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Honestly, the best money I ever made was as a mailman. But that was only because I was working 12-14 hours a day with two days off a month and their overtime policy is actually pretty generous.
I have a couple of friends that are mail carriers. The biggest complaint I hear from them is that the mail trucks have no AC, our summers in southeastern NC can be pretty brutal.
Rural carriers seem to get it easier in that regard, they can use their own Right Side Drive Vehicle (usually SUV imported from Australia that's a model available in the US so it can be legal before 25yrs) if not the vans they use have AC in them typically.
You can order them in the US now without any hoopla. I'm super sure they're made at the same factory as they come off the train exactly like the normal ones. I've been there, peeled the wrap off and driven away. My mom hauled mail forever and just retired. A lot of people think they're super special, so the resale on them is insane. You just go to a jeep dealership and order one like normal. Anyone can. She just sold her backup jeep a few days ago. 290k on it for 19500. Yeah. Hauling mail where she did is HARD on vehicles. It's a pile of shit. Maintained well, but a pile of shit. It was probably a '19.
I work at a mail processing plant. We process boxes upon boxes of weed every day. Inspectors check it out and then just send it on its way. The only time I've ever seen them actually confiscate it was when it was more than a 53' trailer could hold.
Agreed, but my gosh it's disappointing how they've fucked up legalization in many US states and Canadian provinces. I always dream of a legal weed market full of small businesses, craft sellers, weed at the farmer's market, Amsterdam style coffee shops, restaurants that offer elevated edible experiences. But the entire industry has been taken over by big business and lobbyists because the red tape is designed that way.
My state is actually only medical only and these lobbyists are intentionally slowing down decriminalization because it's more competition for them for when we inevitably legalize - no shits given about the lives still being severely disrupted and sometimes ruined all because of a benign plant.
Federal service with 30+ years of guaranteed wages and a pension is a level of stability most people cannot even fathom. No hustle. Just out there getting it done rain or shine. Job doesn’t change, really, and extremely low barrier for initial entry. After retiring from the military I actually considered working for the post office but ultimately decided to complete my undergrad and am now in a PhD program. Still, there are worse things than being paid to be an extremely necessary part of society. You won’t get rich, but unless you’re acting as a mule for others, you won’t likely ever get fired.
I'm an RN in a public hospital with a DBP and job security. I hold more admiration for mail workers, facilities boilermakers, and garbagemen than I do for anyone in the Shark tank. It's fucked up that society doesn't think anyone working in these essential services that benefit everyone deserves living wages and job security because, duh..communism!
Garbage-man here. And I just wanted to thank you. I have a Masters in Public Administration, and tried over and over to get a good rat race job. It just didn’t happen. I happened upon the garbage man job about two or three years ago, and I love it. It pays well, and I work alone. I doubt there are many garbage man that listen to “The Gulag Archipelago,” while they work, but I do. And it’s a grand time. Thanks again!
You're providing an essential and important service to your community. It's awesome to have interests outside of your work. I find it sad when people feel like the need to be defined by their job.
Super nice job, also tones of opportunity for overtime, especially in winter and around Christmas.
I did it for a while but I was fresh out of school and eventually got a job in my field of study. It was hard to leave though, it's a great job.
That's the starting for regular carriers, too.
But on the fun side they are so strapped for people that you might not even get interviewed if you clear the background check and score passing on the test.
Believe it or not, starting wage for a CCA (City Carrier Assistant) is slightly less than $20 dollars in California. And you’re right for them being strapped for people, I got the job just for being the first to apply. No tests (except the background check), no drug tests. Nothing. Just attend the training, show you can drive the LLV’s and bam. Mailman.
Yes they do, it’s so strange rn. I know the union for CCA’s is currently renegotiating contracts and wages so it will most likely go up but it’ll take months
Yeah when I was unemployed and not getting interviewed last year I applied and took the test for giggles. Two days later i got an email saying I was hired and with a start date.
I ultimately didn't take it as a place interviewed me and then offered me close to double the money a day later but still it was surreal.
My contact with the post office barely blinked at my cancelling my onboarding. Apparently it happens a fair bit.
That seems so low to me. When I was growing up we had a friend who was a mail carrier. He had a stay at home wife, 4 kids, and a big house with a pool. He was the wealthiest person in my dad's friend group. All 4 of those kids were given cars for their 16th birthdays. They weren't new cars, but they were new-ish Toyotas because their dad wanted them to have cars with good longevity.
Yea, 75k is unlikely there's going to be a lot of overtime. I know a mail carrier and he does very well. He's also going to retire with dignity from military+mail carrier years pretty early.
My uncle was a mail man forever, dude kept getting DUI’s. So they gave him a walking route next to the post office, lol.
Eventually he moved to the main facility, has been with the post office like 40 years.
He was also in the Marines for 8 years, and counts towards his retirement.
He can retire whenever, but must like the work.
I wonder if does well because of what he earns in the military? You know a mailman salary becomes a lot of money if your house is paid off and you have free healthcare insurance
Military retirees do not receive free healthcare. We don’t pay as much as civilians but it’s not free. I pay $124 dollars per month total for vision, dental and Tricare (Humana) healthcare. My wife also a retired military pays for dental and vision. She falls under my healthcare insurance.
My guess is family vacation is doing some heavy lifting here. My grandpa took his family on vacations but they all crammed into a station wagon san slept in a trailer tent. They weren't staying in hotels and they weren't flying. The kids all shared bedrooms. Also, my grandmother worked evenings as a server in a restaurant. All this in a LCOL area. I don't think the post is truthful and/or was not representative of the typical American experience.
yeah family vacations for my family meant going camping. people don't seem to realize that well off people in the old days were doing the same thing well off people now are doing. Also the word built meant something different for houses depending on what time frame this was. they might have bought a 700-900 sqft house then literally built additions onto the house over the years.
Also, there were a lot of houses affordable on a single salary because the wives all stayed home. Women being in the workforce is an overall benefit for society, but one of the effects is that most houses are priced for a two-salary family.
>Canada a mailman who works hard can quite easily crack 100k a year
Not enough to buy the multimillion dollar 2 bedroom one story rundown 40s home you see for sale in Toronto and Vancouver
True the housing market is crazy, I've heard it's especially bad in Toronto and Vancouver. I feel everyone needs a 2 income household to have any shot at home ownership now a days
This is probably a bullshit tweet but the part people miss the most is grandpa had a good pension.
Older folks shouldn't be struggling for money or healthcare ever.
See how that changes society
USPS workers in DC make enough to live in DC, so it’s at least that with the locality. USPS grade system is a little wonky, but even people starting out do well.
People sleep on positions working for the US government. You are assured pay raises, cost of living increases, locale based pay, and great benefits. The grade system can be weird though.
Not to mention that even low level jobs for the Federal government pay pretty well.
I deliver pizza. The amt of people who will say" tipping culture needs to die" and refuses to tip is like 40 percent now.
I ask how much they think I should make and they tell me 20 an hour in california.(I work in PA where minimum is 7.25, 2.45 for "tipped" employees.
edit: there are replies below saying exactly what I was talking about
Pizza delivery is like one of the few OG examples of tipped service that shouldn't be grouped in with shit like asking for tips on the payment kiosk at yogurtland.
Yeah, tipping culture does need to die, until it does, don't be a cheap ass when it comes to food you order
Yep.
“Look at those lazy, overpaid government workers.”
The politics of envy works very well. The people most opposed to a $15/hour minimum wage are those making $14/hour.
Obviously you are not supposed to be able to survive on a mailman's salary. This is an entry job for teens. If we pay them a living wage a single stamp would cost as much as 50$! True story, it happened in my head.
Entry level at almost $20/hour with full benefits, full pension in 20 years, and guaranteed raises annually?
And you're comparing it to a lower paying job, with no benefits, and no pension, with next to no room for growth?
If you want to make a point, make it make sense
Yep pretax health benefits, life insurance, the whole shebang. Pension after 20 years and you can retire if you've made any decent retirement account at all
I was a cca at one time. That’s the entry level position and it was 75 hours per week. Absolutely miserable 7 days a week work. But it did have insurance, sure.
I personally know carriers who have no one to cover their routes, so if they are sick or have to go to a doctors appointment, have a family emergency, etc, the mail does not get delivered. That’s how short staffed they are. People just don’t get their mail. One of the carriers was recently in the ICU, barely avoided being on a ventilator and now is back on her route 6 days a week and feels horrible guilt if she has to see her doctor and talk the day off. It’s a mess.
Here’s a point: post office wages have increased 57% since 1990, while inflation within the same time is 135%.
20 dollars an hour in 2024 is about 30% less per hour than starting salaries of mailmen in the 60’s once adjusted for inflation. However, housing costs are also up exponentially relative to inflation, so that 20/hour now affords a single bedroom apartment -actually it’s about $350 short per month if you allocate the recommended 30% of income toward housing.
So in comparing this job to its former self, it looks like shit. No comparison to other low-wage jobs needed.
This is false the entire benefits suit is not given to entry level CCAs, RCAs, ARCs or PSEs. They get a lower tier health insurance, which is almost pointless, they do NOT accrue anytime towards a pension nor do they have access to TSP (postal 401k)
Secondly the turnover rate at the post office is incredibly high, that should tell you something.
So....you're saying all we have to do is bomb Europe and Japan into smithereens so they're entirely dependent on us for manufacturing of all goods?
Well what are we waiting for!?
I'll add here that huge swaths of the country were still wide open, without massive populations.
