[GodelNumbering]

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that.

It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately affects people's sense of content and wellbeing. Also, doesn't help that laws and government policy heavily favor home owners (perhaps because home owners vote at a lot higher rate than renters)

[smallmancontrov]

Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives. It's undeniably a little cool that luxuries got cheap, but it's severely un-cool that necessities got expensive. I'm glad to see a focus on pushing statistics to do a better job of reflecting that, but yeah, this is all downstream of structural incentives so fixes are only going to happen through legislative choices that will make people angry and until then the problems will continue to get worse.

[GodelNumbering]

> undeniably a little cool that luxuries got cheap, but it's severely un-cool that necessities got expensive

Well said. Being told that 'you should be happy without owning' to a party that can't afford to own by another party who is actively scooping up the same resource can feel extremely invalidating.

My personal take is that a lot of support for contemporary political extremism in many countries comes from the fact that a significant portion of population is pissed off and see no realistic chance of the 'settle down and thrive' life, not because they are racist/prejudiced or whatever (although labeling them as such only makes things more extreme)

[forgotaccount3]

> Being told that 'you should be happy without owning' to a party that can't afford to own by another party who is actively scooping up the same resource can feel extremely invalidating.

It's not really coming from those though? At the same time that housing costs have ballooned, we've also had a significant migration back to cities. When a larger % of the population are living in high density locations you are going to naturally have a larger % not owning homes. Owning your own home does not align with the density required for a city to function.

At the least, narrowing down the topic to 'Why do people rent instead of own a condo?' is a much more meaningful topic over 'Why do people rent instead of own a SFH?' since a condo is a more viable option in locations where most of the renters are.

[Swizec]

> Owning your own home does not align with the density required for a city to function

Much of Europe would like a word. I grew up in a block of flats where everybody owned. 16 apartments, around 60 people, lived on the footprint of a typical American house. All our parents were homeowners, together they owned the building. Two buildings actually and the land they stood on.

So a total of 32 apartments, 120 people, a small parking lot, and a bit of green lawn owned by the people who lived there and self-governed through a sort of HOA. Little communities like this were extremely common in the city.

Nowadays with my generation homeownership is becoming a little more rare. Still people own apartments in these self-governed buildings, but many have become priced out. Too much demand not enough build.

[repeekad]

Why does being in a city “naturally” mean less home ownership? More demand and higher prices yes, but you also should be earning more and dense housing projects should be trivial to justify. It’s legislation all the way down, politicians protect the interests of the wealthy who want to rent seek regardless of location. Look at how mamdani got a common sense luxury home tax in NYC, before that ultra wealthy owned multiple homes just because they could.

[mauvehaus]

Because multi-family buildings (required for higher density) come with more complicated ownership models. Owner occupied triple deckers in Boston, for example, often come with their own condo associations because there needs to be some way to handle the shared maintenance and expenses.

That's for a three unit building. Now scale that to a twenty or one hundred unit building. At some point, it makes sense for a single entity to handle the common maintenance through outright ownership and rent. Individual families have the flexibility to leave if things suck without being financially tied to the building long-term and subject to changes in housing prices. Yes, moving as a renter is expensive. It's still lower cost and friction than moving as an owner.

Source: rented for years in cities. Now happily a homeowner in the hinterlands of Vermont.

[jimberlage]

A counterpoint is that a huge number of suburban Americans already have experience with a condo association through being in an HOA.

Rural homeowners and people with single family homes in streetcar suburbs or cities don't, but most new developments already have an organization with dues for shared maintenance.

[100percentjake]

Pulling from fuzzy memories here, but to my knowledge the legal framework for the bastardized entity known as Homeowners Associations here in the US originated from the exact thing your describe; multiple person ownership in parts of a single building.

[PunchyHamster]

One thing soviet commies did right was housing builds. Build factory for city blocks, then just pop them up, constantly, keeping the line busy.

It should really be city that is building the new housing (even if in the end it gets subcontracted, at least the top level have vested interest in keeping the quality and cost in check). Maybe even offer some rent-to-own programs where part of rent gets put into savings that can be used to either buy it after few years of use or be withdrawn when moving so renter have nice lil bit of money to put forward for buying new apartment/home.

Then the city can actually plan for it, rather than hope housing developer that bought the land does something good for city and not just their own pocket.

