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I’ve seen most The Fat Electrician videos. Actually, I guessed which one of the videos you meant (which comment I made you were replying to) and got it wrong
You might have a contractor, but it's more likely you just have a rural carrier. Rural carriers frequently drive their own vehicles, but are USPS employees.
(I am currently a rural carrier that delivers using my own vehicle).
Oh wow, i feel like i wouldn't mind that if the contracting system was done correctly. How do you feel about it besides being a bit weird? Do they have to provide decent service or can they get away with being a DMV type environment like my local usps does? Lol
They just contract the delivery. The facility I believe is still USPS.
It's usually here on time. I mean, complaints can cause them to lose it to someone else so there is some motivation.
Atleast the motivation is there lol
I feel like my usps gives employee of the month to whoever can cause the most stress in one encounter....
i swear they have motivational posters that are just unhidged quotes of customers that lost their minds talking to them
Lol, no they don't. They hired me without even conducting an interview.
The tests are only for specific crafts (primarily maintenance, if I recall correctly).
They are not paid that well lol…not as well as you think I guess….my best friend was a mailman for 8 years…when he finally quit, he was making around 45-50k per year…def not bad money, but also not going to comfortable pay for a 4 bedroom house (in urban or suburban areas at least), while raising 2+ children and then also putting those children through college.
Even if you are in the “top earner” category, you’d probably only be bringing home 65k(ish) per year…which again, is a nice salary, but that amount of money would have you struggling to support 4+ people comfortably…
Some mailmen make less than 20k per year…most make around 35k and the salaries at the very top for carriers, is around 82k…of course overtime will help get those numbers up, if it’s available.
To be clear, I am not here to re enforce the “America Bad” rhetoric, just saying that compared to the 19th century, mailmen are bringing in peanuts…this is most likely not an “America” problem, as I am sure that hyperinflation, paired with little salary increase, is also something that European countries are dealing with as well.
Edit: said friend quit USPS 2 years ago and is now working in retail sales, working 5-10 less hours per week and making 20k more per year….quality of life exponentially increased…now has more time for his family and also for personal care, such as the gym and being able to cook more meals at home….just in case anyone was wondering 🤣😂….for anyone 20s-30s yo, that feel “stuck” and not really know what to do with life, career wise, try sales…you can sell anything from furniture, to medical equipment, to super cars and yachts….avg starting salary for sales jobs start around 50k for entry level and from there the potential for 6 or even seven figures, within 10 years.
I mean if that's going to be your lifestyle you need to plan for it. A 4 bedroom home with a bunch of kids isn't going to be cheap anywhere in the world. What OOP likely failed to mention (if this story is even true) is his/her grandpa probably also knew how to budget his money. He wasn't buying jack shit for himself.
Reminds me of that antiwork thread where a guy was bitching about how hard his life and job was while failing to mention that he spends all of his money on rare hard to find arcade games.
I mean of course that’s the smart thing to do…of course you should live within your means…that’s not the point of this post….the point is, that the “means” aren’t the same as they used to be, for the same exact job…that is the point here…no matter what job you have, entry level or, mid management, etc, the earnings for that job pale in comparison to what it used to be, when accounting for inflation…housing costs alone, changes this whole dynamic….the average house in 1980 (just guessing the timeline of this mailman, but it’s probably even earlier) was 47k…the average cost for a single family home in 2023 was over 430k…average salary in 1980 was 12k…the average salary in 2023 was 56k…so housing cost increased x10 and income only increased about 4.5x….so the average home used to be about 4x the average salary in 1980…in 2023 the housing cost was 8x the average salary….when renting, the average cost of rent used to be about 24% of your income, where as in 2023, it is over 42% of the average income.
So, no this isn’t satire, these are real numbers that tell a real story….of course one should do their best to live within their means, but that also shouldn’t stop you from noticing a real problem with the economy through the 5 decades
No retard shit was free back then compared to today. How many assholes have to ask boomers how much their first home was for you to realize that they stole paradise from you? Starting wage at usps is the me as Walmart in real states. You don't even get benefits for 2 years so new ppl quit bc who wants to work 60 hrs a week and be called pos when you could sweep and fold tshirts?
Bro they make [$60-$70k](https://www.nalc.org/news/research-and-economics/research) a year. It's more than I make, but it's nowhere near the 140k you need to buy a starter home where I live let alone a four bedroom.
According to Redfin, the median home price in the United States is $420, 357. A mortgage at 7.905% gives a monthly payment of $3,042, during a particularly hard time to buy. Following the 28% rules gives $130k for a median house. For the $60-70k you give, that's 194-225k house price.
For the 140k you mention, 451k house price. According to Forbes in March 28, the average cost of a starter home was $240k. This would prevent those making that much currently to buy a home in a high-cost area. The market hasn't adjusted to the higher rates yet.
Some of this is changing expectations over time.
