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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Difference between a 23YO American in 1980, and a 23YO American in 2025
I have posted about this before. I keep good records. Not only do I have my Social Security report showing what I made in 1980 as a 23 year old, I believe I have kept every tax return I have ever submitted in my almost 7 decades in this country.
IMHO, America, whether under Democratic or Retrumplican control since 1980, has been living under the trickle-down economic bullshit.
We've been sold a worthless bill of goods. Until we destroy trickle-down horseshit, even winning control of the government, results in nothing but nibbling at the margins of what is destroying the Middle Class.
"Pro-growth" is complete fucking bullshit! Take cancer, for example, no one should be "pro-growth" for cancer, but that is what trickle-down is...IT'S A FUCKING CANCER!
Anyway, here is a small part of my story. If you think it could resonate as a simple explanation of how we got to this fucked-up stage in America, feel free to use it.
In 1980, I was a high school graduate working at a grocery store chain in Ohio. As a Stock Clerk I made $12.60 an hour, time-and-a-half for overtime, double-time for Sunday's and Holidays... and even got 8 hours of pay for my birthday, whether I worked that day, or not.
We also had a decent benefits and pension program.
We enjoyed those good wages and benefits, mostly because our major competitor, Kroger, was unionized and our company tried to closely match the Union compensation standards to stave off Union efforts at our company.
The calculator I've used tells me that $12.60 per hour, full time, plus the overtime we averaged, would equate to $96K per year in 2025 dollars. Next time you're at Walmart, or Kroger, ask one of their Stock Clerks if they make $96K a year? Just be ready to run if you need to.
You need to understand. This was a "choice" job for a 23 year old from the Midwest with a high school diploma. This was the type of job that could put you solidly into the Middle Class. You could raise a family, own a nice home, have a car, or two, and maybe afford to take a nice family vacation every year. Hell, you could even afford to take the family out to Sunday dinner a couple times a month, and do the occasional ice cream shop treat for the family.
Not only that, you had a decent pension that you could combine with Social Security, retire at a decent age and live a comfortable and modest life.
If you played your cards right and got some scholarship or financial aid help, you might even be able to send your kids to college.
I left that job to do what eventually became a 30 year Navy career. I managed to make it through the ranks and earned a commission as a Navy Mustang Officer.
I am now retired and enjoy the type of pension and medical benefits most Americans can only dream of.
But back to that grocery store job. Somewhere in the 1980s, this country lost its way.
Suddenly, it was the grocery store clerk or union worker that were the cause of all America's troubles. It was the millionaires and billionaires that were "suffering" under the yoke of Americans who thought their hard work "entitled" them to a modest living and the occasional dinner out with the family.
See, WE were the problem. Our demands for a modest slice of life were keeping all these "job creators" down.
Why should that stock clerk make a decent living? He never hired someone. His wages and buying power never did anything for America. It's the billionaires that need more. I mean seriously, how many yachts is that stock boy buying?
It seemed like overnight that America began to no longer value labor, we valued wealth.
If you wanted a modest life, get a second job. Drive a taxi. Hell, you have 120 hours a week where you're not working. Go get a second or third job bum!
You think working 40-50 hours a week entitles you to a pleasant night out at the IHOP with your family?
I understand that there is a bit more to it, but what we did 40 years ago screwed over an entire generation.
Now, to get that "comfort", you need to be a Walmart greeter at age 80.
There's something rotten here
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MichMan
(15,536 posts)
SickOfTheOnePct
(8,188 posts)I was a bag boy at Publix, started out at $3.00/hour in the summer of 1979 (minimum wage was $2.90), and we got raises every quarter after when quarterly earnings came out. Sometimes it was a dime an hour and every now and then a quarter an hour, depending on how the quarter went.
nowforever
(574 posts)Made 3.55 an hour working in Herman's sporting goods.
Ocelot II
(126,299 posts)That would be about $33 an hour now and there's no way in hell an equivalent job would pay that well.
pazzyanne
(6,704 posts)The contract I signed that year was for $4,000 for the year. 
OrangeJoe
(521 posts)in 1975 my first year teaching I was paid $9,000 a year, with full benefits and a dream pension (2% of high 3 year average, i.e. 60% ) after 30 years. I left the field & they overhauled that pension in 1979 or so.
haele
(14,432 posts)Retail in a "soda store" where the customers would buy 24 12 oz. bottles of locally mixed sodas or mixers (about 15 different flavors, including 4 diet) by the $4 case and return the bottles for a dollar off. I worked there by myself; the owner was friends with my dad and would book me on hours he wanted to run errands or leave the store for a couple hours, and of course, lunch on Saturday with his family.
Still more than what a Waffle House waitress makes now before tips.
According to the family scrapbook, in 1964, my dad made $12 an hour part time at a Standard Oil station on Wilshire Ave as the evening mechanic and gas jockey; 6 days a week, 6 pm to 9 pm. Mom said the cashiers there made $6 an hour full time with benefits after a year; she had been considering working there, but she got pregnant with my little brother and they wouldn't hire her.
These were common non-union jobs that were available back then.
And they still paid more in terms of a living take home pay than equivalent jobs do now.
And income taxes affecting take home pay have been pretty much been the same for the lower 60% since I started working.
Woodycall
(541 posts)$12.60 in 1980 dollars is:
$48.95 in 2025 dollars
Consumer Price Index (Urban), 1665–2100
Seinan Sensei
(1,079 posts)making $6.25 with a wheelbarrow & shovel.
Was doing so well that I bought
a tailored Yves St Laurent suit
Kaleva
(39,680 posts)Working on a farm which didn’t have minimum wage. I joined the Navy later that year
My three step kids, all in their early 30s, own their own homes.
Katinfl
(440 posts)
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)Start in 73 as a cashier making $3.50 an hour part time. By 1980, I was at the top of their full-time pay scale.