[repeekad]

China and their ghost cities of unoccupied high rises would say otherwise

[pandaman]

>One thing soviet commies did right was housing builds

And yet, the housing was a much bigger problem in the USSR than what amounts to "housing crisis" in the USA. One of the big points of the CPSU platform was to provide non-shared living accommodations to each family by the year 2000 (the USSR collapsed before that but the Party admitted they are not meeting the demand already in 1989). In rich cities most of these pre-made buildings had been already scraped.

[ajsnigrutin]

There's no need for the city to build it, they have zoning plans, and they can easily zone "that corn field over here" into an aera of commie-style apartment buildings (5+ floors, commercial on ground floors, apartments above, garages underground), and assign some percentage of space for green areas.

I live in one of those used-to-be-commie countries, and we somehow manage to keep cornfields in prime locations, and in many areas, the most the local government allows you to build is a two-apartment two-story house, but none of the non-built land is actually buildable, so you need to demolish something else first. Here and there someone is able to build something with maybe 6-8 apartments (probably with an envelope switching hands), but that's it.

It's as if some rich people connected to the government managed to get a lot of realestate in the 1990s when communism fell, and now they don't want prices to drop. But hey, we're building office buildings without any issues and making airbnb even easier instead... so yeah... the situation is pretty bad.

[the_sleaze_]

> One thing soviet commies did right was housing builds

I disagree. I have yet to see a nice-place-to-live low-income project. In USA Russia Brazil or Southeast Asia.

[jimberlage]

Most people don't see that as viable because American cities don't have the public transit needed to make that viable, and equally important, don't have condos built that are the size of a family home. And there's a big push among suburban parents to judge their kids for living in cities, even if they're not as dangerous as the parents think.

If we modeled Spain, we could have more condos. That would require good, safe transit, condos with green space and multiple rooms at a SFH price point, and a cultural change among the older generation to view cities as having less crime.

[carlosjobim]

Housing costs have boomed and are still booming in rural areas and regions where the population is decreasing and all young workers are moving away.

[JKCalhoun]

"…not because they are racist/prejudiced or whatever…"

Perhaps wealthy actors (or those representing them) are attempting to distract the aggrieved—focus their anger toward some non-wealthy group.

[LPisGood]

This seems like an interesting theory, but when I look at the two ways it may be actuated it seems to fall apart.

Either there is explicit collusion where they meet and discuss how to do these things, or there is implicit collusion where they all act in their own best interests and the results is the same. Neither of these mechanism seems particularly likely to me.

I would be happy to hear some thoughtful explanation of how other people approach this issue

[JKCalhoun]

I agree that your two examples don't stand up to scrutiny.

There is historic precedent for blaming immigrants (as an example, or just others, if you like) for one's woes. So on one hand you have well-known "playbooks" that don't require some secret meeting of a cabal.

That aside though, even if actors don't collude, if they're each throwing a lot of things at the wall, they may well all arrive at the same things that seem to "have stuck". It's as though there are universal fears and even prejudices among populations of people.

[beedeebeedee]

Hi, this is a well known phenomenon in politics that is much discussed in political science and sociology, and goes by many names (strategic polarization, racial capitalism, split labor market theory, etc, and depending upon how you frame it, it encompasses all politics going back to Plato’s Republic). There are many examples where elites have stoked division amongst the poor (usually along ethnic or religious differences, but any difference can be utilized).

The most famous examples in America were the divisions created between poor white and poor black Americans during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era to prevent them from forming class solidarity, and then later, the Southern strategy that enabled Nixon and the Republican Party to regain power during and after the Civil Rights era.

If you are unfamiliar with this topic, you can look at wiki articles and blogs like these, and then go deeper by reading academic papers and books on the subject.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_labor_market_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Reconstruction_in_Americ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://belonging.berkeley.edu/new-southern-strategy

[soco]

This is seriously the basis of the manual of populism as mass control tool: identify something attacking their group identity, hang it before their eyes, and they will follow you blindly in every other aspect. Many books have been written about this and nowadays we can see their implementation at work about everywhere.

[ajsnigrutin]

You can spin many things to sound as racism if you want them to.

My small eu country has in the recent years started importing workers from asian countries, and people are against that... of course it's branded as 'racism' in the media.

The reality is, that some businesses have been having troubles with finding workers to do hard work for minimum wage (which is easily solvable by paying people more and creating better working conditions, but hey, think of the profits), and importing foreign workers means that wages can stay down. We're talking about AI and how we'll all lose jobs,and at the same time, importing new people, and that doesn't compute for many, especially those underpaid who can't negotiate for better options because the government approved new foreign workers in their field.

