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Originally Posted by Celjabba
Do note that you shouldn't look at $ value, but at the ratio between the different numbers.
A 1990 $ is not a 2020 $, and even in 2020, values can differ wildly even in the real world.
For example, there is a *100 variation for the income of a primary school teacher, from $50/month in Madagascar to $5000/month in Luxembourg ...
Same with cost of living, item costs (the exact same item from the same factory can have *10 price variation depending on the shop in a single city ), ...
So, comparing Gurps $ numbers to the real world is almost meaningless, you should only look at ratios between numbers.
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I mentioned nothing but GURPS $. I made no use of real life examples, because I was talking about GURPS' economics, not Real Life's.
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That said, I do agree that the ratio average_job_income / cost_of_living for Status 0 at TL8 is unrealistic for our real world society.
There is too much free income.
It is not really a problem, of course, since if you play in the current real world, you can just use real numbers and ignore Gurps generic values.
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It really is a problem, because you can't do that for campaigns that aren't set in the real world, or something close to it. Yes, for some historical games you can do the research, but for some the information isn't readily available. Besides, what's the point of having this stuff in the rules if it has to be ignored?
And then there are the SF settings, at TL9+. We have no real world to sub in if we don't like GURPS' numbers, and the issues with excessive free money become much worse. At TL10 a normal wealth Status-0 job gets you $5,600/month, but Status-0 living is
still only $600/month. So, by the RAW when the PC's say they need a bit of extra cash, and spend a few months between adventures, they get to save $5K/month, each.
The Cost of Living Table needs to scale with TL. This probably also means that starting assets need to be changed from the current '10 months savings'.