"Inflation fools a lot of people. Like the proverbial frog in the pot set to boil, they don’t pay attention to the slow, inexorable erosion of their buying power over time. If you earn $100,000 per year today, you may feel OK about your middle-class lifestyle, but that pre-tax money only had the buying power of $39,037 in 1980, and $16,486 in 1968, roughly my father’s gross earnings that year."
Poster Comment:
My parents were high-school dropout, although they later got their worthless GEDs. My father was a general contractor who built houses, and my mother an admitting clerk in the ER.
I remember my dad making $14,000 in 1968, and the house cost $14,000. I never lacked for anything. Never had a plane or a boat, but never wanted one.
We had a nice, middle-class existence.
I tell my dad that if he were starting out now, he could not do what he had done. He doesn't say anything.