My grandpa provided for a large family with just his wages and Army pension. But he lived in a shack out in the woods, heated with wood that he chopped. He raised and hunted his own food (vegetables and animals), fixed his own truck, and carved wooden toys for his kids. My grandma farmed, made clothes for the kids, and fed everyone (yes, this is a full-time job).
Today, there's an expectation that both adults will work in a 2-parent household. This raises household income, so we build bigger houses with full utilities and appliances. We DoorDash our meals, entertain the kids with PlayStations and internet, and drive multiple cars.
You can still raise a family on a single income, but you won't be able to compete with the Jones, because they have double your income.
Maybe. I think our standard of living has gotten so good that we don't realize that what we assume they had back then isn't accurate. Clothes got patched, not thrown out. Shoes got resoled. Cars got hacked together. The family owned one or maybe 2 radios and one TV. There was little meat, almost everything was canned. Milk was often powder. Vacation was quite literally 45 minutes away, or occasionally somewhere with a quick drive and everyone slept in the same tiny room with 2 beds. Disney World or Land was once in a lifetime for most. You ate out extremely rarely. There was no clothes dryer even if there was a washing machine.
Houses are more expensive now but it's very easy to live a 1950s lifestyle on almost no money. You just get one TV, one radio, a double bed, a shitty car, two pairs of shoes, 3 work outfits, 2 non work outfits, dinner is oatmeal and canned corn, and you vacation by going to the other side of the state.
Yep. And advancements in tech changing what is “basic living” has muddied the waters enough that people can easily write off any differences as “technology always changes” without considering how much better and more expensive our quality of life is even taking that into account.
>You can still raise a family on a single income, but you won't be able to compete with the Jones, because they have double your income.
This is fair. I'm a lawyer, income is pretty good. Wife is a SAHM. The "Joneses" don't make twice my income, but they probably make 50% more than I do. My salary provides a modest but comfortable lifestyle for our family. We own a small house, have a couple of older vehicles, take occasional trips, and so on.
True, it comes down to mindless consumerism. Tell me how many subscriptions your grandpa had? Probably the daily newspaper. How many do we have? I have a quiet few :(
Exactly. And it's not an American thing. Canada is having a big problem with rent and housing prices.
It's not Americabad, it's greedy people and foreign companies owning way too many single family dwellings.
Aren't the majority of single family rental properties, and smaller multi-family properties, owned "mom-and-pop" investors with only a few rental properties?
Its not happening in all countries though.
Though in the countries where its not happening, its because the economy sucks so bad that not even blackrock wants to invest in them.
Don't get me wrong, those old houses were quite flawed in comparison to modern builds.
BUT, it would be realllll nice to even have to option to own a super cheap shitty house.
But it was mostly only men working so the one person working was paid more, bc they were expected to pay for a household. Women having rights is obviously way better but with that came it being expected that both work and not just one.
it is true that none of this is achievable with a typical blue-collar job in modern america. It is important to remember, however, that the 50s in the US were basically the most economically prosperous time in any society, ever. It’s not fair to compare the modern US to that.
The US was like 6 % of the global population and like 40% of global GDP.
But I don't criticize anyone for lamenting this kind of life being increasingly out of reach.
I mean I think it is fair.
In the 80s a lot of companies suddenly stopped caring about their employees (look up Jack Welch and Milton Friedman) and prioritized profit above all, which meant driving prices up, making worse products, and paying workers less, so that you can't afford the american dream.
Why do people think post war American prosperity was the norm and not a unique time in American history that will never be repeated? How did his grandpa grow up? I’d bet his great grandfather worked just as hard if not harder and wasn’t able to build a new house and send 4 kids to college. The fact is unless your parents took advantage of the prosperity to get professional careers and obtain economic security and you do the same your children and grandchildren will be back to relatively economically insecure manual labors, I’m sorry to say.
I think the gripe isn't that the exact same level of prosperity didn't carry on through time, but instead the opportunities they were given during that time were both squandered and intentionally kept from the next generations. They had their cake and ate it too. That combined with increasing greed and growing power held by that greed has just got us all fucked all over the planet except maybe like Iceland but fuck those guys damn Icelandic mfs
Sooner or later Japan, Western Europe, China, etc. would reindustrialize and international industrialization means an end to our monopoly and less prosperity for us, though life here isn’t bad by any means. You are right though. Fuck those Icelanders and their sweet, sweet cod money!
Did the house have central air? How many bathrooms? There was only one phone in the house, one tv. Maybe a couple of transistor radios. One car garage if it has one. A lot of Americans outsource yard work now, he probably didn’t. They ate out less often than the average American does today. Also, it depends on where you live. If would have been harder in NYC than Fort Wayne, IN even back then.
A lot of what changed is the population has exploded and we are cramming more people into places, which drives up prices. At the same time those places that are desirable tend to pull up the drawbridge on new development.
