Ep. 333 (Coffee Time) Are Things ACTUALLY More Expensive Today??
Nicolas, Kent, and Riley dive into an eye-opening discovery: when adjusted for inflation, Americans aren't really better off economically than they were in 1965. They explore work hours, wages, cost of living, and what it all means for happiness and satisfaction in the Midwest. The conversation reveals that beyond covering basic needs like healthcare, housing, vehicles, and food, more money doesn't necessarily lead to better lives. This episode challenges the common belief that economic growth alone solves our problems and offers a fresh perspective on what actually matters for quality of life in rural America.
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Riley Rozendaal (00:00.098)
feet wet here on Fence Row to Fence Row Farming.
here Ken. No, no, no. I need you motivated to get the other good chair.
I'll set up the least.
You're so busy making your company money.
Haha, yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (00:17.774)
Two hours, that's kinda true. That's kinda true.
I mean I was literally selling while running two seat cleaners at the same time.
We're not going to judge efficiency, but there was a lot of noise. There was a lot of moving cars. I love it. I love it.
After this, check.
I'm just kind of sad that we're selling the 200. That's just such a cool tractor.
Nicolas Lirio (00:42.998)
It's a big truck. It's bigger than it looks.
Yeah, it's a powerful tractor.
Nicolas Lirio (00:55.842)
We have to get them bonded.
You sure they're not titles aren't floating around somewhere in one these filing cabinets?
I'll keep looking for about 20 minutes this afternoon until my thought.
Riley has literally combed the filing cabinets in the past year.
yes we think of spaceballs we've come to the desert
Nicolas Lirio (01:12.926)
But I mean there will be like a small chunk of things that go on another round anyway. so it's not the end of the world. Alright.
Plus it means you have to move herbicide today.
So we're not putting it on the auction? can't.
It's not like it's like we literally can't
And that's like $10,000 right there.
Nicolas Lirio (01:32.718)
between the two of them. But it'll sell later. You know what mean? It's not like we just don't get that money.
We can find somebody local who wants to put it on their property or wants to use it to haul a little bit under the table. Man, that just... But through DPA they won't...
No, like legally there's no way because we are on an option
happened to Carol remember he bought that trailer off of an auction and it turns out it was stolen yeah after the wheel came off when he was hauling it home it rolled like 20 acres in the middle of this muddy field and he had to walk out there and carry it back
Well, that's
Nicolas Lirio (02:05.826)
Dude, think of the like energy behind that tire that it would go that far into the.
That kills people there. really? Yeah, my mom has a friend whose husband died that way tire rolled off of a truck and Went right through his windshield and killed him
Interesting. mean, I'm you know going 60 mile an hour and a tire weighs 80 pounds or whatever. Well, you know, that's Yeah, a lot of physics everywhere man Well a couple housekeeping things for our friends listeners of the pod our dear friends one Pheasant fest and then dear classic Dear classic you'll probably catch depending on what day you're there. You could catch any any of us Pheasant fest will be Kent Judd and I
It's a lot of physics.
Nicolas Lirio (02:52.63)
I've been in Minneapolis, so please come hang out with us. We would love to see you.
going shopping for snacks tonight for us to eat while we're there. Yeah. We basically live there for three days. Yeah. Normally it's four days, but we were cutting it close this year on the
Yeah, no.
Nicolas Lirio (03:08.462)
Well usually Ken and I are like, we'll leave at noon, we'll get there and then...
No, we get there, so you can set up either Thursday or you can set up last night. And we're just going for it on Friday.
Friday morning. Well, we've, we've gotten good enough and we don't like a big trailer stuff. We've gotten good enough at setting up that it's kind of whatever,
Plus I gotta think the line's gonna be small. Yeah. Responsible.
Everyone else is so right.
Nicolas Lirio (03:35.178)
No, Well, it's everybody else who has an SUV or a truck. mean, that's what the trade shows there. They're fascinating. They're fascinating. I really like Pheasant Fest because they're so educational. They like just have areas everywhere where they have speakers speaking on different topics. I really like that. So, man, but we're going to be at those two places next. Partnerships. You'll see this in March. We have three or four partners coming on the pod.
and I just want to make something really clear. We'll talk about it in the actual ad spot. we have either used these companies or have a relationship with these organizations beforehand. and we did not go with the high dollar. we'll just say it that way. We went with companies, we knew that we could stand behind and if you actually use their product, you wouldn't be pissed at us because the product sucks. Right? So that was really important to us, you know, actually like customers or users of these organizations. So
Yeah, just wanted to let you guys know that's coming in a couple of weeks. and there was
You get to hear a whole lot more of Nicholas's voice on the podcast. think about that. He's reading ads.