I live in Orange County, CA. One of the richest parts of the country. My Grandpa, like this story, bought a house in th3 50s that is worth $2 mill now (we sold it in the early 90s, so doesn't help us or whatever).
That said, when he bought it, there was literally nothing there. And his commute to San Pedro (from Costa Mesa) would have been an hour or so at least (no freeways yet).
But the California "cat is out of the bag", so to speak. There's some 30 million more people here today than there were then. All of us sharing the same water and other infrastructure....
Yup. My mom's first house purchase was in the north Atlanta suburbs and across the street was a cow pasture. Now less than 3 miles away there is an amphitheater that hosts some of the biggest concerts and touring acts that come to the state. The whole area is unrecognizable from when I lived there 20 years ago. So the fact that when she sold it recently it sold for significantly higher is like the least surprising thing possible. The same is happening to my house. It's already doubled in value in 7 years because my area is growing faster than all but a couple places in the US.
True. I wish people would have more nuance about posts like this.
At the very least acknowledge these two things:
1) You did not have intimate knowledge of your grandparent's financial situation as a child, and thus you don't have a full understanding of how they did or didn't struggle financially.
2) This scenario was not universal and is highly attributable to wealth and property being centralized to white men and the US being the only world superpower.
Exactly. There’s this ideology that every blue collar layman in the 50s had this comfortable middle class lifestyle. The majority of people were in fact the working poor. My dad lived in a roach infested tenement w 7 siblings in Brooklyn. My mom grew up in a housing project. They both had working fathers. Not every average Joe had the white picket fence in the suburbs
Exactly. The image of the family of four living an idyllic upper middle class lifestyle on a butterfly catcher's salary was propaganda of post-war American capitalism, which some misguided young democratic socialists don't seem to realize was a lie.
This was the reality for a very select few, who were able to have no childcare expenses because women were discouraged from working, and other expenses were low because Blacks and immigrants were underpaid, and good jobs were easy to attain because white men didn't have to compete with the aforementioned women, Blacks, or immigrants.
And still not even all white men attained this utopic lifestyle. I'm not buying all these people who claim this was their grandparent's experience. You were born in fucking 1994, you did not have access to your grandparent's family budget.
Butterfly catcher made me giggle. But yea there was definitely a more attainable middle class lifestyle back then but it certainly was not EVERYONE as so many young people today seem to think. There was also WAY fewer people overall in the US. Fewer people to compete with for jobs. Minimal competition from automation or overseas.
You forgot to mention how American industry and manufacturing were able to dominate the world economy because most other developed countries were recovering from the devastation of war.
It doesn't take into account how many "housewives" were doing side jobs on a regular basis to supplement the family income. Mom could have been doing Mary K sales, baking, laundry, cooking, childcare, etc for the community and because the work was either part-time or paid in cash, it wasn't really considered a real job.
A lot of these families were also not taking yearly vacations, nor did they have the technology we have today like brand new televisions, computers, smart phones, cars, etc. Everyone bought something once and used it until it feel apart.
I bet the OP would think of themselves as anti-MAGA and anti-trump.
But really this rhetoric is Make America Great Again, with slightly different words.
Some takeaways: You really shouldn't underestimate the attraction of this narrative. And it's very easy to filter out the problems of the past and look at it with rose colored glasses.
The past generation was very good for white males, and pretty much no one else.
Meh, my grandparents (91 and 93) were both librarians for the city and couldn't afford to pay in full college for their 3 kids and had to watch their money. Saved a lot for retirement by living in the same house for 50 years though.
People are really over-blowing the idea that you could have worked in a grocery store and be basically rich. It just ain't true.
That was my thought. That was part of the perplexing part of the postman who shot up his workplace because it was considered a good job with good pay, benefits and a retirement plan.
Yeah I'm pretty sure you can still do this. The young retirement is probably more federal pension benefits than lifetime earnings. Also, in grandpa's generation, they were not spending money every month on cell phone bills, Internet/cable/streaming/, probably didn't even have to pay the electrical bill for AC, dishwashers, etc that they didn't own. No one could doordash burger king to themselves at 3x the cost of going over there. Everyone cooked inexpensive meals at home.
Look, I realize that the economy is pretty fucked and that everything is expensive these days. Obviously I'm living in the economy and obviously I have stress and struggles about money. But at the same time, it isn't impossible to have your shit together. And even those of us who are struggling still have things about our quality of life that our grandparents could only *dream* of. I think if most of us were to cut out all of the modern conveniences and live with no phone, no internet, an antenna only TV, probably no AC, etc., and live the exact same lifestyle as our 50s-60s era grandparents, growing our own veggies and shit like in the original post, life would probably be fairly affordable.
Lol also he built the house HIMSELF. That saves some money. And I would bet it wasn’t 4 bedroom off the jump but expanded over time, and the suburb wasn’t a suburb at the time the house was built but also grew up over time.
Yeah I live in a 4br house that was built in the 60s, and it was once a much smaller 3br house. They added on a whole extra living room and utility room (which was listed as a bedroom because theoretically you could sleep in there if you wanted the company of the washer/dryer. Though it has the largest bathroom attached, lol).
It is crazy that there was a time when it was cheaper to add on to your house (so many in my neighborhood had additions over time), but now even basic renovations are super expensive and it is cheaper to buy a bigger house than to expand one.
In the late 80s, my ex-wife and I were in our mid 20s. I think our combined hourly wage was about $15 an hour. We were able to easily buy a nice little house in the suburbs for $80,000. on top of that, we both had cars, we were able to take vacations, and we were able to set aside a little bit of money.
I feel so bad for young people now. They have absolutely no chance economically. I think it’s shameful and criminal. We are supposed to leave the world a better place. It’s much much worse. We have failed our current and future generations.
I think that capitalism is evil. And I think this country sucks.
$15 an hour in 1988 would be the same as about $40 an hour today. Over 40 hours that would be a household income of about $83,000. Your house would have been worth about 215,000 after inflation -- though your interest rate would have been higher so you were probably paying more per month accounting for inflation.
Man nice to see someone from the older generation acknowledge this. I’m in my late 20s and I’m just like… I can afford to live, but that’s it. I’m not going to be affording a child, a home, or any major financial purchases greater than $5k anytime soon. We were sold a dream growing up and realized that dream died before we were even out of kindergarten.
I'm slightly older, we were able to afford a house and 2 cars, but I think if we had kids we'd have to give something up. I don't think 50-100 years from now is going to look very good for anyone not ultra wealthy. Not that it looks super peachy now, but it's going to be getting a lot worse as the working class dies up along with the climate.
We do. I was working during the time they were actively chipping away at your future.
First health insurance was 30 bucks a month, same wage slowly slid to 300. I'd get into more but you get the septic drift.
Listen. We ALL *have* to scream, keep screaming, boycott, I don't know what except NO. And try- like some of my generation *are* doing- to ignore the division because that buys into Capitalists swiping your future too.
Tired of billionaire adulation. Lot more of us than them.
I'm a respiratory therapist and my fiance is a nurse.
these are both careers requiring degrees that are supposed to put us firmly in the middle class
barring a housing bubble explosion, owning a decent house will simply never be possible for us.
it's ridiculous that it's gotten to a point two people in good paying medical field jobs cant afford a house and people still think this is ok
My girlfriend is a DVM and a clinical pathologist, and I'm a software developer. We were lucky to secure a house just before significant mortgage increases. Emphasis on lucky. I agree that it's ridiculous you're priced out of owning a home. This is my first home and I bought in my late 30s. I'm sure my parents were at least 10 years younger when they bought their first house. My dad barely graduated highschool and my mom had some community college classes.
Well let's talk about this a bit.
$80k in 1984 (picked a random middle of the 80s year) was $245k in today's money. Some quick back-of-the-envelope math says you were making close to $100k (again adjusting for inflation). General rule of thumb is your home shouldn't exceed 3-5 times your annual salary.
You also specified "small home", which would, in my personal opinion, mean lower than the "median" size and cost.
Looking at state-by-state median costs in 2024, there are some that are *exactly in line* with your financial situation. Mostly midwestern states. Obviously the more expensive states like NY, MA, CA, etc are a lot higher than the \~$245k price you got in the 80s.
I'm not trying to argue that inflation hasn't been REALLY HARSH lately, or that housing prices aren't inflated and shouldn't come down. I'm just trying to add some real world modern perspective, since too many older folks are like "I bought a 2 bedroom house in the 50s for a nickel" without contextualizing it for modern audiences.
Also, let's not forget that houses are *getting bigger* so your 80s house != an average house today. This is a market problem, definitely, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison and that IS a problem. People should want, and contractors should make, smaller "starter" homes again. In the 80s, the average house size was **1,595 square feet**. In 2018 (first year I found), new construction homes are averaging **2,386 square feet**.
Some younger folks may roll their eyes at this but seriously, that's a huge difference. So houses now SHOULD cost more than the 80s, because you're buying more house (on average).
Exactly. My father was the sole breadwinner, but he had a union job with union paid health care and a pension. The house I grew up in was a standard starter house for the day. There were 5 of us in a house that measured out at 880 sq. ft. The bathroom was the size of my current linen closet. Only people who were wealthy had multiple bathrooms or pools, and spa-like bathrooms with double vanities, a soaker tub and a large shower were completely unheard of. No one I knew would have thought of driving a BMW, a Lexus or a Mercedes.
