Kerby Anderson

Pundits and politicians have spent decades lamenting the erosion of the middle class. They point to rising prices in America while many jobs were being sent overseas. While some in the middle class improved their financial status and became part of the upper class, many more discovered that the goal posts moved. They now found themselves in a lower income category.

Compare 1975 to 2025. Families with an annual income of $100,000 five decades ago were doing well. Today, $100,000 makes it difficult to survive. When the U.S. went off the gold standard in 1971, the money supply increased from less than a trillion ($0.91 trillion) in 1975 to 22.3 trillion in 2025. That’s a 24.5x increase in the money supply.

While it is true that the population increased, the money supply grew four times faster than the population. That is correct. It meant that every dollar you earned was competing with a flood of money that was slowly devaluing the dollars in your pocket.

Sometimes the flood of money came quickly. In 2008, we had a banking and housing crisis. Congress and the Federal Reserve swooped in to save banks by printing money. In 2020, we had a pandemic and lockdown. Once again, money printing that was supposed to save Americans also devaluated the dollars in your pocket.

Median household income in 1975 was $11,800 and rose to $83,730 in 2025. That increase in five decades looks good until you compare it to the rising costs due to a devalued dollar. Put simply, wages have underperformed during this period.

The solution to this middle-class meltdown is to fix the money and thereby fix the economy. This fifty-year comparison illustrates what has been happening in our world.