Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2017 13:38:02 GMT -5
How could 1950s families afford to have only a working father?
www.quora.com/How-could-1950s-families-afford-to-have-only-a-working-father-but-a-stay-at-home-mother/answer/Dakota-White-4?srid=u8axl
March 5, 2017
How could 1950s families afford to have only a working father, but a stay-at-home mother?
I mean the traditional western family, where the father works the whole day and the mother takes care of the house and children, instead of having a (full time) job.
How could families afford that?
The TLDR is that minimum wage hasn’t kept up to the times, matched increases in productivity, and most young people didn’t work part time jobs. I’m going to break this incredibly complex topic into 3 parts, because my 3rd grade teacher said to and I listened too well.
First off, I’ll compare the differences between minimum wage then and now. In 1950, the average income per year was $3,210. Since the minimum wage was $0.75 an hour (on January 25, 1950), people working the minimum wage the average number of hours a week (43) made $1,677 a year. So, by working the average number of hours and making the federal minimum wage, you could make 52% of the average wage. In 1950, The estimated price of a new car or truck sold in the U.S. was $1,510, less than what minimum wage workers made a year. In 1950, a new house cost $8,450. So, if you never spent a penny of the money you earned, it would take roughly 5 years at the federal minimum wage to save the amount equal to that of a new house.
In 2015, the average income per year was $55,775. Since the minimum wage in 2015 was $7.25 an hour, people working the minimum wage the average number of hours a week (34) made $12,818 a year. So, by working the average number of hours and making the federal minimum wage, you could make 23% of the average wage. The estimated price of a new car sold in the U.S. in 2015 was $33,560, roughly 3 times the amount made by federal minimum wage workers in a year. The average sale price for a new house in January 2016 was $365,600. So, if you never spent a penny of the money you earned, it would take 29 years at the federal minimum wage to save the amount equal to that of a new house. Do those seem equal to you?
Secondly, in the 1950s, productivity meant more money went into workers pockets. Here are two graphics from the Economic Policy Institute.
As the production of companies increased, they began taking more and more money for the owners and screwing over the lowest ranking workers. According to the EPI, “Between 1973 and 2014 productivity grew 72.2 percent…while the typical worker’s compensation was nearly stagnant…9.2 percent over the entire 1973–2014 period. This allowed a huge concentration of wealth at the highest 1% of people.”
Part 3, the how/why this happened. This disconnect was due to the start of sweeping changes brought on by the Supreme Court's 1957 decision in United States v. United Auto Workers. The Court, on procedural grounds, overruled a lower court decision striking down the prohibition of corporate and union political expenditures. This lead to a landmark decision in 1976 in the ruling on Buckley v. Valeo. This decision of the Court ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech. “A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money. The distribution of the humblest handbill or leaflet entails printing, paper, and circulation costs. Speeches and rallies generally necessitate hiring a hall and publicizing the event. The electorate’s increasing dependence on television, radio, and other mass media for news and information has made these expensive modes of communication indispensable instruments of effective political speech.”
To sum it all up, the highest earners began taking nearly all the wealth and blaming the suffering of all their workers on everyone but them. Don’t let anyone tell you people in the 1950s just saved more or they did without. This is simple gas lighting. In the 1950s, people could afford things, and actually had purchasing power back then.
This video covers the income inequality that really got rolling in the 1976.
This one is about a drop in income since the 1970s.
The 30-Year Growth of Income Inequality (The 30-Year Growth of Income Inequality)
"Personalizing the Impersonal: Corporations and the Bill of Rights (Personalizing the Impersonal: Corporations and the Bill of Rights)", 41 *Hastings Law Journal* 577, (March 1990).
Understanding the Historic Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker’s Pay: Why It Matters and Why It’s Real (Understanding the Historic Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker’s Pay: Why It Matters and Why It’s Real)
Hours of Work in U.S. History (Hours of Work in U.S. History)
What Happened in the 1950s (What Happened in the 1950s)
Wage and Hour Division (WHD) (Wage and Hour Division (WHD))
Abrams, Rachel (December 31, 2014). "States' Minimum Wages Rise, Helping Millions of Workers" (Log In - New York Times). *NYT*. Retrieved January 1, 2015.