Well, well, we tried to do ads, 30 second ads with with Kent once, and they ended up being like three minutes long. So I was like, it's not going to work.
Kent Boucher (04:58.894)
If somebody wants my voice that bad enough they can type it up and submit it that way.
And that's funny. Are you worried about the AI, the AI stealing your voice and face thing? Because especially for you and I, Kent, we're out there.
You got an update today.
Yeah, I am worried about that, especially with some of the scams that have been a thing for a while. One time, my brother-in-law, somebody was pretending to be him. They called my wife's grandmother. They're like, hey, this is your grandson so-and-so. I got into some trouble. I need you to send me bail money right now. Wow.
And can you imagine when they're able to do those phone calls with your actual
Nicolas Lirio (05:46.816)
Well, they can do like they can pretend to be FaceTime. They can pretend to be you think if I remember correctly, Apple has worked pretty hard at making sure people can't just like integrate a third party app to do that. Otherwise, it'd probably be more common. So shout out to Apple. They've always been security down tight, but
Yeah.
Kent Boucher (06:04.524)
Yeah. man. Here's a slow cruiser past the auction lineup out there on the road. I'm seeing it now. Or it might be interrupted momentarily.
We are.
We are getting a lot of people interested in the auction link in the description below today It's the first half is Tuesday February 24th. The second half is March 10th, which I think's a Thursday and I can't remember but So there will be a first half and a second half All sorts of wrestling with titles and old stuff that we don't even know what it is or whose it is out here You know where dad got from so the
Yeah, we have people literally every day multiple times just stopping on in, which, you know, if they're friends, it's fun. And if we don't know them, it's less fun.
Well, Kent brought up a really good theory. It's yesterday. It's too early to be in the field, but your equipment is fixed. And guys, or...
Kent Boucher (07:00.938)
And it's too early to put cows out to pass.
Yep, It's that time of year where almost nothing's going on for conventional eggs.
or in the middle of February. Normally there's some snow on the ground right now. But it's basically spring.
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Yeah, should have looked up the weather data to have actual numbers. But my wife and I, were talking about how it came up on her Facebook memories. On Valentine's Day, we went to see Les Miserables. That's my best French right there that you're gonna get. It's probably our favorite music. You wouldn't know this by now, I'm a big musical guy. I love musicals.
Nicolas Lirio (07:44.494)
He was telling me about Les Miserables and then while we were in the car the other day for hours and he's like, you know what? Let me just tell you the full story and then spent 20 minutes explaining the whole story.
Did I do a pretty He did a great job. Yeah. So we've seen it. I've seen it with her live twice, and she's seen it live three times now. 11 years ago, we went to see that on Valentine's Day. Great theater in Rock Island, Illinois, called Circa 21 Playhouse. Gotta go if you're ever in the area. And it's a dinner theater, actually. And it's super old, it's got that old, you know, like,
Torian era decor in there and stuff and design's pretty cool. Anyways, we were there and it had to be, wind chill was probably, I would estimate at least 20 below zero and real temp probably had to be right around zero. And Valentine's Day this year, was like almost a, I think Valentine's Day itself was what, 60, right around 60? So you're talking a 60 degree difference.
Yeah, my, think it was like 64 when the sun was shining and it was.
Yeah, I mean it was the kind of cold where it like it like made you anxious when you got out into it. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (08:58.582)
Yeah, I don't you know, you can never judge like a climate based on one year and you can definitely judge a climate based on a hundred years. So somewhere between one and a hundred years is the line. know technically.
Yep.
Kent Boucher (09:11.214)
Well, year increments as well.
Are there like deep research? I don't know. Are there like deep papers where they said like, yeah, 30 years tends to be the cycles or is it just kind of like, that's half a human life cycle.
It was just enough data to make a determination. Hello.
Nicolas Lirio (09:59.918)
He's a super nice guy. We were talking about how a 30 year climate.
I just blanked on what we were talking about. yeah.
Did you introduce the did you actually start the episode are we still technically in the intro? Okay, cool. I just didn't know
We're still technically in the intro. Yeah, yeah. Cool.
