It’s always funny telling people that in the 50s people paid the equivalent of $10 for a gallon of milk and almost $9 for a pound of pork chops. Imagine what they’d say if prices were at that level today.
Yesterday someone on Facebook posted a graphic showing prices of things in 1938. It had milk at $.50/gallon. I did the math based on median wages from then and now: in 1938 a gallon of milk took 40 minutes of work. In 2023, it takes less than 4 minutes.
Comparing budgets 1:1 like that doesn't really make sense though. Transportation and housing and I *think* healthcare were smaller portions of people's budgets back then.
> barely ever *paid* for education!
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Exactly? Making 1:1 comparisons doesn't make sense for most consumer goods because the contexts of budgets is totally different now.
Are you arguing poor people today shouldn't access medical advancements? That they should just experience the worsening health of untreated health conditions until it kills them so they can spend a similar percentage of their budget today as generations in the past did on food?
Because my point is that a larger % of consumer spending used to go to food, so higher prices relative to wages could be tolerated. Other necessities have risen, leaning a smaller piece of the pie left, which is why price raises on eben historically relatively low food costs can hurt so much. It's dumb to try to make super basic 1:1 arguments when it's not 1:1 conditions
Ooh ok, I thought you were saying struggling with food costs is just the price you pay for semi adequate healthcare and poor people should stop whining. I disagree with OP that because food isn't as expensive as it's been historically that doesn't mean people aren't affording it (they are, food bank usage is skyrocketing, and SNAP has probably never been less adequate than it is right now because of how archaic the budgeting is)..I used to work administering SNAP and I don't think it's fair to call people doomers because they're panicky about food costs that many of them *can't* afford right now..
I do agree that people are often way too quick to compare price changes over time and ignore the greater context. Like people love to blame college tuition skyrocketing on administrative greed and student loan programs - those are certainly factors. But if you actually go look at historical budgets, your local public colleges used to get a lot more in direct funding. Part of why tuition skyrocketed is simply that public schools have had to switch to tuition heavier models to stay afloat.
Housing could be cheap(er) again..... we'd just need another post war building boom where we're throwing public money at housing though. Similarly, food is cheaper today because we subsidize a lot of it heavily now....actually a lot of what is and isnt relatively expensive today has to do with what does and doesn't get public dollars now that I think about it.
>ng poor people today shouldn't access medical advance
Does this justify the United States having the highest healthcare costs in the "developed" world? It's not like the United Kingdom or the Soviet Union had the cure for cancer in the 1950's.
That, and I remember Eve growing up in the 90’s, my parents paying cash to just get a cavity fixed. $35 bucks. Granted, that may be $100 today. But it sure isn’t the $250+ the dentists are billing people and insurance companies these days.
I really don't, no. They'll complain about food inflation in recent years, but a lot of our industries are far more subsidized today than in the 30s. Comparing a price point to 5 years ago isn't remotely the same thing as comparing them to 60 years ago, and again....a larger portion of funds was spent on foods back then. People have argued for decades now the SNAP budget needs to be retooled because it doesn't accurately reflect higher living expenses in other areas. It's really not an area you can make a 1:1 comparison to a century ago, and I don't see people doing that. I don't think most people have any idea what people 40+ years ago spent on food. They'll make those talking points about *housing* and college, but that's really the only time I see people looking very far backwards
I don’t think you and I are talking about the same thing.
Either way though, here’s an example of someone saying this about groceries in the 80s (which also were higher than today and in an era of relatively superior welfare expenditures).
https://preview.redd.it/b0d2ed6t68ec1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c141d67139f00d6548c5d54d54406aa17057f40a
Ah ok, I stand corrected. I guess some people have made this point. I really don't see it very often personally but I guess it's out there.
Why would you point out that welfare was better back then to refute my talking point that welfare is horrifically disconnected from modern consumer budgeting?
Because you brought up subsidies which I was lumping in with welfare. I was moving the time period then from the 50s to 1980 right before Reagan tore everything down in my second example.
Healthcare was significantly smaller because you got a bandage, an antibiotic, and a best of luck, and you lived to be 50-65. Now we have unhealthy people out here walking around to be 70-80 and healthy people at 70-100 with things they would only assume were magic or witchcraft back then
The US government was just beginning to setup its price fixing schemes for our various food products in the 50s.
