“Look at those prices!” That’s probably the #1 comment I hear
from people as they browse the pages of an old Sears Modern
Homes catalog. Why were Sears kit homes priced so incredibly
low? Well, they weren’t really. Like everything else in history,
the prices of early 20th Century housing have to be looked at in
context. One context to consider is taxation. In 1918, only the
very wealthy paid federal income tax. In fact, only 5% of
Americans paid any income tax at all. If your employer paid you
$15 a week, you took home $15 a week. The other issue is
inflation. Pervasive, savings-eroding inflation has not always
been a way of life in America. In the 1930s, President Franklin
D. Roosevelt took the first step that moved us off the gold
standard. It was a desperate attempt to re-inflate the sagging
dollar. In 1933, Roosevelt issued Executive Order #6102,
requiring Americans to deliver their gold to the Federal
Reserve. At the time, law required that Federal Reserve notes
(aka “dollars”) had to be backed by 40% go