They may want to but they can’t because no one will work for so little anywhere in 2025. I’m not sure you are as tapped into the agricultural economy as you think you are if this is your argument. $20 is the floor anywhere there is an economy to support big horse shows, $15 in more rural areas.
Heck dairy milkers can get more than that these days and that’s the bottom of the barrel as far as ag wages go. Berry pickers are making $35+ easily. And they earn every penny.
I guess not. 
Haha, come to Vermont!
It’s becoming unbearable with climate change, but it’s no easy task to retrofit an 1800s farmhouse
First, I was surprised that my salary makes me Middle Class in my area according to the Pew app because I work for a state agency and my salary seems very low to me (I live alone—no kids or SO).
But if I had a house payment, and my BO wasn’t charging my two retired girls the same board I paid 15 years ago when I moved in, I probably would struggle to keep them.
Yes, he subsidizes my hobby, even though I offer to pay more in board every year and always get turned down. (I do buy their feed and alfalfa pellets because they need high calorie food to keep their weight up.) I also pay the barn worker cash for every nice thing he does for me.
I’m 100% sure, though, that new boarders who have moved in pay substantially more, so he’s not running a charity! I think he just likes my longterm loyalty, plus my girls take very little work to keep and don’t contribute wear and tear to the arenas and covered round pen.
Second, my parents bought me whatever I wanted as a child, including a starter pony and then a large pony that won regularly in the large pony hunters. They also paid for my college education and bought me a car, but never taught me about money management.
Nonetheless, I knew without being told that once I graduated I was responsible for all my expenses. It seemed obvious to me that once you’re a grownup you pay your own way and live within your means.
Nothing drives this home more than recently seeing an ad for a horse “perfect for those on a beer budget” priced at 30k.
The beer budget wording really gave me pause. It just seemed rather out of touch. But at the same time, if that’s the beer budget price for a green 10yo cross breed then maybe I need to start shopping for a weanling now or forever be priced out.
This. Inflation numbers are what they are but doesn’t change the fact that one of the supplements I was feeding literally tripled in price over the last few years. Still a cost I have to absorb.
I lump feed in as part of board costs, so in my mind your board has gone up because I highly doubt your feed costs are the same as they were 15 years ago. Where I am feed is at least half or more of the cost of board.
I find it interesting we’re using median prices, which means 50% of the country is not meeting the metric. I don’t find that particularly compelling when we’ve established that that ~60k number you’ve cited as median income is not enough to comfortably raise a family.
And CPI notoriously lacks real world costs in its calculations, like real estate. And employer covered health care.
And let’s not forget all the undocumented labor and under the table payments that basically keep the gears grinding in this country. Factor those in and I’m betting current median wages are nowhere near equal to the rise in inflation.
Had minimum wage kept up the floor would be $19/hr, we would all be making more money right now, and the poor ceos would still be making a solid 150x more than their lowest peon, rather than 300x.
It’s the US average, I didn’t break anything out by locality. I also used your 1980 starting point, not the past 20 years. You can find all the BLS datasets on their website if you want to check me, although they’re not very intuitive to navigate: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-and-rent.htm. This article offers a much clearer explanation: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/how-much-the-middle-class-paid-for-rent-in-the-1980s-compared-to-now
That is a beer budget, but not for a 10 y.o. crossbred greenie. No matter the market, there will always be delusional sellers 
Timely photo on my social media.
Note the number of laughing emojis.
My first question was “is that a $60k annual salary or $60k take home after taxes?”
Because I make more than $60k but my monthly pay after deductions is pretty darn close to what they are citing is a $60k salary.
But that’s exactly what I mean.
I am willing to wager most of us grew up without AC. I certainly did.
But even somewhere like VT, where people traditionally fled to escape oppressive heat, is becoming too hot to bear without AC.
When I lived in Texas, my roommate and I used to talk about how we both grew up without AC (her in TX, me in PA) and we didn’t remember it being completely intolerable. Yet your AC is likely to get use 12 months a year in TX these days.
