this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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If you compare it with Gold - against which the USD moved in lockstep until the US left the Gold Standart - it's a lot worse than just a 50% loss since 2013, more like a 65% of value.
The fall is probably the same in terms of real inflation (as actually felt by people in terms of how much less their money buys) - the official inflation figures understate inflation (probably because the mathematical calculation for GDP involves raw GDP being deflated by inflation, so the less the official inflation is the more politicians can harp about how much they made GDP "grow") and this has been going on for decades, which is why a single blue collar salary that used to be enough for a good house, a car and the expenses for a family of 5 in the 60s, now can barelly pay the rent of small appartment in a major city.
Except this isn't remotely true. For American's you had the 62% home ownership in 1960's for much smaller homes (on average 700 sqft) vs 65% now for an average of 2000sqft. The average American family in 1960 owned 1 vehicle, they now own 2. They went on less vacations, moms typically had to work on top of taking care of the family (little to no daycare), oh and interest rates were much higher as well (on top of that pesky women couldn't even own a home by themselves). Single person living was roughly 10% vs 30% now, oh and those hard working dads often didn't live by a year past retirement. And if you were a minority? You absolutely were f'ed.
Yes, costs are higher now relative to income, but demands also are. Want cheap, you move out to rural areas, but risk you don't have work. The same problem that has been endemic in the US since it's inception.
In all fairness I only saw evidence of that for Great Britain because a journalist of The Guardian actually notice that his daughter's salary and his father's salary were the same when inflation adjusted yet bought way less now, so he wrote an article about it.
I've read things that led me to believe that there is a similar situation in the US but I don't know specifically how far the difference is in the US.