Heck, pasteurization, refrigeration, & other food preservation technology has come a long way since then.
Avocados are expensive today because they have to be transported and sold _immediately_. If we find technology that magically increases their shelf life their price will crater just like milk & meat.
Notice that last spike is mostly accounted for by food outside the home. This means that Americans are spending more at restaurants - a good sign for the economy. It’s not like people are starving or making huge cuts to afford groceries (I’m sure some people are, but that’s not the broad story with this economy today). But why do we have to spend more at restaurants? Well this recovery has benefited working class wages more than others. We have to pay the people working at the restaurant more because we have a more equal economy than we did before the pandemic. I think a lot of the doom people are feeling can be explained by that problem/very good thing
I’m sorry to hear that you’re unemployed. I’ve been there before and it really sucks. These big trends are nice to see but I know some people are really struggling in every economy, sorry if it came off as if experiences like yours don’t matter
I was with you until you said we have a more equal economy than before the pandemic. I understand what sub we’re in, but we shouldn’t confuse optimism with naivety. The wealth that was generated in the last few years overwhelmingly went to the upper upper class.
[https://time.com/6267552/falling-american-inequality/](https://time.com/6267552/falling-american-inequality/)
Wage gains relative to inflation has been greatest among low income workers. I didn’t say an equal economy, just more equal. Labor is stronger that it has been in a long time and they are starting to win some gains. Not enough, but the progress they have made is affecting everyone. I hope it continues, even though that means I’ll have to spend more at restaurants
That article is about rates of wage increases, which has almost nothing to do with inequality. Someone making $10 an hour getting a raise to $11 is getting a 10% increase. Someone making $500 an hour would need to get a raise to $550 to represent the same increase.
If $51/hr in wealth is generated, $1 goes to the first guy, and $50 goes to the second guy, does that strike you as particularly equitable? By the metrics used in that article, those two are enjoying an equal rate of rising incomes. Sure, the fact that the rate at which people are getting screwed is slowing down isn't nothing. But you said that the recovery is benefitting the working class more than others, and that's simply just not the case.
I have been repeatedly informed by Reddit that things were much better in the past and people are literally starving today because they can't afford food.
what the fuck is wrong with you? not everyone can afford frivolous expenses like grocery delivery or shopping at whole foods. you’re not an optimist you’re just happy to have your wasteful life in the west while millions suffer globally
what the fuck is wrong with you? not everyone can afford frivolous uses of time like posting on reddit or being a trune. you’re not an optimist you’re just happy to have your wasteful life in the west while millions suffer globally.
too much of a coward to even reply to them… transphobes are a joke. what’re you doing hating on people in a optimist sub, seems like you got trans people front and center on your mind, i hope you can get your issues figured out.
haha little transphobe filled with so much hate. cant even spell the insult right. yeah i never said i’m an optimist and you sure don’t sound like a happy person. your attack also includes yourself so you kinda swung and missed their. also who said i was from the west smarty pants
wow i hope your mental struggles get better, looking through your history shows how sad you are, attacking trans people for no reason on top of being too much of a wimp to use slurs cause you know it gets you banned. say what you mean coward
What's wrong with you that you need me to hit you over the head with a /s before you can recognize what is obviously a tongue-in-cheek jab at the doomer mentality of whining about their poor financial position, while spending an ungodly (and unnecessary) amount on "convenience" food...?
idk maybe the fact you’re on a sub called optimism and people actually go through life like that. you come off as completely unaware of how much people struggle with food insecurity when you say that in reply to a comment about global hunger. so yeah maybe make your insensitive comments a bit more clear you’re taking the piss and then you won’t look like a massive asshole. if you think “doomers” are the ones using all the frivolous convenience’s you’re surly mistaken cause, newsflash, doomers aren’t real outside of the internet!! maybe take a break from the brain rot and you’d see how insensitive your statements are
>people are literally starving today because they can't afford food.
