Not really. They were well known, yes. But they didn’t have a well off fan base that could afford higher ticket prices and thus the tickets were priced accordingly.

The Taylor Swift example rather shows that there are more (somewhat) young people that can afford high ticket prices these days.

Also: I was extremely conservative with the inflation adjustment. You could probably equally well argue that $8 in 1970 is more like $60 today, as the basket to calculate inflation changed very unequally and services generally inflated much more than goods.

There is a huge range of drone between fpv drones and those complex loitering ammunition you mention. The ones most commonly mentioned and deployed by Ukraine against tanks, cost a few thousand at most.

That is wishful thinking.

Because neither are as effective per unit.

Well, if there is ever an equally effective (in costs and actual efficiency) counter-measure against anti-tank drones I am happy to change my opinion.

The chassis of tank models have been repurposed for other tasks, yes. That doesn’t make those armored vehicles tanks.

It is a job with a lot of bureocratic red tape, but the work they actually do does not require years of study and deep understanding of a specific subject.

They also don’t earn exceptionally well. The reason they can do that is because it is largely gig work that can be done 1-2 months a year easily.

Also you can’t compare tickets prices of a classic band that largely caters to now well off boomers with what they charged in the 1970ties.

The $8 with inflation and all that comes to approximatly $25-30 or so in 2026 dollars, which is similar to what an entry ticket to a concert of a lesser known band costs these days. And as an occasional treat that is still affordable for low income people.

Helicopters are an exceptionally bad counter example as they are uniquely vulnerable and expensive to operate and thus can only be deployed in a very limited fashion.

You can make thousands of drones for the cost of a single modern tank. No amount of hand wringing is going to change the fact that it has gotten a lot cheaper and effective to destroy tanks because of them.

I said it is mainly a rent issue, and not an income or general price level issue. Yes two people on a single part-time income (living rent free) in a low income sector isn’t easy, but it wasn’t easy in the 1970ties either.

As for the other example. This still exists. I know people working as scuba divers on oil rigs that work 1-2 months a year only. This isn’t a very highly skilled job and mostly involves manual labor, but it is difficult to find jobs like that these days, which was probably easier in the 1970ties due to various factors that are not directly related to income or poverty levels.

Maybe the German definition is derived differently, but notice that in all the English links to military sources a careful distinction is made between “armored vehicles” and “tanks”.

In the hypothetical scenario of not having to pay rent, that is pretty much the case anywere in Europe.

You are completely overlooking the fact that drones are massively cheaper and per-unit also more effective than these other anti-tank weapons you mention. Furthermore, the problem is not that tanks can not be still upgraded further, but that they are waaaay to expensive for the limited benefit they still offer in a battlefield with anti-tank drones deployed. Adding expensive anti-drone defense that is unlikely to be very effective just makes this an even worse argument.

And sorry, that is not a naive view, but rather one that looks beyond narrow tactical considerations, just like the cost argument above. You might be still able to win a battle with tanks, but you can’t win a war with them anymore.

To my understanding these are good against artillery equivalent drones, but not the low flying and lingering anti-tank drones described in the article.

Yes, because “tank” isn’t defined by armor plating or tracks, but by operational capabilities the weapon category offers.

This is still largely the case. The problem is that there are not many skilled manufacturing jobs around that allow you to drop in and out like that, and that rental prices in larger cities have gone through the roof.

Sure, those are somewhat related to the economy at large, but also very specific issues that have less to do with general poverty or income levels.

None of these are tanks though. They are tracked vehicles with some armor plating (and even that isn’t necessarily the case for artillery or mobile air-defense). A tank as it is commonly understood has specific operational capabilities and those are are mostly denied by anti-tank drones.

A caterpillar with some armor plating is now a tank?

Yes, the local construction site also has a lot of ”tanks" by that loose definition 🙄