| I suspect a lot of these comparisons are not apples to apples. Declining wages are real, but populations are declining in the affordable but undesirable towns where property is cheap that my parents and grandparents bought into. My mother's parents bought their first home in Minot, North Dakota and saved up for a tiny home in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was an engineer who put himself through school while living in a boxcar in Montana in the depression. She was a housewife. They scraped and saved, and did well for themselves despite hard circumstances (the depression, world war II, etc.) My parents bought a starter home in Bloomington, MN. He was an attorney, she stayed at home. They moved to a wealthier suburb to find better schools when they could afford to. Both sets saved aggressively, didn't go out, didn't drink, maintained cars themselves, didn't take elaborate vac actions, and lived in relatively low cost areas. Me? I live in a booming tech hub. Prices aren't even comparable. I spend on food and wine and travel. I have a fancy phone I don't need and take my car to a mechanic for standard maintenance. I "can't afford a home" because I don't want to repeat the decisions of my elders. I could certainly buy a home in Minot with cash, and could get a mortgage in Bloomington without too much effort, but I don't prefer those options to what I'm doing now. That's speaking for me only, but I'm pretty skeptical that prudent living doesn't have similar or better payouts than it did fifty years ago. |
Do the super rich really should enjoy the wealth? Are those really justified? Do their employees has done proportionally smaller amount of contribution to only entitle to that much less wealth in salary?