[icelancer]

>> Not even remotely feasible on a single income now, unless you're talking executive pay.

Yes it is. Just not if you want to live in really nice cities and have a ton of stuff.

If you want to live in a suburb, commute, not own much in the way of technology, and own a house 30% of the size of what people live in now, then yeah, that's doable.

Housing costs have inflated and that's worthy of note. But so have our expectations of comfort and life, and those have outpaced earning potentials.

[falcolas]

My parents had a 2,500 sq. ft. house on 5 acres of land. They've replaced their vehicles about every 5 years. I remember twice-yearly vacations where we flew out to Mexico or the eastern seaboard. I was, by current standards, spoiled rotten when it comes to the money my parents spent on tech for me. They've both been able to retire (including snowbird trips to AZ) without worries about money due to a pension and investments.

All of this from a single, blue collar worker's income. The same job that pays $13 an hour today. I, working in the tech industry with a great paying job in a rural city, with a working wife, couldn't begin to reproduce their lifestyle without incurring absurd amounts of debt.

You'll have a hard time convincing me that it's our expectations which have changed the most.

[icelancer]

I could easily replicate my familial upbringing if I lived in one of the cities I grew up in (Cleveland) and had my father's single income as an electrician with my mother working part-time (mostly for her own sanity, not income). I've checked real estate prices and cost of living there, it's totally doable. Not much has changed there; if anything, tradesman jobs are in desperate need of good journeymen and apprentices as tons of kids go to college instead of exploring blue-collar jobs.

Where I live now (Seattle), hell no. But Seattle was a lot different 30 years ago.

And if I just kept my last job w/ a salary in the mid 100Ks and worked remotely, I'd live like a king in Cleveland. I literally wouldn't know what to buy or where to live. In Seattle I live in a "bad" area in a townhome that I could barely afford during the dip and now I won the idiot's lottery and am sitting on a property that has appreciated by double.

But through it all, Cleveland still exists. And I could easily live in a suburb of Cleveland and get a decent enough bungalow boring house for under 100k that doesn't need any work done to it except a paint job.

I bet I'd get even more value in Detroit or maybe Pittsburgh.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> You'll have a hard time convincing me that it's our expectations which have changed the most.

And all this is because women now have careers, instead of being stay-at-home moms?

(Apologies if I misunderstood your comment. I'm trying to connect it to what the GP said.)

[falcolas]

The beginning and the end of my comment was "it's not just our expectations that have changed." My comment was merely to help describe why it is not just be that with a personal data point.

That said, it's highly likely there is some correlation between wages (and housing costs) and the doubling the potential labor pool, but that's another topic for another day.