Except for butchers...they made even more!
Our meat department manager drove a brand new Corvette.
My child is, obviously older than 23 now, but even in a married household, with 2 full-time workers, they are barely holding on, let alone getting ahead.
newdeal2
(3,462 posts)That seems very high to be the average from that time.
Katinfl
(440 posts)What was your position at $12.50? Just curious because my son works for a grocery store chain (30+ years)and he doesn’t see that kind of growth.
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)Moved onto ordering and stocking the bread department. This was before the stores all had bakeries. Big Bear had a huge bakery plant at 7TH and High Street where they made bread, buns, rolls, etc to deliver to all the stores. The rest of the products were from vender, like Hostess, Wonder...
I have always been an early riser. I had to be at the store at 0400 to get the baked goods delivery.
Then, I moved to another store to take a full-time Stock Clerk job. After about 3 years, I was promoted to Head Stock Clerk.
It took about 7 years, but I reached the top of their non-meat department hourly payscale.
I also got 3 weeks paid vacation. You got one week after your first 12 months, then more based on longevity. I think the max was 4 weeks paid vacation.
BTW-we also had health and dental insurance, but I was young and healthy, so I have no idea if the coverage was any good.
Diamond_Dog
(37,786 posts)I remember a guy I worked with (my first real job in 1978 as a Union apprentice). We were both apprentices. His wife worked as a grocery store cashier and made three times as much as we did.
OTOH Mr. Diamond as a first year teacher made less than a toll taker on the Ohio Turnpike.
North Shore Chicago
(4,187 posts)Had a tennis pal whose wife was a cashier in 1980 (Kroger) she was making 13 or 14 dollars an hour. I was impressed!
radical noodle
(10,304 posts)but it seems that your pay was wildly out of step with the pay most people got. I was making about $5 an hour as an office manager of a union construction company in 1986. I did have the added benefits that unions provide and had a pension and health insurance fully paid by the company.
hunter
(39,717 posts)That was part time and somewhat irregular, so no health benefits.
The biggest difference between me and my children's experience as college students was that I wasn't paying any college tuition, just student fees that amounted to a little over $1,200 per year. My children worked throughout college, they were covered by my wife's health insurance, and they still had to take out loans.
My greatest expenses in college were health and car insurance, more than my rent.
Unfortunately I had some severe mental health issues and a chaotic personal life so I wasn't able to parlay white privilege and employment into an ordinary middle class lifestyle, yet I still managed graduate from college without any debt.
My mind went a little sideways with adolescence and I quit high school for college when I was 16. (I was really good at multiple choice tests.) I was "asked" to take time off from college twice for my erratic behavior, the implied threat being permanent expulsion, but eventually I got my mind (mostly) straightened out and graduated from college nine years later.
In today's meaner world I'm not sure what would have happened to me.
Omnipresent
(7,045 posts)I can only say that you had an exceptionally great job in 1980.
My father was a self employed carpenter that made between 8 and $10 an hour working for himself in the early 80’s and had no benefits beyond that.
He did however say before he died that his trade slowed down during the Reagan era and that when the cumulative impact of his policies changed America for the worst.
SickOfTheOnePct
(8,188 posts)*delete*
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)It was such a good job that my mom cried when I told her I was quitting to join the Navy. I went from making $400 a week, to making $350 a month as an E1. It eventually worked out for me.
She even threatened to write Senator John Glenn and Governor Rhodes to get me out of my enlistment contract. LOL.
COL Mustard
(7,528 posts)I was commissioned in 1980 and a 2nd Lt. made somewhere around $800/month. And you generally worked 60 hours a week or more, most weeks. After taxes my take home was somewhere around $250 every two weeks.
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)Wait! I have it. From my Social Security report,
- last year at Big Bear, 1983 - $26.2K
- first year in the Navy, 1984 - $8K
COL Mustard
(7,528 posts)Than my entire paycheck was back then.
Good problems to have.
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
You said that you made $26,000 in 1983 at Big Ben and yet Governor Rhodes was not in office in 1983. He left office January of that year, so how would your mom call someone that wasn't in office at the time?
TheDemsshouldhireme
(212 posts)Did a parody commercial of the Navy in the 70s is not just a job its an adventure, ended with its 96 or 97 bucks a week.
TnDem
(1,148 posts)I worked in a manufacturing job in 1984 and I started at $4.90, and that was a large company...AND, I was hired at that rate because I was partially paid under the JTPA program, which assisted my employer with my wage amount.
I topped out a few years later at around $8 before moving on. In fact, my wife started around the same time with Kroger, (UFCW union), and she made $3.50 per hour. She later retired at 25 years.
I have ZERO idea how you started at "$12.60 an hour" in 1980 for a non-union job.
eppur_se_muova
(39,543 posts)TnDem
(1,148 posts)My dad was a truck driver for Exxon in the very early 1970's, and he might have made $6 an hour.
Lonestarblue
(12,837 posts)Those theories are in essence give all the money to rich people and the benefits will trickle down to everyone else. And today we have probably the most unequal wealth distribution in the world, skewed to the top 1%. Reagan’s war on unions was part of the effort to re-distribute income from workers to top management and shareholders.
I earned an MBA in 1976, and at that time business schools were teaching that corporations and their managers had responsibilities to three groups: their shareholders, their employees, and their workers. During the 1980s that concept was turned on its head and business schools, following Friedman’s economic ideas, started teaching that the primary (and only really) purpose of corporations is to increase its profits for shareholders. Period. No other purpose. Along with that idea came the rise of CEO and top management bonuses tied to the profits generated. Greed raised its ugly head and took over from there. CEOs began managing business operations to increase their bonuses in the short term any way they could, including laying off workers to reduce operating expenses, paying low wages, moving to states without strong unions, and offshoring work and factories.