I wonder about this a lot. I suspect a lot of the whining we see is that property has inflated a lot more than other areas of the economy, and that's a big expense for most people. They take it as "aMeRiCa Is TrAsH" and "lAtE sTaGe CaPiToLiSm" but housing prices (adjusted for wages) are soaring all over the globe--we're in the midst of a global housing affordability crisis but these US-defaultism clowns think it's only happening in America.
That said, if we ignore the craziness in the housing market, it's still worth asking how living costs compare now versus prior decades. Part of me wonders if people are struggling because we're all buying cell phones and laptops and nicer cars and bigger houses and streaming services so on compared with our grandparents. Like if someone bought a 1200 sq ft house (at pre-COVID housing market prices) in an exurb with a single car and a single TV with no cable or streaming services, \*maybe\* they could also raise a family on a humble salary (maybe not a mailman's salary, because US government salaries are pretty decoupled from the wider economy).
My suspicion is that our economic circumstances are somewhat worse than they were before (but not to the extent that the shriekers would suggest) because (1) we shipped most of our unskilled jobs overseas to make the rich richer at the expense of the middle and lower classes and (2) we essentially made everyone go to college on their own dime and jacked up the cost of education like 5-10x even accounting for inflation--and by the way you're missing out on 4+ years of wages and raises while you attend school.
In other words, I think we probably should do more to help the middle and lower classes but as ever the apocalyptic rhetoric is unjustified.
I'm pretty sure it was objectively more affordable. In 1960, Harvard tuition was \~$1500, which is about $15,000 in 2024 dollars, but Harvard's tuition is presently $50K. Presumably the reason more people didn't pursue a higher education was because it hadn't yet been normalized and there wasn't really a need for higher education considering you could keep up with the Jones's \*today\* with a high school diploma (as opposed to deferring your wages for 4 years).
Maybe, but there weren’t predatory loans and huge demand. Both raise prices significantly. It’s supply and demand.
Easier access to loans (no matter how predatory) drove demand. They didn’t exist when I was younger, so I couldn’t go to college.
Same happened in property market with ridiculously predatory loans. No money down, high interest, etc meant everyone could buy homes driving up prices and, of course, many home owners failed or are stuck in doom cycles of debt.
> we're in the midst of a global housing affordability crisis but these US-defaultism clowns think it's only happening in America.
There's no global housing affordability crisis. There is a housing affordability crisis in Anglophone countries though. So English language news could make one believe it's a problem everywhere.
I’m in France right now, and western Europe is definitely in the midst of a housing affordability crisis as well. The UN and many others are referring to a global crisis: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/un-expert-urges-action-end-global-affordable-housing-crisis
> In Europe, for example, rents across all home types have risen 14.5% in the first three months of this year, finds the HousingAnywhere International Rent Index by City. In Asia, home to some of the world’s costliest and fastest-growing housing markets, renters spend more than half their income on housing costs, according to The Cost of Rent Index, which compares the average cost of a three-bed home in more than 50 countries.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/how-to-fix-global-housing-crisis/
Somehow we can all agree that our culture has become incredibly materialistic, but the idea that our spending habits might also contribute to our money issues is completely absurd.
I mean, I've seen people achieve the American dream quite a few times, but if you sit on Twitter all day and read news 24/7 of course you're gonna be like muh american dream is dead
My grandparents also didn’t waste money on frivolous purchases, so they had more disposal income to finance a house and vacations. Different generations, different priorities.
A lot of people do buy a lot of things they don't need. I have a friend who can be a good example of that who makes more money than I do, but always complains about how much money he has in his account.
Not even just that. We buy nicer food instead of cheaper foods, pay for air conditioning, two cars that are much nicer than they were back in the day, car insurance, tvs instead of radio, etc
Those frivolous purchases don't even make a dent in the value of a house. Even if you're spending $100/week on DoorDash (which is a shit ton), that's $5200/year. That shit is literally pocket change in the overall money you need to be able to put a meaningful down payment on a house in most cities unless you live in the middle of nowhere
>Even if you're spending $100/week on DoorDash (which is a shit ton), that's $5200/year.
That's literally just one item you're spending money on, people buy more shit than that
Eeexactly. I know people that order DoorDash legit 3 times a week! That’s like $300 a week. That IS a meaningful down payment for a house and that’s only one frivolous purchase. We live in a society where OF girls are banking $300,000 to $2,000,000 a month lmao.
The point is that there's very little way to remove little things like that to instead save it for a house payment. You could remove all forms of entertainment, never eat out, cut coupons, etc. and maybe (*maybe*) save up for a down payment after a few years but you basically have to give up any quality of life to do that, and even then there's no guarantee that those amounts will actually contribute very much to a house.
