[WalterBright]

> The problem is that, as states, we are not translating these increased profits into increased quality of life for citizens.

Are you sure about that? For example, air travel used to be a luxury only for the wealthy, and you wore your best clothes for a flight. Now airplanes are filled with people dressed in sweats and paying very cheap fares. Tourist destinations are buried in tourists the world over.

Buying a home computer used to cost $3,000. Now you can get one for a couple hundred, and that's in inflated dollars.

What you get when you buy a car is enormously better than what was available in the 1960s. I love old cars, but I'm well aware of the overall poor quality of them, lousy crash resistance, high maintenance, crummy handling, etc.

Clothes are historically cheap as dirt. My mom would sew layer after layer of patches on my jeans. Nobody does that anymore. My aunts would knit socks for me. Nobody does that anymore. (Still have the socks, they're treasures now.)

In general, things are so cheap it makes no sense to fix or maintain them. Just get another one.

Kids get a small mountain of toys for Christmas. Back in the 60's you got a handful of items, and did not feel deprived at all.

You can get a color TV for a couple hundred bucks, one that is far better than the $$$$ ones from the 1960s.

Think about all the entertainment you can get for free from the push of a button. You can get an MIT education for free in your home. You can get any question answered by typing into your computer.

Steak is much, much cheaper than when I was a boy. Then it was a luxury.

Fresh food from all over the world, 12 months a year, at your local grocery.

Our homes are much bigger than they used to be.

Car stereos used to be so expensive people stole them all the time. Today car stereos are so cheap they are worthless.

I built a home theater in my basement from equipment I got at the thrift store for $50. The HD projector was $600 new, and is probably even cheaper today. The screen was $50. The same setup would have cost $20,000 25 years ago, and wouldn't have been HD.

I remember when home stereos were expensive, like $thousands. Now you can buy excellent equipment at the thrift store for $20.

I remember buying stuff mail order from Sears with 3 to 6 weeks delivery time. Now I am spoiled rotten by getting it in 2 days.

Teenagers were expected to work starting at age 16, at least up through the 70s. Now a person's first job is often after college.

Nobody had a microwave or dishwasher when I grew up. Every meal meant time at the sink washing everything by hand. People rarely ate out. My how that has changed.

Seriously, we live in a golden age.

[novok]

The luxuries and toys got cheaper but many large essentials have gotten significantly more expensive on a cost/(hours worked) in most cohorts.

You used to be able to cover tuition and living expenses on a single part time job as a college student.

A single family household from a single high school educated worker could support a house, a car, children, a non working spouse, food and utilities.

Healthcare did not used to be this ruinously expensive.

Our TVs being cheaper, bigger and more colorful is cold comfort in comparison. It's great the tech, car, logisitics and textile industries has delivered more for less, but the rest have gone the opposite direction. Many would be very happy if they could buy a 1970s lifestyle at 1970s prices.

[mywittyname]

You could live a 1970s life on the cheap in 2020.

I live in a neighborhood full of 50's era ranch houses that are ~800sq feet and between 80-120k. It's an industrial area surrounded by factories and shipping yards, for that authentic, disco-era experience. Without the internet, cable, and cell phone bills, you could probably keep monthly living expenses under $1500. There's a grocery store within walking distance and bus service (not sure how great it is though).

Depending on what you call "high school educated," this is doable and more on a single income. Not for a McDonalds fry cook, but someone making $40k/yr could raise a family here. It would just be a sacrifice. I'm surrounded by single parents doing this everyday.

Health insurance is still fucked though.

[WalterBright]

I replied to some of those points in another reply here. I'll just point out that one factor in increased housing costs is government regulation.

Building codes require houses to be middle class houses. That means they cost more. If there are any left, take a look at homes in your area that were built before 1960. Quite a different. It would be illegal today to build the house I first bought, in almost every aspect. But it was a typical mass produced house built around 1970.

Secondly, at least in Seattle, the city government regularly heaps more and more expensive burdens on landlords. For example, recently they passed a law that the landlord is financially responsible for damage to an apartment caused by domestic violence. Regardless of your feelings about that, that causes rents to go up. Ever increasing restrictions on evictions causes rents to go up, again, regardless of whether those restrictions are justified or not.

[mywittyname]

This is neither here nor there. For the most part, new construction has always targeted the middle or upper class, with the less fortunate living in older, depreciated construction from decades past. It's why mature cities have mansions converted into apartments and newer, massive suburban enclaves on the parameter of the city.

It's not until the land is completely used that cities turn to revitalizing their core. But even then, new construction favors the upper class. If you're going to tear down a bunch of old bungalows, they need to be replaced with something pretty expensive to make the project economically viable.

