the cost of living now vs. whenever...and a bit of a rant.
Geoff 'atom' Balme
realize I haven't been through D-day, or the trenches of ww1, or hit a
landing zone from a helicopter amist machine gun fire -- all I
survived or endured was boredom mixed with inanity.
Still, I'm now a 35 year old man -- who grew up strongly on punk rock,
and now in about the tenth year of college -- still needing to hit mom
and dad up for loans every once in a while.
Dad understands, but mom still hasn't congrated me on making it into
grad school.
And who could blame her - it looks like a go nowwhere situation
(especially when little brother worked the smooze and got himself an
excellent sit down job with computers for the Gov. at 60+K/year)
Howe and Strauss in 13th Gen talk about an 800% real money increase in
essentials.
It's easy for me to recognize.
When even a volkswagon beetle costs 20K - I don't expect to be driving
a car that's less than 10 years old any time soon.
IN 1972 my dad bought a VWbug for less than 2K.
If we use the factors given to us for dollar values over the years
from the american institude for economic research - about 4x 2000 =8k
not 20 K.
Anyway, I keep thinking of All In the FAmily. One of my all time
favorite shows as a kid.
I started watching it again on a cable network recently and was
enjoying the hell out of it, until I realized that
Archie was a dock worker.
He was making about 8 bucks an hour.
He had a house in queens and a family.
Was this just hollywood?
8.00 dollars an hour in 74 is about 30.00 dollars an hour now. using
the same factors.
what dock workers make that kind of money?
what work gets that kind of hourly without a college education and a
lot of good smoozing?
in 1989 I was making a little under 8.00/hour in a lace mill.
up until last year I was making about 8.50/hour working as a
mechanic/general clerk at a Taylor Rental.
Am I ever gonna not have to hit up pops for a loan?
Will I ever get a house?
will I ever have a car?
How long do I keep telling the wife we have to wait til we can have a
baby?
whine complain!!
Timothy Kordas
david s. broudy wrote in message ...
>anyway, if you read further into 13th Gen, you'll also see that real wages
>stopped rising in (I think) 1974 and have been dropping ever since when
>viewed against inflation, while cost of living has gone orbital.
The stagnation of real wages is a trend that, I think, has shown
some improvement in the mid to late 1990s. Along with productivity
growth returning to pre-1973 levels (supposedly this is an information
technology driven event: lots of money was spent on computers in the
80s with little evident return, but once utilization reached a critical
level [around 1992 from my reading] large productivity gains resulted).
-Tim
William Strutts
corporations are just now feeling the presure to move from Windows 3.1.
GM and Ford are still working feverishly on getting Windows 95. Oh
boy!!! The reason is Y2K or so they tell me. We just got Windows 95 in
February at the Milford Proving Grounds. We are the first at GM to move
to Win 95. The corporate worlds wheel grinds verrrrryyyyyyy slowly.
I didn't notice any real wage changes until 1994 when I move to
wonderful world of corporate permatemp as a computer contractor. From
1995 to 1998, my wages increased an average of 13% per year. However,
it has come to a standstill as the millenium approaches. Now wheter
this is how the rest of the world experienced things, I don't know. I
was going nowhere very fast until 1994 at near minimum wage in the
service industries. Of course, I am now stuck as a temp. I hope that
that will change as more of the boomers retire.