[fidotron]

Yeah and this is a relatively recent development.

I did my amateur radio license in Canada about 15 years ago, which involves also getting to know the older members of the local radio club. Their attitudes were quite incredible - very normal working class dudes with tens of thousands a year to spend on any serious hobby. (Like spending thousands on amplifiers, then thousands shipping them to pacific islands and up mountains etc.) They would also have cottages with arrays of recreational vehicles of different sorts and so on.

You can also see this in the pinball community as there is an age boundary when it drops off entirely.

It is amazing how quickly the normal expected standard of life in north america has taken a nosedive while the property values have exploded. Europe is even worse.

[bluefirebrand]

Absolutely

There's two dimensions to consider here: many hobbies require monetary investment, and many hobbies require quite a bit of space

You basically cannot have woodworking for instance as your hobby if you live in a small apartment

Yes, maybe there's some kind of Maker-space you can go to, but there may not be. That also just creates a barrier to entry because now you need to deal with a membership to the space, travel time, etc. And you still need space at home to store finished projects too!

So people are pretty restricted in the activities they actually can do if they don't have money or space to do things