Also in the 1980s, the SEC changed the rules on stock buybacks, which were once illegal. In 1982 the SEC issued guidelines that allowed companies to buy back their shares without being accused of market manipulation. Share buybacks are almost always done to increase stock prices, which of course benefits shareholders and includes all those CEOs and top managers who were granted stock as part of their bonuses. Republicans always claim that reducing taxes for big corporations and the wealthy results in huge job growth. It does not, and indeed most of the tax savings from their 2017 tax giveaway was spent on stock buybacks, not job creation.
You are so right about how the middle class has been hollowed out by the policies of the 1980s. But greed and predatory capitalism are now ruling, and it will take a Herculean effort to undo its stranglehold on the country.
TnDem
(1,148 posts)Stagflation and $2 an hour...Add in gas lines and high unemployment, then you have 1975.
COL Mustard
(7,528 posts)Of course you could buy a nice house back then for $95,000. If you bought in 1979 or 1980 and held, especially in more prosperous areas, you're sitting on much more than a mil today. I've seen it in my small town inside the Beltway. I know of one person who bought back then (maybe even earlier) and paid something like $20k. That property is worth way north of $1M today.
TnDem
(1,148 posts)Sam Ewing says:
“Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.”
and:
“Wage workers are unconsciously trading their limited lifetime for abundant pieces of paper that are designed to steal their lifetime”
― Daniella Liberati
The entire system is gamed to do this by the system itself, not Reagan or Carter or Biden or Trump...At first it happens slowly and then ends exponentially... We only recognize true inflation when we wistfully look in the rear view mirror.
Wages shouldn't even go up if we had a fixed dollar tied to a commodity nd not thin air.
OldBaldy1701E
(8,476 posts)
Hey Joe
(128 posts)when this country began the worship of the CEO. I remember the commercials for airlines, hotels and restaurants featuring the gallant CEO darting from limousines into private jets, staying at fancy hotels, expensive restaurants and attending big corporate meetings.
I remember wondering why all of the sudden this attention to these well paid executives like they were the center of the universe.
Turns out it was just corporate messaging to justify their greed.
moondust
(20,960 posts)Well said.
Reagan era: Greed is good.
40 years later: Greed is God.
Reagan era also demonized "big gubment." That was easy to do back when the USSR still existed and didn't allow much private enterprise. Evil empire!!! It worked so well the GQP are still doing it, perhaps leading to DOGE and all sorts of other cuts to "big bad" government. Of course private enterprise may not always take good care of the "commons" shared by all, preferring to do anything to boost their stock price. Privatization of everything might even create a global sewer that even the oligarchs may not be able to escape.
I've always had some reservations about the U.S. and its morally questionable slave-owning founders, totally irresponsible gun culture and assassinations, endless unnecessay wars, etc., and Raygun's 49-state landslide reelection in 1984 certainly didn't help.
Maybe change its name to "Greedland"?
Initech
(105,763 posts)And so much of the crap we're experiencing right now can be tied directly back to Fox and Limbaugh. 
Orrex
(65,653 posts)I’d been out of work for two years and was desperate for any job. The position in question amounted to putting glassware into boxes 8 hours a day for $ 9.75 per hour.
When I mentioned the job to my mother-in-law’s boyfriend, he recalled that he’d worked that same job for that same company in the early 70s, and they paid him that same $9.75.
35 years of negative wage growth. God bless America!
SickOfTheOnePct
(8,188 posts)...was not typical for 23 year olds at that time.
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)Granted, it would be considered upper middle class, but the bottom line is you could live a good, decent, modest life with that job.
You weren't going to be Bill Gates rich, but you could thrive. You could breath. You could even put some money away. You didn't have to live paycheck to paycheck.
America thought that was the easy life.
If you worked a full-time job, you could afford to live...maybe even thrive.
How many people working 40 hours a week today can do that?
rampartd
(2,237 posts)called " washington consensus" the neoliberal economic model is still embraced by most dem and all repub elected types.
from wiki
The Washington Consensus is a set of ten economic policy prescriptions considered in the 1980s and 1990s to constitute the "standard" reform package promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries by the Washington, D.C.-based institutions the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and United States Department of the Treasury.[1] The term was first used in 1989 by English economist John Williamson.[2] The prescriptions encompassed free-market promoting policies such as trade liberalization, privatization and finance liberalization.[3][4] They also entailed fiscal and monetary policies intended to minimize fiscal deficits and minimize inflation.[4]
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)
LSparkle
(12,082 posts)First real job and apartment. My salary was $1085 a month and I think that was pre-tax. My rent for a single apartment in Los Angeles (on the west side) was $175 and my car payment was $99.17. Insurance for the car with Allstate was about $50 monthly. But I believed in the American dream of upward mobility ... and then I spent the next 40 years working in the bullshit trickle-down economy of Raygun and company. No wonder I don’t feel like I’ve done as well as my parents.
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)A 66 Olds Delta 88. Paid $600 for it.
Johnny2X2X
(23,110 posts)Burger King, other small locally owned restaurants, a video tape store etc. I worked a sea food restaurant as a busser, a dishwasher, and a cook. I made a lifelong friend there who was the best man at my wedding. We still talk about how much fun we had working there all those years ago. And it's also the topic of debate about wages and other issues. He thinks restaurant workers making $15 an hour is too much and that's not supposed to be a living, it's supposed to be a first job you work up from. I remind him about inflation and that the $6,80 he was making as a cook in 1987 was the equivalent of $19.30 today.
And for a lot of young people, the first time you really get to know adults socially outside your family and people at school is at your first jobs. We worked with some cooks who were in their 30s. I say to my friend, "remember those people we worked with? They had lives, they weren't living lives of luxury or anything, but those guys had apartments, modest cars, and could get by." There were waitresses who could get by. I worked at Burger King with people making a living there. Now if you work at a restaurant job, you're either living with your parents or have a few roommates.
