Median earnings were $48,070 in 1975, measured in 2024 dollars, and $51,370 in 2024.
Not sure how you're getting 42k: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl... spits out 51k for that number.
In either case, IMO, +-10% over 60 years should just be considered flat. Calling it flat is probably generous considering how inflation has affected durable goods vs necessities. We can buy more appliances now, but places to put them have never been more expensive relative to income.
Still, real wages in 1975 were relatively high compared to previous decades. See table A-7 here: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-2...
Estimated median earnings for full-time male workers peaked in 1973 in the chart, until surpassing it in the 2010s. It's hard to find directly comparable data for earlier decades, but estimates put wages significantly lower. If you anchored to the 1920s, 30s, 40s or 50s instead, you'd just show even more growth in median wage. If you're saying we shouldn't compare to the 70s or 80s either, then what's left? Just years after 1990?
CPI ignores the reality people feel (and swaps in cheaper items that aren't necessarily on par with the original to keep the number lower), gold isn't really a 1:1 with purchasing power...there must be some sort of useful composite metric that merges multiple data points over time like rental/house prices, CPI market basket, dollar vs hard assets like gold to come up with a more accurate number.
Insofar as gold impacts the cost of things people buy, it’s already included. Adding it directly to the CPI makes no more sense than adding Bitcoin or soybean futures.
The cost of housing is already is a massive component of the CPI.
And similarly, the hedonic adjustments to smartphones sort of implicitly claim that the $100 cheap smartphone you can buy today is worth $8000 back in 2009 because of how much better processors and memory have gotten. But you can't buy an iPhone 1.0 for $1 to satisfy the need to have a phone that you can install apps onto (and the upgrade cost every few years as cheap phones can no longer run an O/S version that your banking app requires).
Thirty years ago, internet service was $2.95/hour (in 1996 dollars!), long-distance phone calls were 10 cents/minute, and a low-res 28” color TV with 5 channels cost a fortune.
Uh, back in 2000 (okay not quite 30 years ago, but getting close) I had a 36" Sony Wega which cost around $1500 with DirectTV and hundreds of channels. A 25" to 27" TV was more of a 1988 kind of thing (which is almost 40 years ago now). Being limited to 5 OTA channels was more of a 1980 thing.
But again you can't really buy that Sony Wega anymore, even though the CPI probably prices it at $20 these days.
Back 50 years ago, average household spend on the Internet was also $0, so it was very cheap, we weirdly didn't spend anything on it when I was growing up. Now I spend $80/month on it, and have trouble finding anything cheaper around here.
If you want to consider "communications spend", back in 1988, you might have spent $50/month on your landline, cable tv and newspaper subscription. Today households tend to spend $280/month on internet, wireless and streaming/cable services. That is actually double the CPI. They get lots more for that, but the cost of being an average middle class household has grown at double the CPI. And these days you need the internet in order to keep up with Joneses, it isn't really a choice.
More households subscribe to services today, which inflates the "average expenditures" data cited below: 93% of 1988 households had a landline, 53% cable TV, and 63% newspaper. Compare with today's household services penetration: 98% mobile phone, 94% broadband, and 74% streaming media.
You’re right that this is less than the cost of internet + cell + streaming services today — these are ~50% higher than the 1988 bundle — but consider the differences: you can access almost any kind of content from almost anywhere. And you can consume it on a smart phone or TV that costs 75% less in real terms than that TV from 2000.
Meanwhile, real median household income grew from ~$65,130 in 1988 to $83,730 in 2024 — and furthermore, the tax burden on the middle class fell during this period.
Sources: https://www.bls.gov/cex/1988/Standard/cusize.pdf https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
For example, the comment you're citing is claiming that because minimum wage has increased only 3x over the same period of time in which inflation has eroded the relative value of a dollar by 6x, that wages overall have increased at half the rate of inflation. But minimum wage is a measurement of a minimum, while inflation is a measurement of /average/ price increase so they can't be compared 1:1 in this way.
The housing argument also seems odd. In New Zealand (where I'm from -- I'm not familiar with the US' housing market, so the commenter could be right about that geo!) house prices have increased by far more than 20x since the 70s, but the houses available are of substantially higher quality due to improved regulations (e.g. all newer homes are subject to healthy homes rules which mandate insulation) so just comparing inflation-adjusted home prices vs income doesn't tell the full story
(Aside from that, a whole heap of items like food, electronics, transportation are all both far cheaper AND higher quality today than in the 70s)
What I’d be interested to understand is whether changes to materials (be that buildings or home appliances) has caused an increase in the cost to manufacturer.
I’d wager most things have gotten cheaper to produce these days because the same improvements in technology that can be integrated into the product also applies to technology used to reduce the cost to manufacturer. Plus if wages are below inflation then any labour costs would have declined (relatively speaking) in that time too.
Now do the same analysis but using median wage not minimum. YouTube comments are for entertainment purposes only.
I argue you must evaluate against median purchasing power; it accounts for inflation and (lack of) wage increases.
Comments from your linked video:
> The problem with the “adjusted for inflation” argument is that it does not factor in buying power. The increase in wages has risen at out half the rate of inflation, so sure; $20 in 1975 would be $124 today, but the minimum wage in 1975 was $2.10 an hour as opposed to $7.25 today, giving you half the buying power you had 50 years ago.
> healthcare, housing, and education ... have increased by an insane margin leaving people with less money once that has been paid for (if at all).
> It's even worse when you consider that people are paying 45-55% of their monthly income on a house that cost 20x more than it would have in 1975. Your buying power is fucked from all sides.