Winston wrote:Rock,
History is not one of your areas of specialty. You don't even watch History Channel all day like I do.
You make two critical mistakes here.
1. You assume that the system is fair and that salaries and prices rise in equal proportions. Let's do the math:
If a house cost $900 in 1920, and today it costs about $200,000, then the difference between then and now is about 200 times.
If the average salary per day in 1920 was $5, and today it's about $100, then the difference is about 20 times.
Obviously, housing prices going up 200 times vs. salaries going up 20 times is NOT equal proportion.
These figures are just estimates. If you want more exact figures, ask Momopi to Google them. But the point is, the rises in prices and salaries are not equally proportionate.
What you forget is that those who run the system want to keep everyone in perpetual debt. They want you to spend your whole life paying off a mortgage and nowadays, paying off college debt too. That's why the system tries to keep you in slavery. Didn't you know that? It's common knowledge by now. Why did you forget it?
2. You also assume that everyone in the 19th Century could only do physical labor jobs. If I lived on the East Coast, I could have been a banker, writer, journalist, or something that involved paperwork and education. You forgot about that.
Mark Twain made a living as a writer back then too. Do you know who he is? You generalize too much.
I don't know what's in your family albums. I can't verify that. Why don't you post info from credible sources instead that can be verified?
Also, the title of this thread is a bogus comparison. It's not a worthy comparison, so why ask it? Why not phrase the question like this:
Would you rather be middle class in 2013 or a wealthy aristocrat in 1813?
Would you rather be middle class in 2013 or a Roman Emperor in Ancient Rome?
That would give you more to think about. Why does it have to be a peasant in 1813? That's stupid. Peasants are supposed to be from the Middle Ages anyway.
1. I'm not assuming the system is fair. Salaries and prices don't always rise in equal proportion. And yes, we did have an unprecedented housing bubble through much of the first decade of 2000s. But current price levels have corrected to back to normalized territory. You can look at Case Schiller or other housing data to get an idea of what I mean. Here are a couple charts.
http://observationsandnotes.blogspot.tw ... -1900.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hous ... rds-2009-2
Moreover a house built today, is on average, a much nicer place to live than a new house was 100 years ago. So your comparison is somewhat distorted - not like for like. Similarly, cars today are of much better quality than cars built 60 years ago.
Comparing costs of thing today to 50 or 100 years ago is complicated. Some things have gotten a lot cheaper in real terms while others have gotten more dear. Things which have clearly skyrocketed in real terms which come to my immediate mind are health care and uni level education. Many basic necessitates such as clothing, food, and shelter (rent) have probably gotten a lot cheaper or at least not increased.
As for buying a house, it's also very market dependent. For example, I can go to Lehigh Acres in Florida and pick-up a very decent 2 bed/2 bath modern home on a half acre lot for like US$50,000. It's an ok area and convenient enough.
2. You know me personally so you either trust me or not. I'm telling you about my family but I'm not going back to USA to dig up thousands of family photos and docs to post online publicly. Who does that kind of thing anyway besides maybe you?
3. Percentage of Americans who made a living from some sort of manual labor was very high 100 years ago; not so today.