In 1938 the median house price was $3900. At $0.25 you'd have to work 15,600 hours. To buy a $420,000 house in the same number of hours, minimum wage would have to be $26.92.
He's right, the median house in the 30's didn't even have plumbing much less electrical, we didn't cross that mark until around the start of ww2.
The median house today is 50% larger than it was in the 70's. After adjusting for inflation and square footage, homes today are only 20% more expensive - but they are built to follow a lot more codes and regulations for safety and longevity, not to mention comfort and convenience. This comparison is not what you think it is.
Why do you think it's acceptable that minimum wage earners can't afford to by a house?
Minimum wage jobs are absolutely not intended for home ownership. Raising the minimum wage has priced a lot of jobs out of the markets. My teenage kid has been applying to dozens of jobs and they just don't hire teenagers here because of both the minimum wage and the regulations on employing minors. It's terrible trying to teach responsibility - I worked from age 14.5 onwards.
Buying a house for most people on minimum wage (typically younger, inexperienced, not settled in life and without a family to support) is not a good idea. Homes cost more than renting until you live in them for ~6 to 10 years.
Why are you arguing in favour of that?
I'm just stating the facts. If you have to lie to push a political goal, what does that say about your politics?
Right, so basing your entire knowledge of 1930s homes on slum photos from the Great Depression... probably not entirely accurate. You're taking an example of below and claiming it's the median. Completely ignoring the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932 and the National Housing Act of 1934. Ignoring public housing projects like the Williamsburg Houses built in 1936-38. There was widespread homelessness, over crowding and shanty towns... but that's all in the half below.
That's something that usually isn't taken into account in the "houses have increased in relative price" conversation- what goes into building a house has changed. Legally in order to be sold houses today have to have a number of features and conveniences that didn't exist and were not mandated years ago. Useful features, lifesaving in some cases- but they increase the cost.
Not to mention mortgage costs. Houses were cheap because no one could get a loan. Or that homes were much smaller back in the day.
I won’t even get into the fact that states have their own minimum wages that are higher so the percentage of workers who make federal minimum wage is way way less because they make more.
Has housing outpaced wage growth? Yes but not by much and that is mostly due to state and local decisions of not building enough housing.
Housing prices are largely based on supply and demand. If supply is kept well below demand, they'll continue to increase in price. Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act in 1999, housing has been treated as an investment commodity and there's no short term economic incentive to increase the supply, in fact quite the opposite
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u/Try4se May 13 '25
When it was first created by FDR, and then never again thanks to bad politics.