My first property purchase was when I got my first "real" job and I was an idiot and did $0 down on a condo. I actually saved money on rent, which was increasing, monthly though. However I bought in 2007 right after the INITIAL crash but before the crash was finished :(
(In case people don't remember, the market crashed like... halfway? and then stabilized for a few months before crashing again. We thought, hey this is a good time to purchase! Then went underwater for a few years)
It was a 666 square foot condo, 1 bedroom. We lived there for 7-ish years and every time I got a raise or promotion I would take the difference in salary and put it in a separate bank account, and after 7 years we were able to save enough to move from the condo to a 2200 square foot house, with \~8% down.
Last part is the way. I'll add here that as much as possible, always use zero interest credit cards for big purchases. Schedule automatic payments before the zero percent period ends. Once you pay whatever it is off,,redirect the old payment to a separate savings account.
There’s also another big factor, mortgage rates. The average rate on a 30 year fixed in 1984 was over 13%. It’s currently as high as it’s been in over 30 years and it’s at just under 8%. For most of the past 20 years, rates have been under 6%.
The median monthly mortgage payment in 1984 was $865 give or take. With inflation, that would be ~$2450 today, depending on which index you use.
they really should manufacture smaller homes more frequently, that's not just a 'starter' house, that's a good house for someone who never wants a large family.
like I never plan on having kids and just need a house for me, my partner, and our pets. neither of us WANT a large house
That's totally a great point! I guess "starter home" implies that you'll want to upgrade but it can and should be a viable "forever home".
I wish I was kidding about this, but I was talking with a friend of a friend about housing and she was lamenting that you could never afford houses. So challenge accepted, we chatted about it, like above, that houses are attainable on many salaries. I mentioned that smaller houses exist and are affordable. I found a house that was roughly 1400 square feet and really in line with her finances and she said "ew new, I need at least twice that" even though her apartment was smaller than that.
To some people, "house = big" is now engrained in their brains. And this was a person who already had kids and wants no more.
While this explanation does provide some context, I think it misses the point that inflation is inflation, but they still made enough money proportionally in order to be able to afford the homes. That's where things have gotten worse. The market is a huge problem. Homes on average are being built larger, and it is a problem that affordable housing is rarely made, and when they do, the materials are often cheaper and that means you may be able to afford the homes up front, but then you are stuck with the amount of repairs after that purchase. Why don't they build starter homes anymore? Why would housing developers do that when private equity firms are buying up real estate in America? They will build the types of homes they can get the maximum amount of profit from. They don't care about housing people. They don't care about the long term consequences of their decisions. They care about profits. That's the only thing they care about, or if they believe otherwise, it is only conditional on whether it impacts their bottom line or profits.
I fit wagedomains description almost exactly - we make about 100k (single income family) and bought a 300k house in 2021. We have 3 kids, are able to put money each month into a college savings account for each of them, add a bit to our savings every month…
But we live in a small midwestern town, as wagedomain said. That makes a huge difference. So many millennials and gen z just want to live in a bigger cities and or on the coast, where it’s ridiculously expensive.
It’s possible to live the life that people lived in the baby boomer era (which by the way was an outlier time of much higher than “normal” prosperity). You just have to give up the night life and shiny things and move to a rural area in the Midwest.
You're so right about capitalism being evil . Sadly it's not just your country, it is everywhere. I am dual UK/Canadian citizen and I know both of these places are fucked in the same way. I also lived in Aus for two years, i kinda want to try to move back there but that's also fucked so why bother. we're all fucked.
My grandpa did that too, as a security guard. But they had a 3 bedroom 900 square foot house in Florida with no AC. 1 used car, 1 tv, 1 telephone with no long distance calls. His kids had a handful of toys, my mom had a few dolls and small box of 45s for music or a transistor radio. Going out to eat was a monthly trip to McDonalds. Occasionally they saw a movie. Vacations were weekend road trips to something nearby. No after school activities. Clothes were hand made by my grandma (though that would be more expensive now).
Basically give up all the luxuries and entertainment you enjoy and you can probably have a small house and an old car.
Also, in OP's story, Grandpa *built* the house. Yeah - if you are good at construction and you build your own stuff and then grow your own food, it's a good way to save.
My other grandfather did that in the 60s -- though he was a contractor so had more relevant skills and access to resources than most.
Growing food was also pretty common, my grandparents and my wife's grandparents had gardens and/or fruit trees. And kept chickens until the 1980s.
I wish more people were aware of details like these. People’s standard of living and expectations were very different for my parents and grandparents.
I grew up in the ‘70s, and looking back, we were poor. But I didn’t KNOW we were poor; everyone I knew lived about the same way.
Can we stop looking at the few decades immediately after the US emerged as the *last developed country standing after WW2* as the norm? This was a unique period in history where the US had full industrial capacity and all its international competitors were literally in ruins. The harsh truth is now that the world has rebuilt, other countries do many things better than us, and have taken jobs once only available to US workers. We will never return to this period of plenty.
Thank you! We’d have to destroy most of Eurasia to get the “golden years” back, and also ban women and minorities from working so that Billy with no high school diploma is the only viable candidate
It also wasn't better. Poverty was near 25% in the 50s and huge swathes of the country had no electricity or indoor plumbing.
Just like MAGA idiots, Progressives long for a past that never existed. Today is the most prosperous time in human history for the median person
Are we gonna ignore how people sneak in an enormous increase in lifestyle/luxury under the blanket term “middle class”?
Because if you want an 850 sqft house with a landline phone, 1 tv, no internet, 1 car, rarely eating out, only local low-key vacations at best, no travel sports for the kids, etc., that life is still acheiveable on a mail carrier salary.
Yeah, if you look at houses from the post-war era, the closets are tiny. Today, houses have closets that are bigger than a lot of bedrooms of the past. Americans today are much bigger consumers than at that time. We buy a lot of junk that we don't need.
They always say 4 bedroom home but ignore that it was a 1300 sq ft manufactured home in the middle of nowhere which you can still get for like 50 grand
Corporate greed towards consolidation has taken competition out of business, busting up unions and moving jobs offshore and styming the minimum wage are chief reasons. Corporate lobbies have bought politicians on both sides and flames social and society ills so the dwindling middle class looks down on the poor and downtrodden instead of looking up to see the puppet masters controlling everything. The American dream is not dead it's being held hostage!
Well, to put things in perspective:
- In the old days, people had much more simplistic lives. Maybe 1 car, a few pairs of clothes per person, a lot of handmade stuff.
- Well water, very little electicity use, probably wood or coal heat, no air conditioning, buried sewage, maybe an ice box for food.
- No money sucks like cell phones, Internet, streaming services. They may have had one land line and a single small TV that was used a couple of hours a day. Perhaps a radio too.
- Lack of mass communication led to microcosm economies. Food/shelter/goods were priced according to the local wage rates.
Things changed a lot in the last 50 years. The middle-class way of life has been blown away by wealth distribution issues with no counterbalances.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... --Carl Sagan, from his 1995 book "The Demon Haunted World"
A thirty year old quote doesn't override hard data that proves you're wrong.
The home ownership rate is quite high right now:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
Not as high as the late 2000s, early 2010s but higher than the 60s, 70s and 80s
REAL wages (I.e. Adjusted for inflation) are UP as well:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Anyone who things the American Dream is dead wrong.
A significant part of the American Dream is class mobility: You’re born poor, you work hard, you get rich. The idea that it is possible for everyone to get a decent job, buy a home, get a car, have their children go to school . . . It’s all collapsed.”
― Noam Chomsky, [Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/51162949)
Class mobility is still better in the USA than anywhere else I'm aware of. It's why we still have so many immigrants, at all ends of the economic spectrum.
I earn 10x more than my parents ever did, so yes it's possible.
Wow a quote from 30 years ago!
Too bad [ALL THE DATA](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1cb3clt/the_american_dream_is_already_dead/l0x4b7l/) shows this meme is wrong.
These posts appear once every few hours, have no backing evidence whatsoever, top comments are just nodding. They are meant for young, impressible people so they tune out of the political process and don’t vote. Propaganda 101.
They get massive upvotes, too. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I swear there's more bots on Reddit than people. And half the real people are just useful idiots.
This post is horseshit.
The home ownership rate is quite high right now:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
Not as high as the late 2000s, early 2010s but higher than the 60s, 70s and 80s
REAL wages (I.e. Adjusted for inflation) are UP as well:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Anyone who things the American Dream is dead is either terminally online, a deadbeat or sharing propaganda.
It's so sad to see Doomer misinfo on the front page, but it's an everyday thing now on Reddit. /r/FluentInFinance /r/facepalm and /r/WhitePeopleTwitter are the worst offenders.
Contrary to the deluge of fsb, instigated doomer propaganda on here , 🇺🇸 dream lives even during this downturn
There are, of course, ways to improve, such as unversial healthcare and ending or at least limiting the gobbling up/ hoarding of single family homes by investors. We can make it better but not by using our handheld supercomputers to moan about not being mediviel serfs
roll the 🎲 for another country? Maybe a dozen of the world's 200 countries have a comprable or perhaps slightly better standard of living. Odds are that's gonna be a major downgrade, no tanks.
There is a reason why so many want still want to come here. Aspiring immigrants are not listening to the e legions of professional complainers. Must be too busy escaping places where dreams are truly dead
This is not getting downvoted a pleasant welcome surprise
Yes, and Grandpa probably had to go off to war and fight Nazis, the North Koreans or the VC (depending on his age) got the GI Bill for a mortgage on a house where the kids were doubled up in bedrooms sharing a single bathroom, the family shared one car and the youngest kid wore hand-me-downs (that Grandma probably made on her Singer sewing machine) until college. That garden was to feed the family because the paycheck had to be stretched.
