Pots and Frogs
I grew up a child of the 60s in SoCal, the eldest son (of 2) to an architect and school teacher. Being white, my mother retired when I was born to stay home and start raising the family. She was also a meticulous record-keeper.
By the mid-60’s our family was pretty much formed. My dad was bringing home 997$/month as a licensed architect in a large firm, my brother and I would have no further siblings to confuse the issue, and the mortgage on our new mid-century modern home was $204/month. Yup — slightly over 20% of his take-home pay took care of our house payment. That same home recently sold for $1.3m. Using real-world numbers, the current payment would be $4768 after dropping $300k on a down payment. His take-home pay would need to be in the neighborhood of $23k/month to maintain the same ratio to his earnings.
My parents both graduated from one of the top private universities in the country with zero student debt.
Medical expenses were so low that they were rarely recorded in the family ledger.
We splurged on a new car every 6 years or so — usually 2 to 3 months salary was their top figure, financed over 3 years.
Sure, you say, we get it — stuff is a lot more expensive now, blah, blah, blah.
A couple of miles away in a more “normal” neighborhood lived some very good friends of ours. Normal in that the back wall of their house wasn’t floor to ceiling glass with their kitchen, family room, dining room and living all joined together without walls to separate them. Normal in every way.
Their father was the Controller for the Walt Disney Corporation.
Other than the fact we went to Disneyland every month for free, and watched Disney movies on a screen with a 16mm film projector (yup-saw “Song of the South” on a bedsheet in the garage — I’m sure I’ll be unpacking that little gem with my therapist for years), they were just like our other middle-class neighbors.
My point — other than it sounds like a pretty cool time/place to grow up?
The current Controller for Disney does not live in a middle-class suburban neighborhood and invite the kids over to watch movies in the garage. He has a net worth of roughly $15m. His medical expenses are likely so low as to be laughable due to the executive benefits package he receives. Being an executive used to just be a job, now it comes with a level of entitlement the majority of us cannot comprehend. The odds are likely greater that I win the lottery and move my family to his neighborhood, than he would be caught dead living in mine.
The irony is that you’d nearly need his income to live comfortably in the same house as his predecessor from 50 years ago. Given what young architects make in 2022, my life would be very different…
The gaps are growing wider every day and the people who need the perks and benefits least, are the ones who receive them. This didn’t happen overnight, but wealth and power pull and twist the levers to benefit themselves and their peers. The feedback loop starts slowly, but once it gathers enough momentum it becomes almost unstoppable.
Like those proverbial frogs floating in pots of water that are slowly being brought to a boil, we didn’t notice we were being cooked until it was too late. We’re also lack the capacity to look beyond our own situation and are blaming the other frogs in the pot for the fire-
