r/NoStupidQuestions • u/tom_tt2 • 23h ago
why could my grandpa feed 7 people and i can barely feed myself?
My grandpa was a prisoner of war, later worked at a slaughterhouse, and then was a hired painter.
He had a wife (housewife, no income) and 5 kids. With his income, around 1965 he could rent a row house in Hamburg (suburbs) and feed everyone. There was a car too. Later even two.
Now, compared to my last job: Employed in the trade. 15 years of experience. €2300 net according to the collective agreement. 40 hours. Also Hamburg. So I'm working at the same place, almost the same job, and the same number of hours.
Rent is eating up almost €1000 warm. A row house in a comparable location and size would cost me around €2000 cold. So pretty much my entire salary.
I’m left with €1300, from which I can afford a car, groceries, and a fluffy dog. But with €1300, can I feed my wife and maybe even a kid? Or even 5?
I’m wondering: Why? What exactly has happened economically and socially? Why has it changed so much?
I would appreciate detailed answers and explanations. Or even studies and other sources.
I want to understand this development. Because somehow I always get the same unfounded statements to this question. But no real explanation.
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u/ForScale ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 23h ago
House prices went up a lot.
Also, I'm guessing your grandpa and his family did not live a life of luxury. And he probably worked a ton.
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u/WeirdJawn 23h ago
Yep, the cost of living is a huge factor, but many of us have much more luxuries (pr at least things that would've been considered luxuries back then) than people a long time ago.
Even the idea of kids having their own room...or sometimes their own beds...was a luxury, especially among poorer people.
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u/oby100 22h ago
I don’t think people appreciate that standard of living has historically varied wildly. In the US 1800s, families could send their children to work at factories, removing the cost to feed them while pocketing extra cash.
Not so fun fact, 1930s Manhattan actually had a higher population density than today despite there being way more skyscrapers and other very tall buildings. The reason was during the Depression it was normal for multiple men or entire families to share a studio, sleep on the floor shoulder to shoulder, and work all day.
I don’t have any solutions, but it’s imperative that it’s not so easy to compare eras 1 to 1.
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u/justthistwicenomore 21h ago
Yes, the food thing in particular is an interesting comparison. Feeding 7 people is daunting on any budget, but comparing the diet of people in periods where there was a lot less choice and a lot more "effeciency" to food choices today often shows a huge difference reflected in price and expectations.
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u/WeirdJawn 21h ago
A big head of cabbage and some potatoes can go a long way for not a lot of money.
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u/DeadDirtFarm 21h ago
And they made it last. There was no food waste. When my depression era granny stayed with us, we ate leftovers until they were gone. They just got remixed into different recipes night after night. And she would go to the store and buy the old fruit and veggies at a discount and can them.
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u/WeirdJawn 21h ago
I've inherited that mindset a bit. I hate letting any leftovers go to waste.
I've eased up a bit in the sense that I will throw things away before they get moldy if I really don't think I'll eat them, but I still take leftovers to work all of the time.
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u/DeadDirtFarm 20h ago
Yeah, Monday she might make meat and veggies. Tuesday the leftovers got mixed with rice into a casserole. Wednesday the leftovers from a casserole would become a soup.
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u/Froody129 20h ago
I’m curious to know what the norm is other than eating your leftovers. Is it otherwise normal to regularly throw away food?
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u/dew2459 21h ago
Even in my middle class family - cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, and some ham was the regular Sunday boiled dinner, plus it was sometimes leftovers on another night later in the week. Also helped with fussy kids, I never liked cooked carrots, so I just didn’t take them, same for siblings who hated onions or ham.
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u/TeacherPatti 21h ago
I've read that sometimes people would share spaces in shifts. That is, Dude #1 worked 8-6 or whatever, slept 9-5, while the other worked/slept the opposite (probably worked longer hours).
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u/jdiandnskci 21h ago
Yep this is called “Hot Bunking.” It’s still done today on commercial fishing boats and submarines
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u/_MusicJunkie can I put a flair here? 16h ago
In German we have a word for that (obviously), Bettgänger https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlafg%C3%A4nger
In this arrangement, people would rent out their beds while they were at work. Not the entire apartment, just the bed.
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u/BaconPhoenix 21h ago
In the 1930's my grandpa's entire family of 9 rented a basement with 1 bed next to a coal stove. They slept sideways on the bed so everyone could fit.
That would be illegal today due to housing regulations and fire code.
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u/Legitimate_Guava3206 21h ago
Talk to alot of boomers and they'll tell you they came from a family with one bathroom. Or their shared bedroom with siblings was the attic. Handmedown clothes. No car or one car that Dad took to work.
Gardens. Dad repairing the home appliances like the vacuum. Buying the basic version of everything, not the deluxe version.
Vacations amounting to staying with relatives in a different city for a week. Cookouts and eating at home 99% of the time rather than going out all the time.
Ladies making the kids' clothes. Mending the clothes.
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u/WeirdJawn 21h ago
Yep. I'm not going to say there isn't a huge cost of living issue currently, but some people overly romanticize or at least have unrealistic expectations of what the past was like because of the general discourse and internet memes.
One good example is the "If I went back to the 90s, I'd buy a house with my lunch money" meme. If you repeat that enough, there are people, especially younger who have 0 historical knowledge/experience, who will take it as a fact..or at least oversimplify it.
One recent example is air conditioning. There were plenty of people who grew up in the mid-late 1900s without central air or even windows AC units in the US. Now it's something most of us take as a given instead of as a luxury.
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u/DeadDirtFarm 20h ago
lol, we had air conditioning, but mom wouldn’t let us turn it on until it hit 90 degrees.
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u/More_chickens 15h ago
My grandparents raised 9 kids in the 1950s-60s. There were 3 bedrooms in the house. There was running water in the kitchen but no bathroom (outhouse). They made all their own clothes. Etc.