Table B-2. Average weekly hours and overtime of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted (Table B-2. Average weekly hours and overtime of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted)
www.quora.com/How-could-1950s-families-afford-to-have-only-a-working-father-but-a-stay-at-home-mother/answer/Dakota-White-4?srid=u8axl
March 5, 2017
How could 1950s families afford to have only a working father, but a stay-at-home mother?
I mean the traditional western family, where the father works the whole day and the mother takes care of the house and children, instead of having a (full time) job.
How could families afford that?
The TLDR is that minimum wage hasn’t kept up to the times, matched increases in productivity, and most young people didn’t work part time jobs. I’m going to break this incredibly complex topic into 3 parts, because my 3rd grade teacher said to and I listened too well.
First off, I’ll compare the differences between minimum wage then and now. In 1950, the average income per year was $3,210. Since the minimum wage was $0.75 an hour (on January 25, 1950), people working the minimum wage the average number of hours a week (43) made $1,677 a year. So, by working the average number of hours and making the federal minimum wage, you could make 52% of the average wage. In 1950, The estimated price of a new car or truck sold in the U.S. was $1,510, less than what minimum wage workers made a year. In 1950, a new house cost $8,450. So, if you never spent a penny of the money you earned, it would take roughly 5 years at the federal minimum wage to save the amount equal to that of a new house.
In 2015, the average income per year was $55,775. Since the minimum wage in 2015 was $7.25 an hour, people working the minimum wage the average number of hours a week (34) made $12,818 a year. So, by working the average number of hours and making the federal minimum wage, you could make 23% of the average wage. The estimated price of a new car sold in the U.S. in 2015 was $33,560, roughly 3 times the amount made by federal minimum wage workers in a year. The average sale price for a new house in January 2016 was $365,600. So, if you never spent a penny of the money you earned, it would take 29 years at the federal minimum wage to save the amount equal to that of a new house. Do those seem equal to you?
Secondly, in the 1950s, productivity meant more money went into workers pockets. Here are two graphics from the Economic Policy Institute.
As the production of companies increased, they began taking more and more money for the owners and screwing over the lowest ranking workers. According to the EPI, “Between 1973 and 2014 productivity grew 72.2 percent…while the typical worker’s compensation was nearly stagnant…9.2 percent over the entire 1973–2014 period. This allowed a huge concentration of wealth at the highest 1% of people.”
Part 3, the how/why this happened. This disconnect was due to the start of sweeping changes brought on by the Supreme Court's 1957 decision in United States v. United Auto Workers. The Court, on procedural grounds, overruled a lower court decision striking down the prohibition of corporate and union political expenditures. This lead to a landmark decision in 1976 in the ruling on Buckley v. Valeo. This decision of the Court ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech. “A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money. The distribution of the humblest handbill or leaflet entails printing, paper, and circulation costs. Speeches and rallies generally necessitate hiring a hall and publicizing the event. The electorate’s increasing dependence on television, radio, and other mass media for news and information has made these expensive modes of communication indispensable instruments of effective political speech.”
To sum it all up, the highest earners began taking nearly all the wealth and blaming the suffering of all their workers on everyone but them. Don’t let anyone tell you people in the 1950s just saved more or they did without. This is simple gas lighting. In the 1950s, people could afford things, and actually had purchasing power back then.
This video covers the income inequality that really got rolling in the 1976.
This one is about a drop in income since the 1970s.
The 30-Year Growth of Income Inequality (The 30-Year Growth of Income Inequality)
"Personalizing the Impersonal: Corporations and the Bill of Rights (Personalizing the Impersonal: Corporations and the Bill of Rights)", 41 *Hastings Law Journal* 577, (March 1990).
Understanding the Historic Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker’s Pay: Why It Matters and Why It’s Real (Understanding the Historic Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker’s Pay: Why It Matters and Why It’s Real)
Hours of Work in U.S. History (Hours of Work in U.S. History)
What Happened in the 1950s (What Happened in the 1950s)
Wage and Hour Division (WHD) (Wage and Hour Division (WHD))
Abrams, Rachel (December 31, 2014). "States' Minimum Wages Rise, Helping Millions of Workers" (Log In - New York Times). *NYT*. Retrieved January 1, 2015.
Table B-2. Average weekly hours and overtime of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted (Table B-2. Average weekly hours and overtime of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector, seasonally adjusted)
