Something Soon Will Snap

I posted this last year in December.

Nothing has changed, except donnie has his great big bill, or whatever.

1950:

Minimum Wage: $0.75/hour

30 Year Mortgage Rate: 4.0%

Median Price Home: $7354

2024:

Minimum Wage: $7.25/hour

30 Year Mortgage Rate: 6.6%

Median Price Home: $420,400

So, in 1950, if somebody being paid the minimum monthly wage (22 workdays X 8 hours/day = 176 hours/month = $132/month) wanted to buy a median price home their mortgage - with 10% down - would be $31.60/month, which is 24% of monthly pay, well within the historical rule of thumb of 30%.

So, what does that mean?

It means that, in the 50s, with hamburger at 3 pounds for a dollar, my mother bought, and we ate, a lot of hamburger; $132 a month had some spending clout.

Just to grind that axe a little more, sirloin steak was $0.50/pound and KC Strip (New York Cut) was $0.90/pound.

Times change.

In 2024, dealing with the same variables, the mortgage payment for a median price home with ten percent down would be 189% of monthly pay (minimum wage).

The fact that the down payment would look like the average - relatively prosperous - young American's retirement savings tells the sad tale of "let's get serious".

And so, one might ask "how much would the 2024 pay have to be to have the mortgage be 24% of it; to be the same as a minimum wage earner in 1950?"

Let's use The Serf Equation.

The Serf Equation: (132 - 1950 minimum wage - is to 32 - 1950 mortgage payment - as X is to 2416 - 2024 mortgage payment) 

Using the Serf Equation, we find that that monthly pay needs to be $9,966.

That's $56.63/hour.

That's not a particularly unusual wage in 2024; it's just that that not unusual wage isn't particularly widespread.

As best as I can tell, waiters, baristas, Uber drivers and contract slaves make up the bulk of America's current workforce.

Serfs.

All struggling to make $15.00 an hour.

A chimerically aspirational wage, which is 26% of what they would need for monthly income parity with 1950.

That $15.00 minimum wage has been bandied about for years and, in most cases, has never happened but has been the mythical path to prosperity (in politician's minds) for America's serfs ever since 2014.

And where it has been instituted, it wasn't nearly enough at inception, and inflation being what it is, it keeps getting less enough, and surely not enough to buy a house and start a family.

But then I am off on a favorite, non-productive rant. 

There are all sorts of things that can be said about this little presentation, just completed.

The one that shouts at me is this: in 1950 someone making the minimum wage could probably aspire to owning a home; in 2024 someone making the minimum wage can aspire to living in a dumpster and, probably, feed himself from that same source.

And, god help him, if that dumpster food makes him sick; healthcare for all but the rich, or the just plug lucky, is not in America's business model.

A lot of America's wealth across the years has in significant quantity accrued to the same names, but, somehow, some of those names (for more read Kurt Andersen's book Evil Geniuses) have begun to hoard virtually all of the "fat of this fair land" (quoting Merle Haggard) into their big, padlocked baskets.

Even the government can't get into those baskets.

Or has been afraid to try.

Or now that our president has monetized the presidency, and instituted a reign of terror, who really can afford to give a shit?

The 1% has it all and, in ever diminishing tranches, the rest have the rest.

Half of almost nothing is still something, Zeno has told us.

But half of almost nothing ain't worth nothing, so the song goes.

Or should go.

If there were such a song in the first place.

Which there isn't.

But there is a stray lyric out there, and it's perfect for donnieLand: it obfuscates reality and makes one puff up with self-defeating pride (kinda like when donnieLand plays that that bullshit Lee Greenwod song) until one thinks about what it is really saying; and then one gets really pissed.

"Freedom ain't worth nothin', but it's free" (paraphrasing Kris Kristofferson).

Welcome to donnieLand.

Then yesterday we got this: That Speech Yesterday.