Well, I spent my twenties (in the 80's) in school, or working for 30K or 36K/year. You can work out what inflation does to those salaries vs. what purchasing power gets you today. Anecdotal, yeah, but it's all I got. And albums cost $4-5 in the mid-70's and I did ok on $20/week for food and stuff in school.
And there was no internet and the only computers filled rooms (but were still fun). One did social interactions F2F, which might actually have been a little more expensive.
> Well, I spent my twenties (in the 80's) in school, or working for 30K or 36K/year.
Ballpark the 80's as 1985 and that works out to 82,604.83 to 99,125.80, for the curious. What most people would consider an excellent salary in their 20s, probably (software engineers in the current market excepted, perhaps).
Back in the 2000s in Canada, you could make 350k/y driving a truck in the oil fields with 0 education.
Software engineers are just the new golden job of this era. Even then, it's still considerably harder and has a higher bar of entry than driving a truck.
And there was no internet and the only computers filled rooms (but were still fun). One did social interactions F2F, which might actually have been a little more expensive.