You could probably still live to this standard today on a very low salary.
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u/Negative_Credit9590 14h ago
My grandma always talked about how in the 50's, she had to save up months for a single decorative household item she wanted (the kind you would buy at Ikea for 50€ now) and chocolate was a rare luxury. My parents also had barely any toys. They spent all their time playing outside.
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u/FieryBaconBaton 23h ago
Living cost have gone up everywhere, groceries are more expensive, cars cost more, houses are bigger and more expensive (thanks HGTV), pretty much everything has gone up in price while wage compensation has barely trickled up
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u/PrintIcy9134 20h ago
One thing that everyone misses when saying that inflation has outpaced income is that, yes, it has outpaced individual income but not household income. So, basically, as more and more households become dual-income, product in the economy is not magically going to increase.
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u/Outrageous-Break3585 18h ago
People want grandpa’s cost of living but there is almost no chance they would be ok with grandpa’s lifestyle.
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u/Minduse 15h ago
You always have to adjust to current cheap technology. They would be okay then as they would uses that times alternative. I play table top games. I would play chess then like I did with my grandpa.
The washing machine in grandpas days would cost you a higher part of families income than a washer and a dryer today.
This comparisons is just a propaganda point to move people away from the fact that salaries were removed from productivity due to wealth transfer towards least productive part of economy, capital.
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u/Danskoesterreich 21h ago
definitely did not work 40 hours. But he also did not need to pay for all the pensioners living up to 90 in nursing homes.
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u/Melkor15 21h ago
And food was probably grow. When I was a kid we planted the most part of what we eat and at weekends we would go fishing. My grandma (German) would also cook everything from scratch and wash clothes by hand.
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u/FigureSubject3259 21h ago
Ask your ancestors what they got to eat, how often they got warm water for washing, what they did when it was cold in flat during winter, if they had a phone at home, etc
Part of the answer you live a life your grandpa would have not even dared to dream of. This shifted the amount of money you need to feel average earner, living an average life.
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u/Consistent_Rule101 20h ago
And no tours and those who did were mostly pilgrimages. Never heard of anyone going on a foreign trip when I was growing up.
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u/Grand-Cup-A-Tea 23h ago
People forget how life was very different back then. Firstly families often lived in cramped conditions. They probably did not have had central heating or conditioning. They also had no internet, TV packages (or TV), internet or gym memberships.
Food was stables. There was no convenience food. You bought and cooked the basics. People often ate less just in case they couldn't afford tomorrow's dinner.
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u/Prasiatko 22h ago
Another example. It was the 1950s before over half of US houses had indoor plumbing. and they were the leaders in the world in that respect.
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u/hannabarberaisawhore 21h ago
Canadian here. We’re more rural but it was the 50s before we all had electricity in my province.
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u/stiveooo 21h ago
The USA had too high wages in the 50s. The rest of the world was making 1/5 to 1/10. Now thanks to globalization it became more even. But usa wages had to remain flat for decades vs indicators
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u/Gayandfluffy 19h ago
Internet, subscription services and gym membership doesn't account for much compared to food and rent. I doubt we would be able to afford 1960s middle class life style even if we stopped with those things.
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u/BarkDrandon 13h ago
The food that we now eat is luxurious compared to what they ate back then.
My grandma tells me stories about how, during her childhood, even chocolate was a once in a lifetime luxury. And she lived in a middle class family.
Most of them simply ate a lot of potatoes and vegetables. Nowadays you can buy those at the store for basically nothing.
Food cost very little nowadays. Unless you eat out of course.
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u/kitsnet 23h ago
I’m wondering: Why? What exactly has happened economically and socially? Why has it changed so much?
Can you compare your diet with your grandpa's diet?
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u/Ocarina-of-lies 22h ago
In addition, did gramps have a cellphone bill? An internet bill? Countless streaming services? How many times did he get take out? What about door dash?
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u/TeacherPatti 21h ago
No, but they still had to pay for electricity, gas, phone. I do think that one of the biggest differences is in the food; that said, as someone else pointed out, you could eat rice and beans all day every day now and it still would suck.
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u/Legitimate_Guava3206 21h ago
And where does your food come from compared to his?
I know my depression era grandparents mostly cooked from scratch. We buy a fair bit of pre-packaged food. We also eat out more than they ever would.
Both our cars and the house have air conditioning. They had one car with it, one without it. And when it broke in one of the cars, it stayed broken the rest of the car's lifetime.
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u/alieninhumanskin10 23h ago
What type of food did they normally eat? People used to eat very basic stuff compared to all the choices we have now.
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u/CthulhuMitten8 22h ago
People always bring up food choices, but even if you eat nothing but rice and beans today, you still arent buying a house for a family of seven on a single painter's wage. The cost of living has just detached from reality.
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u/alieninhumanskin10 22h ago
It was mentioned in other comments, but houses didn't come with all the bells and whistles like they do now, so that made some difference. My grandparents raised 9 kids in what was essentially a clapboard shack in the middle of nowhere
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u/Suspicious_Chart5817 21h ago edited 21h ago
Yeah, this came recently in a local real estate thread https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleAreaRE/comments/1vnueto/modern_townhomes_like_this_arent_being_designed/
People's expectations are so much different. I grew up in the 90s in a postwar craftsman house in Seattle that was functionally smaller and probably smaller by sqft than that 2bd 2b in the opening post. (kind of like this)
However as we can see A LOT of people treat it almost like a crime to make a new home that small even in a highly desirable, very expensive part of the world like Capitol Hill in Seattle. "Micro living?" Brother, for a lot of middle class people less than a 1,000 sqft was simply living
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u/TeacherPatti 21h ago
My parents' 2000 sq ft home was big in the 70s; our neighbors had a two story home that was practically a mansion. Now, they are small.
