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(the downside of 20th century work on increasing life expectancy is that most of it happens in retirement, making pensions much more expensive)
edit: I have not done the maths, but I would not be surprised to discover that the total average pension paid to someone retiring at age 65 in 2026 was much more than the total average pension paid to someone retiring at age 65 in 1986, while at the same time the weekly amount of the earlier one would be higher. Because the more recent one has to spread the money over more years.
(inflation adjusted as well)
i.e.
Opt to retire at 65, but you get a defined contribution pot
Opt to retire at 70, you get final salary pension.
It makes no sense to give someone else control of your savings in this day and age.
So, adjusting for inflation, a single income family in 1980 would be equivalent to a four-income family today. Since millennials currently get by with just two incomes, they actually come out way ahead when adjusted for inflation.
Taking your first, the $47K 3 bedroom starter home with a yard. In 2026 that would be $200K (cumulative inflation is a little over 4x[1]); picking a random US city[2] and looking on Zillow[3] I find that...yeah, you can get a comparable home today.
There are certainly arguments to be made about tradeoffs, quality issues (though those aren't as obvious as you might initially suppose[4]) and so on. But just listing unadjusted price comparisons like this is disingenuous.
[1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1980?amount=1 [2] https://www.randomlists.com/random-us-cities [3] https://www.zillow.com [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4C62HC1HSo
But then they also need to make sure to also match salaries to inflation too.. Because wages have not kept up with inflation, which is the reason for most of this..
This is not true.
https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-have-inflation-ad...
Yes, the house now is more energy efficient. The car is safer. But if the price of everything went up 4x-10x, and the median income only went up 2x, AND you have to pay for more things that used to be included, then everything is more unaffordable, inflation be damned.
Inflation-adjusted wages have been at worst stagnant. Inflation-adjusting prices is necessary for these comparisons to be meaningful at all.
This is a website for engineers, you should be embarrassed to be posting these completely innumerate comments.
There's one good effort - comparing a car to the salary of a car-worker. But it only has half the comparison (what are today's car workers earning?). That's the comparison that Marx would recognize: how long do the people making something have to work to buy the thing they made?
The assembly-worker making a Civic and a 7 Series BMW are doing effectively the same thing, but the BMW assembler shouldn’t be getting paid 3 to 4x.
It's a nonsensical position, meant to invoke a certain sort of feels, and nothing more.
I'd paste the text, but you've somehow disabled select/copy/paste, UX strike number two.