In article , Mike Coslo
writes:

In the summer of 1972, I got my first job after high school. It paid
$2.40 per hour. Minimum at that time was $2.20.

You might want to check

http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/chart.htm

It wasn't a living
wage then either. Entry level jobs have never provided the income to
support a family.

Agreed - nor were they meant to. But it *was* possible for a person to live
on them - probably more so than today.

I lived on that $2.40 per hour. Not well, but okay.

Anyone that I have ever known in my lifetime (52 years)
that made minimum wage either lived with their parents or other relatives,
a group of roommates, or had a working spouse even back when I was a
child.

Pretty much the same here.

Folks, conservative ot liberal, there is a whole other world out there!
I know of a number of families that had both parents working at minimum
or close to it.

No adult male that I knew stayed in a minimum wage job any longer than it
took to find something else because they could not pay groc, rent, and
transportation on that. It has never been high enough to do so.

'adult male'....ahem.....

The age of the "adult male" as the breadwinner is long gone. Both
husband and wife now pretty much *need* to work.

Yep. Think about why that is.

If a family is in the
situation where only one needs to work, then that's great. But let's
hope they don't gloat about it.

A lot has to do with choices made and their individual circumstances.

Besides the economic concerns, in a lot of professions today, a person cannot
simply stop working for several years and expect to be employable when they
return.

Wages versus costs is all relative. You have to look at how many hours it
takes to buy something.

Exactly! And you also have to take into account things like creeping
taxation
(even if the laws don't change, inflation causes people to pay more of
their
income in taxes) and increases in the number of 'necessities'.

Taxes are a big part of the game, too. At one time the income tax rules
were
such that people on the bottom end who knew the rules could pay very little
in
taxes. I remember when:

- *all* interest paid (not just home mortgage interest) was deductible.
- *all* documented sales tax and *most* documented medical costs were
deductible
- the various personal and dependent deductions were larger *in infaltion
adjusted dollars*

The majority of items but not all take fewer hours
of work to purchase than they did in 1976.

In some cases, yes, in others, no.

As I recall reading a while back, in 1950, it took 14 percent of an
average workers income to put a roof over "his head". That may have
changed a little bit! 8^)

It changed big time. Same for medical and education costs.

And did you know they are doing seven year loans on cars? If all was
equal, wages and prices, we would still be doing 2 and 3 year loans on them.

Part of that is people *choosing* to buy bigger and more luxurious cars.

There are two of the major outlays for the typical family. Add to that
education costs, which have outpaced inflation by in some cases 400
percent (in my area, we had an around 12 percent increase one year
recently) and you have a bit different picture!

Precisely. And a college degree is much more of a necessity today.

The cost of electronics is down
in terms of hours to buy.

True to a point - but on the other end of the scale, those electronics are
often non-repairable, and have limited useful lives, so that they must be
replaced more often.

It breaks, and you buy a new one. Break even at best.

Yep - and a losing game at worst.

It it actually easier to restore ham gear that is 30-40-50 years old than
much
of the newer stuff, because parts for much of the newer stuff are simply
unobtainable except from junker units. The displays in the popular TS-440S
is
one example - they are no longer made, and yet they are often one of the
first
major parts to fail, so your chances of lifting one from a junker are slim.

The cost of houses is about the same in terms of
hours.

disagree

A lot of that depends on the interest rate and taxes. Interest rates in the
'70s were double-digit, approaching 17% in some markets at times - for home
mortgages! But since all that interest was deductible, the *effective*
interest
rate was less, depending on your tax bracket.

Escalating home prices makes it harder to get started, though, because the
size
of the down payment keeps growing. And since many of the fees involved with
buying and selling are a percentage of the price, the amount of cash a
first-timer needs gets really high.

Compare this to 40-50 years ago, when interest rates, taxes and down
payments were low.

agree. I know some people who are paying over 50 percent of theie take
home pay in mortgage payment. Amazingly enough, their banks allowed them
to get into that situation.

Personal bankruptcies are going up, too.

And that's part of what Dwight would reform! (lack of caps on how much debt a
person can get into)

73 de Jim, N2EY