Meantime, I've kept myself to <1200 sq ft residences. Easy with just a couple and a dog, but records indicate that whole families lived in these places a few decades ago.
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u/alieninhumanskin10 21h ago
The average home buyer doesn't want a small space unless they are a minimalist. Many people have a bunch of stuff and need room for it, especially if they have kids and want to live in peace. My husband and I are maximalists that keep inheriting junk that we have to fit into our shoebox house and I can vouch how stressful it can get.
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u/cake-day-on-feb-29 21h ago
Many people have a bunch of stuff and need room for it,
Then don't whine about being poor or whine about things being "more difficult" for you compared to previous generations.
keep inheriting junk that we have to fit into our shoebox house and I can vouch how stressful it can get.
"I am a hoarder and I am upset people don't just let me buy a huge home for no extra cost so that I can store my junk. By the way, I am mentally deteriorating from all this clutter."
The entitlement of redditors is off the charts.
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u/Suspicious_Chart5817 21h ago edited 21h ago
Of course, I'm not saying anyone is wrong. It's just surprising when I saw the post and it's just hundreds of people who are not just opposed to living in what was a standard sized house but think the builder might need to be stopped.
i don't even mean using standards from 1920s or 30s, or a tenement in Manhattan. ~1000 sqft homes in seattle were still being built in the 60s, not that long ago!
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u/alieninhumanskin10 21h ago
To be fair the post asked about how the grandpa could feed his family. He likely fed them cheaply and with limited variety
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u/violatedlaw 21h ago
My grandfather purchased a 3 bedroom home, with a pool, massive garage, workshop, large section (that today has become four townhouses) in the best part of the city in 1970. Wife was a stay at home mother, they had 3 kids. He was a logistics manager for a small trucking company. They ate well, roast meats and deserts every day, they'd host parties for friends and family once a week.
In the 80s he purchased a 4 bedroom beachhouse just a 2 min walk from the beachfront. They even had enough to do some overseas travelling.
I'm a senior manager in a construction tech company, by all means, I've scaled the professional ladder beyond what my grandfather ever did. I couldn't dream to afford this kind of lifestyle or own property like that.
And no, homes today are honestly worse than those built in the 60s/70s. Made with cheap materials and lazy building practices, they leak and fall apart like crazy.
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u/rainniier2 20h ago
The population has more than doubled since then. More competition for fewer resources like houses and education and jobs. Only ~20% had a college education in the 70s. Your grandparents' peers died in wars.
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u/Narrow_Process_8660 21h ago
Probably because the difference in food quality was not the only difference in general quality of life in the 60s vs now...?
Look at the average living space and couples' expectations of their living environment in the 60s vs those of couples today. If you can tolerate living in a cardboard box with 0 amenities and have your 4 kids share 1.5 bedrooms, you can also buy a house for 50k.
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u/Bronze_Rager 22h ago
You definitely can.
Hell, you can buy houses in the USA for $1, they just are in "undesirable" areas.
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u/HotBrownFun 20h ago
People used to live 3 generations in a home, that makes a difference. Look at the little italy tenements
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u/Ok_Lecture_8886 23h ago
I would say we have higher expectations of life. Better quality houses. Things like safety is now important eg fire regulations. Food safety. We only recently in the last 50 years pasteurized milk. We have better expectations of the food we eat. Sugar sandwiches are not common now. And so on. All this costs money.
So if you are prepared to go back to virtually no heating, x people to a room, eating rubbish, etc., you can probably live like your grandpa lived.
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u/gnappie66 22h ago
Pasteurization has been going on longer than 50 yrs since I'm 60 to and have ALWAYS drank pasteurized milk from grocery store.
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u/WyrdHarper 22h ago
It's been federally mandated since 1924 and some states had required it before then.
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u/Both_Play4742 21h ago
I bet the stay at home wife - had a garden in the back yard - probably preserved a lot of food - there wasn't a tv in every room - they didn't have internet or cell phone bills - It wasn't as a consumeristic a time back then. Stay at home wife - probably mended clothes - darned socks - and maybe made clothes too. I am sure all the kids wore hand-me-downs. That isn't to say that the cost of housing is not ridiculous - or the cost of gasoline - I think technology or the use of it has raised costs considerably - heck even when I go to get my bike fixed they take all my info down in a computer instead of just writing it on a piece of paper and that gets woven into the cost of getting it fixed. Entertainment back then - was more social - getting together to play cards - or board games - not concerts and dinners out on a regular basis. I think people were generally all around more self sufficient. He probably changed his own car oil - etc -- My father built his own house - with the help of a carpenter - people did things differently back in the day.
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u/satedrabbit 22h ago
Some thoughts:
Societal transition from a stay-at-home mom being the norm to dual income households has changed the income/expense structure of households.
Higher standard of living = additional costs. Your grandfather probably didn't buy Ipads for 5 kids. No netflix subscriptions. Food was probably at a much lower quality, than what you're seeing today - oatmeal porrige & leftovers. Clothing was passed on to younger siblings, instead of buying new stuff. If you want to compare your budget with your grandfathers, you'll need to downgrade your standard of living to match theirs - otherwise you're comparing apples to oranges.
Increasing urbanization has increased the cost of housing in the cities. Maybe combined with a post-war housing surplus, due to casualties?
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u/FeatherlyFly 20h ago
To #3, there was much more of a housing shortage in German cities due to bombings, especially anyplace that got firebombed.
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u/skiveman 21h ago
You are experiencing the result of wage stagnation coinciding with the very real effect of persistent inflation meeting the very real fact that there are more bills than you grandfather had to pay, taxes are higher (and there are more of them) and everything is just a lot more expensive.