He's like, I'm blacked out for the whole-
Kent Boucher (10:16.972)
I was.
I blacked out and was like, can't talk about lame as a rob. Did we ever sort the pot?
has a lot of seed to clean and Rylan and have a lot of auction stuff and we've been getting a lot of calls so very grateful for the calls. Thanks for doing that everyone. But we should get started.
No, no, no, let's finish our climate thing. yeah. I thought we were done. No, no, I didn't think so. You were making a point.
No, no, you were saying why we do 30.
Kent Boucher (10:41.98)
yeah, So I think it's just a standard that climatologists have saying like there's enough data if you've gone 30 years to be able to recognize an undeniable trend, right? Whereas if it was only a few years, you know, that we'll think of how much like an event like El Nino affects climate for, you know, really over a year.
I think they it's like four year El Nino is like four years.
The event happens every four years, there's like, there's like over, there's like overspill of, of weather change.
did not realize that. thought they were, you're in El Nino for four years and then you're in La Nina for four years.
Well, it could be both then, because I mean, it's just happening then every four years. But I don't think it's, I guess I've never looked at it that way. I think it's more or less, it's an anomaly that happens every four years, but I could be
Nicolas Lirio (11:39.648)
I also could be very wrong, I'm not stu- Man. cool. We should jump in.
Welcome back to the Prairie Farm podcast coffee time Wednesday. I'm your favorite host, Nicholas Lirio with your favorite co-host Ken Boucher. And your favorite co-host to the co-host Riley Rosendahl. We're here. We're hanging out. We've got some data in front of us so that I put in the smallest.
Howdy ho!
Riley Rozendaal (11:58.616)
Howdy howdy.
Kent Boucher (12:06.582)
I'm Nicholas will leverage this to his own argument here shortly.
Yeah, I called it.
When Nicholas presents a small spreadsheet, a spreadsheet with small letters on it, feel like Kent and I are at a natural disadvantage.
Right. I spent, did spend about an hour looking into this, so I am way ahead.
as let's debate this topic that i didn't tell you about my spent hours gather evidence
Nicolas Lirio (12:29.544)
I just want to remind you all that you're not as smart as me. No, it's not true. Anyone who listens to the podcast knows that's not true. That's not true. Here's what I did. if you're looking on YouTube, sure. If you're looking on YouTube, I'll put it up here right now. the little spread of data. Now I want to be really clear. I got this from Gemini made it cited sources and it had like a bunch of different sources for this different information. Literally like
the, the, what is it? Health.org or whatever they, the Mayo clinic, USDA, the USDA website, all these different censuses. Yeah.
on there.
Kent Boucher (13:07.982)
Remember going do you remember that kids site that they'd always have a go-to at school you hooligans no It was like Yahoo, but for kids or something. Oh, oh my math blaster
remember
Nicolas Lirio (13:19.682)
Yes, I did play Math Blaster in my school that was about, well, 40 years behind the times.
So what?
I don't know. didn't play math blaster. So you never played math blaster? I don't think so.
That's a great game. I was looking up to see if it's still existing because I thought my kids might enjoy it.
yeah, yeah, yeah, video.
Kent Boucher (13:35.732)
I trouble relating to the young folks.
Math Blaster is not the way to get to him, Ken. I hate to break it to you, but...
Don't tell Jonas, but I got him one of those hoops with a stick that you kind of chase around.
Which is, well, about twice what I spent on him Christmas the year before.
Do they give you a pet rock for free when you get your hip with a stick?
Kent Boucher (13:57.422)
I'm
weird
That's funny, the old pet rock. All right, well, I got some data on here. Anyone who's watching on YouTube can see this. I have a list of things. Dozen eggs. We're not gonna go over every single one of these, but dozen eggs, gallon of milk, loaf of bread, gallon of gas, a new vehicle, monthly rent, monthly mortgage payment, a basic t-shirt, a pair of shoes, and a Bible. The reason I use the Bible, it's the most purchased book of all time, so I was trying to say like what books cost, was it cost to print things?
And the Bible because it's the most printed thing they've become very efficient at printing it very cheap lower cost So what am I doing here? Well? 1965 average prices and to any 25 average prices and I did not account for inflation and there's a very specific reason why I Instead of comparing it with the inflation. I did think two things I compared it to what are those things cost per percentage wise of your yearly or monthly income
But more importantly, how many hours does it do you have to work on average in the United States to buy each one of these things in 1965 and 2025?