And health care wasn't this giant shadow hanging over everyone's head, it was mostly affordable and you could get decent insurance through most jobs. The rich decided to impoverish much of the work force so the uber rich could have even more, and now we're living it.
cachukis
(3,336 posts)program during school for 16 hours a week. It bloomed to 40 hours in the summer. I was paid $11.00 an hour in the mid seventies.
Had to take a civil service test and obviously passed, never knowing my results.
Earning that much set me on a track to earn more as I got older.
llmart
(16,663 posts)what grocery chain you worked at? I'm just curious because my husband worked at one while going to college. I don't have the receipts, but I clearly remember how much he was making in the year we got married (not the 80's but 70's). His place was union. I will never forget my stepmother, who was a nurse in a big city hospital working in the ICU saving lives, and she was always appalled at how much more money my husband made putting cans on a shelf than she did standing on her feet all day saving people's lives. It never seemed fair to me or her, but I was a feminist right from the start and saw so much inequality between the sexes.
I agree with you and have posted many times on here that I have always said our country started going downhill with Reagan. That was where this nightmare we are living began.
My Social Security report for 1983, the last full year I worked there, shows $26K as my earnings for the year.
Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, thought I was crazy to leave that job to join the Navy, but it worked out for me.
The next step up for me at Big Bear would be an Assistant Store Manager position, but then, you got put on "salary" instead of hourly.
They worked those Managers and Assistant Managers to the bone. I saw my Assistant Manager, who lived about an hour away from our store, start at 6AM and not leave until 10-1030 PM. One night, he got a hotel close to the store instead of making the drive home. I knew that wasn't for me.
Even my first job, on a Void Tiger Team on my first ship in the shipyard, had a better quality of life.
llmart
(16,663 posts)My husband was on what they called the "night crew" on the weekends. It was only two nights - Friday and Saturday (stores were closed on Sundays back then). They started after the store closed on Friday night and worked until 2 or 3 AM. They got double time on Friday and triple time on Saturday since it essentially ended on a Sunday. They were union. When I met him I was working a full time executive secretary job and he made more money putting cans on a shelf than I did working a 40 hour work week.
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)One year, they scheduled me to work that day. I got double-time for working the holiday, 8 hours for holiday pay, and 8 hours for my birthday. For one 8 hour shift, I got paid for 32 hours. They never did that again.
I bet you no one under 50 even knows that there used to he a thing called Birthday Pay.
BeerBarrelPolka
(1,839 posts)and never heard of Big Bear either. Fazio's, Pick and Pay, Heinens, Lawsons, Fishers, probably a couple more I can't remember off hand.
llmart
(16,663 posts)Also, Rini's Stop and Shop. Pick and Pay was our go-to store growing up and then Fisher/Fazios when I was married.
I Rec'd your post, but this mess certainly didn't start under Reagan OR Carter, but before that.
When the US went off the gold standard and finally the silver standard, it was downhill from there...First slowly and ending very fast.
3Hotdogs
(14,411 posts)I worked there for 7 years and earned a B.A. at night school Then I became a teacher. Starting salary - $7,200 in 1971.
I retired in 2006. Pension and SS get me $72k per year. Things are not great but they are not bad. I'm content.
so where is this leading?
After I retired, I was bored, looking for something to do. So I walked the 1/8 mile to King's supermarket to see about a part time job. The offered $10 per hour with a max of 30 hours per week so's they wouldn't have to pay benefits.
I never went back there, even as a customer.
NoMoreRepugs
(11,508 posts)face an even more uncertain economic future thanks to AI and outsourcing.
mama
(181 posts)I can confirm that I would have really envied someone earning your salary and benefits. As a college graduate teacher in the parochial system, I had to get by on $7400 per year. When I quit to pursue further education, my highest salary was about $8/hr, a seasonal job with UPS.
Forward to 2018, I hadn't been working for years because of family responsibilities. Hubby got suddenly laid off and I decided to pick up a little something so he could relax. Went to a job fair at Giant Eagle, pay was $10 with no benefits. Less money than you made 38 years prior at the same job.
BigMin28
(1,731 posts)anyone over 50. That isn't even an option now.
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)but there was a report about the large percentage of Walmart workers that qualified and received public assistance to make ends meet.
So, if you think about it, our taxes are subsidizing the payscale at Walmart.
I am sure they are not the only major corporation sucking on that "gubmint" teet.
SickOfTheOnePct
(8,188 posts)The proposed solution was to have Walmart (or whomever) pay the government for every employee who is getting public assistance.
While that seems like an easy fix, I don't agree that it is, because someone being on public assistance may be due solely to their pay or it could be a result of pay and family size.
The question I posed is this: two employees doing the same work and making the same wage (same hourly rate, same number of hours, etc.). One employee is single, no dependents, and doesn't need any public assistance. The second is a single parent with two kids, and due to income and family size, qualifies for SNAP benefits and Medicaid.
Should Walmart have to pay the single parent with dependents more than they pay the single no-dependents employee for the same work?
KPN
(16,799 posts)past. Haven't googled it this morning, but it's been my understanding for well more than a decade now -- maybe two. I also happened into chance conversation with two different people more than 8 or 10 years ago now who were actually WalMart employees at the time and getting/qualifying for SNAP benefits; one of them was homeless and living in his car. This is one of the reasons I no longer and and won't ever shop at WalMart again.
Oneironaut
(6,088 posts)Our college graduates are coming into a world where they might not find a job despite graduating.
Many of the job postings now are fake. You’re writing a resume and cover letter that will never be considered.
If someone responds to an application, there’s a chance it’s just an AI bot or scammer.
Many companies are using AI to scan resumes now. Also, companies are being spammed with fake AI resumes, making visibility of real candidates even lower.