Then you have the more on-topic problem of importing thousands of "outsiders" into a relatively small city (~300k pop), without building any housing, neither for them, nor for locals, who want to move out their 30+yo "kids" out of their childhood bedrooms, nor for others living a bit further away who'd like to live closer to work. Sure, you can fit 8 "poor foreigners" into a 2-bedroom apartment with 4 bunk beds for 200/month each, and it'll be cheap for them, but for a young couple wating a child, 1600eur for such an apartment is around 1/2 of their combined income, so nope, no apartment and no kids for them, since they have nowehre to put them, and "we need foreigners, because our people are not having enough kids".

Then the third problem is integration... and the government does nothing about it, no language courses, no nothing... the laws say that businesses must use our native language, but in some areas, you can interact even with waiters or shop clercs (so, first line of interaction with customers) who can't speak a word of it.

But hey, it's easier to say "racist people hate foreigners", than to solve the issues.

[pixl97]

Because the issues are nearly unsolvable.

Your small EU country probably has a replacement rate of something like 1.5 which means you're heading towards extinction. This puts a crimp on labor and increases wages, and it leaves openings in higher paying jobs which people want. You end up with no one to do naturally lower paying non-specalized labor.

Modern standards of not having 100 people die in a house fire have changed the dynamics of where immigrants live when they moved to a country. New York City, for example, just shoved people nut to butt in the smallest most unsafe places they could make. We don't do that in first world countries now, so something has to give.

[ajsnigrutin]

It could be 1.7 if we actually built apartments young people could afford.

It could be 1.9 if we had better paid jobs for those without college.

We could have even more if kindergarden didn't cost as much, and if people could afford everything else.

"Back in the time", you'd start work at 18 (or even earlier, most people didn't go to college), settle down with a partner at 20, 21, and what else is there to do than to make a kid? And since it was communism, having a kid meant you'd get a larger apartment. You're 23, 24... another kid, why not, you're still young. Third kid? An even larger apartment!

Now, you need college to get any kind of proper job, so nothing before 25yo, then you need to build up your career, and the age of first kid is going towards 30yo (for mom) or more. That's before accounting for the place to put your kids in. We used to build apartment buildings in communist times, now we don't. And it's not unique to communist areas, even in places like london and paris, low income housing blocks were being built in the 1960s, 1970s and even 80s,... now? Almost nothing.

So, change the law, import as much workers as you've built housing for, give priority to locals with zero houses already, give tax breaks and create assimilation programs (language first) for foreigners. You can't just bring people in, without having (livable) places to put them in and then leave them be. Hey, you big company needing workers... until you pressure your mayor to approve more housing, you won't get them, and mayors listen to "big money". But nope.

[grvdrm]

I like your take. Do you feel it also a lack of interest in genuine evaluation of hard options?

Not all policy is easy to understand, but I feel (anecdote) that lots of folks don’t want to understand what isn’t an obvious benefit to them, especially if benefits accrue over a longer period.

[palmotea]

> Well said. Being told that 'you should be happy without owning' to a party that can't afford to own by another party who is actively scooping up the same resource can feel extremely invalidating.

That's been a long standing element of capitalist propaganda: attempt to distract and invalidate people's real, legitimate complaints about their situations by noting that not even the Kings of old had color TVs and refrigerators.

Who cares if your housing situation is insecure, getting healthcare is challenging, and politically you're dis-empowered? Look at the boob tube and rejoice at your good fortune!

[rayiner]

> Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives.

BLS says housing, transportation, and food are the top 3. Insurance/pensions is #4, but that also includes car and homeowners insurance and retirement contributions.

Over the past 50 years, both transportation and food got cheaper. Moreover, clothing actually used to be one of the top categories, but that’s fallen off completely.

[throwforfeds]

I've never owned a car since I live in NYC (I'm in my 40s), so the only transportation numbers I'm vaguely familiar with are with the subway. The MTA budget has gone way up over the past 50 years [1] and the cost to build the subway in NYC is hovering in the $2 billion/mile range. This is largely political and bureaucratic, as in Japan and Europe it's about $200 million - $400 million/mile. [2]

So clearly something is going wrong with the way we deal with our mass transit as well if Paris can do things for a fraction of NYC.

[1] https://nypost.com/2017/06/25/it-took-50-years-for-the-mta-t... [2] https://www.city-journal.org/article/why-cant-new-york-contr...

[smallmancontrov]

I should have said "mandatory expense inflation", yes. There are still some difficult problems the economy is making progress on, but the correct attitude towards those is "keep up the good work" and to focus our attention back on the parts which are robbing us of progress as fast as we make it, where costs soar in excess of wage increases: health care, housing, and education.

