this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Ah, so I should divide all of the numbers in your graphic in half to get to something reasonable then.
If you consider that in 1958 the average household family of four was funded 95+% by one male, then you can see clearly that the answer to that is no.
If in 1958, a salary of $6,514 a year could cover the cost for a family of four then that should show you how ridiculously expensive everything has become. Modern families have two income earners and still cannot afford comfortable cost of living, which is about double what it costs for a single individual.
If both of those income earners were paid at minimum $35 an hour, then families would actually be much closer to affording COL for a family of four. But they would still need additional income to reach the level of 50/30/20 comfort.
It seems some people are struggling to understand just how far off the modern American worker is from the financial security that was had by the average male worker in 1958. If we were to draw a direct comparison to that situation and say everyone should get paid enough to support a family of four individually, like you could back then, then everybody would have to be making like $80 an hour due to the massive inflation in costs that wages have not remotely kept up with. Another point is that households in the 1950s had practically zero debt, in comparison to modern households which are absolutely drowning in it
Do you get what Im saying?
I think what most of us are saying is that the way those people were living back then was unsustainable and an unnecessary level of wealth. The 50/30/20 comfort level is unsustainable and requires exploitation. Sure, we're all being exploited now, but to have $20k annual disposable income would surely mean exploiting someone else (e.g., developing nations)
How would more money flowing out of the US and into the rest of the world, rather than sitting in billionaire accounts, not improve the lives of people around the world? How would US wages being appropriately high not drive up wages around the world, considering Americans are generally paid well above any other workers?
Your argument of exploitation makes no sense. Sustainability is a fairer angle, but an issue that could be solved by having plenty of government money researching innovation. Money that would come from people spending money and paying taxes, from their higher wages. Rather than money being parked in billionaire bank accounts…
If anything, the current system by which we Americans get paid shit relative to what value we create is generating exploitation around the world