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Housing costs

Awesome find. The more things change, the more some things stay the same! I particularly liked the page 13 article on businesses that price-cut.
 
1930 annual wage was $1000 in toronto , brand car new was $600 and average house was $6000 , meaning you would have to work 6 years to buy a house , maybe 6 months for a car , 2015 average wage let't say $40-50K average house price in Toronto 600-900K = 12-18 years of working to save up for a house , assuming many things like no taxes etc............. , i wonder what interest rates were back in 1930's , one ad in this newsletter was offering 4% for saving account
 
1930 annual wage was $1000 in toronto , brand car new was $600 and average house was $6000 , meaning you would have to work 6 years to buy a house , maybe 6 months for a car , 2015 average wage let't say $40-50K average house price in Toronto 600-900K = 12-18 years of working to save up for a house , assuming many things like no taxes etc............. , i wonder what interest rates were back in 1930's , one ad in this newsletter was offering 4% for saving account

Of course, they also spent about 25% of their income on food (seasonal and mostly local; mostly vegetarian with small meat portions) compared to 6% today.
 
FWIW
We bought our starter home in 1961 in North York for less than $15,000 on a weekly wage of $105. The 30 year, 6.75% mortgage carried for under $100 per month including property tax.
We are busy folks and never got around to moving, the house is now worth $600,000.
 
Another article in that paper referenced a lot in Forest Hill (Old Forest Hill Rd and Walmer Rd...did these roads intersect at one point in time?) for $23,000 and a new house to be built on that lot for $100,000...all in 1930's dollars!
 
1930 annual wage was $1000 in toronto , brand car new was $600 and average house was $6000 , meaning you would have to work 6 years to buy a house , maybe 6 months for a car , 2015 average wage let't say $40-50K average house price in Toronto 600-900K = 12-18 years of working to save up for a house , assuming many things like no taxes etc............. , i wonder what interest rates were back in 1930's , one ad in this newsletter was offering 4% for saving account

FWIW, Average household income is probably a better metric than average wage. That would reduce the "years to buy," although not down to the six years in your example.
 
The article was talking about what prices should be for home ownership to be affordable to 80% of the population. I would say it's affordable to much less than that today, especially if based on current incomes and current prices. If you don't have an inheritance, and haven't had the chance to benefit from the major appreciation in home values in the last 10-20 years on a home you bought earlier, good luck...
 
The article was talking about what prices should be for home ownership to be affordable to 80% of the population. I would say it's affordable to much less than that today, especially if based on current incomes and current prices. If you don't have an inheritance, and haven't had the chance to benefit from the major appreciation in home values in the last 10-20 years on a home you bought earlier, good luck...

Should home ownership be affordable for 80% of the population?

Anyways, you're right in the sense that you need a small fortune to purchase a house in Toronto. Hell, you need a good $15-20K +land transfer (an absolute joke especially if you're not a 1st time home buyer) just to buy a condo. If it's brand new, you need even more.
 
Of course, they also spent about 25% of their income on food (seasonal and mostly local; mostly vegetarian with small meat portions) compared to 6% today.

I'd be curious when the changes in diet started in terms of eating more meat.

Anyways, there's still expenses people didn't have to worry about back then. Typically the wife stayed at home (almost always) which is part of the reason why incomes were lower, but it also meant you didn't have to worry about childcare expenses and probably a few other things.

You also didn't have to spend as much on university education since an average job today requires a post-secondary education vs just a high school degree back then. Although much of that cost is state subsidized, that's still a cost (via taxes), and it's also less time a person spends on education while they still need housing, food, etc provided for them and time not spent earning money. Healthcare costs are also higher (mostly via taxes).

Also while cars were less expensive back then, you didn't really need them while today 95%+ of Canadians live in a place where they're at a serious disadvantage if they don't own a car. I'm not sure how infrastructure costs would compare, we do have more roads, highways, etc per capita.

The low interest rates of today do help make housing more affordable, but I think it's risky to assume they'll stay that way for the next 25 years.

I also don't know what the writer of the article used for the definition of a home with "civilized conveniences and modern facilities" in Detroit. That city certainly had very much of an "out with the old, in with the new" mentality at the time.
 
I'd be curious when the changes in diet started in terms of eating more meat.