[JKCalhoun]

Transportation has got cheaper? That seems at odds with what I'm seeing (although I was only 12 years old 50 years ago).

[xyzzyz]

Gas prices have barely changed in inflation adjusted terms over last 50 years, and if anything, the trend is slightly downwards. At the same time, inflation adjusted incomes went up, and cars became significantly more fuel efficient.

[rawgabbit]

I have a hard time believing healthcare expenses is not in the top three.

[daemonologist]

It might be that a lot of the cost doesn't show up in the data because it comes out of your paycheck before it's "yours," in the form of your employer's contribution to health insurance premiums. (Anecdotally this is true for me - "my" portion of premiums would not be in the top three, but the total premiums are #2 after housing (for a while when I had roommates they were #1, which is ridiculous).)

(BLS gets this data from surveys: https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cex/home.htm )

[rayiner]

Correct. You can argue this is money that you’d otherwise get if it wasn’t going to healthcare, and that’s a fair point. But then you have to count that in the top line income.

[Xirdus]

I don't know about the first half of those 50 years, but over the second half (2001-today), transportation - or at least cars - got significantly more expensive. Disappearance of cheap new cars + massive supply reduction of used cars + repair costs of old cars + gas prices.

[shipman05]

Inflation has been high enough that it messes with our perception of things, but I believe the data shows otherwise (at least in the US).

- Disappearance of cheap new cars: You can get entry level Chevys, Kias, and Hyundais for < $25k, which is about $14k in 2001 dollars and many more of those cars will last until 200,000 miles and have safety features only available on luxury cars in 2001.

- Massive supply reduction of used cars: I actually don't have good data on this, but it seems like there's pipeline is still borked from COVID era irregularities. That said, cars these days have much better quality and last longer. A car with more than 100,000 miles in the 90s was near the end of its life. That's a typical listing Facebook marketplace these days.

- Repair costs of old cars: Repairs can be expensive, but again, cars today are much more reliable than they were in the 90s or earlier. Even simple things like recommended oil change frequency changing from 3k miles to 10k miles for most models makes a huge difference in total cost of ownership.

- Gas prices: Gas prices have certainly spiked recently (gee, I wonder why), but the cost of gas in real dollars has been higher several times in the past 25 years (see the second chart here: https://www.macrotrends.net/4453/us-gasoline-prices) It peaked in 2008 over $6 per gallon in 2026 dollars.

[Xirdus]

> You can get entry level Chevys, Kias, and Hyundais for < $25k, which is about $14k in 2001 dollars

For comparison, an entry level car in 2001 was <$9k. That's <$18k in today's dollars.

The extra safety features is part of why transportation has become less affordable, yes.

> I actually don't have good data on this, but it seems like there's pipeline is still borked from COVID era irregularities.

That, plus Obama-era Cash for Cars, plus engines becoming so complicated and expensive to fix that 10+ year old broken cars are scrapped rather than repaired at much higher rates.

You used to be able to buy a car for literally less than $1000 that would last you a few good years with minimal maintenance.

> Repair costs of old cars: Repairs can be expensive, but again, cars today are much more reliable than they were in the 90s or earlier.

Not 5x more reliable, as in requiring 5x fewer engine renovations over 15 years now that it costs 5x more to do so.

[AnnikaL]

I wonder if some of this will reverse once more electric cars are available on the used market, which are cheaper to fuel and require less maintenance. Already some of the explosion of non-luxury EVs with >200 miles range around 2020ish are starting to be available used, albeit a bit more expensive than gas counterparts.

If battery degradation isn't too great, maybe in 10 years people can buy 15 year old EVs that are cheap to maintain and run (for those who can accept the tradeoffs of EVs - and that would reduce demand on ICEVs). We'll see.

[CPLX]

The numbers are just bullshit. The current inflation numbers tell us the price of health insurance is falling for example.

When reality seems to be in conflict with logic, the next step is to question assumptions.

[amanaplanacanal]

Is the cost of health insurance falling because people are settling for worse plans?

[rawgabbit]

I would wager they are non insured and going to the emergency room when desperate. As another poster linked healthcare costs have grown exponentially.

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-8...

[matwood]

It's a bit like when the inflation basket subs ground beef for steak, and then says food is getting cheaper.

[runako]

Where are you seeing inflation numbers showing health insurance falling?