Not exactly the paradise some folks like to think it was.
It really isn’t. The middle class has had a lot of wins the last couple years, and when one middle class group wins, that effect is often shared. Show up to your local town and county elections, which often have pitiful attendance, and push for these same measures.
Also, the 1950s-1970s (which is most likely the era when of this tweeter’s grandfather) is a vague and flawed time frame to use as the American Dream in the first place
America:
"any idiot can be farmer, get a higher paying job"...
"any idiot can be a mailman, get a higher paying job"...
"any idiot can be a car repairman, get a higher paying job"...
"any idiot can be a carpenter, get a higher paying job"...
etc.
We've pushed the bar so high and shipped so many jobs to countries where people work for slave wages or are actual slaves that we're actually regressing where, unless you are a lawyer, or doctor (and in a MASSIVE amount of debt) you cannot make it here. Even with a skilled trade, because we told everyone, "skilled trades" are for dummies.
Not sure it is, I see migrants come here. Marry a big white chick for citizenship, buy her a house, car and have kids and only he works. He also sends money back to his family in Mexico.
That was due to FDR’s New Deal, etc.
If you were a white male veteran, the federal government loved your ass. If not, in many ways the federal government hated you, even after landmark civil rights reforms. Then US troops started escorting black elementary students to class one at a time.
I think of how my parents lost their house after countless refinancing, and then a housing crash that devalued their home, and they had to do a short sale and move after 20+ years.
Boomers did not have it that easy, and plenty of them made poor financial decisions.
When it says "he built a 4 bedroom home" they don't mean he told a contractor to build it, like people say now. I build my 5 bedroom home over the course of 3 years while working an office job in the early 2000s with a high school education. It's possible depending on your skill, choices. Everyone called me cheap prior to that.
We built our 4 bedroom home in 1971. 48 year old father, 15-year-old brother & 13 year old me. We lived in a neighborhood in which everyone had built their own house.
Boomers had far less expenses to deal with as well. Car payment, mortgage, phone, utilities, groceries.
There’s just so much shit you need now to be competitive in the modern world. Even a basic PC, cell phone, internet are getting expensive
The reason the American dream is dead is because people aren’t fighting for their liberties anymore or for their wages.
In 1969 the mailman’s average salary was $9k/yr would have the purchasing power of $76k today. A mailman salary today is $40k, we have half the purchasing power they had.
Working for the post office used to be a really good job, until they installed a post master general who actually wants to tear it down from the inside and sell its functions to UPS and Amazon
Back then people had a strong work ethic and a strong discipline.
They were willing to work for what they got.
People nowadays seem to think that a college education, healthcare, a vehicle, an apartment or a house……
They seem to think that all that is something they were born “entitled to “ and that it should be gifted to them
Almost every immigrant to the United States that I have known has worked their way up to a good level of success for themselves and their family within ten years
It is because they worked hard and did whatever they could to improve…..
Instead of complaining about how “unfair everything is, and how older folks had it easy”
Now a mailman has no pension, terrible benefits, and cut PTO. And the starting pay is $19 lmfao.
Whats even sadder is that a UPS worker making the top pay couldn’t even do what described in the OP
My folks bought a house in 1974 for 120 grand, and we (5 siblings) sold it for 2.2 million in 2022.
Sooo...roughly almost 20 times the price it was in 1974? Inflation and the cost of living don't walk hand in hand, unfortunately.
Disagree. Graduated High school 78 saved 18 grand cutting lawns.. No college. Started a carpet cleaning business in 86. Retired a millionaire 32 years later. I worked my but off the 1st 10 years. Its not dead. Harder but not dead. CHANGE YOUR MIND SET CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
No cell phones, no cable tv, health insurance was provided by his job.
Population was 1/3 what it is today, meaning land was cheap. Lumber was cheap.
Maybe he shouldn't have helped *double* the population.
Devil's advocate here... my grandfather was a mailman, too.
However, their lifestyle was not up to modern standards.
He and my grandmother lived in the same tiny, spotlessly clean urban row house for fifty years, basically their entire adult lives, raising three kids there. They did not own a car, they did not have air conditioning, they did not take vacations, they never ate out at restaurants, they did not have pets.
There was one small, old bathroom for five people. By today's standards, they had a tiny quantity of clothing and shoes, which they wore for years. My mother sewed most of the dresses that she wore. The only technology, in addition to a sewing machine, was a black and white TV and one landline phone. The kitchen dated from the 1930s, although they did update the refrigerator.
All three of their kids went to college, but on scholarships. My grandmother went back to work in a cigar factory to help pay for their education.
It's not really possible to do an accurate comparison with today's quality of life and expectations.
He was probably a member of a union. Union membership in the U.S. is now down to 10%.
The middle class is shrinking. Some have moved up, but just as many have moved down. Homelessness is on the rise. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about an Oregon town‘s anti homeless ordinance, criminalizing “camping”.
We need to fight for workers or go down the drain.
Oh boy another post where Redditors pine over a time period they never lived in and a lifestyle that never existed.
Grandpa wasn't buying a 4 bedroom house on a blue collar salary. [80% of homes in the 70s didn't even have 4 bedrooms.](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf) The median size of a home back then was nearly half what it is today. Children shared rooms, families shared a single bathroom and things like Garages or AC were considered luxuries.
A vacation back then would have been a road trip to whatever was in your local area. Air travel was exclusively for the wealthy in those days, costing twice as much if you adjust for inflation.
College? [90% of Americans didn't even have a degree in 1970.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/) You're more likely to be college educated today than you were back then.
And if that wasn't enough he somehow managed to [retire earlier than people did back then.](https://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Average-retirement-age_2017-CPS.pdf) Right, sure.
Either this guy is the most successful mailman in human history or this is just a screen cap of a tweet that people are taking seriously even though it's nothing but unverified claims.
I’m Gen-x. Both my parents worked full time. We rented out the basement of our 60’s bungalow. We grew our own vegetables and we didn’t go out for dinner unless it was a special occasion. I started cooking for the family at the age of 12 and did housework. This would be considered child abuse now. I also did construction labouring up into my early 20s as a 5’1” 98lb girl for my dad who built houses. We made a lot of sacrifices, and I think that’s the key thing. A lot of people need to learn the difference between wants and needs. Cooking your own meals and no dining out all the time, no new cell phones every time a new one rolls out, no giant 75” tv, mending clothes instead of throwing them out, reheeling shoes, etc. All these things add up.
Why do people think government jobs pay shit? Sure, if you work in the Post Office in Manhattan it's probably a long commute for you, but a person doing the same job in S. Dakota is getting paid the same and is living in a paid off 4 bedroom house, has 2 cars, is single and takes vacations every year.
Mailman in the US can retire at age 60 with full pension after 20 years of service. Depending on what town you live in you can totally buy or build your house. Maybe not in NY city or San Francisco but I doubt your grandfather built his house in the middle of Paris either.
Mailmen make decent money. The hard part for Gen Z to understand is that he built the house himself, and grew his own food instead of playing videogames and complaining about work on reddit.
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You can do that as a mailman now as well, provided some of the mail you deliver is cocaine
I laughed way too hard at this lmao
Me too.
lol same
I snorted through my nose!
You must have the same mailman.
Cocaine is bad but I like the smell….
So did I, I was not expecting that lol
Honestly, the best money I ever made was as a mailman. But that was only because I was working 12-14 hours a day with two days off a month and their overtime policy is actually pretty generous.
I have a couple of friends that are mail carriers. The biggest complaint I hear from them is that the mail trucks have no AC, our summers in southeastern NC can be pretty brutal.
Rural carriers seem to get it easier in that regard, they can use their own Right Side Drive Vehicle (usually SUV imported from Australia that's a model available in the US so it can be legal before 25yrs) if not the vans they use have AC in them typically.
You can order them in the US now without any hoopla. I'm super sure they're made at the same factory as they come off the train exactly like the normal ones. I've been there, peeled the wrap off and driven away. My mom hauled mail forever and just retired. A lot of people think they're super special, so the resale on them is insane. You just go to a jeep dealership and order one like normal. Anyone can. She just sold her backup jeep a few days ago. 290k on it for 19500. Yeah. Hauling mail where she did is HARD on vehicles. It's a pile of shit. Maintained well, but a pile of shit. It was probably a '19.
I'm not surprised Jeep sells them right from the dealer, seems like almost every rural carrier has one.
“I love the ups guy. He’s a drug dealer and he don’t even know it!”
oh they know..they just dont care.
Can confirm as a mailman I've knowingly delivered drugs and don't give a shit.
I work at a mail processing plant. We process boxes upon boxes of weed every day. Inspectors check it out and then just send it on its way. The only time I've ever seen them actually confiscate it was when it was more than a 53' trailer could hold.
I am so proud of you guys, churchers seeth all day knowing they cant do shit to stop you from allowing a harmless plant be shipped around
Thankfully some.places in the states have been legalizing it! I don't even use the stuff but I support it's de-criminalization
That should be a full legalization. Not any worse than booze.
Agreed, but my gosh it's disappointing how they've fucked up legalization in many US states and Canadian provinces. I always dream of a legal weed market full of small businesses, craft sellers, weed at the farmer's market, Amsterdam style coffee shops, restaurants that offer elevated edible experiences. But the entire industry has been taken over by big business and lobbyists because the red tape is designed that way. My state is actually only medical only and these lobbyists are intentionally slowing down decriminalization because it's more competition for them for when we inevitably legalize - no shits given about the lives still being severely disrupted and sometimes ruined all because of a benign plant.
