Time Travel in America

I have been traveling through time in the United States. How? By linking city income levels to the year the nation as a whole had, or will have, the same income level. This allows me to travel both forward and backward in time and experience what life is like in 1967 till 2076, a span over 100 years.

In 2024, the US gross domestic product per capita is $82,000. This happens to be the income level in Philadelphia. The city lives in the now.

McAllen, the poorest major city, currently has a GDP per capita of $31,000. This was the national income level in 1967. The city lives, in some sense, 57 years in the past.

San Jose in Silicon Valley is the richest major city, with a current GDP per capita of $208,000. This roughly corresponds to living in 2076, 52 years into the future.

If you want to travel in time, here is a list of cities from each decade. I have visited eleven of the twelve (not yet McAllen) and the differences between them are striking.

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Some observations:

Living throughout a century is hard for a country. Social norms and values will vary accordingly. No wonder there are tensions in American society.

For companies, it shows how products and services have to be tailored to the time period people live in. For example, one cannot sell fashion-forward products in fashion-backward places, and vice versa.

As individuals, we are colored by our immediate environment. It is hard for me, living in 2046, to understand life in 1995. I would think that many of our biases stem from this.

Below is the date stamp of all major U.S. cities:

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