> If lawyers and doctors earned what they earned in the 40s, i am sure student loan debt crisis would miraculously go away.
What's the expression... "the plural of anecdote is not data"?
It's important to keep in mind a few things... First of all, the point about $42,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars was that he was not doing well. Secondly, "inflation-adjusted" is not "cost of living adjusted" for where he was living. Pasadena was comparatively sparsely populated with a low cost of living back then, as opposed to the densely populated, high cost of living area it is now. Accordingly, he was not making anything resembling the median income of lawyers back then: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/SCB/pa...
Adjusted for inflation, the average legal salary from 1949 would be $104,108.17. The average pay for a lawyer in California in 2023 is... $90,028/yr. So yeah, accounting for inflation, lawyers have been earning comparatively less over time... and yet the cost of law school has been consistently growing faster than inflation.
Beyond that, lawyers and doctors are a special class of white collar worker where scarcity is artificially inflated by trade boards. They aren't representative of the majority of people with massive, unmanageable student debts. As an example, median income for an accountant in California (I can't think of a more stereotypical white collar job) is... $49,479.
I also wouldn't presume that the dividing line between blue & white collar workers is a college education. About ~12% of people with college degrees work in blue collar jobs (and the numbers are way higher for college drop outs).
What's the expression... "the plural of anecdote is not data"?
It's important to keep in mind a few things... First of all, the point about $42,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars was that he was not doing well. Secondly, "inflation-adjusted" is not "cost of living adjusted" for where he was living. Pasadena was comparatively sparsely populated with a low cost of living back then, as opposed to the densely populated, high cost of living area it is now. Accordingly, he was not making anything resembling the median income of lawyers back then: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/SCB/pa...
Adjusted for inflation, the average legal salary from 1949 would be $104,108.17. The average pay for a lawyer in California in 2023 is... $90,028/yr. So yeah, accounting for inflation, lawyers have been earning comparatively less over time... and yet the cost of law school has been consistently growing faster than inflation.
Beyond that, lawyers and doctors are a special class of white collar worker where scarcity is artificially inflated by trade boards. They aren't representative of the majority of people with massive, unmanageable student debts. As an example, median income for an accountant in California (I can't think of a more stereotypical white collar job) is... $49,479.
I also wouldn't presume that the dividing line between blue & white collar workers is a college education. About ~12% of people with college degrees work in blue collar jobs (and the numbers are way higher for college drop outs).
I don't think the data supports your narrative.