Gravestone of the American Dream” or A ‘Christmas Vacation’. Analysis.
I recently made a comment on this sub referencing the 1989 movie “Christmas Vacation”.
Clark Griswold is the patriarch of his firmly (upper) middle class family.
The crux of the film is not receiving an expected year-end bonus due to greed of his boss.
Clark says he wrote a check for $7500 as deposit. He says if he doesn’t get the bonus “soon” he will be in financial trouble. ($7500 in 1989 is ~$18k today.)
The median cost of a vinyl lined pool in 1989 was approximately $15k.
Clark also says he will fly his family back when the pool is completed.
Clark has been at his company for 17 years.
This leads us to a reasonable assumption that Clark’s expected bonus would be $7500-$20k.
According to records from the time Chemisit V-Chemist VII roles paid $60k-$80k.
Let’s assume Clark is making $75k. (~$189k today)
This means his bonus is about 10% of his salary minimum.
Now let’s also examine Clark’s life in comparison to our own.
Let’s say Clark and Ellen purchased the home 10 years prior to the time of the film. This seems reasonable. Median home price near Chicago Illinois in 1979 was 62k. Clark is making 1.38x median wage in 1989 so let’s assume similar for 1979.
So let’s say Clark’s house was around $90k in 1979 at 12% interest.
That makes Clark’s mortgage around $600/mo. ($1400 today).
So Clark makes $189k plus >10% annual bonus. Paying $1400/mo mortgage @ 12+% interest, two late model vehicles, two car garage, and seemingly more than a full week off prior to Christmas.
The mean pay for a R&D Food scientist in Illinois in 2023 is $90k. The same house in 2013 would cost $277000 @ 4.16%. So $1550/mo mortgage. We all know what PTO looks like these days and the prices of cars the past five years are like.
There are a lot of conclusions one can make from this little analysis. But my main one is that the greed had gone too far. The middle class have been pushed from not getting a pool to near-precarity in 30 something years. This is to say nothing of the conditions of the working class.
Clarks solution was in the form of Cousin Eddie.
Sadly; Cousin Eddie’s lifestyle is infinitely closer to most Americans today than Clark’s. Clark’s lifestyle is the carrot which dangles from the stick for many of us. The tragic reality – many Americans are one paycheck (let alone a bonus) away from calamity and ruin than ever dreaming of not getting a pool.
How do we, proverbial cousin Eddies of the world, band together and build solitary?
How do we convince the would-be Clark’s as well as the greedy bosses of not only our (collective) power but also the righteousness of our grievances?
My answer to this is simple; yet in the form of two questions.
“Who is cousin Eddie?”
“What did cousin Eddie do?”
WDCED?