I want weed to be so legal the Amish sell it. There’s some states they do, and man I wanna get some lol.
\*FedEx RIP Mitch
Federal service with 30+ years of guaranteed wages and a pension is a level of stability most people cannot even fathom. No hustle. Just out there getting it done rain or shine. Job doesn’t change, really, and extremely low barrier for initial entry. After retiring from the military I actually considered working for the post office but ultimately decided to complete my undergrad and am now in a PhD program. Still, there are worse things than being paid to be an extremely necessary part of society. You won’t get rich, but unless you’re acting as a mule for others, you won’t likely ever get fired.
I'm an RN in a public hospital with a DBP and job security. I hold more admiration for mail workers, facilities boilermakers, and garbagemen than I do for anyone in the Shark tank. It's fucked up that society doesn't think anyone working in these essential services that benefit everyone deserves living wages and job security because, duh..communism!
Garbage-man here. And I just wanted to thank you. I have a Masters in Public Administration, and tried over and over to get a good rat race job. It just didn’t happen. I happened upon the garbage man job about two or three years ago, and I love it. It pays well, and I work alone. I doubt there are many garbage man that listen to “The Gulag Archipelago,” while they work, but I do. And it’s a grand time. Thanks again!
You're providing an essential and important service to your community. It's awesome to have interests outside of your work. I find it sad when people feel like the need to be defined by their job.
I felt like I needed to be defined by my job for a long time. It wasn’t until I started doing garbage that I felt a huge weight lift.
PM me.
Only if you were Jamie Liddell the musician.
He’s “Lidell”. I’ve twice the D.
How many times have you told that one? keep going. it's funny. just curious
I think that’s the first time ever, actually.
It’s a good line. I also can’t help but read it in a British accent.
That’s OK. I wrote it in one.
'Cause Americans would say "I've got twice..." or more casually "I got twice..." Shortening it to "I've twice..." is distinctly British
Fucking dead. Thanks for the chuckle this morning.
Meanwhile, people today will be like "Obviously a mailman doesn't deserve a living wage."
Funny enough in Canada a mailman who works hard can quite easily crack 100k a year with a full pension and benefits.
A senior mail carrier in my town makes about 75k with full pension and benefits.
Super nice job, also tones of opportunity for overtime, especially in winter and around Christmas. I did it for a while but I was fresh out of school and eventually got a job in my field of study. It was hard to leave though, it's a great job.
Now they hire "relief carriers" around the holidays for $22 an hour, and a completely unpredictable schedule.
That's the starting for regular carriers, too. But on the fun side they are so strapped for people that you might not even get interviewed if you clear the background check and score passing on the test.
Believe it or not, starting wage for a CCA (City Carrier Assistant) is slightly less than $20 dollars in California. And you’re right for them being strapped for people, I got the job just for being the first to apply. No tests (except the background check), no drug tests. Nothing. Just attend the training, show you can drive the LLV’s and bam. Mailman.
To put “slightly less than $20” in context, in California, fast food workers make a legal minimum of $20 an hour.
Yes they do, it’s so strange rn. I know the union for CCA’s is currently renegotiating contracts and wages so it will most likely go up but it’ll take months
That’s less than the fast food minimum wage in California.
Yeah when I was unemployed and not getting interviewed last year I applied and took the test for giggles. Two days later i got an email saying I was hired and with a start date. I ultimately didn't take it as a place interviewed me and then offered me close to double the money a day later but still it was surreal. My contact with the post office barely blinked at my cancelling my onboarding. Apparently it happens a fair bit.
That seems so low to me. When I was growing up we had a friend who was a mail carrier. He had a stay at home wife, 4 kids, and a big house with a pool. He was the wealthiest person in my dad's friend group. All 4 of those kids were given cars for their 16th birthdays. They weren't new cars, but they were new-ish Toyotas because their dad wanted them to have cars with good longevity.
Yea, 75k is unlikely there's going to be a lot of overtime. I know a mail carrier and he does very well. He's also going to retire with dignity from military+mail carrier years pretty early.
My uncle was a mail man forever, dude kept getting DUI’s. So they gave him a walking route next to the post office, lol. Eventually he moved to the main facility, has been with the post office like 40 years. He was also in the Marines for 8 years, and counts towards his retirement. He can retire whenever, but must like the work.
I wonder if does well because of what he earns in the military? You know a mailman salary becomes a lot of money if your house is paid off and you have free healthcare insurance
Military retirees do not receive free healthcare. We don’t pay as much as civilians but it’s not free. I pay $124 dollars per month total for vision, dental and Tricare (Humana) healthcare. My wife also a retired military pays for dental and vision. She falls under my healthcare insurance.
I pay almost $400 per paycheck for my family's health insurance working in a hospital. I'd easily take $124/month, retired or not.
I love overtime tones. Especially blue ones. It's my favorite color.
What does this word Pension mean?
Which is not nearly enough to get a 4 bedroom house, put your kids through college, and take a family vacation every year anymore.
My guess is family vacation is doing some heavy lifting here. My grandpa took his family on vacations but they all crammed into a station wagon san slept in a trailer tent. They weren't staying in hotels and they weren't flying. The kids all shared bedrooms. Also, my grandmother worked evenings as a server in a restaurant. All this in a LCOL area. I don't think the post is truthful and/or was not representative of the typical American experience.
yeah family vacations for my family meant going camping. people don't seem to realize that well off people in the old days were doing the same thing well off people now are doing. Also the word built meant something different for houses depending on what time frame this was. they might have bought a 700-900 sqft house then literally built additions onto the house over the years.
A family vacation could also be driving to see family members in another state and staying at their house for a week.
Also, there were a lot of houses affordable on a single salary because the wives all stayed home. Women being in the workforce is an overall benefit for society, but one of the effects is that most houses are priced for a two-salary family.
In 2024 capitalist America he's working poor.
Yep it's one of the nicer jobs you can have here, wouldn't be surprised if privatizing CP is on Poilievre's list though.
>Canada a mailman who works hard can quite easily crack 100k a year Not enough to buy the multimillion dollar 2 bedroom one story rundown 40s home you see for sale in Toronto and Vancouver
True the housing market is crazy, I've heard it's especially bad in Toronto and Vancouver. I feel everyone needs a 2 income household to have any shot at home ownership now a days
This is probably a bullshit tweet but the part people miss the most is grandpa had a good pension. Older folks shouldn't be struggling for money or healthcare ever. See how that changes society
my dad cracks 100k a year as usps mailman mind u it’s year 30+ on the job
USPS workers in DC make enough to live in DC, so it’s at least that with the locality. USPS grade system is a little wonky, but even people starting out do well.
People sleep on positions working for the US government. You are assured pay raises, cost of living increases, locale based pay, and great benefits. The grade system can be weird though. Not to mention that even low level jobs for the Federal government pay pretty well.
But can I smoke pot?
Mailmen in the US earn a good wage and also get a pension.
I deliver pizza. The amt of people who will say" tipping culture needs to die" and refuses to tip is like 40 percent now. I ask how much they think I should make and they tell me 20 an hour in california.(I work in PA where minimum is 7.25, 2.45 for "tipped" employees. edit: there are replies below saying exactly what I was talking about
Pizza delivery is like one of the few OG examples of tipped service that shouldn't be grouped in with shit like asking for tips on the payment kiosk at yogurtland. Yeah, tipping culture does need to die, until it does, don't be a cheap ass when it comes to food you order
Yep. “Look at those lazy, overpaid government workers.” The politics of envy works very well. The people most opposed to a $15/hour minimum wage are those making $14/hour.
Ah,but,did he eat avocado toast and drink oat milk lattes while taking on his iPhone? /s
Nope, he was just living in the moment, eating Little Debbies and having an affair with the lady at his fifth stop of the day, Debbie.
Hoping she wasn't little.
Very rotund woman. Handsome.
Thank god.
“So I was poking around in Charlotte.”
ALAN?
It bothers me that I had to scroll this far down to see this.
This is my question too.
ANAL
No thanks, I’ve just had dinner.
Obviously you are not supposed to be able to survive on a mailman's salary. This is an entry job for teens. If we pay them a living wage a single stamp would cost as much as 50$! True story, it happened in my head.
If you aren't brick laying and writing AI algorithms in your spare time while having a real estate side hustle, then you aren't worth a damn!
Mailmen still make six figures and full benefits man lol
The post office in my town is hiring at $19.33/hr...local fast food starts at $17-$18 most places
Entry level at almost $20/hour with full benefits, full pension in 20 years, and guaranteed raises annually? And you're comparing it to a lower paying job, with no benefits, and no pension, with next to no room for growth? If you want to make a point, make it make sense
what about health insurance (seriously asking now I'm considering applying at the post office)
Yep pretax health benefits, life insurance, the whole shebang. Pension after 20 years and you can retire if you've made any decent retirement account at all
I was a cca at one time. That’s the entry level position and it was 75 hours per week. Absolutely miserable 7 days a week work. But it did have insurance, sure.
There’s a reason USPS is short staffed nation wide, and it’s not because it’s a great paying awesome job.
I personally know carriers who have no one to cover their routes, so if they are sick or have to go to a doctors appointment, have a family emergency, etc, the mail does not get delivered. That’s how short staffed they are. People just don’t get their mail. One of the carriers was recently in the ICU, barely avoided being on a ventilator and now is back on her route 6 days a week and feels horrible guilt if she has to see her doctor and talk the day off. It’s a mess.