[CPLX]

The CPI showed health care price dropping by 7% in the most completed numbers, which were June.

It's fucking ridiculous and obviously so. The problem does involve methodology and so on but mostly it's just that "the map is not the territory" to be honest. The CPI is a synthetic measurement.

There are other examples too. It's not just health insurance. For example, interest rates are generally excluded from the CPI. So they don't affect the tracked price of owning a car even if they cause car payments to go up by double-digit percentages. Which has actually happened.

If you want a link though: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.htm

Scroll to health insurance and note that it's showing over a 7% decrease year over year.

[mrguyorama]

Industrialized agriculture drove the cost of food from 50% of a normal person's income hundreds of years ago to like 5% now.

The problem is that after a few centuries of relatively good times, structures have been built up so that the owners of assets can claw back all that income again. They are using housing as the sink for all that wealth, because land can't be industrialized.

They want us to be peasants again.

[francisofascii]

> Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives.

Definitely true for my household. The mortgage, college for the kids, and health insurance for a family takes up a huge amount. Not to mention the housing expenses like HVAC fixes, trash collection, sewer, utilities, etc.

[Gormo]

It's not a coincidence that the three sectors you mention are the three most heavily regulated and subject to political intervention in the US, all with schizophrenic policy frameworks that simultaneously restrict supply and subsidize demand.

[ffsm8]

luxeries also haven't gotten cheap, really - their manufacturing has been outsourced into places which often don't pay decent wages - so it's just out of sight/out of mind.

We're currently living in a time where some of the issues are being hidden by the nature of a global market - it's friggin impossible to make any good analysis with a global market, it has just too many influences and ways to hide criteria...

[kakacik]

> Health care, housing, and education

In Europe its only housing, and still proportionally cheaper than what US has, often in higher quality for older homes (bricks / concrete vs cheap creaky wooden houses).

The idea of saving massive amounts for my kids potential university studies is ridiculous to me. Same for any health issue. I mean any health issue as long as I can work, and then social state takes over (that is not ideal but at point nothing is).

This is also how happiness can be defined - lack of (much shorter list of) constant worries and pressures to deliver, sustain etc.

[jandrewrogers]

In the US, bricks and concrete are unsafe, not "higher quality". Much of the US has severe earthquakes which collapsed the European-style masonry buildings they used to build. There are many old photos of what happened to cities that were built with brick/concrete after major earthquakes. The main alternatives are steel and wood, same as in Japan.

My home is rated to survive earthquakes stronger than any in recorded European history without structural damage.

[CalRobert]

Concrete houses suck and Europeans need to get off their high house about them. I own a concrete brick house in Europe and I’d strongly prefer a wooden American one. It’s hard to insulate, hard to alter, uglier, has a terrible embodied carbon footprint, has too much thermal mass, and alterations that would make it more livable (like having eaves) are illegal.

[BeetleB]

On the flip side, window AC's are really effective at cooling the single room they're in.

In the wooden house I have, I just can't get the room that cool if the temperature is in the 90's, because the internal walls provide very little insulation. It was trivial when I lived in concrete buildings. It's a ridiculous waste to have to use central air conditioning to cool a whole house when I really just need to cool 1-2 rooms.

[CalRobert]

OK, but window AC and also mini and multi split systems, which are also like this, work just fine in wooden houses, so I don’t see the connection. I had multi splits in a wooden house in Ireland.

Edit: re-reading… I guess it depends on the house but I definitely have had a substantial temp difference between rooms in a wooden house

[BeetleB]

We may just have different standards on what "cold" means :-)

Let's say it's 35C outside. Just using a window AC alone, I want to cool the room to where I'm uncomfortably cold (not quite shivering but close) - within about an hour of turning it on (2 hours max). I can't do that with my wooden house in the US when the outside is that hot. I can make it comfortably cool, but no cooler.

(I had better experience in a wooden apartment building, but that's likely because the walls between apartments have insulation).

Actual numbers: If I leave the AC on at max cool all night, I can get the temperature down to 20C. Keep in mind that it's cool outside at night (and actually will dip below 20C at some point at night).

I've never gotten it below 20C.

When I lived in a concrete place, we would never set the thermostat on the window AC to the coolest setting - it would get too cold!

(Yes, I clean the filter and have even replaced the AC - the unit wasn't the problem).

[huijzer]

> I'm glad to see a focus on pushing statistics to do a better job of reflecting that

“You have lies, damned lies, and then you have statistics”

[testing22321]

> Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives

In every developed country two of those are basic human rights, and you get them free even if you’ve never worked simply because you don’t want to.

