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In the US in 1960 one can find wage surveys[1] where one finds saleries of: Electric, gas, sanitary services: $6147/yr Wholesale and retail trade: $4478/yr The

In the US in 1960 one can find wage surveys[1] where one finds saleries of: Electric, gas, sanitary services: $6147/yr Wholesale and retail trade: $4478/yr The first would be where janitors would go and retail is another poorly paid job today. The average house cost in 1960 [2] was $11,900. So with a house price of around two times yearly income, we get to about $100k wage for a janitor or retail clerk in 1960. US post WWII was a pretty unique situation, but one would hope that you should be able to more than imagine such a situation. You can study the existence of such a culture in the recent past and still talk to people who actually lived it. [1](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021301612;view=1up;seq=406;size=125 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021301612;vi...) [2]https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/values.html https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/valu...

cornholio 8y ago
Using average housing prices is a poor proxy since both the average size and quality of homes have increased, while the US real estate market has had a very particular evolution, unrepresentative for the overall inflation. It was a bad choice on my part, I was trying to give an intuitive current wealth reference, not track housing trends over decades. An inflation adjusted wage of $5000 in 1960 represents $42.500 in 2018, which is in line with the often repeated tidbit that real wages of blue collar workers have stagnated for decades. Therefore, what you are describing is a world with similar real wages to those of today, and with real estate cheaper by a factor 2-3x, inflation and quality adjusted. That is indeed easy to imagine. What I am describing is a world where real wages are 4-5 times larger. Yes, those wealth increases could be trapped by a ballooning real estate market, where a single bedroom semi is worth $2 million at current purchasing parity, making it very similar to your world. Or something else could happen entirely, that is almost impossible to predict.

cornholio 8y ago

Using average housing prices is a poor proxy since both the average size and quality of homes have increased, while the US real estate market has had a very particular evolution, unrepresentative for the overall inflation. It was a bad choice on my part, I was trying to give an intuitive current wealth reference, not track housing trends over decades. An inflation adjusted wage of $5000 in 1960 represents $42.500 in 2018, which is in line with the often repeated tidbit that real wages of blue collar workers have stagnated for decades. Therefore, what you are describing is a world with similar real wages to those of today, and with real estate cheaper by a factor 2-3x, inflation and quality adjusted. That is indeed easy to imagine. What I am describing is a world where real wages are 4-5 times larger. Yes, those wealth increases could be trapped by a ballooning real estate market, where a single bedroom semi is worth $2 million at current purchasing parity, making it very similar to your world. Or something else could happen entirely, that is almost impossible to predict.