Kent Boucher (15:08.654)
So essentially inflation is built into your calculation. Yes.
Yep, exactly. But inflation doesn't account for everything. And there's some pretty complicated ways to look at this, but I figured pound for pound, hour for hour, how much do you get for your work that you're doing is probably the best way to judge it. But if you look here, dozen eggs cost you a fifth of an hour, right? Costs you 12 minutes. Today, it costs you a tiny bit less than that. So okay, dozen eggs, but also,
.18
So that .02 difference, think of how chickens, yeah, thank you, two 100s, think of how, which is a 10 % difference, how much bigger the chicken confinements are to only get a 10 % difference. Right? hey, no, it's gonna be way more efficient. Exactly, all right, gallon of milk, .4, so a little less than half an hour, but today.
and the environmental cost.
Nicolas Lirio (16:09.518)
point one five way ahead. But as you all will hear in a few weeks, we connected with the dairy farmer, not looking good for the dairy farm. So we traded in dairy farmers, livelihoods and maybe, you know, milk nutrition. I'm not even going to speak to that. There's a lot of
Well, just whatever small dairy farm, whatever that effect was on rural culture in Dairyland USA.
Absolutely. Um, loaf of bread was basically the same gallon of gas, the same, which is really interesting in terms of how many hours it costs for a new vehicle. It was just shy of a thousand hours of work. And now, well, 998 now we're at 1,800.
doubled or it has over doubled right? No, no, that's not a percent of increase. That's just a
no no not not quite
Nicolas Lirio (17:06.242)
But what's interesting about the vehicle thing that it's hard to say, vehicles are just way more expensive because vehicles have way more gadgets and quote unquote value in them. Right. I mean, by golly, right now for $50,000, you can get a vehicle that has a TV in it and the on the front and can drive for you.
think about that like the so the big one again my age me going back 15 years ago is you could get it you're in your dash you could get a navigation touchscreen right you could go to Best Buy and buy like a Garmin that you know suction cup to your windshield for 300 bucks and but to like upgrade the option on your car to have it in the dash
yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (17:45.985)
R.I.P. Garmin.
Kent Boucher (17:53.75)
was like thousands of extra. Like to go to that next.
Yeah, you know, you didn't in 2008, you Lexus is a Mercedes had it.
So you'd pay like an extra three grand to get the $300 device put into your dash that you can't ever get rid of when it's way out of date and the Lexus is still running for.
And now the iPhone does it for less money and it also does way more things. So yes, vehicles are way more expensive, but also I think we're kind of just, we choose into the more expensive vehicle thing out of comfort. I mean, you can have all the amenities for the most part, a 2017 vehicle, which at this point, fun fact guys is nine years old, a 2017 vehicle and you can get every 10,000 bucks.
I think as someone who lived in the era of uncomfortable vehicles, like when a bare bones vehicle really was lacking, which you understand well, because you drove those too in high school and stuff. I think vehicles where the upgrade in what a, at that time, modern vehicle offered as far as comfort, road noise, that happened around like
Kent Boucher (19:07.054)
2005-ish, maybe give or take a few years. And since that time, everything has just been gravy added on. You know what I mean? Like it hasn't, like there hasn't been this huge, like no, your quality of life is significantly better now because, I mean, go back like.
Like a vehicle in 90s, how loud it was inside the The wind whistling through the terrible weather stripping, the windshield wipers that did nothing, the headlights that were so dim you'd be better off with a flashlight.
You had five different hubcaps on only four wheels? Yeah. That's real. And we don't get from A to B that much faster anymore. It's like cars are kind of a diminishing return. Well, we're about to have a giant upgrade where they just all drive themselves.
The crazy thing though with cars is they're coming out with a line of, I don't know if you guys have seen these or not, but they're called Slate pickup trucks. Yes, I They're American made, 20 to $30,000, very bare bones. The 90s vehicle per se, right? But with a little bit of electrification. I'll be really curious to see.
Can imagine it's an electric vehicle, but you have crank?
Riley Rozendaal (20:15.65)
It's super funny, I wonder if it'll kind of show as a referendum that, you know, cars used to cost $15,000, $20,000, you know. If we can get relatively close back to that, are people really going to buy it or are we so attached to our TVs that... Yeah, that's true.
