Here are five fast examples from both sides
- The average new house size went from around 1,000 sq ft in 1910 to 1,500 sq ft in 1970, to 2,000 sq ft in 2000 to aroind 2,400 sq ft today. It’s not easy to buy a new small(er) home and housing prices reflect that
- When the Corvette was launched in 1953 it cost $3,490. That’s around $39,000 in today’s money. A brand new Corvette will cost you $70,000
- A 1970 Datsun 240z was $3,500, which is $28,000 today. You can buy a brand new Mazda Miata or Toyota GR86 for that inflation adjusted amount
- A gallon of milk cost $1.32 in 1970. That’s $10
- According to the 1970 census, median household income was $8,730. Adjusted for inflation, that’s around $71,000 - which is surprisingly close to the 2022 census’s $70,784 number
So what’s going on and why are people not happy? IMO it’s a mix of
- Things are getting nicer, but they’re also getting more expensive. This seems to be a mix of consumer taste and seller side shenanigans. For example, small/mid size cars, which are typically cheap, have had decreasing sales volume for the past 20 years. Enter multiple OEMs de-emphasizing small/mid size cars and leaning into crossovers, which just so happen to cost more. To go back to the earlier housing example, house size has been going up while the average household size is going down. There were 4.5 people per household in 1910. This dropped to 3.15 in 1970 and is down to 2.51 today. In other words, today’s new larger homes have fewer people living in them than 50 years ago. New homes today also tend to be built with nicer furnishings (coming from someone with 1960s builder grade cabinets in their house). Housing is a bit of a mess for a bunch of other reasons too… Zoning, smaller parcel sizes for subdivisions, etc etc
- The wage vs productivity gap
- The… very big imbalance between worker vs CEO wage growth
It goes beyond the cost of goods and gets back to some level of fairness (or a complete lack there of).
Donkter@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The argument I’ve seen “against” this is to point out that if you want to live like they did in the 50s it’s pretty cheap. It’s a lot of canned food. A lot of stuff you might pay for now are DIY projects (such as clothes repair, house repair, car repair etc.) there’s no such thing as your fancy TV, your Internet or any modern kitchen amenities. Medical assistance is garbage so no wonder you paid less for it. The way you live today is like a king compared to the 50s.
Now it’s still an idiotic argument. Before anyone replies, I don’t agree with it. But it’s what people who can’t handle the OP tell themselves.
MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I know you said you don’t agree, so this argument is for the hypothetical person who holds that opinion…
With that said. My wife and I crunched the numbers recently. If we lived like people in the 50s, which is to say, we lived as poor as we could and completely wrecked our quality of life (eating as cheap as possible, no Netflix, never eating out, no luxuries at all), we would save like $10k a year. Which means that if we did that for 10 years, we would have enough for a down payment on a house that we would not be able to afford the monthly mortgage on (and a house in that price range would be a wreck in our neighborhood. A standard 3bed 2bath in good condition where I live starts at about 800k).
It’s insane. This isn’t some “just stop eating avacado toast” thing.
Donkter@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Yeah not only that but the obvious conclusion is “well yeah, but why should we hold our standards to the 50s?” Sure we have needs we didn’t then for things like TVs and computers but those same computers have made everything about that 50s lifestyle exponentially cheaper and easier to accomplish. It should be nearly free to live like the 50s but for some reason prices have kept rising.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Lots of the DIY stuff is harder now though. I can change the oil on a ‘00 Civic, can’t on a ‘19. Cars now have complicated and user-hostile electronics - they don’t really want you to fix your own car, phone, TV…
I mend my clothes as much as possible, but fast fashion in the last ten years have seen a race to the bottom on material quality. Clothes don’t always come with extra buttons, the fabric is shit… if you find vintage stuff from even the 90s at a thrift shop it’s obvious. Modern clothing is made to be worn a few times and then thrown away.
Cooking can be still be done cheap (if you enjoy lentils and beans!) but requires time, which is easier if you have a stay at home partner. You also need storage space. There’s been substantial declines in the quality of kitchen appliances and tools imho. I’m still upset about what they’ve done to Pyrex.
Lots of the modern fancy stuff is also somewhat necessary. Internet is required for pretty much everything nowadays. You can go to the library/McDick’s/etc for WiFi, but you shouldn’t be filling out a job app on public WiFi.