Every developed country except one, that is.

[Gormo]

It's not possible for any of these to be "basic human rights", regardless of what rhetoric may be employed by states seeking to assert centralized political control over their provision. Goods and services that must be actively supplied by other people cannot be rights.

Rights are norms that protect people's inherent rights unto themselves as baseline rules we use to negotiate society in the first place. They can't pertain to things that can only be obtained within society.

[cpburns2009]

All of those are free to the poor in the US with our very generous welfare to the bottom and top percentiles.

[qlte]

* assuming you don’t live in a state with a Medicaid work requirement/disqualified by earning “too much” as working poor, and lucky enough/have dependents to win a Section 8 voucher from the lottery after waiting for months to years

[cpburns2009]

I agree the working class gets screwed over as usual.

[testing22321]

What a shame it’s not for everyone

[CGMthrowaway]

>this is all downstream of structural incentives

You are mostly right and the structural incentives are more related at root to unsustainable national debt than any legislative choice (unless that's what you were referring to)

[rawgabbit]

I don’t follow your logic. The recent legislative choice by the current administration is continued tax breaks, corporate tax holidays, and capricious tariffs. There is no serious discussion about the debt.

[spwa4]

Nobody spends like republicans.

Trump increased the national debt by $7.8 trillion in his first term (rising from ~$19.9 trillion at inauguration to ~$27.75 trillion when he left office), 39% increase (more than WW2, the Manhattan project and the Moon landing combined)

Each and every US citizen will be required to pay $22,400 for the (ahem) accomplishments of Trump's first term.

So far in his second term, Trump has added $3.2 trillion so far, if you calculate by the end of his second term it will be about $8.8 trillion.

Each and every US citizen will be required to pay $25,000 for his accomplishments now.

For comparison: you owe $9,200 for Barack Obama's last term, and $20,300 for Joe Biden's term. Oh and Clinton was by far the cheapest president since WW2, increasing the debt by a measly $600 during his 2nd term.

[inigyou]

I don't see how. National debt is just a form of money-printing. And it has to equal private savings.

[amanaplanacanal]

Not necessarily local savings though. Savings from other countries works just fine.

[__MatrixMan__]

Nothing to do with poisoning the non-AI parts of the economy to drive investment in AI? Its not like this bubble was gonna blow itself.

It's clear that there's plenty of money to go around. It's just that none of it is being spent on things that improve people's lives, mostly due to corruption.

[paxys]

These problems have existed since well before AI.

[__MatrixMan__]

Sure, it's only the most recent example of how lopsided economies like ours cyclically shoot themselves in the foot.

[jenniferhooley]

Or we just wait for automation and robotics to make building housing much cheaper and the free market system to fix things - which 5 years ago I assumed was too far out, but with all the advances in the sector, seems like we might get significantly cheaper building costs within the next 10 years or so.

[inigyou]

The cost of housing mostly isn't in the building. If it was, we'd just build smaller and have houses. But you can't because the land costs too much.

[JKCalhoun]

"If it was, we'd just build smaller and have houses."

Someone needs to tell the big developers. They keep turning out McMansions (and somehow selling them?).

There's no profit in building smaller.

[win311fwg]

The local business producing single-wides seems to be doing fairly well and has been in business for over 60 years, so I am not sure it is accurate to say that there is no profit. The market is small, though. If you can afford a small new house you can also afford a large used house and most people are going to choose the larger house every time. In aggregate, there isn't a whole lot of incentive for someone to build a small house.

[inigyou]

Yep. If you're already paying for whatever the city says is the minimum amount of land you can buy, the house on top is trivial.

[jenniferhooley]

Huh? I have a 650sqft house, it costs 430K in a small town. I looked at building a new place, it would cost roughly the same to hire a building team to make it - not to mention years of waiting on development. The land is fairly affordable if I buy a little bit out of town. It's the cost of building that is stopping me.

[AlotOfReading]

If I look at the value of the place where I'm living, a bit more than 2/3rds of it is attributable to land instead of structure. This ratio will change depending on whether you have a multistory structure on a small plot of land, or a SFH with a yard on a larger plot, but land/value ratios > 50% are typical.

[win311fwg]

Houses depreciate. Markets can do funny things (remember the COVID days when a used car could sell for more than the same new car?), but generally the remaining value of a standing structure is going to be a fair bit less than the cost to build the same thing new. It is likely that the parent also sees >50% land value on the current property now that the house has been lived in and is showing some wear and tear, but key here is that to rebuild the building from scratch it would cost as much as the land plus current building is worth just to build the same structure again.