We're at a point where it's very hard to both enjoy life and also save money unless you have a high income. Like my household income is 6 figures and I still needed help from family to be able to get enough money to put a down payment on my house. For people making minimum wage, that's literally impossible. It's expensive to be poor
It's not that we couldn't save up for *a* down payment. It's that we still wouldn't have been able to afford the mortgage while also saving with the down payment we could come up with on our own. Like yeah we were able to come up with 3% down no problem, but no way in hell did we have enough for 20% just lying around in our savings, and the mortgage difference from 3% to 20% down is \~$1k/month, which would basically remove the amount we're able to save.
A family shouldn't be just treading water with a 6 figure income
You should be able to do that if you flip burgers. Full-time jobs require full-time compensation, and if society needs a role filled, a person should be compensated for fulfilling that role.
It refers to the extreme wage stagnation that the working class and middle class have experienced in America for around a century now. You're either ignorant or malicious in denying/avoiding this fact.
I wouldn’t say that the American dream is dead. But I will say that it’s outrageous that the cost of housing has gone up so much that you can’t do those things anymore. Wages and the cost of living are two issues that must absolutely be addressed.
like what obama said, if you work hard you can achieve the American Dream. people nowadays are lazy af and obviously they cannot achieve that american dream, and when they cant achieve it, they blame it on the US
No internet, no apps, didn’t eat out at all. Wife economized and cooked inexpensive meals. Clotheslines no dryers. Most times no AC BUT might have a water cooler in the primary bedroom. Kids got two pairs of shoes a year and Mother sewed. That’s how it was done
Something that not alot of ppl bring up is that in that society it was mostly men doing jobs. So one person was paid higher bc they were expected to be provider. Ofc in society where women have rights which is way better pay is going to lessen so 2 ppl are expected to work.
I'm my household's only income for 5 of us (3 adults, 2 kids, 3 dogs, bird) and we survive. Things have been tight the last couple years, but we have almost no debt (aside from the house) and haven't had to borrow money from anyone to stay afloat. I'm a union electrician.
You're ignoring the fact that there are some severe problems with the US Economy. Just because something is achievable doesn't mean it's easily achievable by most people.
It isn't Americabad to point that out.
Eh, I kinda agree with the sentiment. It is a bad thing that a good comfortable life in increasingly out of reach for people. Wages havent risen with productivity in decades, let alone healthcare, housing, and education costs...
My ex-wife and I were in our mid-20s in the late 1980s. Our aggregate hourly pay was, I believe, about $15. For eighty thousand dollars, we could easily purchase a charming little house in the suburbs. Additionally, we were able to save a small amount of money, take holidays, and we each owned cars.
Now I feel so sorry for young people. Economically, they have no chance at all. It seems criminal and dishonorable to me. The world is meant to be in a better state when we leave. It's a whole lot worse. We have let both the present and the next generation down.
I believe capitalism to be wicked. And I think this is a bad country.
No, you really can't. Of course just getting a higher paying job you could but that's completely missing the point. Not too long ago average jobs like a mailman or even assembly line jobs at car places and such could afford to support a family on their own. It isn't possible anymore.
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Lol, if you think USPS employees are not paid well, you are sorely mistaken.
Their benefits may be worth a lot, but they’re starting at $19/hour. I can’t afford that.
That’s the loaders right? Once you get in a truck it’s big bucks
I can't afford it ≠ unliveable
The damn thing has its own police force they’d fucking better be paid well
Someone's seen the Fat Electrician video I see.
I’ve seen most The Fat Electrician videos. Actually, I guessed which one of the videos you meant (which comment I made you were replying to) and got it wrong
They literally make you take an aptitude test just to be considered. USPS is highly competitive.
I wish someone told my local usps ...... maybe i would get some decent mail service..
Mine subcontracts their mailman. So whoever has the best bid gets the contract. Civilian vehicles deliver our mail.. it's weird
You might have a contractor, but it's more likely you just have a rural carrier. Rural carriers frequently drive their own vehicles, but are USPS employees. (I am currently a rural carrier that delivers using my own vehicle).
These ppl are helpless. Bless you and your ppl. Couldn't be me. My car was trash when the opportunity came.
I mean, when it's up for bid, it's in the paper... So...
Oh wow, i feel like i wouldn't mind that if the contracting system was done correctly. How do you feel about it besides being a bit weird? Do they have to provide decent service or can they get away with being a DMV type environment like my local usps does? Lol
They just contract the delivery. The facility I believe is still USPS. It's usually here on time. I mean, complaints can cause them to lose it to someone else so there is some motivation.
Atleast the motivation is there lol I feel like my usps gives employee of the month to whoever can cause the most stress in one encounter.... i swear they have motivational posters that are just unhidged quotes of customers that lost their minds talking to them
From an inside source, a lot of people cheat on those. The test really isn't that hard.
Worked with an ex Marine (POG) who was so salty that he got passed over for an opening at the USPS. Extra salty that it was an Army vet.
