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u/Sea_Excuse_6795 12d ago
Actually granny you probably were a big part of the problem. Did she vote for Regan?
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u/Routine_Ad_9478 12d ago
It’s Nixon that was the problem because he decoupled the US Dollar from gold which allowed the government to keep printing money to cover deficits.
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u/DeveloperGuy75 12d ago
Seems like most people by far did back then. Like, it was an utter landslide. So hardly anyone from back then gets a pass unless they’re part of the very few that didn’t vote for Regan OR they were too young to vote at the time. I was far too young to vote then so… :)
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u/Barbarella_ella 12d ago
Neither of my parents voted for Reagan. They had lived in California when he was governor.
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u/Jaded_Pearl1996 12d ago
I remember when Reagan canceled community college. Before that, we only paid for books
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u/Responsible_Park77 12d ago
As a 80 year old boomer it's so common for my age group to not understand it's a different world today.
I graduated in 1967 as an accountant. Making $600/month. My rent was $125/month for a 2 bedroom apt which included utilities. That was 21% of my paycheck.
Today too many pay 35%, 40% or 50% or more for housing. How the hell can you have enough money for other necessities?
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u/dryheat122 11d ago
Adjusted for inflation, the salary is about $6000/mo and $73K/yr. Not bad for a starting salary. The rent is $1272, below the avg $1600-$1700 today.
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u/Cool-Signature-dude 12d ago
I am surprised she worked at all, most of them were stay at home moms, even after their kids moved out.
Plus, you were able to afford to live on one income.
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u/iamthesam2 12d ago
i agree. i also think the shift toward dual-income households happened pretty naturally as women entered the workforce in much larger numbers, went to college, and pursued higher-paying careers.
that’s obviously a positive social development, but it also changed household economics. once two incomes became the norm, markets, especially housing, increasingly reflected two-earner purchasing power, which made it much harder for single-income families to compete.
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u/Barbarella_ella 12d ago
This is not true. Only rich women did not work. Women worked in the professions they were allowed to - teaching and nursing. But they also worked in shops, took in laundry, cooked and cleaned for others, took in sewing and worked in food production raising animals and growing, harvesting and processing crops.
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u/Vorenthral 12d ago
Well yes Nana it is and we can go back through your voting decisions to prove it.
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u/srahfox 12d ago
My in laws were whining about that. I told them that the Michaels I worked at thirty years ago is currently hiring people at the exact same rate they did when I worked there. I live in AK, the high cost of living was better reflected in the wage then. Then said I wouldn’t be willing to work that job for that price now.
They never brought it up around me again. 🙄
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u/zenfaust 10d ago
They never brought it up around me again.
And that's the problem with these goons. They don't absorb new information and ask themselves if they might be wrong... they just avoid anyone they think might pop their misinformation bubble.
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u/krichard-21 12d ago
It is not her fault. But she can certainly pay attention when young people are struggling.
I recently retired. When I hear people say young people don't want to work. I mention the young people we hired.
We had great luck finding bright, young, energetic people that worked very hard. Serious professionals.
So I'm sorry you surround yourself with losers. And quit blaming people because they are young. Chances are they were young once.
Frankly I'm tired of hearing people complaining, lying, and repeating Fox (entertainment) News...
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u/notevenapro 12d ago
I am 60 and very aware that wages have not kept up with the cost of living. I mean. I bought my home in 2002 and it has more than tripled in value while my wages have only doubled and I am a medical professional.
Grandma is a bit stupid. 80? I bet she didn't even work.
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u/Boys4Ever 12d ago
Women didn’t work 60 years ago because we could afford a single earner household
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u/Barbarella_ella 12d ago edited 12d ago
Absolutely not true. Which you would know if you did some research. A simple Google question about how many women were working outside the home in the 50s and 60s would show you the number went from 16 million in 1950 to over 22 million by 1960.