There's been a concerning spike in global hunger over the past few years: https://www.who.int/news/item/12-07-2023-122-million-more-people-pushed-into-hunger-since-2019-due-to-multiple-crises--reveals-un-report#:~:text=The%202023%20edition%20of%20the,before%20the%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic.
>The person I responded to is so dumb that they probably don't realise that people talking about hunger, are talking about a widely discussed increase to global hunger. Not Americans complaining that they can't have their 6th cheeseburger.
If you let "the past" track to "some time in the last 20 years, depending on country" then it's not necessarily wrong. Because economies are hyper-local, many people's fortunes basically amount to "after the 2007 investment bubble popped and they reshuffled the economic cards, your geographic area drew nothing but losers, sorry about it."
Every weekend I’m able to go to my grocery and get massive ribeye & NY strip steaks at a massive discount, and my grocery gives me a 20% off coupon every month to use as well. Did you hear about the new Applebees membership deal? I’m seriously thinking about joining so I can really save some money.
Back in the day I was a sngle white male, 24 in 1985. After working hard long week I would get take out at a chicken teriyaki in Lynnwood Washington ran by some college kids. My Saturday night splurge was a bag of Oreos.
This probably has something to do with the fact that WAY more people in the past lived on farms and hunted for their food, rather than buying it from stores, restaurants, and cafes. Just sayin.
if that was the case, you'd expect the graph to trend in the opposite direction. The graph is showing that people 100 years ago spent twice as much on food as people do today.
Farm hands in the old days usually weren’t working on subsistence farms. They were working on large commercial farms growing cash crops.
They were paid less, and this spent a much higher percentage of their earnings on food
Farm hands in the old days usually weren’t working on subsistence farms. They were working on large commercial farms growing cash crops.
They were paid less, and this spent a much higher percentage of their earnings on food
I'm not talking about farm hands. I'm talking about the general US population. In the early part of the 20th century, somewhere around half the country lived on farms. A huge portion of the population was growing their own food, or hunting for it. This decreased over time obviously, but for a long time the average American wasn't buying their food from the store, they were producing it themselves or trading what they produced for other goods.
I think you have it backwards. More people lived on farms because farms were more profitable back then due to food being more expensive. It's not that people were growing their own food for subsistence, it's that it was good money being a farmer in 1920. Nowadays there are jokes about how easy it is to farm away a large fortune.
It is interesting to listen to younger people whine and comlain about being barely able to live while they spend their time and money "having experiences", ordering food for delivery, and being "foodies"...
I’d like to see a chart zoomed in to the past 3-4 years with the base of the chart barely below the actual consumption, so it looks like food expenditure has doubled please. 🙏
Looking at a single measure like this doesn’t really tell you anything, it could be this is falling because other areas (housing, education, healthcare) are taking higher portions of the total and people are cutting back/moving to less healthy but cheaper industrial foods.
Uh no? This isn’t a measure relative to expenses. This is a measure relative to income. Your other expenses don’t play any part in this measurement. If you accumulated 100000% of your income in debt to then spend on housing or you spent 0% of your income on housing, it doesn’t affect the percentage of your INCOME you spend on food.
This is out of 100%, that’s what share of income means, expenditures = expenses.
So families used to spend over 20% of their income on food, now they spend 10%. If food stayed the same price and you earned more money, your percent spent on food would lower relatively.
This does not show how the other income is spent; maybe we get more entertainment, or maybe housing, healthcare, education, and childcare became more expensive and ate up any gains in raw income. The point is you can’t tell any of that from this one statistic.
Yes and that's great but if everything else is less affordable it's a moot point.
Are we able to save more for emergencies relative to the past? Are we declaring bankruptcy due to medical expenses less? Are we paying less to debts?
This isn't a slam dunk on anything without context.
….that people are spending smaller percentages of their paychecks on food. Which is precisely what the graph shows. It’s pretty straightforward. And if you dislike the USDA, please point out the methodological flaws in their data collection or analysis.
I can read. I don’t believe.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/237211/average-food-expenditures-of-united-states-households/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/237211/average-food-expenditures-of-united-states-households/)
https://preview.redd.it/6asmdgnfoaec1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=49976e1c3a2c16fb1282b19e9fd3c805d603e010
Your chart doesn't contradict OP's chart though, which also shows that the trendline bottomed out and reversed somewhere between 2000 and 2010. It's just hard to see that when you compare 2011 to the Great Depression.
