1998, under the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act[1]. $60,000 in 1998 would be about $89,000 today, after adjusting for inflation. Trump's initiative is around $40K above that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Competitiveness_and_W...
I have a hard time believing $89k is the equivalent of $60k in 1998. Gas was $1 a gallon, average rent in LA was $900, health insurance was $35 a month, DOW was at 9k.
i'd say $60k 20 years ago is more like $120k today... and that's being generous.
The poster just happened to cherry pick things that have increased faster than inflation: refined petroleum, coastal city housing, and health care.
As an aside, people's perception of health care increases are driven by factors somewhat decoupled from a reasonable measurement of actual cost increases:
- employers have steadily shifted a larger fraction of healthcare premiums onto employees
- older people's healthcare is dramatically more expensive than young people's (actuarially). The fact that everyone alive has aged 20 years means your perception of cost is dominated by the age curve, not the steady-age cost
This is true, it's a major reason the public understanding of health care cost growth doesn't mirror health care spending growth. But it's also meaningful, because it defines consumer spending, and it's not usually accounted for.
Healthcare's piece of the CPI basket is ~5%, but for a lot of people the real share has grown rapidly and is ~20%. Which means that using a CPI calculation to scale income is a problem - one of the faster-than-inflation segments has rapidly taken over much of the basket.