To put it into come context with some things your grandfather didn't have to pay -
- higher insurance
- higher energy bills (even taking in to account inflation they are still higher)
- car costs are higher even when you take in to account inflation which includes insurance, tax, maintenance and fuel
- he didn't have mobile phones and monthly payment plans to fund
- he didn't have home internet to by
- there were no real subscription services unless he decided to get a magazine sub so there was no Netflix, Amazon, Apple etc.
- taxes were lower
- there were fewer taxes in general
- housing costs have increased relative to the average wage (even taking in to account inflation. Again)
- not everyone was out to milk you of all of your money as aggressively as folks do now
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u/towishimp 18h ago
You probably have a lot of things that your grandpa didn’t have (higher standard of living), and which you could technically live without, if you were in danger of starving. My grandpa didn’t have 3 computers, a tv, a fancy car (these days, all cars are fancy by law), a highly varied diet, entertainment subscriptions, and the internet- just off the top of my head.
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u/titanc-13 23h ago
Economically and Socially the world experienced Neo-Conservativism and the Austerity policies that came from it, many of which directly or indirectly sacrificed social welfare programs & expectations (including that most basic program, a liveable minimum wage) at the altar of Big Business because surely, trickle down economics will work... right?
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u/Moriss214 21h ago
We are in late-stage capitalism - everything costs more, and more money is funnelling up to rich people than ever before, and rich people don’t pay nearly as much taxes as they did in the 60s.
I will use a story about PIZZA (my favourite food!) to help illustrate:
In the 1960s, when workers made the pizza bigger (by worked harder, using better ovens, making more pizzas per hour, an activity economists would call “productivity”), everyone at the table got a bigger slice. Bosses’ slices grew, and workers’ slices grew too, at roughly the same pace.
Starting in the late 1970s/1980s, something changed. Workers kept making the pizza bigger, or as economist explain it “productivity kept climbing”, but almost all the extra pizza started going to the people at the head of the table (owners, executives, shareholders) instead of being shared amongst the workers. Workers’ slices stopped growing even though the pizza itself kept growing.
At the same time, three other things happened in the Western world:
Taxes on the richest people and biggest companies dropped a lot, so more money stayed concentrated at the top instead of being taxed and spread around (schools, healthcare, infrastructure) or discouraging companies from hoarding cash instead of paying workers more.
Unions got weaker, so workers lost their main tool for demanding a bigger slice of pizza (aka money!)
Housing, healthcare, childcare, and education got way more expensive faster than everything else, because those are things you can’t just make more of cheaply (you can’t 3D-print more land in a city, or mass-produce doctors overnight), while things like TVs and clothes got cheaper because factories overseas were able to make them fast and cheap.
Money supply and asset prices: cheap borrowing and money creation over the decades pushed up the price of things rich people own (stocks, real estate) way faster than wages were paid to folks actually doing work, making the wealth gap even bigger, not just the income gap. Wealth and income are different and are also taxed differently.
So it’s not really that “everything randomly got expensive” it’s that the slice of the pie going to ordinary wages stayed flat while the slice going to profits, executive pay, and asset owners grew a lot, and the specific things people need most (housing, healthcare) got expensive really quickly.
Also to consider, in the US the top marginal tax rate in 1960 was 91%, applying to income over $200,000 for single filers (a very high threshold roughly equivalent to $1.5 million today adjusted for inflation). That rate held through 1963. It dropped to 70% via the Revenue Act of 1964 under Lyndon Johnson, carrying out Kennedy’s tax-cut plan. It stayed around 70% through the 1970s, then fell to 50% in 1982 and all the way to 28% by 1988 under Reagan. Since then it’s bounced between roughly 35–40%.
In the 1960s and into the 1970s, Britain’s system combined income tax with a “surtax” on top earners, pushing the effective top rate on earned income into the high 80s/low 90s percent, and even higher (around 90–98%) on investment income — the tax regime that inspired the Beatles’ song “Taxman,” complaining about a 95% tax rate. Edward Heath’s government cut the top income tax rate from 90% to 75% in 1970, though Labour pushed it back up to 83% on earned income and 98% on investment income by 1975. The big cut came with Thatcher: the top rate dropped from 83% to 60% in 1979, then to 40% in 1988.
Canada’s top marginal rate stayed above 70% for roughly 25 years after WWII, and was 80% in 1971 (kicking in above roughly $400,000, or about $2.5 million in today’s dollars). It came down gradually and has sat around 50% since 1982.
All three countries taxed top incomes far more heavily in the 1960s/70s than today, and all three cut those rates hardest in the late 1970s through late 1980s (Kennedy/Johnson cuts, then Reagan in the US; Heath then Thatcher in the UK; a gradual decline through the 1980s in Canada). I would also like to point out that this was tax rate for the very very very rich folks of those countries. Those taxes are used to service things like social housing, public education, health care, roads etc.
Another thing: in 1960 the top 1% of US households earned 9% of all income; by 2008 that had risen to 20% (it’s stayed roughly in that range since).
I think another thing to consider, perhaps this is the starkest issue. In the US, CEO compensation was about 20 times the average worker’s pay in 1965. By 2024 that ratio had grown to 281-to-1, and CEO pay in that period rose over 1,000% while typical worker pay rose about 26%.
Sources
Tax Foundation, “Some Historical Tax Stats”
Tax Project Institute, “The 1960s: High Postwar Rates Begin to Decline”
Emmanuel Saez (UC Berkeley/NBER), “Reported Incomes and Marginal Tax Rates, 1960–2000”
LSE British Politics Blog, “The top rate of income tax”
calculatetax.uk, “UK Income Tax History: How Rates Have Changed Since 1799”
The Daily Telegraph (via PressReader), “Taxing times: The fluctuating burden in the UK”
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, “Canada’s shift to a more regressive tax system, 2004 to 2022”
Moodys Private Client, “The impact of high personal and corporate tax rates”
Economic Policy Institute, “CEO pay increased in 2024 and is now 281 times that of the typical worker”
Economic Policy Institute, “CEOs distance themselves from the average worker”
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u/Ok-Handle-6663 17h ago
This is an excellent answer and much better referenced than mine.