[phil21]

I guess it depends on how you look at the numbers.

My current place would sell for say $1.4M or so.

The lot itself is worth around $600-700k if it was empty.

A similarly sized home would cost well over $1m to construct to similar quality levels - normalizing a bit for modern construction techniques and all that.

So about $2.4m to build new, or $1.4m to buy a fairly similar 25 year old home next door. New construction here costs more than the older structures on the land in most cases. This ignores permitting and financing costs which throws a light wrench into those calculations, likely making it a bit more expensive on the build side.

That is using numbers I would pay a custom builder for, but even if you add in 20-30% profit for the builder the math isn't super great for the new build end of things.

[runako]

If it's costing $650+ per sqft to build, it sounds like there may be some externalities about the site(s) that might be relevant here?

For scale, in much of the country it is possible to build a new home for well under $200/sf. New detached homes retail for <$175/sf, which includes the builder's profit.

[CalRobert]

I had a 1200 sqft house built for about €180,000 in Ireland.

[win311fwg]

Why would you build a small new home when you can buy a large used home for the same price?

[moate]

1- Costs of operating an larger house are higher than a smaller house 2- Yearly maintenance of a new house is cheaper than an older house (older the house, the greater this gets) 3- Easier to keep a smaller house tidy 4- Mobility/lifestyle issues. 5- Indifference towards resale value

Not everyone wants a giant house, and plenty of people like a small one. It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it.

[win311fwg]

I don't think anyone is talking about giant houses. Last time I priced a new 1,500 sq ft home they wanted over $800,000. That was an instant nope from me. Another commenter pointed out that their 650 sq ft home would be $400,000 to build new. These are already beyond most people's affordability even before considering the cost of the land.

So when we talk about small and affordable we're talking more like 100 sq ft. Large compared to that is what most would call a modest home.

[inigyou]

If homes were expensive we'd buy less of them.

[win311fwg]

Which is why we do buy less of them nowadays. We're buying slightly more of them than we did during the Great Depression, but we are on the low side as compared to the historical norm. If we bought more of them we wouldn't be talking about it in the first place.

[gchamonlive]

How about a bit of empathy. People don't have 10 years to wait for necessities, those vulnerable are suffering today

[twoodfin]

Owning a home creates a stable, personal nexus with a set of vital institutions: Family, community, local economy, government, …

As a driver and measure of well-being, it’s probably at least 10,000 years old, since agriculture made migratory hunter-gatherer societies obsolete.

[eulers_secret]

You can have these things without owning a house.

Community is IMO easier in apartments, the higher density means there’s a bigger pool of folks you might click with.

Community gathering spots are more prevalent as well: pools, playgrounds, green spaces, etc are common amenities. Especially if you get a dog, you will meet lots of people.

Of course it depends on which complex you live in. If I move I will miss my apartment and its community. I won’t miss my window aircon though, central air would be awesome.

[100percentjake]

And then after 3 years in the apartment the landlord (or a new owner, if the place you call "home" is merely a line on some out-of-state investment leech's spreadsheets) decides to "adjust" the rent and price you out and you are, with little to no warning, forced to move and very likely abandon many of those connections.

[NiloCK]

> You can have these things without owning a house.

Yes this is feasible, but respecting it as a design problem, renting is more transient than ownership and tilts the floor away from deep communal relationships.

Comparing the neighborhood I grew up in with the one I now live in is night and day. My mom has had the same next door neighbors for 44 years. Up and down the street there are many similarly familiar persons.

By comparison, from my own front door, I can only physically see two houses that are owner occupied. There are good neighbors (and friends!) in the rental houses as well, but investing in those relationships pays off with lower certainty because circumstance is very likely to uproot them at any given moment.

[Fargren]

You can own and appartment and live in it. For some reason ownership every discussion with USAmericans seems to come with the premise that home ownership implies houses. The vast majority of home owners I know personally own a flat.

[ch4s3]

> 10,000 years old, since agriculture made migratory hunter-gatherer societies obsolete.

This isn't really how the transition to agriculture worked. Historically agricultural elites captured lands with conscripted armies and forced people to farm. There are plenty of examples where central authority collapsed and the archeological evidence shows us that people largely stopped farming.

[trimethylpurine]

This seems reasonable without negating the previous comment.

With no army to protect the farm, there can be no farm. A return to hunting and gathering would occur as an effect of warfare, regardless of whether or not the farmers have any choice. But hunting and gathering is still obsolete, whereupon agriculture is possible.

