Just looked at some housing data and honestly the rent situation is wild compared to what it was decades ago. The median rent now is sitting around $1,957, and a lot of people are spending way more than 30% of their income just on housing. It's gotten so bad that over 12 million people are literally paying half their paycheck to rent.

Made me curious - how much was rent in 1970 anyway? Turns out the median monthly rent back then was only about $108. When you adjust that for inflation, it's still nowhere near what we're paying today. The real kicker is that even though how much was rent in 1970 seems dirt cheap by today's standards, people back then actually had more breathing room in their budgets.

The gap really widened starting in the 1970s with the recession, and then the 2008 financial crisis basically sealed the deal. Now we're stuck with this affordability crisis where how much was rent in 1970 feels like a completely different world. A one-bedroom goes for $1,499 and two-bedrooms are around $1,856 in most places. Meanwhile salaries haven't kept up - the average income in 1970 was about $24,600 adjusted for inflation, and now we're averaging $59,384. Sounds like a raise until you realize rent has gone up way faster than wages.

So yeah, how much was rent in 1970 versus now tells you everything about why the middle class is getting squeezed. The numbers don't lie.