Actually if minimum wage had been tied to inflation since its inception (1955), the minimum wage today would be $9.06. Data from Bureau of labor statistics. The problem with tying minimum wage to inflation is that you create an inflationary spiral. So all wages and prices go up and the person making minimum wage has the same purchasing power they always had - no more, no less.
Oof. I grew up in OK in the 80s/90s and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to do that without AC. We wrapped up all summer lessons by 10am (then admittedly stayed at the barn all day lol) so clearly adults were aware of heat risks. I just don’t think access to AC can be thought of as a an unessential perk these days. Maybe not 12 months a year, but it only takes a week of high temps to trigger a rash of deaths across most urban (heat-trapped) areas.
But I may be a little sensitive as I just woke up to a broken AC and we hit a heat advisory tomorrow 
I feel for you!
Mine went out a couple weeks ago. Thankfully they were able to repair it same day. And while it was a big, unexpected bill, it was a lot smaller of a bill than the last time that happened to me! Hoping you have the same luck.
Stay cool!
And I agree; for most of the country, AC is no longer a “luxury.” It is as essential as having heat for the winter. When it comes to weather-related deaths, extreme heat is the #1 killer. There are more fatalities due to heat each year than any other type of weather event.
Thank you 
To throw some related figures into the mix, since I dug out the receipt for the new HVAC we installed in 2020 to replace the 1980s system in the 130 year old house first thing this morning, that was $6,000. That would be (and was for sure!) a massive chunk to cough up suddenly for a lot of people whose AC suddenly goes out the day before a statewide Heat Advisory. Could even be a death sentence for an elderly person.
And some other numbers related to that adorable little chart
My heating alone in winter is north of $200/month. Close to it for summer months for AC. It’s a 2 bedroom. A 2000sqft 2 bedroom with massive ceilings and minimal insulation, but still
And my marketplace health insurance is north of $600/month, and will possibly go up a terrifying 75%.
I didn’t have a car payment for 17? years but the new one is definitely north of $500/mth.
This is what you get when you spend a decade blaming lattes and avocado toast for the state of things so you can prop up the billionaire class— widespread delusion about what things actually cost.
And why is that a problem? That’s the entire point of having a legal minimum wage surely.
I bought a weanling, did the math on this and deleted it as quickly as possible because I didn’t wanna stare at it. But I can tell you that weanling by the time he is four and useful will have cost me that 30K. And that’s with being a professional and doing all the training myself.
If it’s the reseller I’m thinking of there is no way it cost that much because I know where they get them. Free mares or homebreds, pasture breeding with stallions they own, cheap local hay if they even cut hay and don’t just put them out for the winter on standing grass and minimal handling. Do their own trims and basic vet care
My friend buys these draft crosses en masse for a trail string (qh crosses) out West from a few breeders that also supply hunt horses to east coasters (TB crosses). If they spend $5k actual cash getting them to 4 yo I’d be surprised.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I do absolutely hate the metric that people price horses by what they cost them to produce because quite frankly you can put a ton of money into a Horse that is a POS and worth nothing close to that.
My point was that if you think you are saving money by buying a weanling instead of buying the made product, in general, there isn’t a lot of money saved… I of course, ignored my own data and went ahead and bought the horse.
Agreed. If you board buying a weanling is crazy, price wise.
I’m not disagreeing that it costs that to get them to 4yo. In fact I think that’s probably about the floor price for a decent purpose bred sport horse prospect. It’s the beer budget piece that has me pausing, especially in contrast to the posts on the 60k salaries. 30k is a good chunk of change to a large percentage of middle class folks, and to casually call it beer budget just drives home how unaffordable this is to the average income earner.
Even if the ad just said “on a budget” I don’t think it would have rubbed me the wrong way as much, since that seems more relative to the grand scheme of things in the sport horse world, in which we know 30k doesn’t get you very far.
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