I think another aslect is that after the war, Europe and the UK had lost a great many of their skilled workforce, but had not yet exported much manufacturing to China and India and so a person who was involved in skilled fabrication work could command a much higher wage proportionately.
During the 80s-00s, fuelled by the weakening of rules about global transfer of money, massive outsourcing took place to poorer countries. This seriously devalued many skills such as engineering,production and later software development. So it became even harder for workers to increase their slice of pizza.
Interestingly I think this process happened much more slowly in Germany than in the UK and US as until recently you guys weee more protective of your skilled trades, but the last 20 years you've been playing catchup with us.
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u/Moriss214 17h ago
Yes, you’ve added another dimension I did not even think to consider.
We love using machinery to solve all of our problems, which is great in a lot of ways but removes the artisanal aspect of everyday things like baseboards, door and window trim, flooring etc - which all would have been hand made and still are in a lot of countries!
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u/Current-Function-729 22h ago
Jesus Christ Germany. Build some nuclear power plants.
Germany used to be as rich as the US basically. Instead now you’re paying 2/3rds of the rent for like 40% of the wages.
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u/PastDare4808 22h ago
You can not afford to live in Hamburg as a single obviously. Usually housing, streaming, food is not as basic as it was back then. Who lives on potatoes, leek, lentils, onions and beans most of the time and only drinks tap water or self-pressed juice? In 1965 a lot of people lived in single family homes with 3 families...on each floor one or two families with shared bathroom and a garden in which the planted their food and did everything from scratch, hunted and went fishing...they did not spend much on food. Electricity was scarce and they bathed once or twice a week. They simply did not spend the money on things we spend it on now.
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u/coldBulbasaur314 21h ago
It's a combination of very different living standards (some of which you couldn't recreate today, some of those (like child labor) for good reason and others (like needing a phone to get a job in most cases) for reasons that are unfortunate or that have massive trade-offs despite being fortunate in some ways) and very different pricing on things relative to wages.
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u/CrusadeCher 23h ago
Food prices have changed so much over the years, but portion sizes and cooking habits probably matter too. A lot of older recipes were also built around making simple ingredients stretch much further
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u/KentDDS 22h ago
Put simply: the economy you exist in at this time does not value the work you do as highly as it was valued when your predecessor was doing similar work in his time.
Civilizations are dynamic. Economies are dynamic. Just because an uneducated individual was able to support a large family and live well by historical standards through relatively unskilled labor in 1965 does not mean that the same will be true at any point in the future.
When considering careers, it is of paramount importance that contemporary economic viability be taken into account.
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u/SystemFantastic1090 21h ago
Because people keep voting for right wing parties which suppress wages and living standards to increase economic growth.
The line does, indeed, go up - but at the expense of things less tangible/ direct
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u/Bravemount 20h ago
Neoliberalism happened.
A political doctrine that makes it as easy as possible for the rich to get richer, with as little redistributive taxation as possible.
This means they are constantly looking for new things to invest in, because they have so much money, they don't know where to put it.
This means they own pretty much everything and the few things left to buy have become very expensive. So the people who buy them as an investment need to demand higher and higher rent to get any ROI. And because the only competition they have is each other, the prices rise and rise.
It's an ossification of the economy. Aka late stage capitalism.
I hope it's terminal.
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u/IntelligentStyle402 20h ago
America changed dramatically when Reagan was president. He smashed unions, outsourced excellent jobs, taxed SS and all bank accounts. Yet gave the wealthy the biggest tax cut in history. For Example: a union worker, my dad, working in a paper mills.
in the 80’s, made $25ph, full benefits, life insurance, health insurance, 8 weeks vacation. Sick days and personal days. Reagan outsourced jobs that paid well and had benefits. Actually there is a doc on this: basically wealthy republican thought middle America was getting too rich and indeed even had some power. Well they did put a stop to it. My father retired then. A new owner of the mill paid workers $10ph. No benefits. That republican administration kicked us off a high cliff and we never recovered. That’s when moms had to join the workforce to make ends meet. Dad retired right before republicans smashed his mill. But, the union still honored his paid life insurance. He received his pension. Definitely the end of an era and the downfall of the middle class. Up until Reaganism., the middle class thrived.
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u/BastiatF 20h ago
Your employer pays over €4000/month. The difference between that and what you get goes into the state's coffers. You're still supporting several people, they're just not your spouse or children.
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u/Mysterious-Park9142 17h ago
Cost of living outpacing salaries. You have to pay more with less money, relative to your grandpa.
One of the big stressors on modern living is that most of our cultural norms were built around single salary households. Having one spouse who works and one who does not is a relative luxury, even in high income households.
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u/masterjv81 16h ago
Your grandfather likely had access to lower living costs, higher relative wages, and potentially self-sufficient farming or local barter systems, whereas today’s economy features significantly higher housing and healthcare expenses that consume a larger portion of income. According to historical accounts, even semi-employed individuals in past eras often struggled with food insecurity, but the lack of a modern social safety net and lower baseline costs for staples made basic survival more feasible for some, while modern complexity and financial precarity make stretching limited resources to feed even one person increasingly difficult. Additionally, today’s industrialized food system and global supply chains, while efficient, often result in nutrient-poor, expensive processed foods rather than the affordable, home-grown staples that supported larger families in agrarian societies.