[WalterBright]

Again, take a look at the remaining older homes in your area. It's not depreciation that makes them cheap. They are very small and poorly, cheaply built by modern standards. Saying they were originally targeted to the middle and upper class says a lot about how the standard of living has improved.

> they need to be replaced with something pretty expensive to make the project economically viable.

Which implicitly requires there being lots and lots and lots of people who can buy them.

[novok]

That is a very american pattern, offloading responsibilities that would be part of the government onto businesses themselves, probably because of government budget reasons.

One thing to note, what we often think of as luxury housing or new building regulations adding cost tends to be %10 of the cost of new housing. Expensive housing typically comes from expensive land and zoning bureaucracy delaying things.

I call it the lexus effect. A luxury lexus vs the camry it was based on is often a %10-%20 BOM difference vs. bigger margin it has when sold.

[Mirioron]

Part of the reason those large "essentials" (college education is not essential!) have become so expensive is that people have been willing to pay more and more for it. The supply of these is not increasing fast enough to keep up with demand. US population in 1970 was 205 million. Today it's 327 million. Nowadays around 30% of the population has a college education, in 1970 that was 10%. 70% of students that graduate high school go on to college nowadays. It used to be 50%.

People have more money available, the resource is scarce, and the bare minimum to live costs less. This means that people are willing to pay more of their income and these people end up taking up the supply.

[WalterBright]

Ironically, it's governmental attempts to make college affordable that caused the huge price increases.

[narag]

Tuition and healthcare seems to be USA specific. Most other rich countries have them solved.

Housing is more general of a problem, probably because it's also considered investment (with zoning as a way to add value), renting is a business...

[novok]

I agree, but then the countries where tuition and healthcare is more accessible have other issues that make you feel like you're treading water.

In Canada for example, housing is significantly more expensive on a cost/hours_worked basis than large chunks of the USA, and many households have debt load levels higher than the US. Cost of normal goods such as gas, utility bills, food, consumer goods, etc are also more expensive than the USA. You can see similar dynamics in Europe too.

[narag]

I watch USA and Canada in tv shows where middle class people buy huge houses that only the definitely rich would buy in Europe. If you want to stay out of debt, just don't spend too much.

IIRC you were talking about regular people's problems. Europe is not uniform, but in the richest countries you can live comfortably off a blue collar salary, no matter the taxes or cost of living. Actually it's infuriating how our government compares our taxes (Spain) to northern countries in percentage, omitting the fact that what you make after taxes and expenses is still higher because raw salaries are much higher there.

[novok]

The TV shows are aspirational and have a bit of a filter effect. Think instagram. Many people in US/Canada buy small(er), uglier houses.

Since the price of housing is more land than the building itself typically, a house that is literally double or triple the size in interior sqft (1500 to 3000 sqft for ex) can cost 'only' %25-%50 more.

There is also an availability factor, most of the US & Canada is suburban, you don't really have much of a choice to buy a small house. And with the price dynamic described above, it doesn't matter as much. You need a house to live in either way.

I've also heard that housing is crazy expensive in places like stockholm, and people do crazy ass stuff in amsterdam like no principal payment mortgages, but I'm not as familiar with the real dynamics there.

[Mirioron]

From an ex-Soviet perspective, living in a house itself can already be considered bordering on a luxury. When I grew up, a family of 4 to 7 easily lived in an 800-900 sqft apartment.

[throwaway0887]

> A single family household from a single high school educated worker could support a house, a car, children, a non working spouse, food and utilities.

I'm not sure things are much different today vs back then. Two working parents were always the norm, even in the mythical 50/60s.

[Reedx]

Two working parents has only been a norm since the 80s:

https://www.pewresearch.org/ft_dual-income-households-1960-2...

Prior to that most households were single income.

[throwaway0887]

Your source only includes married couples with children, not Americans in general. There's many variables that changed to fulfil that definition in the meantime.

For example, these days said couples tend to be older, more educated and with less kids on average. Which may explain why they're more likely to be dual income. You don't have time for a second job when you have 5 kids to raise. But that's less likely to happen today, statistically speaking.

So your comparison most likely compares people in different stages of life, not the same people across generations.

But in any case, the worker participation rate has stayed between 58% to 68% over the last 70 years, with around 63% today. Doesn't sounds that big of a difference to me.

[_lqaf]

This is the worst kind of lazy, I-got-mine, rose-colored-glasses thinking. One step away from the preposterous claims we saw a few years ago about how nobody is really 'poor' anymore because cell phones and huge TVs.