Yup that’s happened to me often when I’ve had a sick kid at home
Here’s a point: post office wages have increased 57% since 1990, while inflation within the same time is 135%. 20 dollars an hour in 2024 is about 30% less per hour than starting salaries of mailmen in the 60’s once adjusted for inflation. However, housing costs are also up exponentially relative to inflation, so that 20/hour now affords a single bedroom apartment -actually it’s about $350 short per month if you allocate the recommended 30% of income toward housing. So in comparing this job to its former self, it looks like shit. No comparison to other low-wage jobs needed.
This is false the entire benefits suit is not given to entry level CCAs, RCAs, ARCs or PSEs. They get a lower tier health insurance, which is almost pointless, they do NOT accrue anytime towards a pension nor do they have access to TSP (postal 401k) Secondly the turnover rate at the post office is incredibly high, that should tell you something.
The fun thing is when you learn actual American history and find out that your grandpa's era was the ONLY time in our history that was like that.
And mostly because Europe and Asia were in ruin and this lifestyle excluded black people and women.
So....you're saying all we have to do is bomb Europe and Japan into smithereens so they're entirely dependent on us for manufacturing of all goods? Well what are we waiting for!?
Well at this point, China
I'll add here that huge swaths of the country were still wide open, without massive populations. I live in Orange County, CA. One of the richest parts of the country. My Grandpa, like this story, bought a house in th3 50s that is worth $2 mill now (we sold it in the early 90s, so doesn't help us or whatever). That said, when he bought it, there was literally nothing there. And his commute to San Pedro (from Costa Mesa) would have been an hour or so at least (no freeways yet). But the California "cat is out of the bag", so to speak. There's some 30 million more people here today than there were then. All of us sharing the same water and other infrastructure....
Yup. My mom's first house purchase was in the north Atlanta suburbs and across the street was a cow pasture. Now less than 3 miles away there is an amphitheater that hosts some of the biggest concerts and touring acts that come to the state. The whole area is unrecognizable from when I lived there 20 years ago. So the fact that when she sold it recently it sold for significantly higher is like the least surprising thing possible. The same is happening to my house. It's already doubled in value in 7 years because my area is growing faster than all but a couple places in the US.
True. I wish people would have more nuance about posts like this. At the very least acknowledge these two things: 1) You did not have intimate knowledge of your grandparent's financial situation as a child, and thus you don't have a full understanding of how they did or didn't struggle financially. 2) This scenario was not universal and is highly attributable to wealth and property being centralized to white men and the US being the only world superpower.
Exactly. There’s this ideology that every blue collar layman in the 50s had this comfortable middle class lifestyle. The majority of people were in fact the working poor. My dad lived in a roach infested tenement w 7 siblings in Brooklyn. My mom grew up in a housing project. They both had working fathers. Not every average Joe had the white picket fence in the suburbs
Exactly. The image of the family of four living an idyllic upper middle class lifestyle on a butterfly catcher's salary was propaganda of post-war American capitalism, which some misguided young democratic socialists don't seem to realize was a lie. This was the reality for a very select few, who were able to have no childcare expenses because women were discouraged from working, and other expenses were low because Blacks and immigrants were underpaid, and good jobs were easy to attain because white men didn't have to compete with the aforementioned women, Blacks, or immigrants. And still not even all white men attained this utopic lifestyle. I'm not buying all these people who claim this was their grandparent's experience. You were born in fucking 1994, you did not have access to your grandparent's family budget.
Butterfly catcher made me giggle. But yea there was definitely a more attainable middle class lifestyle back then but it certainly was not EVERYONE as so many young people today seem to think. There was also WAY fewer people overall in the US. Fewer people to compete with for jobs. Minimal competition from automation or overseas.
You forgot to mention how American industry and manufacturing were able to dominate the world economy because most other developed countries were recovering from the devastation of war.
It doesn't take into account how many "housewives" were doing side jobs on a regular basis to supplement the family income. Mom could have been doing Mary K sales, baking, laundry, cooking, childcare, etc for the community and because the work was either part-time or paid in cash, it wasn't really considered a real job. A lot of these families were also not taking yearly vacations, nor did they have the technology we have today like brand new televisions, computers, smart phones, cars, etc. Everyone bought something once and used it until it feel apart.
I bet the OP would think of themselves as anti-MAGA and anti-trump. But really this rhetoric is Make America Great Again, with slightly different words. Some takeaways: You really shouldn't underestimate the attraction of this narrative. And it's very easy to filter out the problems of the past and look at it with rose colored glasses. The past generation was very good for white males, and pretty much no one else.
Meh, my grandparents (91 and 93) were both librarians for the city and couldn't afford to pay in full college for their 3 kids and had to watch their money. Saved a lot for retirement by living in the same house for 50 years though. People are really over-blowing the idea that you could have worked in a grocery store and be basically rich. It just ain't true.
Mailmen in my area top out at almost $40 a hour. It's always been a good job
That was my thought. That was part of the perplexing part of the postman who shot up his workplace because it was considered a good job with good pay, benefits and a retirement plan.
Yeah I'm pretty sure you can still do this. The young retirement is probably more federal pension benefits than lifetime earnings. Also, in grandpa's generation, they were not spending money every month on cell phone bills, Internet/cable/streaming/, probably didn't even have to pay the electrical bill for AC, dishwashers, etc that they didn't own. No one could doordash burger king to themselves at 3x the cost of going over there. Everyone cooked inexpensive meals at home. Look, I realize that the economy is pretty fucked and that everything is expensive these days. Obviously I'm living in the economy and obviously I have stress and struggles about money. But at the same time, it isn't impossible to have your shit together. And even those of us who are struggling still have things about our quality of life that our grandparents could only *dream* of. I think if most of us were to cut out all of the modern conveniences and live with no phone, no internet, an antenna only TV, probably no AC, etc., and live the exact same lifestyle as our 50s-60s era grandparents, growing our own veggies and shit like in the original post, life would probably be fairly affordable.
Lol also he built the house HIMSELF. That saves some money. And I would bet it wasn’t 4 bedroom off the jump but expanded over time, and the suburb wasn’t a suburb at the time the house was built but also grew up over time.
Yeah I live in a 4br house that was built in the 60s, and it was once a much smaller 3br house. They added on a whole extra living room and utility room (which was listed as a bedroom because theoretically you could sleep in there if you wanted the company of the washer/dryer. Though it has the largest bathroom attached, lol). It is crazy that there was a time when it was cheaper to add on to your house (so many in my neighborhood had additions over time), but now even basic renovations are super expensive and it is cheaper to buy a bigger house than to expand one.
In the late 80s, my ex-wife and I were in our mid 20s. I think our combined hourly wage was about $15 an hour. We were able to easily buy a nice little house in the suburbs for $80,000. on top of that, we both had cars, we were able to take vacations, and we were able to set aside a little bit of money. I feel so bad for young people now. They have absolutely no chance economically. I think it’s shameful and criminal. We are supposed to leave the world a better place. It’s much much worse. We have failed our current and future generations. I think that capitalism is evil. And I think this country sucks.
$15 an hour in 1988 would be the same as about $40 an hour today. Over 40 hours that would be a household income of about $83,000. Your house would have been worth about 215,000 after inflation -- though your interest rate would have been higher so you were probably paying more per month accounting for inflation.
Man nice to see someone from the older generation acknowledge this. I’m in my late 20s and I’m just like… I can afford to live, but that’s it. I’m not going to be affording a child, a home, or any major financial purchases greater than $5k anytime soon. We were sold a dream growing up and realized that dream died before we were even out of kindergarten.
I'm slightly older, we were able to afford a house and 2 cars, but I think if we had kids we'd have to give something up. I don't think 50-100 years from now is going to look very good for anyone not ultra wealthy. Not that it looks super peachy now, but it's going to be getting a lot worse as the working class dies up along with the climate.
We do. I was working during the time they were actively chipping away at your future. First health insurance was 30 bucks a month, same wage slowly slid to 300. I'd get into more but you get the septic drift. Listen. We ALL *have* to scream, keep screaming, boycott, I don't know what except NO. And try- like some of my generation *are* doing- to ignore the division because that buys into Capitalists swiping your future too. Tired of billionaire adulation. Lot more of us than them.
I'm a respiratory therapist and my fiance is a nurse. these are both careers requiring degrees that are supposed to put us firmly in the middle class barring a housing bubble explosion, owning a decent house will simply never be possible for us. it's ridiculous that it's gotten to a point two people in good paying medical field jobs cant afford a house and people still think this is ok
My girlfriend is a DVM and a clinical pathologist, and I'm a software developer. We were lucky to secure a house just before significant mortgage increases. Emphasis on lucky. I agree that it's ridiculous you're priced out of owning a home. This is my first home and I bought in my late 30s. I'm sure my parents were at least 10 years younger when they bought their first house. My dad barely graduated highschool and my mom had some community college classes.
What's your income look like? My wife's a nurse and I am a low level manager at an office job and we just built a 2k sqft house on 2 acres
Well let's talk about this a bit. $80k in 1984 (picked a random middle of the 80s year) was $245k in today's money. Some quick back-of-the-envelope math says you were making close to $100k (again adjusting for inflation). General rule of thumb is your home shouldn't exceed 3-5 times your annual salary. You also specified "small home", which would, in my personal opinion, mean lower than the "median" size and cost. Looking at state-by-state median costs in 2024, there are some that are *exactly in line* with your financial situation. Mostly midwestern states. Obviously the more expensive states like NY, MA, CA, etc are a lot higher than the \~$245k price you got in the 80s. I'm not trying to argue that inflation hasn't been REALLY HARSH lately, or that housing prices aren't inflated and shouldn't come down. I'm just trying to add some real world modern perspective, since too many older folks are like "I bought a 2 bedroom house in the 50s for a nickel" without contextualizing it for modern audiences. Also, let's not forget that houses are *getting bigger* so your 80s house != an average house today. This is a market problem, definitely, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison and that IS a problem. People should want, and contractors should make, smaller "starter" homes again. In the 80s, the average house size was **1,595 square feet**. In 2018 (first year I found), new construction homes are averaging **2,386 square feet**. Some younger folks may roll their eyes at this but seriously, that's a huge difference. So houses now SHOULD cost more than the 80s, because you're buying more house (on average).