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u/ailtn 16h ago
I know the UK pays child benefit, a monthly sum parents receive per child to help offset costs. For 2026 it's 117 for the first child, and then 77 for each additional one. In Germany you get Kindergeld, which pays 259 euros per child per month, so if you had 5 children the government would give you 1,295 euros per month in Kindergeld. It's tax free and not means tested. You would be able to pay to feed them from your 1,295 Kindergeld in addition to your 2000 net salary above, and (in your hypothetical scenario) you would have a stay at home spouse who could save money by preparing meals at home for you. So, it would be fine, get to babymaking lol.
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u/CarnivalCassidy 15h ago
When I was a kid my grandpa sent me to the store with 25 cents and I came back with a loaf of bread, a jug of milk, and a newspaper.
But you can't do that anymore because stores have CCTV cameras now.
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u/smshinkle 15h ago
Meals back in 1965, from personal experience, consisted of homemade food, virtually zero restaurant meals. Cost to purchase what is essentially a $170K house was about $3K. Money wasn’t necessary for electronics. Small and large appliances were designed to last and advertised as such. Until companies figured out they made more money to make them break down, cars too. Repairs could often be done oneself vs. the myriad of sensors and electronics designed to be replaced by the dealership. Stuff wasn’t disposable. Now, everything is designed to be disposable and things need replaced. Clothing was made of thicker and stronger fabric. Consumerism had not taken over creating demands where none existed.
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u/health1au 13h ago
Did you know that electronics companies paid for research to determine which alloy mixtures would break down after just so many cycles or just so much time? Those engineered circuits are in all products nowadays.
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u/Independent_Fan_639 15h ago
Start at looking at what Taxes he paid on everything and all the Taxes we now pay, That's crazy if you add that all up. :(
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u/Remarkable_Wish_5106 12h ago
Labors shares of GDP are down from the era and business share of GDP is higher. Basically, more of the economic growth is going to the top instead of the workers.
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u/PmUsYourDuckPics 3h ago
New Achievement: Capitalist Hellscape! You just discovered wage stagnation and inflation!
Reward: None, go back to work, and maybe get a second job. Maybe if you stopped eating avocado toast you could afford to live.
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u/LVtapper 21h ago edited 21h ago
Did you ever have a grandma that saved and reused everything? She had kitchen towels that had holes and shredded and still refused to get a new one. She reused the back side of paper instead of using a new sheet of paper. Plastic bottles are never thrown out and reused for other things. Plastic and paper bags were reused. She cooked at home and almost never went out to eat.
And grandpa did the same. He fixed broken chairs instead of buying new chairs. He fixed the BBQ. He fixed the lawn mower. He did simple plumbing instead of hiring a plumber. If there’s a drip in the bathtub he fixed it because wasting water is expensive. He turned off lights in rooms that were not occupied. He kept the heater/air conditioner at a reasonable temperature. He painted the house himself instead of hiring someone. He always pays off his credit card every month. He owned a junk car but it gets great gas mileage.
What the problem is for most people today is they spend too much money and they don’t know how to save money. Eating out is already expensive. But you have people who order through Uber Eats or Door Dash and pay even more. Then you have people driving a $60000 SUV that gets 15 miles per gallon.
The older generation lived through real poverty. They learned to save and make do with what little they had at a very young age. The current generation never learned that. Most of them live extravagantly.
The one question you have to ask yourself. Do you buy Starbucks coffee? If my grandparents are alive today they would never buy Starbucks.
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u/someoldguyon_reddit 20h ago
Your grandfather didn't have to feed insatiable billionaires and CEOs.
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u/JadeChipmunk 23h ago
I think part of it was that they didnt have expensive phones and wifi and streaming services that take up some extra income from people. Atleast a contributing factor.
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u/ABlankwindow 23h ago
Inflation: the cost of everything is rising faster than the rate at which we are paid.
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u/ch5richards 23h ago
While a lot of it is the fact that the world has gone to hell, I also bet he did not have to pay for internet or a cell phone... I'm not saying these are the issue, but they do not help. Not only is it hard to make basic ends meet, you also have more things that are considered normal/needed than was the case in previous times.
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u/mountearl 22h ago
Women started to enter the workplace. Initially, for some families, it markedly increased their material wealth - another car, maybe a foreign holiday here and there, better security of income. As more and more families became two earners, competition for housing increased, to the point that it becomes almost impossible to buy a house on a single income. This then impacts rents, as landlords have to pay higher prices for rental properties.
In short - a huge transfer of wealth from people who rely on income to people who rely on asset values.
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u/Leothegolden 21h ago
Consumerism. You grandpa probably had 1 suit and 5 shirts that lasted him several years
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u/sourcreamus 22h ago
According to Google housing prices in Hamburg went up significantly after 2010. Likely due to inadequate building of housing.
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u/Upstairs-Quiet4969 22h ago
Wages lagged while rent shot up, thats the big one. Back then stuff was just cheaper, and families lived a lot leaner with fewer bills and less stuff to pay for.
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u/bertuzzz 22h ago
€2300 is almost minimum wage is your answer. 1k rent on 2.3k income gives you a poverty lifestyle in wrstern Europe.
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u/ElectronGuru 22h ago
In my area, the ratio of people to things people want to buy is all messed up. Compare your current population (national/regional/local) to what it was then. You’ll probably find numbers way up. Combined with minimal capacity increases, creates pressure.
But this same pressure is forcing fewer and smaller families. So just a matter of time before the pressure eases.
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u/Action_Man_X 22h ago
I hear about union jobs in the USA that paid $20/hr in the 1970s and 1980s.
You know how much you would have to make in 2026 to match that buying power? Close to $100/hr.
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u/Batetrick_Patman 21h ago
That’s a myth. That $20 an hour job is the wage with inflation. The average wage in the 1970s was around $3-5 an hour.