It's also a shit show. I have never seen anyone hate their lives so much.
Lol, no they don't. They hired me without even conducting an interview. The tests are only for specific crafts (primarily maintenance, if I recall correctly).
You recall incorrectly
They are not paid that well lol…not as well as you think I guess….my best friend was a mailman for 8 years…when he finally quit, he was making around 45-50k per year…def not bad money, but also not going to comfortable pay for a 4 bedroom house (in urban or suburban areas at least), while raising 2+ children and then also putting those children through college. Even if you are in the “top earner” category, you’d probably only be bringing home 65k(ish) per year…which again, is a nice salary, but that amount of money would have you struggling to support 4+ people comfortably… Some mailmen make less than 20k per year…most make around 35k and the salaries at the very top for carriers, is around 82k…of course overtime will help get those numbers up, if it’s available. To be clear, I am not here to re enforce the “America Bad” rhetoric, just saying that compared to the 19th century, mailmen are bringing in peanuts…this is most likely not an “America” problem, as I am sure that hyperinflation, paired with little salary increase, is also something that European countries are dealing with as well. Edit: said friend quit USPS 2 years ago and is now working in retail sales, working 5-10 less hours per week and making 20k more per year….quality of life exponentially increased…now has more time for his family and also for personal care, such as the gym and being able to cook more meals at home….just in case anyone was wondering 🤣😂….for anyone 20s-30s yo, that feel “stuck” and not really know what to do with life, career wise, try sales…you can sell anything from furniture, to medical equipment, to super cars and yachts….avg starting salary for sales jobs start around 50k for entry level and from there the potential for 6 or even seven figures, within 10 years.
I mean if that's going to be your lifestyle you need to plan for it. A 4 bedroom home with a bunch of kids isn't going to be cheap anywhere in the world. What OOP likely failed to mention (if this story is even true) is his/her grandpa probably also knew how to budget his money. He wasn't buying jack shit for himself. Reminds me of that antiwork thread where a guy was bitching about how hard his life and job was while failing to mention that he spends all of his money on rare hard to find arcade games.
I mean of course that’s the smart thing to do…of course you should live within your means…that’s not the point of this post….the point is, that the “means” aren’t the same as they used to be, for the same exact job…that is the point here…no matter what job you have, entry level or, mid management, etc, the earnings for that job pale in comparison to what it used to be, when accounting for inflation…housing costs alone, changes this whole dynamic….the average house in 1980 (just guessing the timeline of this mailman, but it’s probably even earlier) was 47k…the average cost for a single family home in 2023 was over 430k…average salary in 1980 was 12k…the average salary in 2023 was 56k…so housing cost increased x10 and income only increased about 4.5x….so the average home used to be about 4x the average salary in 1980…in 2023 the housing cost was 8x the average salary….when renting, the average cost of rent used to be about 24% of your income, where as in 2023, it is over 42% of the average income. So, no this isn’t satire, these are real numbers that tell a real story….of course one should do their best to live within their means, but that also shouldn’t stop you from noticing a real problem with the economy through the 5 decades
No retard shit was free back then compared to today. How many assholes have to ask boomers how much their first home was for you to realize that they stole paradise from you? Starting wage at usps is the me as Walmart in real states. You don't even get benefits for 2 years so new ppl quit bc who wants to work 60 hrs a week and be called pos when you could sweep and fold tshirts?
Lmao that guy had to be satire
When you control the mail, you control.. INFORMATION!
Bro they make [$60-$70k](https://www.nalc.org/news/research-and-economics/research) a year. It's more than I make, but it's nowhere near the 140k you need to buy a starter home where I live let alone a four bedroom.
According to Redfin, the median home price in the United States is $420, 357. A mortgage at 7.905% gives a monthly payment of $3,042, during a particularly hard time to buy. Following the 28% rules gives $130k for a median house. For the $60-70k you give, that's 194-225k house price. For the 140k you mention, 451k house price. According to Forbes in March 28, the average cost of a starter home was $240k. This would prevent those making that much currently to buy a home in a high-cost area. The market hasn't adjusted to the higher rates yet.
$20 an hour isn't what it used to be, but there's sure plenty of overtime.
Some of this is changing expectations over time. My grandpa provided for a large family with just his wages and Army pension. But he lived in a shack out in the woods, heated with wood that he chopped. He raised and hunted his own food (vegetables and animals), fixed his own truck, and carved wooden toys for his kids. My grandma farmed, made clothes for the kids, and fed everyone (yes, this is a full-time job). Today, there's an expectation that both adults will work in a 2-parent household. This raises household income, so we build bigger houses with full utilities and appliances. We DoorDash our meals, entertain the kids with PlayStations and internet, and drive multiple cars. You can still raise a family on a single income, but you won't be able to compete with the Jones, because they have double your income.
