ISSY, OK, I do get a little confused with too many variables.
I admit trying to juggle too many numbers and theories at the same time is NOT one of my strongest features.
I put it down to age.
Apparently that gets me out of a lot of jams these days.
By the way, I'm curious, which numbers did I stuff up, I'd like to know, I might learn something, so as to not let it happen again?

ALTRAV,

"Today it's $38,000/$740 per week = 51 weeks or over 4 years"

For starters, 51 weeks is just short of one (1) year.

ISSY, HA, Yes, oops you're right!
So does that mean we can buy a new Commodore for the equivalent of one years "gross" salary?
Why does that not sound right?
Well the numbers don't lie, so there you have it

Just to complicate this argument as bit more, why not talk take home pay.

In the 50s I payed only 4.7% income tax, meaning most of my earnings were mine

Today our earnings have to pay a couple of bureaucrats, a health care worker, half a dozen hangers on in some NGO, [non government organisation} as well as a couple of academics.

Once the tax to pay for all that is extracted, you have a lot less to use to buy that car. Just as well they got cheaper.

Hassy, you're right but I think we tried to keep it in "gross' pay, because we were not privy to the real amount of disposable income of 70 years ago, well at least I wasn't, obviously others were but that is what we went with.
You do raise a very, very useful and alarming fact though.
When you compare 4.7% to what I believe our base rate of tax is, what around 28%?
If anyone could enlighten me.
The point is, no matter what the true base rate is, it's going to be significantly more than 4.7%.
This must be the missing link as to why it takes so long to save up for something and why the banks have engineered and steered the govt's into upping the interest rates in cahoots with the reserve.
My memory of life in Australia is that things were better back when, and got progressively worse as time went on.
I felt that things were going well until the end of the eighties, then almost as if someone had flicked a switch, things started to go South very quickly.

and even with a higher tax rate, most things are far cheaper than they were in 1948; another constant that is used for a useful comparison is the price of a beer.

Or petrol (in 1950),

"PETROL PRICE RISE LIKELY EXTRA TWO PENCE A GALLON SOUGHT.'
BRISBANE, Dec. 29.-An increase
of 2d a gallon in the price of petrol
is likely In February- This would
mean a. new city retail price of
3/2. Late in January, the present
price of 3/ will be reviewed by the
State Prices Ministers' conference
in Sydney. The Ministers will consider an application from the major oil companies for an increase of
3d a gallon. Retailers also have
asked for a higher price."
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/42681400

Which means that for the minimum wage in 1950 one could buy 243 litres but on today's min. wage one can buy around 500 litres for the same number of hours worked and today's cheaper cars are much more fuel-efficient and with far better brakes.