That's fair. Well, so let me go down the list. I'm to skip rent and mortgage real quick. t-shirts, basically the same price that they used to be. pair of shoes, a lot cheaper, like 20, 30 % cheaper than they used to be. And, and I don't know if that's because like shoes have become a commodity or now we're getting them from Eastern Asia. I don't know, but, they're a lot cheaper. And then, the Bible and books, a lot cheaper half, half the price of, in terms of how many hours you work for it.
I put wifi on here cause I think that's funny cause they didn't have, yeah. Well, I mean the bandwidth that everything you do is on the last 10 years, but yep, from $0 of our monthly budget to about a hundred. well let's go to mortgage and rent. This one's interesting because in my opinion, this is the best argument for, Hey, rent and mortgages are going way up. And that is, rent used to be 34 hours of work.
Way up.
Nicolas Lirio (21:33.006)
Now it's 64 hours of work per month and mortgage used to be 44 hours per month. Makes sense. Hey, if I'm going to own the thing, I'll pay a little more for it. Uh, now it's 87. It, uh, it doubled.
So people are, they're getting paid bi-monthly, one of their first paychecks, a little more than that, goes to their mortgage payment.
mortgage payment. Yeah.
Definitely real estate is more expensive and that is that is true for various reasons And we can get into those reasons, but also definitely we want more Bang for a buck. It does not I should have broken down the mortgage payment per square foot. That's what I should know
I kind of push back on that because houses unlike a lot of the other things on this list last a long time so so a lot of the houses that people were living in in 1965 someone still living in them today. Yeah. And whereas a car that was manufactured in 1965 is long has long since been well it's one of these piles of scrap metal out here that's going off to the metal recycler you know. And so I.
Kent Boucher (22:47.566)
I don't know that it's as much, now definitely we've built a lot of houses since then, but also the world's population has gone up a lot since 1965. There's a lot more demand for housing. You know, just there's had to be more houses built, a lot more to adjust for that number of people.
Well, one more piece of the data I want you to look at before we jump into what you guys think of this stuff is on the far right side, you see that number that says 2.653846154. That was the average hourly wage. Do you see that number 26.666? That. Oh, it's over here on that far right. So the 2.6 was average hourly wage in 65. Uh, and.
Yeah.
I'm not sure. OK. OK.
Nicolas Lirio (23:39.733)
$26.67 is the average hourly wage. And actually, sorry, I should correct myself. All of these are median numbers. They're not averages. So we're not skewed by super rich or super poor people. So they're median numbers. The median hourly wage is $26.67. Do you know what, if you account $2.65, the inflation from 1965 to 2025, I did 2025 numbers, do you know what that number would be today?
No, I do not
it would be $26.65. Literally, the middle class has not gotten an ounce wealthier. Literally, like a couple pennies, you know?
Don't most employers give enough of a raise just to keep up with inflation every year?
Merit, yeah, like inflation raise or a merit-based raise that is usually two and three.
Kent Boucher (24:33.256)
So kind of makes sense, know, like the math has always been there, like, yeah, you've gotten this much more each year to adjust for inflation.
That's true. And I'm hoping that people who are getting more experience at their job are getting raises and the medium's dragged down by the new employees who just come in and then they slowly go up. And that's my hope, but crazy. Isn't that crazy? We're the wealthy. Look at how much the S &P 500 has gone up since 1965. meanwhile, average wage is the exact same. And it makes me think that labor is just a commodity.
So what do you think that money, theoretically, if everyone's got the same amount of money adjusted for inflation that they're ending each pay period with, Yep. What was that money going towards in 1965 that is now going towards? Well. Mortgage. Phones. New vehicle, or yeah, vehicle payments. so what were they spending it on in 1965? Well,
I wanna get to that because I don't exactly have those answers, but there's one more really important thing that we need to talk about. And I did not do the math on median household income, which has actually gone up and it's up above inflation. So $6,900 is the median in 1965 and $84,000 is the median now. That's above inflation increase by some odd 20 % or something like that. But UNL's went up.
way more than 20%, the amount of wages earned, labor hours per household worked because women entered the workforce.
Kent Boucher (26:08.974)
and it has a lot of the way the big news
Yep. so, but they literally added way more hours than the median income of a household. So it didn't actually, that's why I had to go per hour worked and not just like, the media, you know, the median income of a household went up. Yeah. But, someone wasn't around at the house taking care of some of the other things. And that's why even at churches, you see more people on staff is because there used to be a culture of a lot of the stuff that someone has paid for.