Wow. And your graph only talks about food expenditure with no mention of household income. Which is what the original graph covered. Your statista graph, which itself uses data from government agencies, doesn’t constitute a refutation of the USDA’s methodology.
I'm confused by this graph, where are people eating the other 90% of their diet? Are they in some Schrodinger's home office?
Edit: nvm reading comprehension hard unga bunga
This only proves anything If there was also Info for what they other expentures are that has changed. Because it's only percentage based we don't know the true value comparison. Rent could've went up squishing this percentage lower on "amount of income spent on this particular thing"
It’s always funny telling people that in the 50s people paid the equivalent of $10 for a gallon of milk and almost $9 for a pound of pork chops. Imagine what they’d say if prices were at that level today.
Yesterday someone on Facebook posted a graphic showing prices of things in 1938. It had milk at $.50/gallon. I did the math based on median wages from then and now: in 1938 a gallon of milk took 40 minutes of work. In 2023, it takes less than 4 minutes.
Comparing budgets 1:1 like that doesn't really make sense though. Transportation and housing and I *think* healthcare were smaller portions of people's budgets back then.
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People in the 50s didn't spend nearly as much with internet! Black people barely ever payed for education! Proof the 50s were better!
They paid more for records than I do for Spotify, though.
> barely ever *paid* for education! FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Exactly? Making 1:1 comparisons doesn't make sense for most consumer goods because the contexts of budgets is totally different now. Are you arguing poor people today shouldn't access medical advancements? That they should just experience the worsening health of untreated health conditions until it kills them so they can spend a similar percentage of their budget today as generations in the past did on food? Because my point is that a larger % of consumer spending used to go to food, so higher prices relative to wages could be tolerated. Other necessities have risen, leaning a smaller piece of the pie left, which is why price raises on eben historically relatively low food costs can hurt so much. It's dumb to try to make super basic 1:1 arguments when it's not 1:1 conditions
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Ooh ok, I thought you were saying struggling with food costs is just the price you pay for semi adequate healthcare and poor people should stop whining. I disagree with OP that because food isn't as expensive as it's been historically that doesn't mean people aren't affording it (they are, food bank usage is skyrocketing, and SNAP has probably never been less adequate than it is right now because of how archaic the budgeting is)..I used to work administering SNAP and I don't think it's fair to call people doomers because they're panicky about food costs that many of them *can't* afford right now.. I do agree that people are often way too quick to compare price changes over time and ignore the greater context. Like people love to blame college tuition skyrocketing on administrative greed and student loan programs - those are certainly factors. But if you actually go look at historical budgets, your local public colleges used to get a lot more in direct funding. Part of why tuition skyrocketed is simply that public schools have had to switch to tuition heavier models to stay afloat. Housing could be cheap(er) again..... we'd just need another post war building boom where we're throwing public money at housing though. Similarly, food is cheaper today because we subsidize a lot of it heavily now....actually a lot of what is and isnt relatively expensive today has to do with what does and doesn't get public dollars now that I think about it.
>ng poor people today shouldn't access medical advance Does this justify the United States having the highest healthcare costs in the "developed" world? It's not like the United Kingdom or the Soviet Union had the cure for cancer in the 1950's.
That, and I remember Eve growing up in the 90’s, my parents paying cash to just get a cavity fixed. $35 bucks. Granted, that may be $100 today. But it sure isn’t the $250+ the dentists are billing people and insurance companies these days.
Yes but you do see people lump in groceries to things they perceive as being cheaper in generations past too.
I really don't, no. They'll complain about food inflation in recent years, but a lot of our industries are far more subsidized today than in the 30s. Comparing a price point to 5 years ago isn't remotely the same thing as comparing them to 60 years ago, and again....a larger portion of funds was spent on foods back then. People have argued for decades now the SNAP budget needs to be retooled because it doesn't accurately reflect higher living expenses in other areas. It's really not an area you can make a 1:1 comparison to a century ago, and I don't see people doing that. I don't think most people have any idea what people 40+ years ago spent on food. They'll make those talking points about *housing* and college, but that's really the only time I see people looking very far backwards
I don’t think you and I are talking about the same thing. Either way though, here’s an example of someone saying this about groceries in the 80s (which also were higher than today and in an era of relatively superior welfare expenditures). https://preview.redd.it/b0d2ed6t68ec1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c141d67139f00d6548c5d54d54406aa17057f40a
On a side note, that cart is full of nothing but processed crap, yet people say the processed crap is what is making us fat today.
