The time needed to get $1 in international dollars is 63 minutes in the US. This is about twice the average in Germany, France and the UK according to an Oxford University researcher. This suggests that average poverty is significantly higher in the US.
It is a job with a lot of bureocratic red tape, but the work they actually do does not require years of study and deep understanding of a specific subject.
They also don’t earn exceptionally well. The reason they can do that is because it is largely gig work that can be done 1-2 months a year easily.
Also you can’t compare tickets prices of a classic band that largely caters to now well off boomers with what they charged in the 1970ties.
The $8 with inflation and all that comes to approximatly $25-30 or so in 2026 dollars, which is similar to what an entry ticket to a concert of a lesser known band costs these days. And as an occasional treat that is still affordable for low income people.
Oil rig divers need training in industrial scuba diving and underwater welding. That are two specialized skills, both usually requiring some years of training. That’s not bureaucratic red tape, you simply can’t do the job if you don’t know how to weld underwater and are going to die if you have no industrial diving skills. This is part of the reason why they are well paid. It’s a very bad example for the discussion.
I didn’t say that it is an unskilled job. But once you have the necessary certifications (which don’t take years, although you can get additional certifications over the years while doing the job), it is a risky but not especially complex job. The payment is according: good for a job like that, but not crazy level money.
And anyways, the point was that “regular workers” jobs still exists that allow you to only work a few months a year, but they have become more rare and hard to get, partially because of bureaucratic red tape.
It’s entirely missing the point because offshore scuba diving is highly skilled specialized labour. It doesn’t matter whether it’s not very complex work when you get down to it. You need years to even get access to it and it has always been like this. The “bureaucratic red tape” has only been added so that the employers can acutually assess the skill of the people they hire. It’s a field where mistakes are very, very expensive.
Maybe you’ll understand what’s wrong with your example when I present you an equally bad example: I know a guy who works two months and then spends three months scuba diving in Egypt. He’s a doctor.
Look, you don’t need to explain the details to me, as I am a scuba diver myself and have seriously considered getting into commercial diving 10-15 years ago. Hence me knowing some people that actually do this.
As I said, it is difficult to get into it and there is a lot of certificates you need to do, but at the end of the day it isn’t super difficult to do and the job itself is mainly relatively well paid because there is a certain risk involved and you spend a lot of time away from home often even cramped into small submersible habitats.
A doctor is a very bad example indeed, because most doctors have fixed jobs they can’t easily leave for longer time periods.
See, that’s the whole point. This was a discussion about people being able to live on seasonal, menial and easy to access jobs like unloading goods or waiting tables. They weren’t living very good of it, but it was possible without sleeping on the street.
So both examples show jobs that are difficult to get into with years of certification and training. Both have nothing to do with the initial point of the discussion.
Commercial scuba diving is difficult to get into but it doesn’t take many years, and for sure nowhere near as long as becoming a doctor takes.
But I get the feeling you are just trying to argue for the sake of arguing and this has long moved past the original point.
The Stones were the top band in the world in 1970. Comparable with Taylor Swift today.
Not some indie group.
Not really. They were well known, yes. But they didn’t have a well off fan base that could afford higher ticket prices and thus the tickets were priced accordingly.
The Taylor Swift example rather shows that there are more (somewhat) young people that can afford high ticket prices these days.
Also: I was extremely conservative with the inflation adjustment. You could probably equally well argue that $8 in 1970 is more like $60 today, as the basket to calculate inflation changed very unequally and services generally inflated much more than goods.
I love watching people use all their intelligence to ignore basic facts.
I did a quick search and the Stones came in number 3. Top band was Led Zepplin.
Tickets to Zepplin were $6.00
That completely ignores my argument.
Rock and Roll music was not something well off elderly people went to concerts in the 1970ties.
I don’t know how old people got involved in this argument.
We’re talking about the part-time waitress and her boyfriend.
In 1970, they could afford to go to a big concert.
In 2026, they can’t.
I don’t know why this is such a hard concept for you to grasp.
You compared $8 tickets of the same band to $150 tickets today. Obviously the people buying these might be still the same, but they are do not fall in the same age group or disposable income bracket anymore.
And as I have clearly shown you that there are more people being able to afford it these days, and ticket prices reflect that.
And even if that wasn’t the case, the problem for that hypothetical couple is that they have to spend more on rent not that their income is smaller.
Of course you can argue that it is unfair that their income didn’t increase according to the rate of GDP growth during these years, but over all they can still afford to go see that concert just like they did in the 1970ties (if they don’t live in a city with high rents).
And as I have clearly shown you that there are more people being able to afford it these days, and ticket prices reflect that
So, you never understood the original argument.
The original argument was that a part time waitress would be able to afford to live pretty well in 1970, including going to a big concert and paying her rent.
Like I said, you were using all your intelligence to ignore what was right in front of you.
No, you problem is that you don’t do a proper problem analysis and thus fail to understand what actually changed.
And you also seem to vastly underestimate inflation and overestimate how well such a couple was able to life in the 1970ties.