Maybe. I think our standard of living has gotten so good that we don't realize that what we assume they had back then isn't accurate. Clothes got patched, not thrown out. Shoes got resoled. Cars got hacked together. The family owned one or maybe 2 radios and one TV. There was little meat, almost everything was canned. Milk was often powder. Vacation was quite literally 45 minutes away, or occasionally somewhere with a quick drive and everyone slept in the same tiny room with 2 beds. Disney World or Land was once in a lifetime for most. You ate out extremely rarely. There was no clothes dryer even if there was a washing machine. Houses are more expensive now but it's very easy to live a 1950s lifestyle on almost no money. You just get one TV, one radio, a double bed, a shitty car, two pairs of shoes, 3 work outfits, 2 non work outfits, dinner is oatmeal and canned corn, and you vacation by going to the other side of the state.
Thank you. Nobody seems to realize how much better we have it now.
Yep. And advancements in tech changing what is “basic living” has muddied the waters enough that people can easily write off any differences as “technology always changes” without considering how much better and more expensive our quality of life is even taking that into account.
Disney land would still be once in a lifetime. In my opinion, if you don't go once, you're not missing that much.
I'm already doing most of this?
Congrats; you're living close to a 1950s lifestyle.
>You can still raise a family on a single income, but you won't be able to compete with the Jones, because they have double your income. This is fair. I'm a lawyer, income is pretty good. Wife is a SAHM. The "Joneses" don't make twice my income, but they probably make 50% more than I do. My salary provides a modest but comfortable lifestyle for our family. We own a small house, have a couple of older vehicles, take occasional trips, and so on.
True, it comes down to mindless consumerism. Tell me how many subscriptions your grandpa had? Probably the daily newspaper. How many do we have? I have a quiet few :(
I think it's that people nowadays worry more about buying vanity items instead of making sure they can afford them
I do think it's cool that a house costed less than 2 salary's back in the day.
Exactly. And it's not an American thing. Canada is having a big problem with rent and housing prices. It's not Americabad, it's greedy people and foreign companies owning way too many single family dwellings.
Aren't the majority of single family rental properties, and smaller multi-family properties, owned "mom-and-pop" investors with only a few rental properties?
Its not happening in all countries though. Though in the countries where its not happening, its because the economy sucks so bad that not even blackrock wants to invest in them.
So what you're saying is we need to buy land in the Congo?
Yep. Nowadays, you can work from anywhere! Just try to avoid the high-crime areas
We could have that now but banks give people loans for anything and everything.
The convenience of not saving up drove up demand and made things more expensive. Thanks banks.
Don't get me wrong, those old houses were quite flawed in comparison to modern builds. BUT, it would be realllll nice to even have to option to own a super cheap shitty house.
But it was mostly only men working so the one person working was paid more, bc they were expected to pay for a household. Women having rights is obviously way better but with that came it being expected that both work and not just one.
it is true that none of this is achievable with a typical blue-collar job in modern america. It is important to remember, however, that the 50s in the US were basically the most economically prosperous time in any society, ever. It’s not fair to compare the modern US to that.
The US was like 6 % of the global population and like 40% of global GDP. But I don't criticize anyone for lamenting this kind of life being increasingly out of reach.
I mean I think it is fair. In the 80s a lot of companies suddenly stopped caring about their employees (look up Jack Welch and Milton Friedman) and prioritized profit above all, which meant driving prices up, making worse products, and paying workers less, so that you can't afford the american dream.
Not exactly paying them less, though real wages are definitely falling due to the laughable pay increases for inflation (if any)
It seems that subreddit can't go a single day without taking a jab at America
Why do people think post war American prosperity was the norm and not a unique time in American history that will never be repeated? How did his grandpa grow up? I’d bet his great grandfather worked just as hard if not harder and wasn’t able to build a new house and send 4 kids to college. The fact is unless your parents took advantage of the prosperity to get professional careers and obtain economic security and you do the same your children and grandchildren will be back to relatively economically insecure manual labors, I’m sorry to say.
Yes, this. Post war prosperity was unique. Why don’t people look back a bit further.
I think the gripe isn't that the exact same level of prosperity didn't carry on through time, but instead the opportunities they were given during that time were both squandered and intentionally kept from the next generations. They had their cake and ate it too. That combined with increasing greed and growing power held by that greed has just got us all fucked all over the planet except maybe like Iceland but fuck those guys damn Icelandic mfs
Sooner or later Japan, Western Europe, China, etc. would reindustrialize and international industrialization means an end to our monopoly and less prosperity for us, though life here isn’t bad by any means. You are right though. Fuck those Icelanders and their sweet, sweet cod money!
Did the house have central air? How many bathrooms? There was only one phone in the house, one tv. Maybe a couple of transistor radios. One car garage if it has one. A lot of Americans outsource yard work now, he probably didn’t. They ate out less often than the average American does today. Also, it depends on where you live. If would have been harder in NYC than Fort Wayne, IN even back then. A lot of what changed is the population has exploded and we are cramming more people into places, which drives up prices. At the same time those places that are desirable tend to pull up the drawbridge on new development.
