Subjectivist wrote:vtsnowedin wrote:Outcast_Searcher wrote:
The US dollar is only worth a tiny fraction of what it was in 1900, for example.
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In 1900 they adopted the gold standard which pegged the dollar at $20.67 for an ounce of pure gold. The median wage at the time was $10 per fifty five hour work week.($0.18/ hr) So it took 110 hours of average work to buy an ounce of gold.
Today the median income is $55,000 a year or $27.50 per hour and with today's gold price of $1293/ troy ounce you can buy one with just 47 hours of average labor.
So the dollar is both easier to come by and you can get more for your dollars based on how hard you had to work for them.
$55,000 median where? It sure as heck isn’t that high around where I live. I suspect those figures might be valid in LA or NYC, but Toledo, Detroit or Cleveland are a whole different fnancial environment.
Median income is pretty misleading. The average income of the bottom 90% is around $30k and has been falling in real adjusted dollars.
https://thinkprogress.org/average-incom ... 03517ccfe/