We are not planning to offset jobs lost through AI. Our plan is, “Just let them be poor. It’s ok to have 50% unemployment in society.” It’s completely delusional. Our society is eating itself rather than using AI to create more jobs. Keep wages stagnant and laying people off with no alternative, and, you are creating a nice time bomb that is going to explode on our society.
raccoon
(31,964 posts)Keep wages stagnant and laying people off with no alternative, and, you are creating a nice time bomb that is going to explode on our society.
pfitz59
(11,691 posts)Working for the Forest Service. ~ $500/mo as Navy E-3 in 1981 (nuke puke accelerated promotion). Mustang promotion retired as O-4. Nice pension plus SS and I'm doing OK (Tricare for Life). Watched as Reagonomics gutted the lower and middle class in this country. I don't see how the modern military can stomach the current situation and ther oaths to protect the Constitution while Trump and SCrOTUS tear it to shreds. I don't see an easy way out of this mess.
rickford66
(5,916 posts)If I only knew I could quit that job and work at the local supermarket.
Freddie
(9,917 posts)70s thru 90s. He worked at the Acme and it was a union job. While he was there he became certified in airplane mechanics but decided to stay at the Acme because the $$ was better. Mid-90s they gave all the union people a nice buyout to quit and replaced them with folks making $8/hour, then most of the local Acmes closed.
yardwork
(67,342 posts)I think a lot of people who are replying missed the point that you worked your way up to that position over nearly 10 years.
The point is that there was the opportunity to work your way up to a good living, with good benefits. That's what's gone now.
In 1982 I had just graduated from college. I wanted to stay in the area and took a job at a hotel restaurant while I looked for a better job. The job paid very little - even with tips because I worked the breakfast and lunch shift - but it had free health insurance. And a retirement plan. And paid time off.
I was guaranteed 40 hours a week. I had consistent shifts. A number of the other waiters were young moms, earning money while their children were in daycare. They could do this because they had the same shift every day, Monday through Friday. We worked from 6am to 2 pm.
Nobody working in the service industry has that anymore.
Historic NY
(39,160 posts)TnDem
(1,148 posts)Inflation was counted wildly different then than it is now.
The old: "There's lies, damn lies and then there's statistics"
KPN
(16,799 posts)The rate in 1979 was 13.3%. The first 6 months of 1980 were considered a recession.
ForgedCrank
(2,784 posts)the only grocery store employees in my area who made that kind of money were unionized at one particular store. Which was great until they went bankrupt a few years later and closed all of their stores in several states. Everyone else was making 3-5 dollars an hour for unskilled labor.
FakeNoose
(38,026 posts)... well see, they're SPECIAL because (as you say) ... they're the JOB CREATORS.
So they deserve all the benefits of the trickle-downwards/gush-upwards system. When it's all gushing upwards, there's not much left to trickle down to us. But that's OK because we DEPEND on the billionaires for our jobs and livelihoods.
Therefore Uncle Sam needs to keep them happy and give them reasons to keep investing THEIR MONEY in our economy. (Like where else would they invest it, anyway?) Reagan didn't invent this trickle-down theory, but he played it perfectly. That's the story they've been shoving down our throats for the last 45+ years.
It's the biggest load of horseshit ever, since the "divine right of kings" system.
lastlib
(26,375 posts)persuading people to glorify and worship wealth. It was the "greed is good" mentality on steroids, and far too many people bought it.
ThreeNoSeep
(223 posts)$3.50 if I was lucky. IMO, while I agree with your sentiment, the portrayal of your pay weakens your argument. I don't know anyone who worked at a grocery store stocking shelves making that kind of money. Unless Stocking Clerk means something else.
c-rational
(3,079 posts)JT45242
(3,513 posts)First jobs were delevering the "Door Store" ads and the local weekly newspaper.
Eventually worked at a McDonald's and was making about $8 in 1991 when minimum wage was around $4.50. Was so good at what I did, that they paid me travel time to drive 4 hours from college each weekend each way to preclose on Friday, open Saturday, and open Sunday. One of the guys, I went to HS with bought his first store at age 22 while I was still in college with his profit sharing. McD's corporate stores gave you a 2% bonus every year and many of us qualified for matching stock options. When I finally graduated, I was making about $24K a year ($just under $12/hour). That's equivalent to $53,400 a year today according to google. You could live on that in most places.
I quit that job to become a science teacher at a Catholic school (they hired me when I graduated in August) for $14K plus $3k in extra contract work (man the computer lab, scoreboard operator, etc). I didn't make much more at the public school when I left after two years. It was my fourth year as a school teacher that I outearned my wife who was working as adminstrative support staff for an architecture firm and then a doctor's office.
Yeah -- the irony of painting "welfare cheats" as black women who had extra kids to get more welfare tapped into both racism and a sense of resentment rather than the reality that most welfare is corporate welfare going to investors and c-suite types is too painful.
Walmart, General Electric, defense contractors, at first then later apple, google, all of Apartheid Clyde businesses that took over definded government agencies like NASA and of course ALWAYS THE BANKS.
Yesterday I heard Gov. Braun in Indiana talk about the for porfit companies charging huge amounts for electricity because they are not regulated and appealed to their good nature to "help Indianians out"....seriously, regulate profits and safety. Problem solved. BUt that would never come out of a rethigligan mouth even though they know deep down that it is the solution -- just not the one that the people who REALLY PAY them want.
Ms. Toad
(37,374 posts)And with a bachelor's degree and a professional certification i only made $4.81 $10,005/year. In skeptical that grocery store clerk made nearly 3 times that in the same era.
