this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Average income of $1,731/yr is equivalent to $37,393 in present dollars. Current average wage is $63,795.
Yes but a house would only cost $84,240 in todays dollars. It's all relative.
Which begs the question, is $1,731 really equivalent to $37,393? Because it sure sounds like we aren't using the right metric for that conversion.
We should be comparing purchasing power instead of raw inflation.
Yeah, the numbers in the parent comments of this thread make me wonder how useful those "in today's dollars" conversions are in general. Especially considering entire markets that existed in the 30s don't today (or do but are vastly smaller, like horses would have played a bigger role and shoe shining was a job) and new markets exist today (like the entire tech sector). Is it even meaningful to compare money between those two timeframes without putting it in some specific market context?