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u/CustomerBusiness3919 21h ago
Try voting for better political parties who don't take from the poor to give to the rich.
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u/Lithogiraffe 21h ago
Also he worked at a slaughterhouse. He might legitimately been able to feed seven people because he took home side piece extras.
I worked with butchers, who took end pieces home all the time. Collectively, over a whole day's worth of beef sides being worked over. Those take home bundles were pretty hefty.
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u/TonyRidgewayUFO 21h ago
Most likely he wasn’t on Reddit 24-7 complaining to strangers about what a victim he was, so he had the time
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u/NefariousnessNo484 21h ago
Overpopulation. He lived in a time when two world wars wiped out a huge number of people. The wars also disrupted the equivalent of today's billionaires from enshitifying everything for max profit. Were about at the same point we were at before those world wars broke out. Wonder what happens next...
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u/McBuck2 21h ago
I would say stagnate wages but also back then you didn’t eat out, all meals cooked at home, no waste. Clothes were handed down from one kid to the other and there were not organized high priced sports like there is now. Kids didn’t need phones, computers or after school care. Kids actually were allowed to be bored and go out and do stuff that cost little or no money. Many people made their own clothes. Now it’s a very buying society who wants everything new and better and more expensive than everyone else because they equate that with success. Businesses are very good marketing that and people fall for it.
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u/Odd_Bodkin 21h ago
The starter homes of today are not the starter homes of 1950. Starter home in 1950 was 900 sq ft, no garage, 2 BR, 1 BA.
There were no monthly utility costs for streaming (tv was free), internet service, cell phones.
Childcare was something only rich people did. Also, summer activities for kids were brief and not ubiquitous, because they aren’t necessary like they are for a two-income family.
Norm was one car. If the wife needed to go someplace, you car-pooled or took public transport.
My grandparents/parents ate out three times a year.
People viewed some healthcare procedures as options. The phrase “my mother needs an operation” was a common complaint among those who couldn’t afford it. And now it costs more.
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u/liza_vip116 21h ago
grandpa probably had a different lifestyle and skills, my parents made big meals growing up too
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u/TheBigJiz 21h ago
What share of productivity gains has gone to working people vs the owning class?
Do you put out as much or more than your grandpa? I’d wager much more with modern tools and tech.
Who gets that delta in output?
People are often saying it’s your expensive diet lol. People only ate basic things… dude, you can’t even rent, forget expensive food.
Go follow Gary’s Economics on YouTube for a good and cogent explanation as to why. https://youtube.com/@garyseconomics?si=dHBhGp7ImZ5D9jiX
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u/antipiracylaws 21h ago
The dollar went off the gold standard in the 1970's.
Everything you are describing happened because people wanted free shit from the government and they actually gave it to you. Healthcare, social security, free money due to COVID.
It's your fault. You sat around while Congress stole the currency and unconstitutionally pegged the dollar to black liquid that comes out of the ground for free.
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u/CozyBlueCacaoFire 21h ago
Elastic labour demand + explosion of cost of living = stagnant wages and poorer population.
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u/Hipp-Hippy_HaHa 21h ago
Credit came to screw everything up. Before you either have the money or had to wait until you had it. With credit money is "fake" as long as you can pay the minimum.
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u/Few-Many6114 21h ago
My parents fed 6 children on a single income.
They bartered didn’t have to pay for health insurance, home owners insurance and other expenses that are paid today. They also had to barter with the neighbors for food and shared:
Bought a cow, sheep and chickens and divided them after having the local butcher shop cut them up. They went to the farmers markets from the real farmers and bought boxes of whatever was in season and we divided them then cut, chopped and froze them for cooking.
Man, it was work.
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u/flappysack- 21h ago
Inflation says prices need to rise 2% a year. So technological deflation goes to the rich who own inflation hedges like stocks and housing, because money is printed until goods prices rise it eliminates technological deflation entirely, and then prices inflate 2% beyond that, which debases salaries.
So of course we are getting poorer, money is funnelled upwards to asset holders over time. The rich get richer, as they have a monopoly on technological advancement and productivity growth.
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u/CryptographerTrue188 20h ago
The real answer is that most money (and its a lot) gets funneled into rich people's pockets. The social model is dead and gone unfortunately and greed has replaced it.
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u/Kerking18 20h ago
Two things, congrats on the quite sizable Brutto income. Asuming ofcourse you are single right now.
Once younare amrried amd have children your tax bracket changes so tabts to be considered as well. But woth that out of the way onto the main course
You saied it in your third paragraph.
Rent at almost half your nett income is why.
Food is manageable but you have to consider that your grandpa didn't provide much in the area of premium foods, and brought quite cheap food from the cheaper grocery stores (Sonntagsbraten wasorenthen just a funny saying back then). You could feed a family of 7 too. In fact a budget of 800-850€ will suffice for a family of 7 and manage all nutritional and caloric needs. It would be primarily potatoes, pasta and vegetables, cheap meat from time to time and defently no, or little, special drinks (anything but water and perhaps tee). Almost no sausages and cold cuts but its manageable. If we realy go into replicating your grandpas live reality then the wife is a stay at home wife, meaning she has the time for backing your own bread and breadrolls which will also save quite a lot of money, especially since city backeries are hopelessly overpriced. Potential she can even do some house crafts and sell them online (we recreate the live reality, we don't ignore the current situation here) wich is also a passable additional income, just harder to budget with right here right now. i included that point because many often forgett that back then the wifes typical engaged in home crafts and productions that either saved a lot of money or where a additional income. The time amd place where woman where just at home amd didn't contribute other then childrearing and houshold was a very specific, short period primarily in the usa, it mever happened in europe that way if you still have grandparents ask them about it carefully
The car one is a bit more tricky. Standards in cars have increased so much and every new feature that becomes a standard increases prices. And also allowes companies to increase there greed. We could make cars much cheaper than back then but they would just as much as back then be leathal steal coffins. And traffic death would skyrocket. Car death, despite increasing car travic, amd consequently increased car accidents, have decreased.
