Pump price for motor fuel varies wildly in both time and space; including it in the CPI would be very difficult and subject to even more manipulation than is already present.
Posted on 12/11/2023 8:53:44 AM PST by Red Badger
There were “revolving” store credit accounts in my youth. I’m not sure how many families used these as a percentage.
I know of no family on the street I lived on in the 1960s that had a bank credit card.
My mother never had a credit card that I know of. I never saw my father use a bank credit card.
Credit card interest was not a budget item for lower income people decades ago. Credit was typically not made available to people making less the equivalent of $40,000 in 2023 dollars except via rent-to-own stores.
I’m the first person that I know of that had a student loan.
I think “layaway” was a thing in those days.
You could claim the item and the store would hold it in storage for you.
Then you would pay over time.
When it was fully paid for the store would release it to you.
The French use microstations d’epuration instead of septic tanks.
They basically are on-site wastewater treatment facilities.
“average young people are in trouble”
$15/hour, 40 hours/week = $600/week
two people
~$5,000/month gross
“The entire spectrum of new development regulatory requirements is amazing these days”
I have advocated the replacement of ad valorem taxation by square root of square footage taxation. This would end the incentive of government to make building expensive.
A 900 square foot apartment would pay 60% of the property tax a 2,500 square foot house would and half the property tax a 3,600 square foot mansion would.
Your post reminds me that these regulatory high barriers to entry (money and time) are the same for new construction small houses as for large ones—so a developer has a strong incentive to build the largest homes they can possibly sell.
“So a lot of the numbers being used in these “silent depression” videos are from dubious sources.“
Bullshit. These Tic Tok numbers square with my grandparents recollections on weekly pay and home prices etc. I heard their stories in the 1960s and was amazed that they, stoop labor immigrants from Ireland at the turn of the century, owned their own Brooklyn brownstone by the late twenties early thirties on that measly weekly income.
Pump price for motor fuel varies wildly in both time and space; including it in the CPI would be very difficult and subject to even more manipulation than is already present.
No house that is 3,600 sq. feet is a “mansion” and a 900 sq foot apartment is a one room studio!
My grandmother got married in 1916, her designer, satin wedding shoes cost $15, which she told me was the average salary of the average working man at that time.
In 1959, in NYC, the minimum wage was $ 0.50 ( that's FIFTY CENTS ) an hour.
After WW II, because of the BABY BOOM, there were commercials on T.V. begging people to become teachers and their pay had just been to $2,000 and something to about $3,000 a year depending on the grade and/or subject, I think.
There is a site that will tell you what a year's salary at other times would be equal to today. I typed in search what I wanted go know and the site came up, but I don't remember the name of the site and didn't save it.
“Tik Tokers are stupid.”
Well, NO SOUP FOR YOU!
“...would recommend the Dave Ramsey approach—live below your means—”
What’s interesting is, once you live below your means for 10-20 years and it works out, the habit stays with you even when your means have grown. You tend to keep living below your means and you don’t feel pushed to keep up with anyone because you never got caught up in the rat race.
Yup—exactly.
I joke that we bought our “too small” starter home decades ago—which became the correct size after we retired.
;-)
“Inflation is easing...”
This is the difficulty with inflation. At this point in the cycle we are reading that inflation is “easing”. But all we consumers see is rising prices. When that which already feels expensive goes up every little bit hurts. Deflation in prices requires job losses and less consumption, lower wages, even worse!
People will agree there’s no free money but people still panic when they find out the continuing cost of the “free” money they got and already spent.
Nice going!
“Inflation is easing...”
Means you still hurt, just not as bad as last month..........
TikTokers have no idea how bad the great depression was if another democrat or Rino gets elected they will and it will be much worse in many ways.
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