🔻A Normal Salary Doesn’t Buy a Normal Life Anymore - Cypher News

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Wages didn’t fall. Assets ran away.

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Homeownership quietly detached from work.

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The middle class wasn’t defeated. It was priced out.

BRIEFING

Grant here. There are a lot of people who try to say that the slow erasure of middle America is a conspiracy theory, but frankly, every day there are more and more stories from everyday Americans that show this isn’t something dreamt up by those with foil on their heads. It’s real, it’s happening, and thanks to social media, more and more people are speaking out. A teacher recently sat in her car, did the math out loud on salary and owning a home, and with that inadvertently explained why a normal American life no longer functions on a normal American salary. Let’s break it down.

In the video, she says that in 2016, she bought her home for around $160,000 while earning about $40,000 a year. Then in 2025, that same house is worth roughly $350,000 to $360,000, while her pay, even with a master’s degree, sits around $54,000. All while she’s in the same profession but with more credentials, a higher income, and, ironically, zero chance she could buy her own home today.

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This is a major problem in America everyone should be talking about

– Teacher making $40k bought her home in 2016 for around $160,000

– In 2025 her home is now worth $360,000 and even with her pay increase she wouldn’t be able to afford it if she bought it now

Home ownership has become completely unaffordable just in the past few years and nobody in power is doing anything about it “How are people buying homes? How are people purchasing homes at these prices?”

Listen, it’s not necessarily breaking news to hear that someone earning a median salary can’t afford a home right now. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, most Americans are keenly aware of this reality. However, what’s striking and laid out cleanly in this video is the alarming rate at which homes are steadily climbing in price, while salaries are barely crawling along.

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Cut through the noise, the spin, and the propaganda.

Look, just to really put this in the plainest terms, back in 1985 America’s median home price-to-income ratio was 3.5. Now? It’s a staggering 5.0 in 2025

Nationwide, median home prices are now around five times median household income, a ratio that is historically high and far above the affordability levels of previous decades.

And again, once you take homeownership away from the middle class, the entire class starts to literally disappear.

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In 1985, the median U.S. home cost $82,800, while the median household earned $23,620 annually—a ratio of roughly 3.5x income. Here’s how that gap has widened over four decades:

As of 2025, the median American home costs $416,900, five times the median annual household income of $83,150.

Meanwhile, the 30-year fixed mortgage rates have nearly halved from 12.4% to 6.8% between 1985 and 2025. While home prices have outpaced incomes, the lower cost of borrowing in 2025 does have a significant effect on a home’s affordability.

This doesn’t account for potential differences in fees, taxes, and insurance costs over the years, however, if the down payments are an equal share of the home’s cost, mortgage payments as a percentage of income are actually a bit higher in 1985 than in 2025 because of the high interest rate 40 years ago.

The gap between American home prices and incomes is especially worse in coastal U.S. cities. Notably, the median home price in LA is 12.5 times the median annual household income. This ratio stands at 10.5 in San Jose and 9.8 in New York on the East Coast.

DEBRIEFING

This is the big picture everyone needs to understand: once ownership moves out of reach for people who work, save, and play by the rules, the middle class doesn’t just struggle. It slowly but surely starts to thin out.

This is because homeownership isn’t just a roof over your head. It’s stability, equity, and the overall ability to build something that lasts longer than a paycheck.

This teacher thankfully was able to afford her home when she did. But had she waited an extra year, or heck, maybe even a handful of months, there’s a good chance that she wouldn’t have been able to afford her home, period.

And that’s the predicament many Americans are sitting in right now. It’s like many of us are holding a flimsy ticket to a high-speed train, unsure whether to board early or not. But before we know it, the train takes off before we even had a chance to pick our seat.

The ugly truth is that nowadays a normal salary no longer buys a normal life, and when that becomes permanent, it doesn’t just change housing. It changes the entire country.

NOW YOU KNOW

The ladder didn’t break. It moved.