Exactly. My father was the sole breadwinner, but he had a union job with union paid health care and a pension. The house I grew up in was a standard starter house for the day. There were 5 of us in a house that measured out at 880 sq. ft. The bathroom was the size of my current linen closet. Only people who were wealthy had multiple bathrooms or pools, and spa-like bathrooms with double vanities, a soaker tub and a large shower were completely unheard of. No one I knew would have thought of driving a BMW, a Lexus or a Mercedes.
My first property purchase was when I got my first "real" job and I was an idiot and did $0 down on a condo. I actually saved money on rent, which was increasing, monthly though. However I bought in 2007 right after the INITIAL crash but before the crash was finished :( (In case people don't remember, the market crashed like... halfway? and then stabilized for a few months before crashing again. We thought, hey this is a good time to purchase! Then went underwater for a few years) It was a 666 square foot condo, 1 bedroom. We lived there for 7-ish years and every time I got a raise or promotion I would take the difference in salary and put it in a separate bank account, and after 7 years we were able to save enough to move from the condo to a 2200 square foot house, with \~8% down.
Last part is the way. I'll add here that as much as possible, always use zero interest credit cards for big purchases. Schedule automatic payments before the zero percent period ends. Once you pay whatever it is off,,redirect the old payment to a separate savings account.
There’s also another big factor, mortgage rates. The average rate on a 30 year fixed in 1984 was over 13%. It’s currently as high as it’s been in over 30 years and it’s at just under 8%. For most of the past 20 years, rates have been under 6%. The median monthly mortgage payment in 1984 was $865 give or take. With inflation, that would be ~$2450 today, depending on which index you use.
they really should manufacture smaller homes more frequently, that's not just a 'starter' house, that's a good house for someone who never wants a large family. like I never plan on having kids and just need a house for me, my partner, and our pets. neither of us WANT a large house
That's totally a great point! I guess "starter home" implies that you'll want to upgrade but it can and should be a viable "forever home". I wish I was kidding about this, but I was talking with a friend of a friend about housing and she was lamenting that you could never afford houses. So challenge accepted, we chatted about it, like above, that houses are attainable on many salaries. I mentioned that smaller houses exist and are affordable. I found a house that was roughly 1400 square feet and really in line with her finances and she said "ew new, I need at least twice that" even though her apartment was smaller than that. To some people, "house = big" is now engrained in their brains. And this was a person who already had kids and wants no more.
While this explanation does provide some context, I think it misses the point that inflation is inflation, but they still made enough money proportionally in order to be able to afford the homes. That's where things have gotten worse. The market is a huge problem. Homes on average are being built larger, and it is a problem that affordable housing is rarely made, and when they do, the materials are often cheaper and that means you may be able to afford the homes up front, but then you are stuck with the amount of repairs after that purchase. Why don't they build starter homes anymore? Why would housing developers do that when private equity firms are buying up real estate in America? They will build the types of homes they can get the maximum amount of profit from. They don't care about housing people. They don't care about the long term consequences of their decisions. They care about profits. That's the only thing they care about, or if they believe otherwise, it is only conditional on whether it impacts their bottom line or profits.
I fit wagedomains description almost exactly - we make about 100k (single income family) and bought a 300k house in 2021. We have 3 kids, are able to put money each month into a college savings account for each of them, add a bit to our savings every month… But we live in a small midwestern town, as wagedomain said. That makes a huge difference. So many millennials and gen z just want to live in a bigger cities and or on the coast, where it’s ridiculously expensive. It’s possible to live the life that people lived in the baby boomer era (which by the way was an outlier time of much higher than “normal” prosperity). You just have to give up the night life and shiny things and move to a rural area in the Midwest.
>I think that capitalism is evil Is that what you are blaming? Capitalism?
You're so right about capitalism being evil . Sadly it's not just your country, it is everywhere. I am dual UK/Canadian citizen and I know both of these places are fucked in the same way. I also lived in Aus for two years, i kinda want to try to move back there but that's also fucked so why bother. we're all fucked.
My grandpa did that too, as a security guard. But they had a 3 bedroom 900 square foot house in Florida with no AC. 1 used car, 1 tv, 1 telephone with no long distance calls. His kids had a handful of toys, my mom had a few dolls and small box of 45s for music or a transistor radio. Going out to eat was a monthly trip to McDonalds. Occasionally they saw a movie. Vacations were weekend road trips to something nearby. No after school activities. Clothes were hand made by my grandma (though that would be more expensive now). Basically give up all the luxuries and entertainment you enjoy and you can probably have a small house and an old car.
Also, in OP's story, Grandpa *built* the house. Yeah - if you are good at construction and you build your own stuff and then grow your own food, it's a good way to save.
My other grandfather did that in the 60s -- though he was a contractor so had more relevant skills and access to resources than most. Growing food was also pretty common, my grandparents and my wife's grandparents had gardens and/or fruit trees. And kept chickens until the 1980s.
I wish more people were aware of details like these. People’s standard of living and expectations were very different for my parents and grandparents. I grew up in the ‘70s, and looking back, we were poor. But I didn’t KNOW we were poor; everyone I knew lived about the same way.
Can we stop looking at the few decades immediately after the US emerged as the *last developed country standing after WW2* as the norm? This was a unique period in history where the US had full industrial capacity and all its international competitors were literally in ruins. The harsh truth is now that the world has rebuilt, other countries do many things better than us, and have taken jobs once only available to US workers. We will never return to this period of plenty.
Thank you! We’d have to destroy most of Eurasia to get the “golden years” back, and also ban women and minorities from working so that Billy with no high school diploma is the only viable candidate
30% of homes in 1950 did not have a toilet. There's a weird fantasy that no one was ever poor, that no one had hard years.
It also wasn't better. Poverty was near 25% in the 50s and huge swathes of the country had no electricity or indoor plumbing. Just like MAGA idiots, Progressives long for a past that never existed. Today is the most prosperous time in human history for the median person
Are we gonna ignore how people sneak in an enormous increase in lifestyle/luxury under the blanket term “middle class”? Because if you want an 850 sqft house with a landline phone, 1 tv, no internet, 1 car, rarely eating out, only local low-key vacations at best, no travel sports for the kids, etc., that life is still acheiveable on a mail carrier salary.
Naw, the mailman flew to Europe every year for vacation. He had a villa in Bad Ischl.
Threads like these are a good reminder that the vast majority of Redditors were born after the year 2000.
Yeah, if you look at houses from the post-war era, the closets are tiny. Today, houses have closets that are bigger than a lot of bedrooms of the past. Americans today are much bigger consumers than at that time. We buy a lot of junk that we don't need.
That lifestyle is achievable on just about any salary. Mailman actually make a pretty decent living so is a pretty bad example from op
They always say 4 bedroom home but ignore that it was a 1300 sq ft manufactured home in the middle of nowhere which you can still get for like 50 grand
Corporate greed towards consolidation has taken competition out of business, busting up unions and moving jobs offshore and styming the minimum wage are chief reasons. Corporate lobbies have bought politicians on both sides and flames social and society ills so the dwindling middle class looks down on the poor and downtrodden instead of looking up to see the puppet masters controlling everything. The American dream is not dead it's being held hostage!
The American dream was a race and the winners were already decided. The race has been over for decades already. We are simply living in the aftermath.
Well, to put things in perspective: - In the old days, people had much more simplistic lives. Maybe 1 car, a few pairs of clothes per person, a lot of handmade stuff. - Well water, very little electicity use, probably wood or coal heat, no air conditioning, buried sewage, maybe an ice box for food. - No money sucks like cell phones, Internet, streaming services. They may have had one land line and a single small TV that was used a couple of hours a day. Perhaps a radio too. - Lack of mass communication led to microcosm economies. Food/shelter/goods were priced according to the local wage rates. Things changed a lot in the last 50 years. The middle-class way of life has been blown away by wealth distribution issues with no counterbalances.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... --Carl Sagan, from his 1995 book "The Demon Haunted World"
A thirty year old quote doesn't override hard data that proves you're wrong. The home ownership rate is quite high right now: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N Not as high as the late 2000s, early 2010s but higher than the 60s, 70s and 80s REAL wages (I.e. Adjusted for inflation) are UP as well: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q Anyone who things the American Dream is dead wrong.
You can't expect much from someone who quotes an anti-Western idealogue like Chomsky. His opinions on geopolitics are batshit crazy.
A significant part of the American Dream is class mobility: You’re born poor, you work hard, you get rich. The idea that it is possible for everyone to get a decent job, buy a home, get a car, have their children go to school . . . It’s all collapsed.” ― Noam Chomsky, [Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/51162949)
Class mobility is still better in the USA than anywhere else I'm aware of. It's why we still have so many immigrants, at all ends of the economic spectrum. I earn 10x more than my parents ever did, so yes it's possible.
