So how did it affect you ?

started

No, but if people take the job at 18K/year that is their choice. If no one bites at that wage the offer will be upped until it becomes attractive to workers or the company can't turn a profit and goes under. That's the way it works. The whole country has taken on a WalMart mentality and it is going to bite 'em in the end.

Jim

Ya know, I should now about this, since my dad was a plant super for Armour in Memphis, but I have NO IDEA what they paid there!

For us, didn't effect me at all. I heard that the builder where we just bought our house didn't have anyone come in to work (only on sub showed up...) but the reason our flooring guy didn't come in was a stomach flu!

Charlie

You have to adjust your views of parents' salaries for inflation. When I was born my father was making $10/week as a grocery store manager, and that was considered a good wage ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Hello Jim,

According to this calculator that equates to well over $100/hr today:

Your folks must have been quite comfy.

Regards, Joerg

I know he was working a second job as a night watchman sometimes, and that mom worked on and off through the years, but what we actually made is completely unknown to me. We didn't discuss money much in our house...

Charlie

Methinks you have me older than I really am ;-)

I was born in 1940.

$10/WEEK = 25¢/HOUR in 1940 => $3.62/HOUR in 2006

...Jim Thompson

Hello Jim,

Oops, sorry, thought it was per hour. $10 per week in 1940 must have been really tough.

I guess most of our parents and grandparents had those challenges (mine, too). The good thing was that it forced them to attempt to repair almost anything and then they passed the acquired knowledge on. When a shaft broke my grandpa would say "Let's find a big enough and sturdy nail and make one from it". The stuff he improvised lasted forever.

Regards, Joerg

Methinks hour and week got confused !

Graham

Hello Charlie,

My parents did. To make sure ends would meet they'd place pa's pay in envelopes. One for rent, one for electricity, one for groceries and so on. They explained the system to us and why it is important that the grand total at the end of the month never be larger than what's in those envelopes.

Most politicians seem to not have had that educational experience, maybe they grew up around an unbelievable cash flow.

Regards, Joerg

If cheap labor is available, it's available to all the meat packers. So any one that doesn't use the most affordable labor is going to go out of business, because his competitors will.

American labor generally considers itself the enemy of American business. Adios, jobs.

John

Yep, in my house, it was don't ask, don't tell!

Mom did the finances, but she was a saver/spender. She would save $100, and then go and spend $200. She did some of the craziest purchases, like a solar water heater for their mobile home that barely worked, or big Christmas presents for the kids, etc.

I learned to budget, because I had an allowance, and would have to save it for bigger purchases. But, now my wife is a big saver, so I really know how to budget!

Charlie

...something that I suspect you would agree is not practical anymore many common household devices. I remember Consumer Reports mentioning in some article a handful of years ago that some surprisingly large percentage of people have broken VCR, Camcorders, and other electronics in their home that they're unwilling to just toss out given the large initial purchase price. Weird, but I can see the reasoning...

Plenty of *toasters* have microcontrollers in them these days. Sheesh. On the other hand, you can buy a new DVD player at Wally*World for something like $39, and it performs as well as a box that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars 30 years ago.

You're still not going to buy an HDTV (or HDTV->NTSC converter box) when NTSC transmissions cease, right Joerg? :-)

To a large extent yes, but you do have to keep in mind that there's really not very much "choice" at all if you're a single uneducated adult: You have to work to keep a roof over your head, yet you don't have enough money to readily obtain a better education to let you get a better job. Single parents are in even worse financial straits.

I suppose this points out the value of early education, something that in general few students actually value when they're receiving it; digging your way out of a $9/hr job as an adult is orders of magnitude harder than avoiding such a fate in the first place.

From a societal point of view, there's value in trying to get those making $9/hr wage earners better educated so that they're less of a burden on the government as a whole -- anyone making such low wages is going to qualify for plenty of government assistance programs, their medical care will probably be provided largely by emergency rooms wehre the costs will be transferred to others, etc.

I would grant that there are plenty of people out there who are simply uninterested in becoming better educated or otherwise moe employable; I really don't know what to do with those folks, since letting them starve in the streets isn't an option.

Hello Joel,

Throw-away world, sad. The strategy for those who can brace themselves is to wait until WallyWorld has it for under $50.

Maybe a converter box. If it can be had for little money at WallyWorld and if (this is the big "if") the programming is worth it. Right now it isn't, really. Plus by then we probably have to master the Spanish language to understand most of it. Right now about half the channels we can receive are in Spanish.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Charlie,

That's good. Same here, we are both careful with financial stuff. Differences of opinion in that sector have wrecked many marriages.

Regards, Joerg

Sounds a lot like the strategy in the book "The Millionaire Next Door" by Stanley and Danko. Before reading that book, I never would have guessed that real millionaires (not the Hollywood stereotype ones) are ultra-frugal.

Yep, her dad and mom retired (him from the railroad) and I was amazed when we went with him to the bank, because he needed to roll over about $100K in CDs. Their family was extremely frugal, giving the impression that they had barely enough to make ends meet. After retirement, there were a few interesting sessions as her mom persuaded dad to 'open up' and actually spend a few of the bucks they had saved!

Now that we are getting this house, we hope to finish paying off the mortgage in a few months, and then begin saving for retirment. It is interesting when you can take your budget, and look at your savings and say "I can live 'X' months on these savings..."

Charlie

Yep, frugality can produce funny situations.

Helping my daughter-in-law through these trying times, she was fretting over how to pay the ~$5K in credit card debt that my son had racked up buying car parts... like a 1100HP engine for his Mustang... no that's NOT a typo.

I digging through everything I asked about the house and the mortgage... $150K mortgage on a $650K house... ONLY ~$500K of equity... I almost fell out of my desk chair ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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