I missed the note about the grinding cost-increases of college that people don't apparently need to work to pay for (and everyone apparently goes to!).

And the entry for the increasing deaths-of-despair rate that is turned the US life expectancy rate negative.

And the one for young folks' increasing need to delay what used to be normal young adult things, like home purchase and marriage. And...

I think what you mean is that, if you have money and are over 40, the world will cater to you. (And to be clear, I'm in that category, as are many here.)

[WalterBright]

Take a look at historical life expectancy in the US:

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life...

About 10 years more than 1960.

[_jal]

Why are you fixated on 1960?

Try this: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db355.htm

[StandardFuture]

Sigh ... I hope this style of commentary comes to a swift end on the internet (and especially places like HN). Making a list of observations and declaring a pattern is not how objectivity works. Your list conveniently ignores the massive increase in housing, education, and healthcare costs alongside a declining average income (inflation-rated).

I also notice your time scales jump back 50+ years to the 1960s ... But, do all of your same observations hold up within the last 30 years? Some, maybe. How about 20? Much fewer. How about 10 years? Almost none.

Funny, that must be why attempting to make objective arguments with anecdotes does not actually qualify as "objective". Huh, imagine that.

[WalterBright]

My "anecdotes" are pretty easy to verify for yourself. Ask someone who has been around a while. The tourism industry has been recently in the news as place after place is groaning under the weight of tourists loving them to death.

housing - a couple factors at work here. Increasing population means housing is going to cost more. There's no getting around that.

education - you can get an MIT education for free on youtube. I've been filling in gaps in my education that way. For FREE!!! How awesome is that? The cost of attending college has indeed gone way up - due to government policy.

healthcare - this cost increase is driven by government policy.

[lordnacho]

Both housing and education are also largely driven by regulation. Housing when it comes to restricting new building, and education in regards to student loans.

[StandardFuture]

> Housing when it comes to restricting new building

Which is a very relevant form of regulation with regards to housing costs, because this regulation tends to exist more in places with high housing demand. So, you can still buy a cheap house in the middle of nowhere where there also is likely (gasp) no regulations on housing. Not sure what the causal relationships are exactly but the correlation seems to be there for sure.

I just sum it up as the baby boomers fucking over their kids for a quick buck, but shrug what do I know?

[samatman]

Your comment is low quality and doesn't add to the discussion.

novok, by contrast, makes all the same points, correctly, and without all the histrionics.

It can simultaneously be true that the technical 'dividend' is enjoyed by practically everyone in the developed world, and that the necessities of ordinary life have become more expensive, saving rates have plummeted, and precarity has been normalized.

Indeed, this appears to be the case. Expecting every comment on the Internet to cover everything salient about a given topic is unrealistic. Good thing we have the nested forum format, so that other people can fill things in!

[StandardFuture]

> Your comment is low quality and doesn't add to the discussion.

Please do not make personal attacks against people on HN. There is literally no reason to tell someone that their on-topic and very-relevant comment/response "is low quality doesn't add to the discussion". It is petty.

> Expecting every comment on the Internet to cover everything salient about a given topic is unrealistic. Good thing we have the nested forum format ...

Again, my response was utilizing the HN format to fill in some missing information and make a very relevant point about improved formatting of arguments in general.

> It can simultaneously be true that the technical 'dividend' is enjoyed by practically everyone in the developed world, and that the necessities of ordinary life have become more expensive, saving rates have plummeted, and precarity has been normalized.

It CAN be true, yes. It can also be true that the technical dividend is far out-weighed by rising costs. It can ALSO be true that globalization has changed the pricing dynamic mentioned in GP more so than a "technical dividend".

[samatman]

By "personal attacks" do you mean comments such as this one:

> Sigh ... I hope this style of commentary comes to a swift end on the internet (and especially places like HN)

?

[tarsinge]

The irony is that a lot of things you list are causing huge challenges for the environment and are not sustainable, so maybe a golden age for your generation not so much after.

[WalterBright]

True enough, but there has been progress on many fronts. I grew up in the era of leaded gasoline, and surely carry around a lot more lead than young people today, leaving me at elevated risk for diseases. Our waterways used to be far, far more polluted. Air pollution has been drastically reduced.

The birth rate going down will help a lot in making things more sustainable long term.

[triceratops]

> My mom would sew layer after layer of patches on my jeans. Nobody does that anymore

> In general, things are so cheap it makes no sense to fix or maintain them. Just get another one.

> Steak is much, much cheaper than when I was a boy.

> Fresh food from all over the world, 12 months a year,

This is terrible for the planet. I'm on board with the other stuff but our disposable economy and distant supply chains are a disaster.