[michaelchisari]

A deli manager at a grocery store in the Chicago area in 1985 made $35k - $40k a year. Adjusted for inflation, that was the equivalent of around $72k - $81k a year. With full benefits.

It's been clearly determined that wages have not kept up with inflation, so I would say that comparing one generation's wealth with their parents is not something that will yield hopeful results.

[sparky]

Wealth != Inflation-adjusted dollars.

You can buy many things for $100 today that would have cost $5000 in 1985 (or more likely, that didn't exist at all). Life's necessities, with the important exception of homes and apartments, have gotten cheaper in inflation-adjusted dollars over time.

I'd argue that the truest measure of wealth is the distribution of 'happiness' over a population, but that opens so many cans of worms as to be near-useless. I'm guessing the average happiness has decreased over time, but I wouldn't chalk all that up to a decrease in inflation-adjusted dollars.

[mixmax]

The things you mention are what inflation is meant to nullify. In an economists perfect world the amount of a normal good you can buy with $1 would be the same as the amount of that good you could buy for 1 inflation-adjusted dollar at any other time in history.

[sparky]

You're right, an inflation-adjusted dollar should buy some fixed fraction of e.g. a loaf of bread at any time in history. It's just such a multidimensional space that any one number is bound to leave out some pretty crucial information as to how much money a given person needs to be happy.

[ShabbyDoo]

A grocery store deli manager in the mid-80's likely would have been a union member, especially in Chicago. It would be interesting to compare real wage changes in non-unionized vocations vs. highly unionized ones to tease out relative impact of macroeconomic changes vs. the decline of unions and their power to impart wealth transfer.

[scrod]

This is an excellent point. The decline of unions is probably one of the greatest reasons why wages have stagnated over the last 30 years.

[tjansen]

Did a manager at a grocery store have the same amount of responsibility as today? My guess would be that today being a deli manager just means that you need to follow your chain's rule books. In 1985, with more independent stores and smaller chains, a manager had more responsibilities, and thus her contributions were more directly related to the store's profit than today. Thus a good deli manager is worth less than she used to be (and the really good people should work where they contribute more value, like creating the rules for deli managers in a chain).

[vacri]

While we're pulling reasons out of the air, I think that the difference in wages betwen '85 and today is /clearly/ because of Saturn's wobble.

[natrius]

That's a ridiculous comment. The reasons were not pulled out of thin air. Relative to the population, it seems likely that more people are qualified to become deli managers today than they were in 1985 due to standardization and advances in technology. If more people can do a job, it will receive less compensation.

At least be right if you're going to try to shoot down a comment with worthless sarcasm.

[krschultz]

Really? Do you what percent of groceries stores we shop in today were around in 1985? Almost all of them. Same brands, same buildings, hell a lot of the people are the same too. My Dad was doing sales for Colgate and Nestle in 1970 and dealt with almost the exact same stores we have in our area today. A lot has changed in tech in 25 years, but the rest of the economy hasn't nearly as much. Last time I was at a deli counter, it was a bunch of meat and cheese that needed to be sliced and weighed by a bunch of teenagers. I don't think that has changed along the way at all.

[natrius]

I was born in 1985, so I don't really know how things were back then. I'm guessing more people actually used butchers and deli counters rather than picking up pre-packaged meat. I'm also guessing that it was harder to actually slice the meat since that's basically automated today.

Regardless, the original comment was fairly reasonable and didn't deserve the response it got.

[jacoblyles]

Is "full benefits" comparable across time? You couldn't buy 2010 medicine in 1985 at any price. Survival rates for a host of deadly diseases are much higher today.