That was all that stuff was volunteer driven. know, not just churches, all sorts of nonprofits and taking care of community parks and you know, all this stuff. I just thought that like shook me how many more hours we put in as a civilization to make the exact same amount of money.
You know
Just to keep the status quo. Keep making the monthly mortgage payment, buying food. Yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (27:04.315)
Yeah
So surely you have some takeaways from this, not just, well, that's the data,
Well, I really wanted to hear you guys takeaways before I just pounded mine onto the onto the table
I can't tell what angle you're working here, but Nick's always got an angle. So there will be something coming. I would be really curious to know what were people in 1965 if the median income is, if people are, adjusted for inflation and everything else, it's clear that it is, you know, now a lot of the daily things are pretty much the same we saw and even a little bit cheaper.
But be blindsided.
Kent Boucher (27:45.676)
Which is interesting because a lot of those things have been political tension points. So much worse now. Trust us to make it better for you. So I mean in those ways it stayed relatively the same. However, like the increases for rent, mortgage, and vehicle payments are so much greater that
yeah. Terrible the cost of food.
Kent Boucher (28:16.786)
had to have some more cash available and what were they doing with it? I guess I shouldn't say what were they spending it on? What were they doing with it? Were they just saving it? Were they buying property? Were more people paying for their kids' college? I mean, what do you think was going on with that money?
I think college is hard because back in 1965 college was like a stick of gum and working at the pool for 20 days during the summer. It wasn't like a $300,000 investment. But I think that it's hard to tell. I would imagine people just saved a lot more because
You know, we have these little things now that kind of eat away at things like your cell phone bill, like your wifi, you know. And buying new phones all the time and all the gadgets and you know, I guess you could go buy a new blender in 1965, but like, we didn't have like all these smart devices and things that we now wrap our lives
So you think it was just largely saved and invested maybe?
Maybe, I think there's a lot of consumption that went on between 1965 and now that really we've kind of went, okay, well, we're making more money. We can consume more on this and that and the other thing.
Nicolas Lirio (29:41.422)
boomers would have been teenagers in 1965 well because in 1945
Yeah. The last year of boomers was 64 when they were last year.
Oh, I realize that. thought it was in the fifties. Okay. So they would be, I mean, they would be 15 and maybe, maybe 17, maybe the oldest were 17. And, so they weren't in the workforce. we are literally talking about three years before they entered the workforce until now, which is when they are currently exiting the, the workforce and, and what has changed. Scott Galloway, I think has a pretty good argument.
It would be like grade school to high school.
Nicolas Lirio (30:21.78)
about consolidating wealth. And you and I have talked about this.
Nick's getting ready to get all the boomers to chase after me.
No, no, no, no. No, I, my argument is that every generation, every time, because the greediness of the human heart takes all the chips off the table. The boomers were just the very first generation where there were tons of chips on the table, know, chips that helped people live till 90 years old and, chips that help people have three houses and.
post-World War II global economy where we were the only economy left standing for a long time.
And that's, mean, I'm like a boomer sympathizer. I see in the comments, man, people are not boomers. I'm a boomer. And here's why. When I'm looking for a plumber, I'm looking, I'm hiring a boomer. And that's from like experience of many, plumbers. you know.
Kent Boucher (31:21.454)
Yeah, to say that that any generation doesn't have anything I mean there is Gen Z. Okay, that's outlier to my dad here, but I'm just kidding To say that there's no good qualities to Any generation is completely ridiculous, but Yeah, I think there's there has been some wealth hoarding that has gone on whether Deliberately or just playing the game
That's me!
Kent Boucher (31:49.204)
I think most of us has been playing the game. These are your opportunities or you're not going to take them because you want someone else to have them. Very few people are willing to live that way. But that being said, a lot of opportunities were taken that other generations didn't get a chance to have. But the pros of the boomers has certainly been they stick with the job for an entire career. They don't bounce around. They get the job done. You don't see them on their phone.
while they're on the clock. You don't have this concern of do they actually know what they're talking about because they do. And so certainly there's pros and cons.
Yeah, the cons are when they're in the comments on social media. Actually, that's basically a con for well, every generation. I made a post just on my personal thing earlier today that was like, when I get to heaven, I can ask God anything. I'm going to ask to see a list of all the comments that were typed out, but not hit send.