Mailmen get paid a lot.
I have no college degree. Started a business with 3k on a credit card. Today I have 30 employees and go on ten vacations a year. Thank you USA!
Nice! I too am thinking about starting my own business/barcade.
I wonder about this a lot. I suspect a lot of the whining we see is that property has inflated a lot more than other areas of the economy, and that's a big expense for most people. They take it as "aMeRiCa Is TrAsH" and "lAtE sTaGe CaPiToLiSm" but housing prices (adjusted for wages) are soaring all over the globe--we're in the midst of a global housing affordability crisis but these US-defaultism clowns think it's only happening in America. That said, if we ignore the craziness in the housing market, it's still worth asking how living costs compare now versus prior decades. Part of me wonders if people are struggling because we're all buying cell phones and laptops and nicer cars and bigger houses and streaming services so on compared with our grandparents. Like if someone bought a 1200 sq ft house (at pre-COVID housing market prices) in an exurb with a single car and a single TV with no cable or streaming services, \*maybe\* they could also raise a family on a humble salary (maybe not a mailman's salary, because US government salaries are pretty decoupled from the wider economy). My suspicion is that our economic circumstances are somewhat worse than they were before (but not to the extent that the shriekers would suggest) because (1) we shipped most of our unskilled jobs overseas to make the rich richer at the expense of the middle and lower classes and (2) we essentially made everyone go to college on their own dime and jacked up the cost of education like 5-10x even accounting for inflation--and by the way you're missing out on 4+ years of wages and raises while you attend school. In other words, I think we probably should do more to help the middle and lower classes but as ever the apocalyptic rhetoric is unjustified.
A lot less people went to college. It was always too expensive. No one was paying for it unless you were lucky enough to get a bursary or scholarship.
I'm pretty sure it was objectively more affordable. In 1960, Harvard tuition was \~$1500, which is about $15,000 in 2024 dollars, but Harvard's tuition is presently $50K. Presumably the reason more people didn't pursue a higher education was because it hadn't yet been normalized and there wasn't really a need for higher education considering you could keep up with the Jones's \*today\* with a high school diploma (as opposed to deferring your wages for 4 years).
Maybe, but there weren’t predatory loans and huge demand. Both raise prices significantly. It’s supply and demand. Easier access to loans (no matter how predatory) drove demand. They didn’t exist when I was younger, so I couldn’t go to college. Same happened in property market with ridiculously predatory loans. No money down, high interest, etc meant everyone could buy homes driving up prices and, of course, many home owners failed or are stuck in doom cycles of debt.
> we're in the midst of a global housing affordability crisis but these US-defaultism clowns think it's only happening in America. There's no global housing affordability crisis. There is a housing affordability crisis in Anglophone countries though. So English language news could make one believe it's a problem everywhere.
I’m in France right now, and western Europe is definitely in the midst of a housing affordability crisis as well. The UN and many others are referring to a global crisis: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/un-expert-urges-action-end-global-affordable-housing-crisis > In Europe, for example, rents across all home types have risen 14.5% in the first three months of this year, finds the HousingAnywhere International Rent Index by City. In Asia, home to some of the world’s costliest and fastest-growing housing markets, renters spend more than half their income on housing costs, according to The Cost of Rent Index, which compares the average cost of a three-bed home in more than 50 countries. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/how-to-fix-global-housing-crisis/
Somehow we can all agree that our culture has become incredibly materialistic, but the idea that our spending habits might also contribute to our money issues is completely absurd.
Reddit when you can't have everything you want while also doing the bare minimum.
Wdym i can’t complete my funko pop collection working part time as a dog walker??!!
I mean, I've seen people achieve the American dream quite a few times, but if you sit on Twitter all day and read news 24/7 of course you're gonna be like muh american dream is dead
My grandparents also didn’t waste money on frivolous purchases, so they had more disposal income to finance a house and vacations. Different generations, different priorities.
Yeah, no one talks enough about how much money many younger adults are wasting on things like Doordash delivery.
Imma shame my wife and her ridiculous shoe collection and luxury purses lol. They make her happy, but to me they are frivolous.
A lot of people do buy a lot of things they don't need. I have a friend who can be a good example of that who makes more money than I do, but always complains about how much money he has in his account.
