I rented a 3/2 apartment in LA that was going for ~$710/month in the late 80s. That very same apartment now goes for around $2,200. The job I had at the time pays the exact same today as it did then, nominally.
In the meantime, healthcare costs have quadrupled or more, education costs have done the same, food is probably double, and gas is ~4 times what it was then.
Workers have been getting squeezed to death, and it’s not because there is no money; it’s because of where the money has been going:
“Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percentof total increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts, but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 percent. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads.
Here is a snapshot of income distribution during the past 100 years:
Chart of the Top Ten Percent Income Share, 1917 – 2008.
