The Cost of Living

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is the price of living in the United States beyond
the reach of folks living in the United States? The
Communist in New York City says yes, and that's why
he won the Democrat nomination for mayor. Is he on
too something? A lot of us just can't keep up,
much less get ahead these days? When did this happen?
Just two generations ago? Anywhere in the country, an average family, mom, dad,

(00:23):
two kids could own a home, a color TV, take
a vacation, buy a new car, pay the doctor bill,
and save every month. What's changed simply the cost of
everything went up a lot faster than wages. In nineteen
seventy five, the median price for a single family home
was twenty six thousand dollars. Since home prices have gone

(00:44):
up one hundred and thirty two percent. Don't know what
the property tax or the property insurance tab was on
that house in seventy five, but my bet is that
those rates have gone up five hundred percent or more
in the fifty years. Healthcare in seventy five, the average
out of pocket annual cost was about one hundred and
thirty dollars per person. Today, it's nearly one thousand dollars

(01:08):
on average. That new car in seventy five average price
thirty six hundred dollars in twenty twenty five forty five
thousand dollars. How about the trip to Disneyland in seventy
five for two adults two kids for three nights, not
including food, was four dollars per day to ride seven
rides and thirty two dollars a night for the hotel.

(01:31):
That's one hundred seventy dollars total. Today, depending on the season,
the ticket book is six hundred dollars per day, the
hotel room three hundred dollars a night. Same for retail goods,
that college education, or much anything else. Was it always
this way? Yes? So what's the difference. It's the average

(01:52):
percentage of what we earn. In seventy five, that home
cost us just twenty percent of our take home income.
Today it's forty five percent principal, interest, taxes, utilities, maintenance.
It adds up that it's pretty close to forty five
percent of which take home health care costs in seventy
five fifteen percent of what we brought home. In some

(02:13):
cases today it's up to thirty percent. Two generations ago,
that college degree from UNL was twenty five dollars at
credit hour on campus housing about fifteen hundred a year
tuition fees, books, food beers, football tickets, spring break trip
a dorm room. Four years twelve thousand dollars. Today it's

(02:34):
over one hundred thousand dollars, not including the trip. Now
we all get inflation, but from the earliest days of
economic thinkers, one principle has remained. When the government intrudes
into the marketplace, its policies set prices, and they always
go up. And in the last two generations, no industries

(02:55):
have seen more government meddling than healthcare and higher education. Medicare, Medicaid,
federally funded student loans. Those three are prime suspects in
your lack of purchasing power. Got another one credit. In
the last fifty years, banks, savings and loans, credit cards,
the car companies have made credit handier than a shirt pocket.

(03:19):
It has fed an addiction Americans cannot break. Get it now,
pay later. Ask your dad or your grandfather, how much
did you owe when you were in your thirties or forties.
They'll say nothing except the home mortgage. In seventy five,
the entire country the USA owed a total of two

(03:40):
hundred billion in debt, and most all of it was
on a mortgage. Today we owe one point eight trillion
on our credit cards, student loans another one trillion. Credit
is the most marketed product in the country. Three hundred
billion dollars is spent promoting debt. It has blurred the

(04:02):
once obvious divide between want and need. For generations, we
only bought what we needed except on Christmas and birthdays.
Credit has made every day Christmas Day promotes bad habits,
gins up phrases like fake it till you make it problem.
A lot of us don't make it. Credit makes it
easy to buy things we think we need, unnecessary gadgets,

(04:26):
expensive cars, clothes, hundreds of cable TV channels we never watch.
I don't even know what channels for which I'm paying.
Some of us even pay to look for things on
the internet. If you fret about your bills, try this.
Sober up and do a really deep dive into your
monthly expenses. Do a spreadsheet with the absolute gotta have

(04:46):
you know, mortgage, utilities, food on one side, and the
think we gotta have on the other, and then slice
up your credit cards. If you eliminate the think we
gotta haves for six months might be surprised how much
more or affordable life can be