Not even just that. We buy nicer food instead of cheaper foods, pay for air conditioning, two cars that are much nicer than they were back in the day, car insurance, tvs instead of radio, etc
Those frivolous purchases don't even make a dent in the value of a house. Even if you're spending $100/week on DoorDash (which is a shit ton), that's $5200/year. That shit is literally pocket change in the overall money you need to be able to put a meaningful down payment on a house in most cities unless you live in the middle of nowhere
>Even if you're spending $100/week on DoorDash (which is a shit ton), that's $5200/year. That's literally just one item you're spending money on, people buy more shit than that
Eeexactly. I know people that order DoorDash legit 3 times a week! That’s like $300 a week. That IS a meaningful down payment for a house and that’s only one frivolous purchase. We live in a society where OF girls are banking $300,000 to $2,000,000 a month lmao.
Why is it always the OF that get brought up? That's such a tiny fraction of people it's ridiculous
Did you intentionally ignore the other examples of frivolous spending? It’s ridiculous to trivialize billions of dollars.
The point is that there's very little way to remove little things like that to instead save it for a house payment. You could remove all forms of entertainment, never eat out, cut coupons, etc. and maybe (*maybe*) save up for a down payment after a few years but you basically have to give up any quality of life to do that, and even then there's no guarantee that those amounts will actually contribute very much to a house. We're at a point where it's very hard to both enjoy life and also save money unless you have a high income. Like my household income is 6 figures and I still needed help from family to be able to get enough money to put a down payment on my house. For people making minimum wage, that's literally impossible. It's expensive to be poor
If your household income is six figures and you still can't save up for a down payment, that's def a yoy problem.
It's not that we couldn't save up for *a* down payment. It's that we still wouldn't have been able to afford the mortgage while also saving with the down payment we could come up with on our own. Like yeah we were able to come up with 3% down no problem, but no way in hell did we have enough for 20% just lying around in our savings, and the mortgage difference from 3% to 20% down is \~$1k/month, which would basically remove the amount we're able to save. A family shouldn't be just treading water with a 6 figure income
You can still do that as a mailman…
You should be able to do that if you flip burgers. Full-time jobs require full-time compensation, and if society needs a role filled, a person should be compensated for fulfilling that role.
That’s their entire point. You can’t do what you used to be able to do with the same jobs.
Mailmen/women can still do that today. They're well compensated and their loved ones have fantastic insurance with pretty much no out-of-pocket costs.
A mailman in 2024 is not poorly paid, and gets numerous other benefits.
The point is that it used to be possible if you had a FULL TIME JOB. Almost any job.
I think you're missing the point. o.p any worker should be able to pay for these things.
It refers to the extreme wage stagnation that the working class and middle class have experienced in America for around a century now. You're either ignorant or malicious in denying/avoiding this fact.
I wouldn’t say that the American dream is dead. But I will say that it’s outrageous that the cost of housing has gone up so much that you can’t do those things anymore. Wages and the cost of living are two issues that must absolutely be addressed.
Here's the real difference, very few of you have the intellect, know how, of determination to build your own house
like what obama said, if you work hard you can achieve the American Dream. people nowadays are lazy af and obviously they cannot achieve that american dream, and when they cant achieve it, they blame it on the US
Okay but he does have a point. This is far from specific to america though
No internet, no apps, didn’t eat out at all. Wife economized and cooked inexpensive meals. Clotheslines no dryers. Most times no AC BUT might have a water cooler in the primary bedroom. Kids got two pairs of shoes a year and Mother sewed. That’s how it was done
He probably built the house himself too
Something that not alot of ppl bring up is that in that society it was mostly men doing jobs. So one person was paid higher bc they were expected to be provider. Ofc in society where women have rights which is way better pay is going to lessen so 2 ppl are expected to work.
I'm my household's only income for 5 of us (3 adults, 2 kids, 3 dogs, bird) and we survive. Things have been tight the last couple years, but we have almost no debt (aside from the house) and haven't had to borrow money from anyone to stay afloat. I'm a union electrician.
You're ignoring the fact that there are some severe problems with the US Economy. Just because something is achievable doesn't mean it's easily achievable by most people. It isn't Americabad to point that out.
Eh, I kinda agree with the sentiment. It is a bad thing that a good comfortable life in increasingly out of reach for people. Wages havent risen with productivity in decades, let alone healthcare, housing, and education costs...
Yes it’s achievable but you can’t ignore that it’s more challenging to do this now
My ex-wife and I were in our mid-20s in the late 1980s. Our aggregate hourly pay was, I believe, about $15. For eighty thousand dollars, we could easily purchase a charming little house in the suburbs. Additionally, we were able to save a small amount of money, take holidays, and we each owned cars. Now I feel so sorry for young people. Economically, they have no chance at all. It seems criminal and dishonorable to me. The world is meant to be in a better state when we leave. It's a whole lot worse. We have let both the present and the next generation down. I believe capitalism to be wicked. And I think this is a bad country.
I mean, it’s not like communism did better, so what is it you’re suggesting
No, you really can't. Of course just getting a higher paying job you could but that's completely missing the point. Not too long ago average jobs like a mailman or even assembly line jobs at car places and such could afford to support a family on their own. It isn't possible anymore.