Portion sizes in general increased significantly during the end of the 70's and early 80's.

Meat wise, typical restaurant steak portions went from 3 to 5 ounces in the 50's to today's 8 to 16 ounces. In the '50s McDonalds had a 1.5 ounce standard burger patty and today they serve closer to an 8 ounce patty on average; the single-patty big mac was considered excessive but today it's actually on the small side of the options.

There are many examples but I'm not aware of a single published study on just meat; most focus on general increase (near doubling) in portion sizes between 1950 and 2000.

It's something I've started paying attention to. 3 out of 4 of my grandparents lived into their mid 90's yet my parents (who have a significantly different diet) are struggling with serious health issues in their 50's.
 
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Anyways, there's still expenses people didn't have to worry about back then. Typically the wife stayed at home (almost always) which is part of the reason why incomes were lower, but it also meant you didn't have to worry about childcare expenses and probably a few other things.

You also didn't have to spend as much on university education since an average job today requires a post-secondary education vs just a high school degree back then. Although much of that cost is state subsidized, that's still a cost (via taxes), and it's also less time a person spends on education while they still need housing, food, etc provided for them and time not spent earning money. Healthcare costs are also higher (mostly via taxes).
There's also the issue of delayed adulthood. My great grandfather left home and joined a clipper ship at aged 14, working his way to master rank by his early 20s. My grand father left home as a teenager, started working at a bank and by his mid 20s, while commanding an anti-aircraft battery in thre Home Guard, was in mid mgmt at the Bank of Scotland. My father left home at 17, began working in sales, had wife, house and three kids by the time he was 22, and emigrated to Canada in 1976 in his mid 20s to take up a sales mgmt job. Now he owns his own firm. In those days you didn't need to stay in education until you were 25 to acheive marketable skills - even today my Dad's mental math skills amaze me, and my Grandmother's latin was impressive. Somehow we got math, spelling, grammar, reasoning skills and languages into kids' minds at an earlier age.

In contrast look at today's man-child, living at home into his late 20s or early 30s, stuck at university to get an education that is not really necessary for most jobs but deemed essential by parents, the students and the employers - at my firm you can't even get an interview for a basic sales job without at least community college.

What does all this mean? For starters, we have fewer earning years, meaning we can't buy our houses, have kids, etc, until our 30s.. We have less money to start our adult lives because of functionally unnecessary but systematically required post-secondary education spending. We must work past age 65 because we started working at 25.
 
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What does all this mean? For starters, we have fewer earning years, meaning we can't buy our houses, have kids, etc, until our 30s.. We have less money to start our adult lives because of functionally unnecessary but systematically required post-secondary education spending. We must work past age 65 because we started working at 25.

That's a bit of a potted history, Beez. People didn't 'work past 65', they died at 65 on average. That's why the whole old age support regime was started at that age. My grandfather came to Canada in the 1920s, then rode the rails in the '30s to find work. None of the farming/menial jobs he did would be considered a worthy career today. I much prefer my daughters going to university and not starting their families until their late '20s or early '30s. And to say that a university education is 'functionally unnecessary' is ridiculous for most white-collar jobs. You need to be able to program, account, and write, even for your salesmen's job. Would you really have a 17-year-old selling your product today? Balderdash.
 
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And to say that a university education is 'functionally unnecessary' is ridiculous for most white-collar jobs. You need to be able to program, account, and write, even for your salesmen's job. Would you really have a 17-year-old selling your product today? Balderdash.
Well yes, if they're not leaving secondary school with any of those abilities they'll need to be sent to university to obtain them. But why can't they obtain those abilities in secondary school? Surely accounting, writing and basic pc skills can be taught in secondary school?

A 17 year old would have in the past started off as a junior sales guy, instead he's not in that role until perhaps eight to ten years later. I see those as wasted years for many folks.
 
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^^ why not skip the inefficient school process altogether? Start sending 'em down the mine shaft as soon as they're potty trained. Kids aren't as cheap as canaries, but if they can talk, they can provide you a bit more information about the tunnel -- right before they kick the bucket. Work, work, work: all hail the mighty dollar. You must earn your right to exist, from the moment you can stand upright till you draw your last breath.

"Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

Isn't progress great? :p
 

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