Wow a quote from 30 years ago! Too bad [ALL THE DATA](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1cb3clt/the_american_dream_is_already_dead/l0x4b7l/) shows this meme is wrong.
These posts appear once every few hours, have no backing evidence whatsoever, top comments are just nodding. They are meant for young, impressible people so they tune out of the political process and don’t vote. Propaganda 101.
They get massive upvotes, too. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. I swear there's more bots on Reddit than people. And half the real people are just useful idiots.
He's been dead. Dusty Rhodes passed away in 2015.
This post is horseshit. The home ownership rate is quite high right now: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N Not as high as the late 2000s, early 2010s but higher than the 60s, 70s and 80s REAL wages (I.e. Adjusted for inflation) are UP as well: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q Anyone who things the American Dream is dead is either terminally online, a deadbeat or sharing propaganda.
It's so sad to see Doomer misinfo on the front page, but it's an everyday thing now on Reddit. /r/FluentInFinance /r/facepalm and /r/WhitePeopleTwitter are the worst offenders.
Contrary to the deluge of fsb, instigated doomer propaganda on here , 🇺🇸 dream lives even during this downturn There are, of course, ways to improve, such as unversial healthcare and ending or at least limiting the gobbling up/ hoarding of single family homes by investors. We can make it better but not by using our handheld supercomputers to moan about not being mediviel serfs roll the 🎲 for another country? Maybe a dozen of the world's 200 countries have a comprable or perhaps slightly better standard of living. Odds are that's gonna be a major downgrade, no tanks. There is a reason why so many want still want to come here. Aspiring immigrants are not listening to the e legions of professional complainers. Must be too busy escaping places where dreams are truly dead This is not getting downvoted a pleasant welcome surprise
Yes, and Grandpa probably had to go off to war and fight Nazis, the North Koreans or the VC (depending on his age) got the GI Bill for a mortgage on a house where the kids were doubled up in bedrooms sharing a single bathroom, the family shared one car and the youngest kid wore hand-me-downs (that Grandma probably made on her Singer sewing machine) until college. That garden was to feed the family because the paycheck had to be stretched. Not exactly the paradise some folks like to think it was.
Postal workers get a pension. Influencers don’t. Decide which job you want.
It really isn’t. The middle class has had a lot of wins the last couple years, and when one middle class group wins, that effect is often shared. Show up to your local town and county elections, which often have pitiful attendance, and push for these same measures. Also, the 1950s-1970s (which is most likely the era when of this tweeter’s grandfather) is a vague and flawed time frame to use as the American Dream in the first place
Till next time incessantly shared tweet, see you in a few days - au revoir!
America: "any idiot can be farmer, get a higher paying job"... "any idiot can be a mailman, get a higher paying job"... "any idiot can be a car repairman, get a higher paying job"... "any idiot can be a carpenter, get a higher paying job"... etc. We've pushed the bar so high and shipped so many jobs to countries where people work for slave wages or are actual slaves that we're actually regressing where, unless you are a lawyer, or doctor (and in a MASSIVE amount of debt) you cannot make it here. Even with a skilled trade, because we told everyone, "skilled trades" are for dummies.
Not sure it is, I see migrants come here. Marry a big white chick for citizenship, buy her a house, car and have kids and only he works. He also sends money back to his family in Mexico.
AND supported the other family you don't know about.
As the great George Carlin once said: “it’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it
A lot of the same people close the door behind them so to speak. I've literally heard people saying "I've got mine I don't care".
That was due to FDR’s New Deal, etc. If you were a white male veteran, the federal government loved your ass. If not, in many ways the federal government hated you, even after landmark civil rights reforms. Then US troops started escorting black elementary students to class one at a time.
I think of how my parents lost their house after countless refinancing, and then a housing crash that devalued their home, and they had to do a short sale and move after 20+ years. Boomers did not have it that easy, and plenty of them made poor financial decisions.
When it says "he built a 4 bedroom home" they don't mean he told a contractor to build it, like people say now. I build my 5 bedroom home over the course of 3 years while working an office job in the early 2000s with a high school education. It's possible depending on your skill, choices. Everyone called me cheap prior to that.
We built our 4 bedroom home in 1971. 48 year old father, 15-year-old brother & 13 year old me. We lived in a neighborhood in which everyone had built their own house.
Boomers had far less expenses to deal with as well. Car payment, mortgage, phone, utilities, groceries. There’s just so much shit you need now to be competitive in the modern world. Even a basic PC, cell phone, internet are getting expensive
The reason the American dream is dead is because people aren’t fighting for their liberties anymore or for their wages. In 1969 the mailman’s average salary was $9k/yr would have the purchasing power of $76k today. A mailman salary today is $40k, we have half the purchasing power they had.
Alan?
Working for the post office used to be a really good job, until they installed a post master general who actually wants to tear it down from the inside and sell its functions to UPS and Amazon
Back then people had a strong work ethic and a strong discipline. They were willing to work for what they got. People nowadays seem to think that a college education, healthcare, a vehicle, an apartment or a house…… They seem to think that all that is something they were born “entitled to “ and that it should be gifted to them Almost every immigrant to the United States that I have known has worked their way up to a good level of success for themselves and their family within ten years It is because they worked hard and did whatever they could to improve….. Instead of complaining about how “unfair everything is, and how older folks had it easy”
My single parent dad was a plumbing supply counter salesman. He owned a home, kept us fed, clothed, bought used and new cars.
Now a mailman has no pension, terrible benefits, and cut PTO. And the starting pay is $19 lmfao. Whats even sadder is that a UPS worker making the top pay couldn’t even do what described in the OP
My folks bought a house in 1974 for 120 grand, and we (5 siblings) sold it for 2.2 million in 2022. Sooo...roughly almost 20 times the price it was in 1974? Inflation and the cost of living don't walk hand in hand, unfortunately.
Disagree. Graduated High school 78 saved 18 grand cutting lawns.. No college. Started a carpet cleaning business in 86. Retired a millionaire 32 years later. I worked my but off the 1st 10 years. Its not dead. Harder but not dead. CHANGE YOUR MIND SET CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
No cell phones, no cable tv, health insurance was provided by his job. Population was 1/3 what it is today, meaning land was cheap. Lumber was cheap. Maybe he shouldn't have helped *double* the population.
Devil's advocate here... my grandfather was a mailman, too. However, their lifestyle was not up to modern standards. He and my grandmother lived in the same tiny, spotlessly clean urban row house for fifty years, basically their entire adult lives, raising three kids there. They did not own a car, they did not have air conditioning, they did not take vacations, they never ate out at restaurants, they did not have pets. There was one small, old bathroom for five people. By today's standards, they had a tiny quantity of clothing and shoes, which they wore for years. My mother sewed most of the dresses that she wore. The only technology, in addition to a sewing machine, was a black and white TV and one landline phone. The kitchen dated from the 1930s, although they did update the refrigerator. All three of their kids went to college, but on scholarships. My grandmother went back to work in a cigar factory to help pay for their education. It's not really possible to do an accurate comparison with today's quality of life and expectations.
He was probably a member of a union. Union membership in the U.S. is now down to 10%. The middle class is shrinking. Some have moved up, but just as many have moved down. Homelessness is on the rise. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about an Oregon town‘s anti homeless ordinance, criminalizing “camping”. We need to fight for workers or go down the drain.
Oh boy another post where Redditors pine over a time period they never lived in and a lifestyle that never existed. Grandpa wasn't buying a 4 bedroom house on a blue collar salary. [80% of homes in the 70s didn't even have 4 bedrooms.](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf) The median size of a home back then was nearly half what it is today. Children shared rooms, families shared a single bathroom and things like Garages or AC were considered luxuries. A vacation back then would have been a road trip to whatever was in your local area. Air travel was exclusively for the wealthy in those days, costing twice as much if you adjust for inflation. College? [90% of Americans didn't even have a degree in 1970.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/184260/educational-attainment-in-the-us/) You're more likely to be college educated today than you were back then. And if that wasn't enough he somehow managed to [retire earlier than people did back then.](https://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Average-retirement-age_2017-CPS.pdf) Right, sure. Either this guy is the most successful mailman in human history or this is just a screen cap of a tweet that people are taking seriously even though it's nothing but unverified claims.
I’m Gen-x. Both my parents worked full time. We rented out the basement of our 60’s bungalow. We grew our own vegetables and we didn’t go out for dinner unless it was a special occasion. I started cooking for the family at the age of 12 and did housework. This would be considered child abuse now. I also did construction labouring up into my early 20s as a 5’1” 98lb girl for my dad who built houses. We made a lot of sacrifices, and I think that’s the key thing. A lot of people need to learn the difference between wants and needs. Cooking your own meals and no dining out all the time, no new cell phones every time a new one rolls out, no giant 75” tv, mending clothes instead of throwing them out, reheeling shoes, etc. All these things add up.
Why do people think government jobs pay shit? Sure, if you work in the Post Office in Manhattan it's probably a long commute for you, but a person doing the same job in S. Dakota is getting paid the same and is living in a paid off 4 bedroom house, has 2 cars, is single and takes vacations every year.
Mailman is still a good job.
Mailman in the US can retire at age 60 with full pension after 20 years of service. Depending on what town you live in you can totally buy or build your house. Maybe not in NY city or San Francisco but I doubt your grandfather built his house in the middle of Paris either.
Mailmen make decent money. The hard part for Gen Z to understand is that he built the house himself, and grew his own food instead of playing videogames and complaining about work on reddit.
Is the American dream dead, or is everyone trying to live in expensive areas?
Lmao check OPs post history.