How 40 Years Makes A Hell Of An Economic Difference - Wages & Cost Of Living

reply to post by Dustytoad


And what does that do to reduce the increased cost of the modern age? Squat.

Ever notice that something as simple as roadwork maintenance occurred far less often and was far less costly in the 70's? Ever wonder why? A couple thousand extra shipping trucks running over them per day really does a number on wear and tear.

How about base development costs? Stuff like running utilities to a building. Think they had 6 lines to run in the 70's? Think again, they ran 3.

Etc, etc, ad naseum.

Our lifestyle (as a society) has huge infrastructure costs, we can either pay the extra costs or we can all give up this lifestyle and go back to the 70's.

I just wanted to add:

People keep complaining about the increased costs that we face today vs recent history, but they seem to exclude all the extra luxuries we receive for that extra cost.

Let's start with milk to keep consistent with the OP's original.

Does anybody realise how different the procedure for producing milk is today vs 1970? Only a couple hundred different safety standard tests and measurements...none of which are free. All brought in to make a simple product safer for the population.

How about housing? A base 1970's home was around 1,500 sq ft, contained an average of 2 outlets per room, had 2 bathrooms, 2 single fuse outlets in the kitchen, etc, etc.

A base 2012 home is around 2,150 sq ft, has an average of 4 outlets per room plus phone and network, has 3 1/2 bathrooms on average, and the modern kitchen contains as much wiring as the original 1970's house. It also has thicker walls, multiple layers of weather seal, 3 times the amount of glass, 4 times as many floor finishes, etc, etc.

Of course a new house costs more, you are getting significantly more product for your purchase.

Originally posted by Ghost375

Today the average minimum wage is 10$. A LITRE of milk now costs between 1.99$ and 2.75$. Which means the gallong would be about 6$ on average.

minimum wage is only 8 dollars around here. Not sure your stat about the average being 10 is correct.....
and a gallon of milk is only 3 dollars....
I'm not sure where you're getting your averages.....


But you're missing the KEY statistic.....
How many people(as a percentage of the population) are earning minimum wage now, as opposed to back then?

this is why our economy IS NOT growing...tens of millions of people making crap wages....all they do is pay for the basic necessities. and let's forget the college graduates...every year hundreds of thousands of graduates come out of our colleges and universites...where is the BIG INCOMES for those people?
83,000 engineering degrees were earned in 2011 in america
www.asee.org...

and yet, the business world keeps complaining that "there isn't enough qualified engineers in this country, so we have to hire them from other countries"...i call b**ls**t...they hire from overseas because they can pay them crap wages.