I can't find a 1980 comparison, but a union survey from 1975 puts the range of wages for full time store clerks between $3375-6673 ($2.62-$3.21)
sdfernando
(5,826 posts)but much older. He was drafted near the end of WWII and went to the Philippines. After he got out he worked for the postal service, got his degree and then went back into the Army as an officer. Went to Korea, and Vietnam..so a 3 war veteran. He retired at 49 and had a whole other career in real estate. He was actually retired from the Army way longer than he served. Of course this all worked out for him...and us. I myself graduated HS in 1979 (so we are close in age). Being a gay man I never served, wasn't allowed back then and I wasn't going to hide it. Still had some good jobs that I mostly "fell" into. Just now retiring (a few years early) and getting out of this country before the end of the year. Trickle down is and always has been a joke! Curses on demented reagan and stockman for foisting that on us...yeah, I know it wasn't just them but they were the most visible ones.
TnDem
(1,148 posts)In the Infantry during all three eras of combat that you say he has, then he would have been awarded the Combat Infantry badge times three.
There are only 325 people that have been awarded that award for three separate wars. All of their names are on a plaque at Fort Benning.
sdfernando
(5,826 posts)In Vietnam he as an early advisor type attached to a Vietnamese battalion. He as in the Brinks hotel when the garage bomb went off. The rest of his career he generally served above his grade.
Martin68
(26,227 posts)
PATRICK
(12,290 posts)Such as getting the "easy to get" jobs through middlemen services that took at least a third of the salary you would normally have received as a full time employee. Disposable, farm system "temps" always pressured to take the worst assignments with the crummier benefits of the middlemen. Security guards who dropped out faster than autumn leaves left "opportunities" to work round the clock for days for the sleep deprived remnant. My wife finally got decent employment at a student loan corp(se) and it blew itself up with corruption. Walmart would routinely fire workers and managers about to get some seniority advancements. It seems no one even discusses the "poverty limit" wage
I finally made it into the USPS which, compared to the autoworkers and other powerful union jobs, went from backwater to treadwater to among the last standing regarding decent wages and benefits. I think ALL benefits and work standards originate from unions. I remember Reagan making sure we ALSO paid into SS besides our pension. Attacks were made on our Thrift Plan under Bush. Everything is against us under the dictator. We have suffered endless attacks(despite the popular support) and all the governing bodies(both parties) even if loyal to the service believe in idiotic and destructive policies like privatization. Simple math seems to escape American business when it comes to resenting workers and consumers and implementing technology. They hire vicious headhunters to suppress unions. They serve the stock market game.
Recreating the Desolation of Smaug and waiting for the dragon to go to sleep?
bagimin
(1,587 posts)After 13 years of traveling and playing music with my wife, I became a letter carrier in '84 and retired in '16. I was under civil service and have little social security. We have an extremely modest retirement and not the best health as we struggle toward 80.
FadedMullet
(359 posts).....making $2.25 an hour, non union. Moved to Denver in 1970 and went to work for King Soopers as a union journeyman (RCIA) making $3.65 an hour while going to school. Today's equivalent would be $30.56 an hour or over Sixty thousand a year. I'm retired and never made that much in a year. Ever.
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)Not so much the hourly wage I was paid, but what it translated into for real buying power.
My brother had a degree in education. He worked for a few years as a Grade School teacher, but he made more money as a part-time butcher at Big Bear, so he left teaching and went full-time.
Even our cashiers, who started at $3.50 an hour in 1973, WOULD BE MAKING $24.50 PER HOUR in today's money as their ENTRY LEVEL PAY!
Just looked it up. The starting wage for a Kroger cashier in Ohio is $13.77!!!!!
That's a far cry from $24.50
FadedMullet
(359 posts).....complaining that they could not get workers post Covid. Remember when all the factory jobs were going overseas or to Mexico? Our republican overlords told us not to worry as we were transitioning to a "service economy" and our counties great wealth would benefit everyone. There were voices among us who said "this is baloney, don't believe it, moving money around requires money in the first place", but they were ignored. (Oh, yeah, I also have my tax returns dating back to 1970. It's a disorder of some sort, I'm sure.)
Wicked Blue
(8,149 posts)Last edited Fri Jul 25, 2025, 02:58 PM - Edit history (1)
But I competely agree with the rest of your post.
The decline began with President Ray-gun. The rich became "in" and working people were "out" as far as the media were concerned.
After fucking with the California system of public education as governor, Ray-gun got rid of free tuition in the state colleges and universities. All of a sudden poor and lower middle class folks lost the opportunity to get degrees and a shot at good white collar jobs.
The cancer spread to other states around the country. Free tuition disappeared. Low cost tuition, like the $200 per semester I paid at Rutgers, was gone. The price of a college education got higher and higher, becoming unaffordable for most. And Congress passed a law that made it impossible to declare bankruptcy to get out from under staggeringly large student loans.
Lots of middle class kids went into the IT field, one of the few areas where they could get decent jobs and hope to pay off those loans.
Then two things happened. Congress passed a law exempting companies from paying overtime to IT employees, so businesses could force people to work insane hours with no extra pay. Big tech firms also persuaded the federal government to loosen regulations on H1b work visas for tech workers.
Soon tech companies were laying off many of their IT people, saying they earned too much, and replacing them with foreign IT workers as cheap labor. One American IT person might be replaced by two or three people on work visas making far less money than their predecessors, and willing to work longer hours. This began driving IT salaries down across the board.
Back when this was happening, overseas companies supplying tech workers began providing them with cheap barracks style housing, so they could save much of their earnings and return home wealthy by their home countries' standards.
And like many other college graduates, laid off IT workers were stuck with those gargantuan student loans, unable to afford having children or buying homes. I know someone who graduated from law school nearly 20 years ago, who has barely made a dent on his loan and will likely be paying it for the rest of his life. And this is just for law school, he got his BA on a scholarship.
The goal of the oligarchy is to undo the entire New Deal and force the vast majority of Americans into menial work that does not pay benefits.
