It Takes Less Work to Afford to Purchase Nice Clothes Compared to 1956
Remember when folks bring up the gap between the classes or the "vanishing middle."
Using my Sears Fall/Winter 1956 catalog, I searched for the lowest-priced ensemble of men's business-wear clothing available at Sears in 1956 (subject only to a few constraints mentioned below). From page 551 through page 676 of that catalog I found these basic items. The prices listed just below are the 1956 prices; in brackets are the amounts of time the ordinary American worker – earning then, as he or she did, $1.89 per hour – had to work to purchase each of these items.
Remember from this November 26, 2012 post that I use the 1956 average hourly manufacturing earnings of production workers, as reported in Table 1 here, as the figure for the hourly earnings of the 'ordinary' American worker. That hourly wage in 1956 was $1.89.
Hide Comments (0)
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post commentsMute this user?
Ban this user?
Un-ban this user?
Nuke this user?
Un-nuke this user?
Flag this comment?
Un-flag this comment?