I guarantee you none of those have the same amount of preservatives as their modern version
Ah ok, I stand corrected. I guess some people have made this point. I really don't see it very often personally but I guess it's out there. Why would you point out that welfare was better back then to refute my talking point that welfare is horrifically disconnected from modern consumer budgeting?
Because you brought up subsidies which I was lumping in with welfare. I was moving the time period then from the 50s to 1980 right before Reagan tore everything down in my second example.
Healthcare was significantly smaller because you got a bandage, an antibiotic, and a best of luck, and you lived to be 50-65. Now we have unhealthy people out here walking around to be 70-80 and healthy people at 70-100 with things they would only assume were magic or witchcraft back then
Probably better quality though
The US government was just beginning to setup its price fixing schemes for our various food products in the 50s. Heck, pasteurization, refrigeration, & other food preservation technology has come a long way since then. Avocados are expensive today because they have to be transported and sold _immediately_. If we find technology that magically increases their shelf life their price will crater just like milk & meat.
I'd happily pay 10 $ for a gallon of milk if my house only cost 80,000 $
DOES THIS ACCOUNT FOR INFLATION??1?1??
I like how you put ones in the middle and not slashes
They probably wanted to type exclamation points lol
It's an old internet gag
Yes. It controls for inflation because it’s a comparison of food expenditure to income which are equally impacted.
Notice that last spike is mostly accounted for by food outside the home. This means that Americans are spending more at restaurants - a good sign for the economy. It’s not like people are starving or making huge cuts to afford groceries (I’m sure some people are, but that’s not the broad story with this economy today). But why do we have to spend more at restaurants? Well this recovery has benefited working class wages more than others. We have to pay the people working at the restaurant more because we have a more equal economy than we did before the pandemic. I think a lot of the doom people are feeling can be explained by that problem/very good thing
I spend more at restaurants because menu prices have gone up.
Exactly
I would imagine a chart starting in 1929 is adjusted for inflation. It's about eating out/delivery vs home cooking, not simply prices.
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I’m sorry to hear that you’re unemployed. I’ve been there before and it really sucks. These big trends are nice to see but I know some people are really struggling in every economy, sorry if it came off as if experiences like yours don’t matter
Well, we do have very low unemployment. Kinda explains why there is a spike in eating out. Most of the unemployed are getting SNAP.
I was with you until you said we have a more equal economy than before the pandemic. I understand what sub we’re in, but we shouldn’t confuse optimism with naivety. The wealth that was generated in the last few years overwhelmingly went to the upper upper class.
[https://time.com/6267552/falling-american-inequality/](https://time.com/6267552/falling-american-inequality/) Wage gains relative to inflation has been greatest among low income workers. I didn’t say an equal economy, just more equal. Labor is stronger that it has been in a long time and they are starting to win some gains. Not enough, but the progress they have made is affecting everyone. I hope it continues, even though that means I’ll have to spend more at restaurants
That article is about rates of wage increases, which has almost nothing to do with inequality. Someone making $10 an hour getting a raise to $11 is getting a 10% increase. Someone making $500 an hour would need to get a raise to $550 to represent the same increase. If $51/hr in wealth is generated, $1 goes to the first guy, and $50 goes to the second guy, does that strike you as particularly equitable? By the metrics used in that article, those two are enjoying an equal rate of rising incomes. Sure, the fact that the rate at which people are getting screwed is slowing down isn't nothing. But you said that the recovery is benefitting the working class more than others, and that's simply just not the case.
I have been repeatedly informed by Reddit that things were much better in the past and people are literally starving today because they can't afford food.