LiberalBear
(27 posts)As US economic productivity has gone up dramatically since 1980 due to increased efficiencies in large part driven by technology and "free" trade, while labor has been weakened in its role to impact markets. The result, helped by US tax laws that reward investment but punish work, a huge increase in disparity of wealth between educated and uneducated and young vs old. There is an obvious and clear answer to this problem and that of the national debt. Progressively tax unrealized capital gains and balance the tax codes revenue generation by capturing a piece of the economic productivity that currently remains untaxed. Notably, as unrealized capital gains grow in accordance with economic growth, these investments do not lay dormant for those who hold them as these large stock portfolios are leveraged for a wide range of economic activity to avoid paying income tax. I don't need ChatGPT tell me this as it is obvious to anyone who can count....but what the hell, good to know I am at least 15 years ahead of AI.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/i-asked-chatgpt-what-would-happen-if-billionaires-paid-taxes-at-the-same-rate-as-the-middle-class/ar-AA1I2aW5?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=c1cdf97f50fa41d08eb2fc496ac9e064&ei=17
I was discharged from the AF and found work on what they called a CETA program where the government would pay half your salary for on-the-job training. I was a copywriter for an ad agency in Anchorage, Ak. I ended up writing 98% of their copy and was paid $3.50 per, half of it paid by Uncle Sam. Since I had been making about $180 a month in the AF, it seemed pretty good.
thatdemguy
(606 posts)It was at pizza hut as a cook, iirc I made 10 cents more than min wage. I was lucky and occasionally got to wait tables, that was I think 2.12 an hour but even then I could make 20-25 an hour in tips on a friday night.
I went in the navy and got out and went back to pizza hut as a shift supervisor, and made 6.55 an hour in 1994. I left pizza hut and joined the electrical union and made 6.46 an hour in 1995. Top pay in 1995 for a journeymen in the union was 20.50 an hour.
I did have a part time job working in the county owned liquor stores in 1990 making like 9.95 an hour, which was very high pay at the time. And all of this was in Montgomery county md, which was at the time one of the richest counties in the country. I knew someone who worked for Giant grocery stores and they were union and in 1990 they made like 8 or so an hour.
So making 12.xx an hour in 1980 made you very rare for pay.
1WorldHope
(1,481 posts)I believe you. A grocery store job used to be a career, for men. Teachers and nurses were mostly women and did not ever make a living wage. But I was able to live quite frugally with part time jobs back in those days. Rent was cheap, food was reasonable, I don't remember utilities being that bad either. Cars were cheap, gas was cheap. I remember putting a $1.00 worth of gas in my car and driving around town all evening. Ahh the good old days.
Kaleva
(39,680 posts)Gas was about $1.19 a gallon in 1980 which equates to about $4.54 a gallon in today’s dollars. Gas is going for about $3.19 a gallon today where I live.
StocktonNative
(136 posts)and we were paying around $0.89 a gallon....cigarettes were under a buck. It wasn't until 1992 or so that gas bumped passed a dollar around $1.12 - that seemed like a good bump.
Kaleva
(39,680 posts)“To calculate the time price of a gallon of gasoline we divided the nominal money price by nominal blue-collar hourly compensation (wages and benefits) as reported by the economic data website measuringworth.com. When we look at the time price of a gallon of gasoline, we see a much different story.
In 1929 it took about 24 minutes to earn the money to buy one gallon of gasoline. Today the time price is closer to 6 minutes. The time price of gasoline has dropped by 75 percent. For the time it took to earn the money to buy one gallon in 1929, you can buy four gallons today“
https://humanprogress.org/are-gas-prices-really-the-highest-in-history/
The information I got about the price of gas in 1980 was from various sites that listed the national average price of gasoline in the US for any given year.
I also was working grocery..I was a couple years behind you but 10 bucks and hour in the 80's was damn good money..New cars were about 12,000 or more of course..But life was good, rent was dirt cheap.. I could pay the car payment and rent from one check..
SleeplessinSoCal
(10,213 posts)It may be too late to fix.
slightlv
(6,192 posts)an office job at 16k a year when I was in my early 20's. But as a single mom with very little child support (150$/mo), it didn't go far when the Montessori school was $180/mo! LOL I was living in San Antonio in what is now known as the NE side of town, around Nacogdoches Ave. Rents were high, for the time... but you could walk into an HEB and get tortillas and cans of refried beans pretty damned cheap. Also helped that four different apartments of us in the same boat pooled money and held communal dinners so everyone was always fed.
It was when Reagan got into office it all started going downhill for us fast. You hit the nail on the head, Max, when you wrote:
It's even put right out there in our tax code! UNEARNED Income is taxed lower than EARNED Income. Passive income of any and all types should be taxed higher than the money made by the sweat of your brow or your knowledge, skill, and training towards specialized subject areas. Labor has been disrespected for way too long in this country, and we put up with it. But it hit the golden age with Reagan. All anyone had to say was "X" was going to be "deregulated" and we knew immediately prices would be going up again.
"Trickle Down" policies, deregulation, and greedflation have been hitting us over the head for decades. The entire tax code needs to be scrapped at the first opportunity and rewritten to more closely resemble what it was in the 50's and 60's... take back the code to the Progressive scales, instead of the Regressive one we have now.
I say, I'll be satisfied with my pre 1980's salary (via SS) that I'm trying to live on right now, if all these vendors, companies, and corporations drop their prices on everything they sell to their pre-1980's prices.
wryter2000
(47,921 posts)And his voodoo economics
TheDemsshouldhireme
(212 posts)I was a stock person in grocery store in 1980 and made a little over 3 bucks, and I have my ss statement also.
bluboid
(809 posts)joanbarnes
(2,018 posts)...and in the 1950's and 60's of my childhood guns were rare (law enforcement only had them), homelessness rare, mom's stayed home, somehow we got to the doctor and dentist when we needed to. We rode on solid roads, there was always money for schools. We also had public bus and train transportation. One working parent raised a family of 8. We had few vacations and were frugal but we were never hungry. I know it was not great for people of color in the more shithole parts of the country though.
