▪️This incredible leap of logic is only possible if you ignore all context. The median income is only relevant if you have a job! In the Great Depression, unemployment reached nearly 25%, so a good portion of the country had no job to buy a house with. Kind of an important detail.
▪️Because of this, home prices plummeted. One estimate has home prices falling 67% from 1929-32, and hovering there for most of the GD. So if you were lucky enough to have a good job, housing was affordable, but obviously this wasn’t ideal. Housing was “affordable” because…so many couldn’t afford them.
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=41283#:~:text=Abstract,most%20of%20the%20Great%20Depression.
▪️In 1932, 273K people lost their homes. The next year, 1,000 homes were being foreclosed on every day. By 1934, nearly half of all mortgages were delinquent. But hey, median pay to home cost was great!
https://www.atlantafed.org/blogs/real-estate-research/2010/11/15/mortgage-relief-in-the-great-depression
https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-and-education-magazines/housing-1929-1941
▪️Also, homes have changed substantially. In the 1930s, homes averaged around 1,000 sq ft. Today, they avg over 2,200 sq ft and come with many more amenities (air conditioning, refrigerator, washer/dryer, etc.) We live in bigger homes with fewer people, a substantial increase in standard of living.
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/04/05/the-size-of-a-home-the-year-you-were-born-5/
▪️Today, median personal income is ~$42/yr. So that would equate to a $131K house using the meme’s 32% Great Depression standard. But more relevant, median household income is ~$80k/yr, equating to a $250K home. Guaranteed you’d rather find a home at that price today than the avg house in the 1930s.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N
It’s just so wild to see these movements see saw, it feels like just yesterday that conservatives were boycotting Disney and the left was gloating.
Just incredible. After posting a meme blaming Charlie Kirk for his own murder, they post another a few hours later applauding Democrats for their civility.
Also, if you look at the Occupy Democrats timeline, their posts “denouncing political violence” were variations on “no one should be shot…BUT here’s a quote from Kirk showing he’s a terrible person.” Or sometimes they’d leave the first part out altogether and just attack him. There are no posts denouncing violence without qualifiers trying to gin up their base.
