It isn’t about how little the poor have, its about how much the rich hoard. And it always has been.
No one who earned minimum wage was owning homes. There were far more ft salary jobs with opportunities for advancement when the Silent Generation and then the Boomers hit adulthood. Most of those jobs included training so it wasn’t expected that everyone have a degree, masters, red seal and work experience before being hired.
Whatever happened to “source?”
You can go back as far as you’d like to; if memory serves 1950s was our best time re salaries and purchasing power.
Here’s a 20% drop since 2010 straight from the horse’s mouth.
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/purchasing-power-constant-dollars.htm
Not sure about this one I haven’t checked sources on it, this is just a quick search for you because you’re a good kid
https://www.macrotrends.net/4534/cpi-purchasing-power-of-the-dollar
There’s zero debate, we are fucked
Recall that in addition to this drop in purchasing power, we are taxed in countless new ways that we never had to worry about decades ago. In my state we pay a tax on toilet paper. We have to pay the state to take a shit.
The solution is obvious. Let’s print more money!
p.s. a good way to spot check the economy is to check the price of gold. My gold is now worth 400% of what it cost years ago. So… it’s not actually worth more than it was… it’s just our dollar has lost that much value.
Managed it when I was 35 in ‘21.
This economy is shit.
depends on your field, tech/ health i can see that quickly. not a teacher or any other field that isnt “Valuable”
Same except it was 2017
Yeah, I snagged mine right before the market went crazy, but I also live in a rural area
No, but let’s look at it more positively: Cease eating entirely, and the problem will become immaterial soon enough.
