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by deepsun 565 days ago
But it wasn't cheap "back then" either. I've spent 1 hour one way riding 2 buses to school (same as my parents to work). We had 62 m^2 (670 sq. ft.) of house for 2 parents + 3 children.

It's just now we suddenly consider that too bad. Back then it was normal, just like everyone else.
1 comments
ido 565 days ago
I don’t know where you were born and how old you are, but that situation was defiantly not usual when i was a child (born 1983 in Israel). If anything I think I’d need a startup-liquidity-event level windfall to be able to afford housing as spacious as my parents bought in the 80s (housing costs increased way more than wages).

It may have been when my parents were born though (mid 1940s, one in what is now Israel and the other in what was then the Soviet Union).

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helge9210 565 days ago
But your parents didn't live in Israel 2019. Israel 1983 was more like today's Venezuela or Argentina. If you move today to a place comparable to Israel in 1983, you'll be able to afford even more space than your parents.
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ido 565 days ago
Not sure why 2019 specifically, it's 2024. I think you also underestimate 1980s Israel - although there was a stock-market crash in 1983, it was not otherwise that poor- maybe more like today's Portugal or Greece than Venezuela.

But anyway my parents were 1983 Israelis, they didn't come with future-Israel purchasing power - so they were able to afford their housing on the income of the time :) Other kids in my class had ± similar housing. Some were poor and had worse housing, but not 5 people in a 62m flat level of poverty- for that to be common you had to go back another couple decades (e.g. my mother's childhood experience in the 40s-50s was more like that, might have been common up to the 60s).

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helge9210 565 days ago
> Not sure why 2019 specifically, it's 2024.

Because in 2019 real estate was not only expensive by itself, but also all the future growth was added to a price.

Today in 2024 you can buy very cheap in some places (north, for example).

> there was a stock-market crash in 1983

Not just stock-market. By the time of the crash, Likud laid waste to the whole economy to undermine "the left".

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