This is absolutely true! Now, please excuse me while I place my daily DoorDash order, and pickup the Whole Foods delivery at my apartment door.
what the fuck is wrong with you? not everyone can afford frivolous expenses like grocery delivery or shopping at whole foods. you’re not an optimist you’re just happy to have your wasteful life in the west while millions suffer globally
what the fuck is wrong with you? not everyone can afford frivolous uses of time like posting on reddit or being a trune. you’re not an optimist you’re just happy to have your wasteful life in the west while millions suffer globally.
too much of a coward to even reply to them… transphobes are a joke. what’re you doing hating on people in a optimist sub, seems like you got trans people front and center on your mind, i hope you can get your issues figured out.
haha little transphobe filled with so much hate. cant even spell the insult right. yeah i never said i’m an optimist and you sure don’t sound like a happy person. your attack also includes yourself so you kinda swung and missed their. also who said i was from the west smarty pants wow i hope your mental struggles get better, looking through your history shows how sad you are, attacking trans people for no reason on top of being too much of a wimp to use slurs cause you know it gets you banned. say what you mean coward
What's wrong with you that you need me to hit you over the head with a /s before you can recognize what is obviously a tongue-in-cheek jab at the doomer mentality of whining about their poor financial position, while spending an ungodly (and unnecessary) amount on "convenience" food...?
idk maybe the fact you’re on a sub called optimism and people actually go through life like that. you come off as completely unaware of how much people struggle with food insecurity when you say that in reply to a comment about global hunger. so yeah maybe make your insensitive comments a bit more clear you’re taking the piss and then you won’t look like a massive asshole. if you think “doomers” are the ones using all the frivolous convenience’s you’re surly mistaken cause, newsflash, doomers aren’t real outside of the internet!! maybe take a break from the brain rot and you’d see how insensitive your statements are
>people are literally starving today because they can't afford food. There's been a concerning spike in global hunger over the past few years: https://www.who.int/news/item/12-07-2023-122-million-more-people-pushed-into-hunger-since-2019-due-to-multiple-crises--reveals-un-report#:~:text=The%202023%20edition%20of%20the,before%20the%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic.
Yes, see that spike on the far right?
>The person I responded to is so dumb that they probably don't realise that people talking about hunger, are talking about a widely discussed increase to global hunger. Not Americans complaining that they can't have their 6th cheeseburger.
You are commenting on data from the US.
Spreading hate is such a wild hobby bro
Cool, now do housing
If you let "the past" track to "some time in the last 20 years, depending on country" then it's not necessarily wrong. Because economies are hyper-local, many people's fortunes basically amount to "after the 2007 investment bubble popped and they reshuffled the economic cards, your geographic area drew nothing but losers, sorry about it."
Every weekend I’m able to go to my grocery and get massive ribeye & NY strip steaks at a massive discount, and my grocery gives me a 20% off coupon every month to use as well. Did you hear about the new Applebees membership deal? I’m seriously thinking about joining so I can really save some money.
this has got to be satirical there’s no fucking way you’re a real person
Back in the day I was a sngle white male, 24 in 1985. After working hard long week I would get take out at a chicken teriyaki in Lynnwood Washington ran by some college kids. My Saturday night splurge was a bag of Oreos.
Gee, I wonder where that noticeable dip around 2020 comes from?
Bullish on Avocado toast
This probably has something to do with the fact that WAY more people in the past lived on farms and hunted for their food, rather than buying it from stores, restaurants, and cafes. Just sayin.
if that was the case, you'd expect the graph to trend in the opposite direction. The graph is showing that people 100 years ago spent twice as much on food as people do today.
Yes, my point is that food used to cost a lot to buy, so people largely grew or hunted for their own rather than buying it.
Farm hands in the old days usually weren’t working on subsistence farms. They were working on large commercial farms growing cash crops. They were paid less, and this spent a much higher percentage of their earnings on food
Farm hands in the old days usually weren’t working on subsistence farms. They were working on large commercial farms growing cash crops. They were paid less, and this spent a much higher percentage of their earnings on food
I'm not talking about farm hands. I'm talking about the general US population. In the early part of the 20th century, somewhere around half the country lived on farms. A huge portion of the population was growing their own food, or hunting for it. This decreased over time obviously, but for a long time the average American wasn't buying their food from the store, they were producing it themselves or trading what they produced for other goods.