Yeah
Kent Boucher (32:39.438)
Yeah, that's true, yes.
Kent Boucher (32:51.278)
Hey, I've used that joke before. Really? Yeah, there's a guy that I knew in college who posted that years ago. He's like, I want to go to the place where all the unsent text messages and Facebook comments are.
Dude, that dude, I mean, there's some stuff in there. yeah.
And there'd be a lot of truth in there.
What do you actually think? I can't even tell you how many times I've done that. OK, well, the whole Boomer thing that wasn't my point. Here's here is my big takeaway on this. Was that when you believe that lifestyle gets better from overall economic improvement? That's a lie. At after a certain point of not experiencing.
Yeah, what's your big takeaway?
Nicolas Lirio (33:39.606)
the stress of being able to pay your medical bills and your mortgage. Basically, if you can pay for your medical insurance, your mortgage, your vehicles and your food, if you can do that and not worry about having to do that, the happiness you experience is up to you at that point. And, you know, it is like a driving political force, you know, the econ.
economy is going to be so much better. And, Zach Lane said it really well. The, worshiping the, the, was it the religion of economics?
the, how do you say it, capitalist spiritualist or something like that, or a religious capitalist.
Religious, and it's just true.
capitalism essentially. No matter what, capitalism's the right answer.
Nicolas Lirio (34:32.974)
And what is kind of interesting is the averages are totally different from 1965 until now. And I think it's just showing to some degree, the bell curve gets stretched out further. So rich people get richer. I would actually argue that poor people aren't getting poor. I think that's why the average is going up. I think the poorest people now in the United States are much wealthier than the poorest people in 1890 or 1930. Well, definitely 1930. But
Well, mean, when did Social Security come around? was LBJ, wasn't it? Post-Kennedy, so 1965, 1966, somewhere in there. Yeah.
And I thought there would be a lot.
Nicolas Lirio (35:15.596)
I went on a whole rabbit trail on this about like, I bet there's way more social security or some sort of payout that it's less per capita accounted for inflation. It's less than 1965.
There's less people getting government assistance, you're saying? There's less government assistance dollars available to recipients?
well
Nicolas Lirio (35:37.46)
No, not available. So there's way less cash handed out now than 1965. And part of that is because we got a little smarter and started handing out food and subsidies for housing and stuff like that, which I think if you're going to hand stuff out, that's the way to do it. But because I really thought, some of these numbers are propped on the government handing out more money now than what? No, not true. And then I was like, well, maybe this website. No, just everywhere I looked, it just wasn't true. So I was wrong about that.
Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think this makes a good argument for the Midwest because a lot of our political leaders and or people who are wanting to get into office are making strong economic arguments. I just want, I hope you already know this. If you're listening.
Better economics past those four things that we talked about better economics just won't make your life better. You know, overall macroeconomics just because a giant corporations making a ton of money down the road doesn't mean the 8,000 people who work there are are making more money. And here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying those big companies are abusing people if they're paying like a fair livable wage. And I think a fair level wage is a fair livable wage for what you're doing for work. But
I don't think we should be basing all of our decisions in our communities, especially, especially here in the Midwest, the East and West coast pride themselves on running after economics and great. I'll take advantage of Netflix cause some billionaire, someone else invented it. I'm fine with that. But the, the actual here now and what we want to preserve, I don't want us to chase after the economics. I don't think that will lead to good things for the Midwest. We just don't have the resources needed. And I think this data.
perfectly says that.
Kent Boucher (37:29.07)
Yeah, that's an interesting take for sure.
Yeah. So I'm what I'm really curious. Riley is kind of the he's like our penny pincher and like our resident. Like if we are going to go buy something at Wal-Mart, we call Riley first.
Sir David Ramsey.
Scrooge McDuck and I'm the Scrooge McDuck of the company. When Nicholas said or when Kent said we're gonna buy groceries for Pheasant Fest, I could feel my heart just constrict a little bit. But I'm excited, I'm excited for that.
I'm curious, like, what is your view on how much money someone can make and or the kind of lifestyle that leads based on the fact that 1965 to 2025 basically isn't any different for the average human.
Riley Rozendaal (38:11.21)
I'm sympathetic because, you know, there are certainly things that we've been fortunate enough to hold pretty steady, but there's other things that I wonder about. Like, I think so much of this confusion and pain right now comes from these increases. You know, people, it's not just that maybe adjusted for inflation, things are pretty steady.
