[xyzzyz]

You can easily get 1950s quality housing and support a family to 1950s quality of life on today's single income. Our parents and grandparents quite simply expected much less from life than we do today.

It is really quite blatantly clear: as societies get wealthier, the fertility falls instead of rising.

[Hermitian909]

> You can easily get 1950s quality housing and support a family to 1950s quality of life on today's single income. Our parents and grandparents quite simply expected much less from life than we do today

I'm curious what you think makes a 1950s quality of life? I agree that people expect more material things today, but many of those things e.g. computers are de facto requirements to be a member of society. It seems to me that it is significantly more expensive to afford a good meal or a decent sized apartment.

Qualitatively, I know a large number of people who grew up in the 50s and their experiences of the time are different qualitatively. None of them ever struggled to meet their housing needs as long as they were able-bodied, and then generally only needed 20-40 hours of work (this include lower end work: construction, landscaping, retail).

While I don't have the stats handy* materially we know that during the mid 1900s the bottom 50% of americans owned a higher percentage of private property than in any time in history. Since then, we have reverted to a much more unequal distribution. It's hard to imagine this does not impact the current feeling of people feeling they can barely afford a place to live.

*if you have access to a copy of Capital and Ideology I believe you can find references in chapters 9 and 10

[weatherlite]

You can easily get thrown out of the workforce due to offshoring, AI automation or ageism. Our grandparents didn't need to deal with all that they had strong unions and kept the same job till retirement. I'd take the 50s if this is the future the elites are planning for us.

[Thorrez]

>Our grandparents didn't need to deal with all that they had strong unions

Larry Page's grandpa was an autoworker, and had to carry around a pipe with a hunk of lead on it to avoid getting beaten up by his employer.

https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-pages-grandfather-kept...

[weatherlite]

Some things got better and some things got worse, we can all find interesting anecdotes. You're saying the average American's story is more closely resembling Larry Page's than the one I described? I'm really not so sure that's true.

[xyzzyz]

Your understanding of the past is very mistaken. Our grandparents had to deal with the same issues.

I live Washington, and frequently travel around the rural areas here. The state is littered with coal mining towns abandoned a century ago, with lumber mills closed before WWII, with towns like Index, WA, which was established in late 19th century, and had its population and industry peak in 1920s-1930s.

Our history is history of dynamism and change, and while some fraction of Americans lived and retired working for the same big factory in Detroit, this has by no means been an universal experience of our ancestors. In fact, if you look at the data, people today move for work less than our ancestors had. Our past was indeed glorious, but it was not a past of wealth and stability.

[weatherlite]

> In fact, if you look at the data, people today move for work less than our ancestors had. Our past was indeed glorious, but it was not a past of wealth and stability.

Indeed it depends how far you go back. I mostly talk about the baby boomer generation (who are "our" parents in many cases as many people here are 25-50 years old). In general they experienced more financial and occupational stability than us since they had much stronger unions and globalization was only starting.

[xyzzyz]

There was a brief period in American history where workers were quite well off, but it had more to do with the rest of the industrialized world being bombed to pieces than with unions.

When boomers started entering job market en masse in 1970s, they entered the economy of prolonged stagnation and high inflation, saw rationing of fuel, and by no means enjoyed significant stability. When they were buying houses, the nominal price was low, but mortgage rates were 8% at best times, 16% at the worst, making the mortgage payments scarcely more affordable than they are today. When they were entering job markets, the unions were already declining for two decades, and only something like a quarter of people were in a union in 1970.

Really, the boomers only made a killing in last decade or two, resulting from the low interest rates pumping values of assets. They certainly did not have it easy or stable in their youths, when they were forming families. I think your understanding of economic history needs more research.

[weatherlite]

Our economic position is just as bad and probably worse than the 70s - on top of inflation we have the biggest debt since WW2, much worse demography, weaker unions and AI is just beginning to wreck havoc. Really not great to be middle class now in my eyes. I do agree though, these comparisons to the past need to be done carefully, there is a lot of nuance.

[bamboozled]

The issue is, your kids will need / expect as much as other kids.

So you might be happy with having little, but it's not going to be easy to send your kids to school and tell them they shouldn't have an iPad or an international holiday so mummy doesn't have to work.

[pacija]

It's even harder to teach them that what one knows, what one does and what one gives, is more important than what one consumes and what one has. But I think it will be worth it.