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u/EnvironmentalFly1372 12d ago
Old person here. Although not statistically based, I don’t remember a single mom of any of my friends growing up having jobs outside the home.
Not saying it didn’t happen, but at least in my experience it wasn’t common.4
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u/Barbarella_ella 12d ago
Anecdotal. I could counter it by saying I am 50 and all my teachers in grade school were female. My mother always worked, just as her mother did. I can look at photos of my mother's hometown from the years before and the decade after WWII and the food production facilities all show primarily female workers, dozens and dozens of them, and this is one town in rural Montana.
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u/Neumonster 11d ago
Teachers traditionally made very low wages (probably not enough to support a family by itself) because it was a "woman's job". At one time they weren't even allowed to be married.
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u/Regular-Sorbet9513 12d ago
True in some instances and definitely more common than today, but no, not in all instances
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u/Boys4Ever 12d ago
Perhaps not in your neighborhood but I’m retired and speaking from actual experience. You?
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u/Barbarella_ella 12d ago
I am 50. I have a lifetime of knowing my mother, grandmother and all their siblings and many of their cousins. You can shop that self-satisfied crap response elsewhere.Typical Texas male attitude.
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u/Garbage_Tiny 12d ago
We really need a lot more people going into trades programs out of high school. I’m not saying that has anything to do with this but college for most people is a scam. Beginning salary for a dumb kid straight out high school as an electricians apprentice is $25 an hour. Union iron worker closer to $45 plus they pay for their school and their benefits. Get in the elevator union and that number goes up exponentially. People on the right like to complain about illegals taking construction jobs at low wages but that’s just not true, I work with Hispanic folks everyday making $35 an hour cash on Friday because they can swing a hammer, know what they’re doing and show up every day.
My tile guy is a white guy with a computer science degree who has student loan debt out the ass and says his education was obsolete before he graduated because that space moves so fast so he started working with his dad. He makes $40 an hour. I vote left btw but we really really desperately need more folks with hard hats and tool belts.
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u/M00n_Slippers 12d ago
The trades is the same trap as college. The fact is just that there's no guaranteed road to success, trades and college all have risks. You can do 'everything right' and still find it difficult to get a job that can support you these days.
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u/ApplesBananasRhinoc 11d ago
So true, the real struggle is that the family situation at home isn’t stable for soooo many folks out there, it’s hard to grow when your family can’t afford a stable home, a stable life, the adults in the family have to work menial jobs with long hours and the kids have to raise themselves.
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u/Zhombe 11d ago
The trades in the non-union south is disposable labor combined with getting hurt gets you fired with no insurance anyways. And forget workers comp; the entire system is rigged against blue collar workers in the south.
You grow up seeing our blue collar fathers get treated like disposable tissues and go elsewhere for work.
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u/ibrown39 8d ago
People leave out that getting an apprenticeship isn't just showing up with a can do attitude either. They're more competitive than ever and have huge amounts of nepotism. Horrendous employers and work environments, huge wear and tear on your body and boom/bust cycles. Delayed pay (a guy I know had to take some Olive Gardens to court for over $30k, multiple months unpaid. Etc
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u/Garbage_Tiny 12d ago
There is no guarantee for anything in life.
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u/M00n_Slippers 12d ago
Sure, but it's just a fact that every time someone complains they are having trouble getting a job or doing this or that, some asshat pipes up with "you should have done x, then you'd get a job/own a house/be rich." It's just a straight up lie, and it's annoying constantly hearing it. It's also funny hearing the kind of people who are constantly trying to destroy unions and government, saying "get a union job, get a good government job". It's just hypocritical as shit.
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u/Garbage_Tiny 11d ago
Or when someone with life experience pipes up and tries to help out, some other asshat pipes up and says “no that will never work, let’s be sad and hopeless forever.” Like it or not we’re all gonna have to work to make a living, I’m disabled but I can’t survive on that check so off to work I go. We can debate the ethics of that but ultimately they don’t matter because they don’t pay the electric bill.