But when you see like your water bill go up 20 % in one year, it's like that's something nobody's watching for the 2 % a year. Okay, we're increasing your water bill 10 cents. think it's just a shock and awe thing where people are calling out for a better economy because they're feeling like, okay, everybody else is increasing prices, but my wage isn't going up. Nobody gave me a 10 % raise this year. So I think it's a reaction to
to what you see in your day to day. If your day to day is getting shocked by these sticker shocks and go to the grocery store and buy 10 things and it's 150 bucks. I think that's what gets to people. But I was thinking about this the other morning as I drove to work this morning. If I was given $100,000, what would I do with it? Would it demonstrably make my life better? Would I live my life differently? And I was like, I don't think so.
With $10,000 a year, how big a difference would that make in your life?
I think if your basic needs are met, you know, it, depends on as a person, if you draw your value from outside things, or if you can have a sense of self that, doesn't rely on material goods, you know, like it's nice to have your, you know, you turn the key in your car and your car starts in the morning. That's, that's something that's done, honestly, better. you know, whether or not your car has leather seats from 10 years ago or five years ago is
Riley Rozendaal (40:14.702)
It's a nothing burger to me, you know?
Interesting.
That's a good perspective.
Well, everyone listening, you are hearing an evolution in my brain. I thought for sure everything was way cheaper today than it was back then. Besides maybe rent and mortgages, I knew that was kind of going up. I thought, nope, same price, we're getting paid the same, it's all the same, no matter what's going on around us. And so we gotta look elsewhere to figure out some of this satisfaction in life, especially here in the Midwest where...
I think it's also to remember that we aren't just, we've been saying this since day one of the podcast. We aren't just powerless victims. The biggest vote is with your dollar. And so if you see somebody who's doing things well, doing it in a way that you like better, give them your dollar. And you don't always have to let whoever the big bad guys are in the economy, you don't have to, you're not.
Kent Boucher (41:16.77)
I guess totally beholden to giving them your dollars. If you want positive change, your dollar speaks a lot louder than your actual vote does. mean, it's a sad reality, but it's true.
we always, we like to complain, it's all a rigged game up in Washington. Yeah, but it's rigged by our dollars where we put our dollars. if we can.
Whenever if we ever are complaining about something and I'm not I'm not virtue signaling here because I'm guilty as well if we're ever complaining about something, you know, we're saying yeah, I bought it from there, but I just hate giving him my not well There's no point complaining because you just gave him more dollars You know if that's ever if that's ever where the conversation goes then then no change has been made just because you've recognized that it's a It's not where you want to be spending your money. If you're still spending your money there. They're still winning
Man, well, this is good guys. I'm like totally a data and graph nerd. just know nerd on all things. I'm just not enough of a nerd simply because I just don't care about Lord of the Rings enough. I just don't. I've watched the movies a couple of times. I really thought I'd like them more, but in a lot of other ways I'm big nerd like video games like.
You just didn't
Kent Boucher (42:32.27)
Do ever think that those movies were made like in the early 2000s? If they had the CGI available to them that's there today, they'd probably be pretty, pretty awesome.
Maybe, I mean that was one of their big things is they had not that much CGI.
They were probably, I mean, when you think of like major, what do they say, major motion pictures? Is that what they used to say? What do you think of, what do you think of like big time movies and not just relying on CGI for all like the really crazy special effects that might be like one of the last.
Yeah, I'm sure they did.
Kent Boucher (43:10.69)
big movies to, no, we really have people dressed like that, jumping off of that to get this shot.
I mean, you can tell they're great movies. I know they're ranked like some of the highest movies ever, but I just can't get into them. My brain's too rotted by scrolling on social
Yeah, they were great.
Kent Boucher (43:28.846)
I'm not a nerd. I don't like I don't like Lord of the Rings. I watch anime instead
The didn't resolve in seconds.
Yeah, you go from one of the greatest written stories ever told to the cheapest garbage shows I've ever seen. I eat those up. I love them. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening. Don't forget we're hanging out at Fezz and Fest and Illinois Deer Classic. Is that what I said? yeah. We'll be in Illinois too and Iowa. So anyway, we'll talk to you again next time.
And the Iowa deer classic. Well, you said Illinois.
