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Infographic: How the American Dream Is Getting More Expensive

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american dreamNo, it’s not your imagination. The cost of maintaining the American dream is getting harder with each passing year. To illustrate, the folks from Vouchercloud have put together a detailed graphic that succinctly summarizes price increases since 2004 of everyday items including milk, gasoline, Big Macs, movie tickets and wages — both average and minimum.

Oh, and as an added bonus, they also included the adjusted prices for inflation too — lest there be no confusion over real versus nominal price inflation.

As you can see, the data is not encouraging — we’re all getting far less bang for our buck with each passing year:

An infographic by the team at vouchercloud; Photo by: torba hopper

Comments

  1. 1

    Mr. Frugalwoods says

    Huh, a lot of things don’t look that bad when you adjust for inflation. College though, wow. That’s a horror show! There must be a an upper limit for the cost of higher ed but it’s clear we haven’t reached it yet.

    • 2

      Len Penzo says

      I just finished reading an article that showed the average annual income in 1938 was $1731. Meanwhile, the annual tuition at Harvard was just $420 — or just 24% of average annual income.

      Today, annual tuition at Harvard is $58,600, while average annual income is about $52,000 — so 112% of average annual income. (And consider that, unlike in 1938 when most households had one breadwinner, today it’s more often two breadwinners per household.)

      • 3

        Marcia says

        Ouch

    • 6

      Len Penzo says

      Thanks for the link, Garrett. Frankly, I think the article is garbage. In fact, the author is essentially tinkling on his readers’ leg and trying to convince them that it’s raining. (And judging from the article’s comments section, there are plenty of people who are willing to accept his story at face vale too!)

      I have gone the extra mile to dig beneath the surface of the basic government statistics in order to refute the author’s arguments many times before. In fact, I explain and provide plenty of evidence every weekend in my Black Coffee posts that methodically explains the dire situation we’re all in economically — and why that is so.

      I don’t know about you, but I’ve lived through several booming economic periods during my lifetime and they are amazing; the majority of people see their real year-over-year income increase on an annual basis. New businesses spring up everywhere. A large majority of citizens have a job. There are relatively few people on government assistance. People are rewarded for saving money.

      Since 2009 that has not been the case — it is certainly THE weakest economic period I’ve ever lived through (and I have been working since the early 1980s). And that is despite adding more than $7 trillion in additional debt under the current administration (more than all of the other presidents combined)! As a result, the US dollar has been given a death sentence — and because we are now so deep in the hole, it cannot be undone. It is a mathematical certainty. The only question left to answer is when the execution will be carried out.

      If this economy was as good as some people would have us believe, then the Fed wouldn’t need to be propping it up; instead they would start immediately raising interest rates and stop all of their money printing. The fact that they won’t is all the proof anyone should need regarding just how bad things are!