Old tv programs show the comparative poverty of modern Americans

[vic624]

On 'I Love Lucy' the characters routinely bet $50 dollars for all sorts of escapades while supposedly being working class in a NYC apartment. The rent for said apartment is given as $130 a month. Typing those numbers into an inflation calculator shows about a 9x difference. The $50 becomes $450. The $130 rent for the two-bedroom apartment comes out to $1200 in 2019. Obviously $450 dollars is WAY beyond "play money" these days for working-class people and the only $1200 two-bedroom apartments in the NYC area are a handful deep in the Newark, NJ ghetto. Unless the show, one of the first on TV, was out of touch with reality at the time, their relative purchasing power was much stronger than today's working-class urban residents.

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[incel20]

sanford and son

(not as old as that show though)

 

[Deleted member 19756]

Those were prices in small town USA only 5-10 years ago. Wages have been stagnate for over a decade. We never really left the recession. Only the rich pricks and boomers benefited. Zoomers are in for an almighty economic ass fucking.

 

[Lester]

inflations me

 

[vic624]

Wages have been stagnate for over a decade.

Yeah, I suspect that's why immigration is still so high. The only way to show "growth" is the add more actors to the system, but quality of life is worse.

 

[Deleted member 16608]

Wages haven't increased since the late 70s counting for inflation.

 

[blickpall]

Perhaps something shown on TV is not entirely accurate? Wild idea, I know.

 

[vic624]

Perhaps something shown on TV is not entirely accurate? Wild idea, I know.

The show wouldn't have had appeal if it was completely unrelatable to the audience, which at the time was about 60% of all households.

 

[blickpall]

The show wouldn't have had appeal if it was completely unrelatable to the audience, which at the time was about 60% of all households.

They wouldn't be appealing if they were a complete mirror of real life, either. Popular TV shows, in fact seemingly an absurd amount of them, take place in a fictional world where money practically grows on trees, or at least affordable housing does. Trying to extend the living standards of sitcom stars in a fictionalized world to their generation's real world counterparts is fallacious.

 

[mylifeistrash]

They wouldn't be appealing if they were a complete mirror of real life, either. Popular TV shows, in fact seemingly an absurd amount of them, take place in a fictional world where money practically grows on trees, or at least affordable housing does. Trying to extend the living standards of sitcom stars in a fictionalized world to their generation's real world counterparts is fallacious.

There's no stress either. All large organizations without except are full of bloat, waste, mismanagement and endless problems. Yet on TV none of that shit exists.