• Hildegarde@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    So maths time…

    If that cart is a weeks of groceries, it takes 1250 weeks of groceries to buy a house in 1980.

    According to a 2024 USA today article the average family with kids spends $331 per week on groceries.

    If the groceries per house ratio stayed the same, a house would be $413,750 in 2024.

    The U.S. median home price was $412,000 in September 2023, according to Redfin.

    I dunno seems pretty proportionate.

      • TheFrogThatFlies@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        And “household income” definition also changed: at the time the most common was that only the man of the household was working. So I’d say we are down to a quarter of what was earned then.

      • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        I think the most important context is minimum wage.

        In 1982 a full-time job making $3.35 an hour is pulling in approx $6,700 a year. Or 14% of the price of a house.

        In 2022, that same worker, working the same number of hours at minimum wage $7.25 an hour is bringing in $14,500 a year. Or 3.5% the price of a house.

        The same for groceries. THAT is the fucked up part. It’s what happens when people seem OK with 50 trillion dollars going from the bottom 90% to the top 1% over the past several decades.

        • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          I mean, that minimum wage should be higher though.

          At the same time, if you doubled it, it would still be half as much of a percentage of a house.

          No matter which way we slice this up, were fuckkkkkkked

          • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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            5 months ago

            Yeah minimum wage should be quadrupled at the least. But I think the US should have a 50 dollar minimum wage.

            • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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              5 months ago

              50? Wow.

              That’s more than I make. I mean, I’m not opposed to the idea, but it would be an excuse from every capitalist out there to go crazy with inflation.

              We’d probably end up worse off on the end but I wouldn’t mind as much because my house is already mortgaged.

              • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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                5 months ago

                They’re already going crazy with inflation. We’ve got nothing left to lose by trying it. And when teenage burger flippers at McDonald’s are making 50 an hour, you can go to your boss and ask for a raise with a very good argument. How would you like to make 80 or 100 an hour?

                • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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                  5 months ago

                  Well, yeah. But honestly, I like what I do. So, I’m not sure I’d ask for a lot more than minimum in that case. Of course, that would change as inflation goes nuts and prices go crazy… But still. The first few months of that would be awesome.

                  My argument would probably be along the lines of: I make x% above minimum wage, so it seems fair that I should continue to make x% above minimum. Now that the minimum wage is $50/hr, I calculate my fair wage as $y/hr.

                  I don’t think I’d get that full amount, but it would set up a foundation for the rest of the wage negotiation. Right now, at my current job, I believe (if my math is right) I’m around 205% of minimum wage, so if it suddenly went to $50/hr, I would be seeking around $102/hr or so. But behind the scenes, I’d settle for like $80/hr.

                  I’ll add a caveat that I’m not in the USA, and the minimum wage where I am is much more than the US minimum wage. If our minimum wage was closer to the US minimum wage, I’d be closer to 350% or more.

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          I don’t expect anyone to know this off the top of their heads, but do things seem any better from a global perspective over that same time period? e.g. are there so many fewer kids dying from malnutrition that on average a citizen of Earth chosen at random is likely to be better off?

          • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Yes. We can be as doom and gloom as we want, but the world overall is infinitely better than it was even looking 25 years ago. There’s a lot of fucked up shit going on, but there are far fewer people dying of starvation and crushing poverty than ever in human history.

            • KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Fun fact: most statistics regarding global standard of living (access to water, schooling, etc.) peaked shortly before covid and have gone down again in recent years.
              Also, much of that improvement happened in China.

      • xenspidey@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        I think that’s a little unfair of a comparison. The average house price in the US is $495k. The average house price in Ohio is $273k. Let’s take Brooklyn for example. In the 80’s houses were cheap in comparison to today. Ohio in the 80’s were probably on par for what they are today. There was no silicon valley in the 80’s. You didn’t have as much of the super rich mega mansions back then. So yeah, it’s going to sway the numbers.

        • MindTraveller@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          If we’re going to have super rich mega mansions, then we should be taking care of everyone at a proportionate rate. If we’re not, then the tax for the rich is too low.

        • moistclump@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I feel like it’s implying a standard of living. You got more for less, you owned a home. Maybe only one of the family was employed for that life.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I agree the inflation would not be a huge deal but only if incomes had kept up. Couples are struggling to exist today doing two jobs (or more) each of which could have supported a small family just decades ago.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
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      5 months ago

      Furthermore:

      • $25.00 in 1970 is worth $202.03 today
      • $25,000 would be $202,030
      • Home prices vary wildy depending on location and size of the home. It does not seem unreasonable that someone could spend $200 a week on groceries and live in a $200K home.
      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 months ago

        So the real question is how did pay in the most common industries keep up with inflation. I don’t think anyone is disputing costs rising at comparable rates. It’s our ability to keep up as earners.

      • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        so, by his numbers, we’re paying over 50% more for food and houses.

        But they’re equally more expensive, so we’re getting screwed two ways, not just one.

    • aport@programming.dev
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      5 months ago

      The ratio of interest isn’t groceries:housing, it’s income:CoL

      The first ratio may have stayed rather consistent, but the second has not.

    • MrShankles@reddthat.com
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      5 months ago

      Inflation vs income

      Income hasn’t kept up with inflation, so you have a widening gap

      The prices may be proportional, but the average “purchasing power” has decreased. Most family units have more than a single income now, but they still struggle.

      Inflation goes up (which devalues our income), but our wages have gone up much slower… so we have a widening gap of “purchasing power” that people’s budget can feel

      The “prices” may be proportional, but the ability to afford them is certainly not

      • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Its a reasonable assumption. Most of the visible foods are bulky items that are not stacked efficiently to be visible to the camera.

