Today I learned that I, with a BS degree and a decade of experience in IT work, am not making the minimum wage my dad made as a teenage high school dropout.

Yep, the 1% lost a lot of their workforce during the war. They needed to treat them right and give concessions. The 1% wants their fiefdom back and have been working on it every since.

Think of it like if Apple, Microsoft and Amazon didn't have agreements to keep wages down and it was actually competitive, they would offer bonuses and paid vacation, etc. to even medium employees to keep them.

This a good post. People love to argue about current wages and the like, but it is buying power that is the issue.

In the early to mid 70s buying was the best it has ever been. One job could afford a house, car, and education.

Whatever happened to "source?"

My parents bought a house in the 90's and after they bought it, they realized they couldn't really afford the mortgage.

As a comparison, my wife and I tried buying a house 3 years ago. We had around $3,000 left in our budget after ALL our expenses was paid, and we got rejected in 3 banks before we got a loan.

Our rent was $1,500 / month. Our mortgage is $1,000 / month. We have more money after expenses living in our house compared to the place we lived before.

They make it really damn difficult to buy a house, even when you have the money.

I only have a house because I inherited it from my dad, and my dad only had a house because he inherited it from my late grandpa, and he only had a house because he bought a farmland for some cows back when this was barely a town

Voting is important kids.

No, but let's look at it more positively: Cease eating entirely, and the problem will become immaterial soon enough.

There's plenty of money to go around, and we could easily pay that minimum wage, but gotta make those 1%ers richer.

Who needs a functioning society when you can just have a couple trillionaires instead..

We can’t afford the luxury of corrupt politicians, billionaires and shareholders anymore. We need a revolution

It's hard not to resent the boomers. We shouldn't, but it's hard.

The reality is avocado on wheat toastwould save some people money in the long term (from doctors bills.) Fiber. Protein. A good monounsaturated fat that feeds your HDL (the “good” cholesterol.)

Bonus, fiber creates a more full feeling, longer. That sense of satiation means less snacking and less feeling the need for more food consumption overall.

Not bad for $0.40 in avocado and a slice of wheat bread.

Managed it when I was 35 in ‘21.

This economy is shit.

American culture is fucked. I have a wife and two kids now, but I had to move to the UK for it. American media has the population so indoctrinated that you're unlikely to find any American stable enough to last any considerable amount of time in marriage. I'm at 5 years, now. If you aren't dealing with an algo-indoctrinated social media scroller, things are better

Like I have a house, but I dream of just living in a van or an RV.

they want it to be 0, and most countries are just burying thier heads in the sand, as long as the rich are buying homes, they believe nothing bad will happen.

Trickle-down economics at work

Without earlier data it's impossible to know whether it was on the way up or down in 1950, but notice that the prosperity decline started sometime in the 1950s, right when the business world started handing out consumer credit like candy. They discovered that when given the chance, people were willing to spend money they didn't have. And with the shift to psychologically designed advertising that encouraged viewers to feel inadequate and insecure, people could be persuaded to spend money they didn't have on crap they didn't need. Over the next few generations people have gradually become accustomed to more and more debt and less and less financial security. We're like frogs in a slow cooker, suddenly realizing something smells like soup and it's us.

I grew up in a town of 53k people. My sister lives there now and gets factory jobs that pay good. You can buy a house under 200k. No public transportation

you're supposed to skip the $500/mo in subscriptions that you're definitely paying, too

/s

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

I’ve bought 5 homes in my life, 2 were 680k, one bought recently, you need to take home roughly 10k a month to afford a home at that price point. Closer to 100/ hr if you live in CA. Duel income is a must.

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.

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.

Married + home

A house is easy - how much money do I need for a husband/wife?

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.

This shows how young people don't want to marry anymore, smh.

Well, about the same percentage is what you get paid of the value you provide to your employer.

Logic makes their brains hurt. I think that’s why this type of ring doesn’t work on them.