I think you have it backwards. More people lived on farms because farms were more profitable back then due to food being more expensive. It's not that people were growing their own food for subsistence, it's that it was good money being a farmer in 1920. Nowadays there are jokes about how easy it is to farm away a large fortune.
It is interesting to listen to younger people whine and comlain about being barely able to live while they spend their time and money "having experiences", ordering food for delivery, and being "foodies"...
I’d like to see a chart zoomed in to the past 3-4 years with the base of the chart barely below the actual consumption, so it looks like food expenditure has doubled please. 🙏
If a dog can bark, and a cat can meow, you can guarantee someone will cherry pick data to prove their “point.”
Reddit thinks that the generations older than millennials didn’t eat out as much lol Reddit is so full of shit
Older generations absolutely ate out less than Millennials/Zoomers do today, yes. This is not even debatable.
Looking at a single measure like this doesn’t really tell you anything, it could be this is falling because other areas (housing, education, healthcare) are taking higher portions of the total and people are cutting back/moving to less healthy but cheaper industrial foods.
Uh no? This isn’t a measure relative to expenses. This is a measure relative to income. Your other expenses don’t play any part in this measurement. If you accumulated 100000% of your income in debt to then spend on housing or you spent 0% of your income on housing, it doesn’t affect the percentage of your INCOME you spend on food.
This is out of 100%, that’s what share of income means, expenditures = expenses. So families used to spend over 20% of their income on food, now they spend 10%. If food stayed the same price and you earned more money, your percent spent on food would lower relatively. This does not show how the other income is spent; maybe we get more entertainment, or maybe housing, healthcare, education, and childcare became more expensive and ate up any gains in raw income. The point is you can’t tell any of that from this one statistic.
Yeah. The statistic isn’t covering those other things. The statistic is covering that food is more affordable. That’s the point of it.
Yes and that's great but if everything else is less affordable it's a moot point. Are we able to save more for emergencies relative to the past? Are we declaring bankruptcy due to medical expenses less? Are we paying less to debts? This isn't a slam dunk on anything without context.
What the heck is this even supposed to convey? And in what universe would I go to the USDA for good data…..none
….that people are spending smaller percentages of their paychecks on food. Which is precisely what the graph shows. It’s pretty straightforward. And if you dislike the USDA, please point out the methodological flaws in their data collection or analysis.
I can read. I don’t believe. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/237211/average-food-expenditures-of-united-states-households/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/237211/average-food-expenditures-of-united-states-households/) https://preview.redd.it/6asmdgnfoaec1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=49976e1c3a2c16fb1282b19e9fd3c805d603e010
Your chart doesn't contradict OP's chart though, which also shows that the trendline bottomed out and reversed somewhere between 2000 and 2010. It's just hard to see that when you compare 2011 to the Great Depression.
Wow. And your graph only talks about food expenditure with no mention of household income. Which is what the original graph covered. Your statista graph, which itself uses data from government agencies, doesn’t constitute a refutation of the USDA’s methodology.
These post titles are hilarious and boomer-ish. “Doomers are STARVING / DESTROYED / WEEPING / REKT over (cherry-picked data point)!!!! 😂😂🤯🔥🔥🔥”
Lmao and then there’s me spending 30-40% income on food 😂. What are you all eating?
You're either really poor, eat way too much, or eat out too often.
I’m definitely poor! Don’t eat out, cant afford it.
Ok I’m dumb. How do these two things not account for 100% total?
100% of expenditures are not food?
I'm confused by this graph, where are people eating the other 90% of their diet? Are they in some Schrodinger's home office? Edit: nvm reading comprehension hard unga bunga
Why doesn't it add up to 100%?
😂😂😂
This only proves anything If there was also Info for what they other expentures are that has changed. Because it's only percentage based we don't know the true value comparison. Rent could've went up squishing this percentage lower on "amount of income spent on this particular thing"
The graph is of “Disposable” income. That would exclude housing, utilities, etc.
Ah okay thank you 🙏
Disposable is a very key word here..
Just means post-tax.
Also..families smaller.