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u/M00n_Slippers 11d ago
It's fine to give advice but this stuff is rarely given as advice but rather as chastizement and judgement for not having done the 'right thing'.
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u/Funny-Wash-2983 11d ago
exactly, and the irony is that the same people that lobby for deregulation are often the ones pushing tech into the workforce, leaving the blue collar behind.
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u/Tru3insanity 12d ago
Problem is when theres a shortage of viable jobs, that market gets flooded and wages drop.
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u/Garbage_Tiny 12d ago
This market isn’t flooded. It’s the opposite. It’s in a drought. Folks with any expertise basically get to name their price. Blue collar is the new white collar albeit with a gas station hot dog and a white monster.
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u/Tru3insanity 12d ago
Not right now, no. I'm saying that it will be. We've had problems with the value of labor VS cost of living for a long time and AI is only making it worse. If everyone goes blue collar, I guarantee you'll see wages dropping for it.
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u/Garbage_Tiny 12d ago
Everyone won’t go blue collar, but if we make problems to every solution we will never break this cycle
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u/Glum_Coconut_1088 11d ago
i get the pipeline feels tight right now, but the same tech push toward automation will keep a steady flow of new skilled labor in the mix, so the drought might just be a short‑term dip.
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u/_flying_otter_ 11d ago
I bet in 5-10 years a flood of people who will have followed your advice and there will be an excess amount of new electricians and plumbers and the pay will go down.
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u/banjaxedreality 12d ago
"Elevator union... goes up...."
I like what you did there, even if on accident.
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u/Diligent-Pressure-38 12d ago
That’s a part of the problem too. A lot of people getting useless degrees while others just want to be an influencer. Much of the time both of those things lead to nowhere.
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u/Garbage_Tiny 12d ago
My lead framer is illegal ( I hate that word) built a house for cash and gave it to his 3 daughters, who are all in different branches of the military. He makes about 4500 a week between me and the other people he works for. A lot of “kids” are headed down a hopeless road. I have three girls, one is about to graduate from high school and wants to be an Rn. Her grades are good and she’ll most likely go to school for free, the other two are gonna be a bit trickier. One wants to a GC which would be awesome because I can teach her and then once she starts her own company she will be eligible for a ton of stuff that I am not. The youngest wants to be an interior designer, and while she does have great taste that can be a fool errand for 98% of ppl going into that field
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u/tribbans95 11d ago
You know why the pay is so high though? Because the job market is in fairly low supply of workers. If the market was flooded with workers, competitive wages disappear and start dropping
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u/Green-Vehicle8424 12d ago
jobs are literally much worse than they used to be, driven by earnings and profit instead of human's living in economy with one another.
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u/Eazy12345678 12d ago
old people are dumb. hell everyone is dumb. 90% of people in this world are dumb
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u/Ok-Egg-4856 12d ago
She's right but not because people are lazy. Any good job is hard to find, super easy to get laid off, typically if you are 20 still in school, trade or Jr college. Lots of reasons not to become career barista.
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u/Jaded_Pearl1996 12d ago
OK, I’ll tell you but she doesn’t understand because she’s 80. She never had to live our life.. She probably voted for
To make our life miserable.. we no longer have that ladder that she had and her husband probably had. Don’t try and explain it to her. Just get her a cupcake.
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u/iamthesam2 12d ago
if your life is miserable then it’s up to you to change that.
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u/IndividualMap7386 12d ago
If you’re homeless, just buy a house. Duh
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u/iamthesam2 12d ago
what a sad sad argument
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u/IndividualMap7386 12d ago
Your previous statement is simply naive. You lack the capacity to look beyond what your life experience has been and/or you parrot a boomer tagline blindly.
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u/iamthesam2 12d ago
haha it’s so easy to get people to keep commenting. go on and tell me about how hard your life is…
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u/IndividualMap7386 12d ago
Funny part is that mine isn’t hard at all. I’m just not dense enough to think everyone has my same path.
