Tom Woods on Exaggerating about Falling Real Wages

by Stephan Kinsella on October 25, 2026

From a Facebook post by the great Tom Woods:

My feed is filled with people reproducing this post. It is nonsense. You won’t find anybody more opposed to monetary debasement than I am. But you are asking me to believe that in 1971, half of America had an income equivalent to that of nearly a millionaire today.

No society anywhere has ever been that prosperous. And the 1970s sure don’t give off the vibe of everybody living in luxury.

Of course Nixon shouldn’t have closed the gold window. No argument there. But the statement below is unsupportable, and it’s contradicted by common sense.

ADDENDUM: I’ll add: literally nobody, no economist of any school, thinks real wages have fallen 88% since 1971. That is absolutely and demonstrably false. I don’t get how people can find this plausible. If real wages had fallen 88% since 1971, TRUST ME, YOU WOULD KNOW. I will devote an issue of my newsletter to this, since I’m aghast that some people on my side seem to think this is the case. I assure you, there has been no such collapse.

Want to have your mind blown?

In 1971, the median household income was $9,030, or 220 ounces of gold.

In 2025, it was $87,460, or just 25 ounces of gold.

Your paycheck went up 10x.

Measured in gold, it fell 88%.

To earn what the median household earned in 1971, you’d need about $890,000 per year today.

That’s what fiat debasement looks like.

— Adam Livingston (@AdamBLiv) October 23, 2026