    • catsarebadpeople@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Damn I’ve seen some really stupid takes on here but this one is really something special. Cherry picking the numbers here is so obvious and the ones that you ignore, like income, so blatant that I’m unsure how this isn’t flagged as straight up misinformation. That’s not even the stupidest part though believe it or not. Why would you even try to cook the books like this to make it seem like there’s nothing wrong with the home cost situation? How could trying to convince people of this fantastical situation possibly benefit you?

      • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        it’s not dumb at all.

        that is, I don’t see what he’s saying is good or bad, just “food and housing have stayed a similar ratio”. Which is interesting.

        But we should be wondering at the cost of groceries at the very least.

  • ChojinDSL@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    Anybody else find it funny that her cart is just full of junk? No fresh fruit or vegetables to be seen. Some things never change in America.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        Yeah, but we had a no smoking section if you didn’t like the smell. Because smoke was great at staying on the right side of a rope…

        • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          the purpose of the “no smoking” section was to keep the rare non-smokers away, so their presence wouldn’t annoy the smokers. /s

    • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      And her countless hours of unpaid labor!

      Which oof sure, being a housespouse is often way harder and more responsibility than people would think (even the ones who benefit from it) … but damn being a housewife in the 50s? You know how much harder it was to cook back then?! Do laundry or vacuum or probably literally any household chore is so much easier and faster than today. Hell, even taking out the trash is easier not having to drag Oscar’s heavy ass house to the curb.

        • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Some old shithead GOP house rep was talking about how unreasonable a $15/hr minimum wage was because he used to make $4.50 when he was a teen working at a grocery store.

          His $4.50 worked out to be $26/hr after inflation.

  • Veedem@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    That’s also the average looking 35 year old from that time period.

  • erp@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    This is 1970s, not 80s . Pretty sure a cart full o groceries was way over $20 in the eighties, after a card full of collected grocery chain stamps was saved and turned in. Inflation and all that.

    Anyway… how bout some Suzy Qs, ‘Chun King’ (is that oriental flavor?), Kraft Mac N Cheese…and Hawaiian punch?

    Break out the silver and spic-and-span those no-wax floors; the gobnah’s comin ovah to-nite!

  • plz1@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Spent $350 on a single cart of groceries today, nearly lost my mind at how bad it’s gotten.

      • Jesus@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Not to uncommon if you have kids, live far from a store and need to stock up for more than just a couple days, and or are doing a big ass Costco run.

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    1980 was not prosperous times. I remember us using food stamps. My dad was working in a hospital kitchen and stole food from work to feed us. Inflation was crazy, gas went up to about $1.80 (in 1980 dollars) and the Reagan era mass unemployment of 1982 was just around the corner. Jimmy Carter famously told the nation to wear a sweater in winter when people couldn’t afford heating.

    Our family of four lived in a small two bedroom duplex in 1980.

    I do have fond memories from back then, but it had nothing to do with prosperity. It was that I was always over at Grandma’s house and Grandma was a god damned saint who walked among us.

    Go ahead and downvote and deny the realities of a time you probably weren’t even alive.

  • Hucklebee@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Any website that would have more of these type of retro pictures? Love that shit, looking how life was before my time.

  • adam_y@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I get it. We can’t buy houses, we can’t afford groceries.

    Admittedly my parents couldn’t afford a house and we often had to skip on groceries too.

    But as a kid of the 80s, the thing that gets me is how these memes seem to ignore inflation entirely.

    Yes those numbers are lower but so were wages.

    And of course we can can talk about real terms wage stagnation, but poverty is timeless and the 80s were an awful and unaffordable time for a lot of people.

    But yeah. Sure.

    • OpenStars@discuss.online
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      5 months ago

      Things are so much more COMPLEX than they used to be - on purpose ofc, b/c people made money from exploiting that increase in complexity.

      e.g. American schools used to be tops in the world for things like STEM + others. Now… not so much.

      Healthcare too. Now… not so much.

      Life expectancy / standard of living, it’s all relevant.

      And we don’t even know: is this a temporary downswing, which will eventually right itself? It doesn’t look like it, when up against the forces of globalization, automation, and fascism - it looks rather like now is as good as it is ever going to get, and things like Social Security, Medicare/-aid will just not be available for the people who are currently paying into it. But, back then they did not know how quickly things would get better either, and yet they did so…

      On the other hand, decades went by where the gap b/t a living wage vs. what people were paid got ever wider. DECADES of that practice put us into this situation, and it won’t take mere days, weeks, months, or even years to get out of it. Robert Reich’s Inequality for All (completely free to watch on YouTube etc.) explains the 3 reasons people did not notice it happening back then: as costs went up, (a) additional people went to work (it used to be just one person, then it became two), (b) people worked for longer hours (not just 30-40 hrs/week, but 60+ these days), and © people borrowed against the past successes, with e.g. mortgages to put their kids through college and prop up the standard of living that they were accustomed to.

      So, yeah, poverty itself was probably far worse back then, whereas hopelessness seems worse today, and it seems not entirely due to media clickbait exploitation of people’s fears. But also, things have shifted such that poverty WILL BE worse in the future: e.g. if young people today cannot afford college, and the minimum wage is not a livable one, then not only will they never own a home, but there is a real, actual potential that they will find themselves homeless. As is happening right now all across the country in fact… Maybe that will be turned around, but like… how?

      Indeed, the age-old dance, but always, always with a new form (except there is nothing truly new under the sun).