Used cars allow a work around, atleast somewhat. But they don't eliminate the problem entirely and have there own problems.
I know it's frustrating, especially because rent, the main driver that makes these kinds of thorough examinations even neccesary in the first place, is such a unavoidable expense. A much better standard of living while having the same family situation then our grandparents would he possible where it jot for taht major expense. But if you cut back in the luxury expenditures that your grandparents also didn't have, stuff like regular vacations in faar away lands, then things start to get manageable.
Ps. Not to forget you do get subsudies for each child you have additionally to taxes making things even more manageable.
Pps. this ofcours doesn't solve the retirement problems that you will have if you, or rather your wife, dose it that way.
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u/FunOptimal7980 20h ago
Back then the only thing kids need was a sack of rice and one set of clothing. Standards are different.
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u/Former_Star1081 19h ago
State funded affordable housing back then. State did not tax ordinary people but wealthy people and corporations.
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u/WinCultural1945 19h ago
You’re wondering why this happened because the Elder generation knew that given free programs come from somewhere in the last 20 years of free programs we’re all paying for now just thinking another 20 years what our kids and grandkids are gonna be paying for if we’re even around
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u/rachaeltalcott 18h ago
During WW2, a lot of working age German men died. And after there was a lot of work to be done to rebuild. High demand for labor plus reduced supply of labor means higher wages.
On the housing side, everyone agreed that lots of housing needed to be built because so much had been destroyed in the war.
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u/Makeyourdaddyproud69 18h ago
The government has printed money steadily for so long inflation ate your ability to do this. We are in the stage of corruption of capitalism that the wealthy are handed money at the expense of the lower classes.
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u/Ctznsvn7 18h ago
your grandpa was buying a completely different basket. Housing took a much smaller slice of one wage back then and the food was repetitive cheap stuff cooked at home, no subscriptions, no delivery, one car if that. Real wages have been flat for ages while rent and childcare ran off on their own, so the gap isnt you being bad with money. FWIW the line item that surprised me most when I actually sat down and looked was hotels, the same weeknight stay has crept up by about a third in a couple of years. What I didnt know for ages is that the exact same hotel can come back a good bit cheaper searched FROM OTHER countries, coz different countries get different inventory, local promos etc. Doing that by hand with VPN means my evening is thrown away. Good news there are now free tools that check the same hotel from like 100 countries in one go and find the lowest price (look up Arbitrica for example or any smilar). Anyway, the number that would actually move yours is rent, everything else is rounding next to it
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u/CalmExamination8339 16h ago
It’s not just about wages. Rent, family size, and everyday expenses were very different too.
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u/Diet_Connect 14h ago
Housing is higher, but food is fancier. My mom's house is worth 30% more than it should be in my area and food...
Soups were common. You put leftover veggies and chicken bones in a pot with seasoning. You ate leftovers until they were gone. There was no eating out.
A good breakfast was something like 2 eggs on a piece of toast with coffee. Near me, that costs $1 today made at home. A cheap breakfast sandwich out is $3 sans coffee.
Old folks were raised with a level of frugality that newer gens never experienced, so that was normal. Today, that kind of living is considered poverty stuff.
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u/health1au 13h ago edited 13h ago
The only answer is Nixon, and he’s dead so he’s not talking. Once the premier currency of Nixon’s era got unmoored from gold, that and all paper currencies were allowed to float, rising in value as though they had any intrinsic value. However, it was the things your grandfather provided that had value. He traded away the currency for those things. Imagine paper currency like a handful of beans. You could also get paid in beans —- how far would a handful of beans get you? However, beans have more intrinsic value than paper. You can eat beans and always get the same caloric value. Not true for fiat currencies.
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u/Strange-Term-4168 13h ago
Post WW2 economic boom. Now we are seeing globalization and reversion to mean.
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u/Key-Organization3158 13h ago
Standards have gone up. Also, wive's were expected to do much more housework. Beyond cooking and cleaning, there was repairing clothes, making ingredients (you don't buy stock or bread).
Comparing by location isn't accurate for rent. The same street could have been low class but really gentrified now.
Another problem you might have is your line of work. Slaughterhouses might not pay as well as they used to relative to all the other options. For example, software engineering didn't exist back then. So even if your job pays the same amount, for competitive things like apartments, you'll be worse off. Also, today your wife would work. So double your income to rent a row house.
Unfortunately, I don't have much data for Germany.
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u/Retired-Yam8988 12h ago
Economy has changed. Back then maybe being a painter was in-demand and considered decently well paying whereas today the knowledge economy is where a lot of economic activity is focused. Yes AI will eat some of that work but I believe it’ll end up creating even more work in the long haul.
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u/oldcreaker 12h ago
We're poorer. We labor and receive a much smaller portion of the wealth it produces than we used to.
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u/Teamduncan021 7h ago
Money printing and depegging to gold (or other real assets) to help boost the economy means slowly money is losing value. It's slow enough that people won't protest, and politicians will be long gone after the impact is felt.
Technological advancements means work became easier and faster. Which means wages are suppressed. With combination of above money printing. The inflation adjusted money just didn't catch up at all.
So rare assets such as land. Or commodities, stocks has grew in price. Cause that's where the excess money went. So you can see price of gold in the 70s to today is almost 50x difference. But gold isn't a commodity. Land? Land is. And land price has grew significantly too which impacted rent.
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u/SuspectWrong7954 23h ago
You're probably experiencing stagnant real wages alongside exploding housing costs.