Dock_Yard
(225 posts)I'm in my 71st year, born in late '54.
Lately I have been making the conversational point that the First One-Third of my life, America was steadily advancing the life/liberty/happiness (and financial) interests of "the average Joe". And that the Last Two-Thirds of my life, America has suffered a complete reversal of that trend.
The unmistakable turning point: Year 1980, the election that resulted in RayGun. I was 24, in my first full-time job in the high-tech engineering world (designing the optical guts of the Hubble Telescope, if you're curious). I detested that administration:
> its embrace of phony christian evangelicalism,
> its over-the-top patriotism for all the wrong reasons,
> its moderate & periodic bullshit, and
> its utter incompetence both pre- and during ronny's dementia, with a semi-culted first lady calling most of the shots for the last 2-3 years.
But to my young-ish self at the time, it SEEMED like we would get back to the progressive chase we'd been on.
As it turned out over the following 45 years, we never could achieve that resumption. 12 years of gop strangle-holds on the oval office, congress fracturing under radical right-wing factions, etc. We thought Clinton would straighten everything out, and he made good progress on balancing the federal budget, yet little got done to close the vastly diverging wealth gap between the rich and the middle class. And under the radar all along, "democrats" across the entire south and fly-over states were getting pulled into "conservatism" (HA) via their incurable addiction to nonsensical political crap cloaked in phony christian preaching. The early rise of right-polarized "news" channels on cable, plus the later explosion of social media has only locked millions of unintelligent, low-info people into the cults they find themselves in.
The 1/3rd vs the 2/3rds of my life. It's sad to contemplate, and, while I'm moving on to live out my personal goals, I'm unable to assess the broader/societal trend any other way.
Auggie
(32,440 posts)after income tax and health insurance, I was broke.
pansypoo53219
(22,439 posts)StocktonNative
(136 posts)She said she was making about $19k around 1979. I'm sure she was making more than a grocery store cashier by far. Minimum wage was $3.35 in 1985 and I was making that at Carl's Jr when my other friends got the same at CentroMart.
Evolve Dammit
(21,106 posts)
madville
(7,818 posts)That’s a $100k a year job in today’s dollars if it was full time. That must have been a very rare situation, those jobs back then typically paid more like $3-5 an hour in most parts of the country.
I retired from the military myself, I’m more shocked you left a job making $26,000 a year in 1980 to join the navy and make probably $6,000 a year.
TimeToGo
(1,428 posts)But I can’t remember where. Maybe here some time ago,
Seems implausible based on my experience. But . . . who knows.
phxjurist
(40 posts)"while it's possible that a stock clerk could have made $12.60 per hour in 1980 in a specific situation, it would not have been the typical wage for that role. The average wage would likely have been closer to the federal minimum wage of $3.10 or slightly above it." AI was used in this quote.
However, other sources say that the median household income in 1980 was about $18,000.
Aussie105
(7,113 posts)Me, son of Dutch immigrants to Australia:
1960s: 6 years of Uni education, paid for by the government on the promise I'd teach in the country for 1 year.
(Living allowance included.)
Ran a family of 4 and a mortgage on a teacher's wage.
Now retired, solid income from government pension and retirement fund.
Now we have higher education loans, to be repaid when you actually get a job.
Single income family on a current teacher's wage couldn't support 4 people, a mortgage plus those repayments.
Ther numbers just don't gel like they did in the past.
Jack Valentino
(2,881 posts)at a non-union grocery--- or at a union grocery, for that matter. Minimum wage was $3.00 or $3.35 1980-1981...
I have read this narrative before, I presume it must have been from you,
and found it very hard to believe the first time...
rickyhall
(5,327 posts)With overtime I might have broke $10k that year. What were you saying about being better then? Horse shit. They were screwing most of then and now, nothing changes.
BigmanPigman
(53,406 posts)My entire life has been destroyed by this idea. As an artist, then a teacher I have struggled to earn and save every fucking penny since I have ZERO safety nets. I am not married, not a veteran and so I am screwed big time to this day. I had to work for shit at jobs which were torture just to get paid minimum wage and health insurance. And it is continuing!!! Fuck RAYGUN!!!!! And Bush, and Bush 2 and tRump and all the future uber rich.
The idea that "greed is good" has ruined this country since 1980. Two college degrees and I still worked minimum wage jobs and careers that were hell on earth, just to have health insurance. What fucking country lives like this besides the US?!?
benfranklin1776
(6,941 posts)Trickle down means getting pissed on by the rich and excoriated for not liking it. 🤬It ‘s exactly as you say the biggest scam perpetrated on Americans ever. 😡
lostnfound
(17,110 posts)As a library page for a public library, they could pay 85% of minimum wage. As an engineering student after just 9 months of college, one could be hired as a co-op with regular pay raises every term. Six months work, six months school, paid my non-scholarship expenses.
maxrandb
(16,708 posts)As I was thinking about this, I had a conversation with an old friend. He's a bit conservative, but not in a Donnie Dipshit fascist way.
Anyway, the conversation eventually ended on the conservative 60 year trickle-down bullshit that conservatives always go to. It's like rote learning.
As I pointed out how much wages have been decimated, he centered on the tired old; "people are not getting ahead, because they live beyond their means". They always fall on this. You know? That poor working stiff "has to have a car", or "a cellphone", or, "they buy too much stuff", or they "bought a house".
It truly is a fucked-up argument. As if transportation, shelter, communications, were a "luxury"!
I simply pointed out that THAT'S WHAT BEING MIDDLE CLASS IN AMERICA USED TO BE!
A middle class American, working a full-time job, should be able to buy a car, rent, or buy a home, afford to communicate, and maybe even take the family out for dinner, a movie, or take a summer vacation.