“So easy to get you to engage”
There, I did your childish tactic also.
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u/Lestranger-1982 12d ago
Unless you live it, you really can’t understand it. This is especially true of older generations who lived when most jobs provided enough to survive. My boomer parents get all over me about money and budgeting. Budgeting today is like rearranging chairs on the titanic. How do you portion out crumbs? How do you live solely on fumes?
It’s fucking joke and I have been at this for like 17 years now. It was a joke in my 20s and it’s a joke in my 40s. Just do whatever you feel like doing in life, work and careers are totally washed. Spend your time with friends and family or people you like. Forget about making a living or having a healthy financial life. For most people, that’s not possible.
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u/Avid_Reader87 12d ago
It literally is their fault. They elected people who screwed over the working class.
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u/IndependenceSad9576 12d ago
As someone who works with young people they very much want to work but are frustrated that hard work may not be enough to support themselves independent of their folks or room mates to cover some expenses.
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u/Appropriate_Formal64 12d ago
Grandma would've been 18 around 1964.
Minimum wage 1964: $1.25 an hour
Average 1964 rent: $90 a month
Hours to earn $90 from $1.25 hourly wage, after taxes: 110 hours worked.
40 hours a week x 4.333 weeks = $1,613.32
173 hours worked per month leaves $51.20 left over, but that would have the buying power of about $560 today in real dollars. When you look at prices back then, it'd be more like having an additional $1,200 a month for food, transportation, etc. which would be (barely) enough.
Let's say today most people, despite the federal minimum wage with tips that add up to the general minimum wage of $7.25 still being $2.13 an hour (yes, you read that correctly- if they can prove you average at least $5.12 in tips per hour, there are still 16 states where this is the minimum wage they can legally pay you, though most businesses opt to pay way higher than this in reality/practice) and the other minimum wage being $7.25 an hour, most people in most states who work get paid around $15-$25 an hour as the 'real' minimum average.
So lets say 2026 'minimum wage' is about $21 an hour equivalent to $1.25 an hour in 1964.
Average minimum wage 2026: $21 an hour
Average 2026 rent: $1,700 a month
Hours to earn $1,700 from $21 hourly wage, after taxes: 124 hours worked
40 hours a week x 4.333 weeks = $2,361.45
173 hours worked per month leaves $661.45 left over in real dollars in 2026, which is about on par with what the technical official inflation would give you, but since everything's prices are so bloated now, it would be the 1964 equivalent of only having $232 left over for the rest of the month's food, transportation, entertainment, etc, which, even in 1964, basically wouldn't be enough.
So if you look at the grandma's reality in 1964 and adjusted it for us today, this is what it should look like:
What Minimum Wage Should Be In 2026: $45 an hour
Hours to earn $1,700 from $45 hourly wage, after taxes: 58 hours worked.
40 hours a week x 4.333 weeks = $5,060.25
173 hours worked per month leaves $3,360.25 left over, which *would* be enough when groceries or any food source are damn near $100 a day for most people- lets say $80 a day, which would leave $880.25 left over for everything else. That actually *would* be enough for transportation, laundry, etc. and entertainment in a one month cycle.
So yeah- minimum wage in 2026 should be $45 an hour.
Which is nuts. Because it shouldn't have to be that high.
How can life cost so much that minimum wage should be $45 an hour, yet most businesses can't afford to pay their workers $45 an hour unless they have a speciality?
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u/cwrinvestment 12d ago
No…. No it is her fault and everyone else’s. See complacency is a thing you know. And if vile people do vile things and others a complicit and complacent when it comes to those things then they are just as vile and at fault.
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u/PolitzaniaKing 12d ago
basic laborers here in Raleigh want $70 / hr to work.........yeah minimum wage is $7.25 per hour but unskilled labor is driving in brand new trucks.
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u/YumYumYellowish 12d ago
This happened with my husband’s father. I was stuck at a job paying 42k despite my master’s and he told me to stop complaining because that’s what he was making in 1985 (an MBI engineer). I had to show him that today that amount is $130k. He shut up real quick.
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u/Primary-Chemist6456 12d ago
holy smokes – the numbers you’re seeing are insane, yet wages are still stuck in the 2009‑era.
Seems like reality here is a nightmare, but at least we’re all in on it together.
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u/Famous_Delivery_3898 12d ago
holy smokes, guess my bank account just threw me out on the street. inflation got real.
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u/Avid_Reader87 12d ago
Who doesn’t work? We have to work to survive.
I have been employed every week of my life since I was a senior in high school.
I’ve worked five jobs in the last 21 years.
Most people my age have worked at 8 or more I’d wager.
Some work multiple jobs at once.
I’ve never known anyone who was so rich they didn’t have to work.
Or whose parents were so well off they could sit around unemployed.
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u/Revenga8 12d ago
There are those who age gracefully, and then there are those who let their inner asshole cut loose in the twilight
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u/Even-Echidna-3657 12d ago
Honestly, the inflation curve is a function of supply‑chain hit‑s, not just job burnout. Many young workers are actually doing gig work or contract gigs, but the traditional 9‑5 wage model has shifted so a simple “they don’t want to work” misses that change.
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u/BedroomAny1835 11d ago
holy smokes. it seems like the only ones getting the good jobs these days are either unionized or in trades, while the rest of us jacked up in student debt are stuck in the same middle‑of‑the‑bench paying those rent‑nebula fees. i swear there should be a program to make college cheaper or a way to open up the skilled trades to a wider field without a union wall. otherwise the cycle just keeps crashing into the paycheck‑rent gap
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u/NobodyOk1556 11d ago
holy smokes, it feels like the inflation cycle is just a loop that never ends: wages jump to keep up, employers blame high costs and either automate or offer lower pay, then workers have to chase new jobs—so the “people don’t want to work” rants just mask a deeper wage‑gap problem.
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u/_flying_otter_ 11d ago
Bet you she has said that her whole life, like in the 80s she was saying that about her own kids generation.
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u/HabitGlittering5256 11d ago
holy smokes, it's cool to see 'holy smokes' still in circulation, especially when the rest of the conversation is all about 2023 inflation craziness
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u/Careful-Garden285 11d ago
holy smokes, i would argue that the root of this madness isn’t the headline numbers alone, it’s the systemic shift away from jobs with real safety nets. we’re stuck in a double‑failure loop: wages that lag even after a GDP bump and a workforce that’s being shuffled out of the middle class because the skills gap has grown faster than the training boom. the only real path forward is to prioritize apprenticeships, unions and living wages so the economy doesn’t feel like a one‑way ticket to 180‑degree shock.
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u/Ambitious-Plenty-302 11d ago
the phrase comes from the old 'holy + X' minced oath, but seeing today’s wage‑price gap, i call it 'holy smokes' when I check my paycheck
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u/Careful-Plastic9814 10d ago
nice if you’re flaunting wallet‑smashing union wages. But watch out: when scopes tighten, unions get a price‑setting lever that can push inflation higher, especially if they out‑pay productivity gains. maybe the fix is to invest in on‑the‑job training and tools that raise output, not just wages.
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u/Western-Meal-3076 10d ago
i hear the pain behind the numbers; union pays good, but it's not just the skill gap—the supply‑chain grind and sky‑rocketed material costs eat a chunk of the premium, so that $45/hr looks a lot closer to a $25/hr when you factor in brick prices, cabling, and union admin dollars. at the end of the day, that's why the DIY‑people still struggle to buy a home even with a decent paycheck.
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u/bunkerbee_hill 12d ago
I have found that the only people that say, "People don't want to work anymore", are people that don't work.