Obsolescence does not by definition imply permanence.

[twoodfin]

I’m not sure you’re disagreeing with me: Those who owned the land and didn’t have to migrate / soldier around or work someone else’s land to survive were doing well for themselves!

[ch4s3]

The people farming didn't really own the land, in many cases they were captured or corralled in place and forced to farm. The were also forced to dig canals and occasionally do the soldiering. All of the early Mesopotamian city states use corvée labor. Being an early farmer was super shitty, and no one did it by choice.

[twoodfin]

Right, I’m saying the jerks who did the capturing and the forcing (the owners!) were doing well, not the proto-feudal farmers.

[jltsiren]

When archaeological evidence shows that people largely stopped farming, it usually means that those people largely stopped existing. Or at least living in that area. Apart from a few rare exceptions, agriculture is the only viable way to support substantial populations.

Farming came first, and with it came larger communities and higher population density. That led to surplus, which enabled elites and other forms of existence beyond basic subsistence. And that lifestyle mostly spread organically. Not because the agricultural elites didn't try to conquer hunter-gatherer societies, but because there were so few hunter-gatherers to conquer. Conquered lands were mostly farmed by descendants of farmers from neighboring regions, because they formed the majority of the population.

[ch4s3]

> When archaeological evidence shows that people largely stopped farming, it usually means that those people largely stopped existing

No, there are signs of habitation. If you look at the evidence from the alluvial plain around ancient Babylon and similar cities from the early history of cities in the region you see people returning to fishing, hunting, and sort of opportunistic planting on river banks. These cities had a tenuous grasp, and people would often just leave, or the city would collapse and people would stop doing intensive agriculture. People would abandon irrigation channels which they had been forced to dig and simply just go fishing. James C. Scott's Against the Grain covers the archeology nicely.

[jltsiren]

That's what I meant by "largely stopped existing". With the decline of agriculture, there was a major decline in food production and therefore a major decline in population.

[ch4s3]

Again, you don't see a major decline in population in many cases based on the archeology. Insofar as we can tell people would spread out a bit away from the cities. In the fertile crescent early city states attempted to corral people in to controlled zones of production. Absent coercion, people didn't die they just moved.

[Nicholas_C]

I see you have read James C Scott as well.

[ch4s3]

His book, and Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything as well as some miscellaneous books on Mesopotamia. The Dawn of Everything does a great job challenging some popular ideas around state formation as well.

[Nicholas_C]

I found the Dawn of Everything to be misleading - I did research on a few parts of the books that I found interesting and discovered the authors present many things as fact which weren't true or hand wave away or omit contradicting facts/viewpoints. Against the Grain was amazing though.

[carlosjobim]

Pastoral nomadic animal husbandry made agricultural societies obsolete.

[dktp]

There was an interesting video by Ben Felix that makes a case that home ownership doesn't significantly (or at all) increase happiness - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G_OSohLC_A

That being said housing has gotten worse for both buying as well as renting. I think there is a case to be made that having a place you feel comfortable/home in (whether rented or owned) affects people's wellbeing disproportionately.

[shmolyneaux]

Here's a follow-up video by Ben Felix posted more recently about the case for home ownership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16eA5ebWMQQ

In the end, home ownership is more based around the kind of life you want to live than costs/benefits of the house as an asset. As a Canadian I see that many of my friends would choose to pay a lot more each month on the principle of a mortgage than they would ever save in a registered account.

[alexjplant]

> home ownership doesn't significantly (or at all) increase happiness

N=1 but for me it didn't. I'm probably repeating myself on this site but 70 years ago a home was a box that kept you out of the weather. Now it's an investment that you have to treat as a going concern. Many industries - contractors, window salesman, landscapers, HGTV, realtors, mortgage brokers, driveway pavers, deck builders, HOAs, etc. - have substantial swaths pushing this neo-feudalist "your home is your castle bro they aren't making more land" narrative so that people are socially pressured into dumping their life savings into a non-fungible asset then spending even more on ridiculous things like building pergolas and updating a 10-year-old bathroom to purportedly improve its value. Everybody's become a property speculator and wants to "get on the ladder".

The upshot is that I spent a lot of time and money on a bunch of stuff I didn't care about for my house because I was concerned with getting my money out of it when I sold. Conversely I chose not to pursue several interesting projects that I liked because they might have been dealbreakers to potential buyers. The whole thing is depressing. It's centered around building/projecting wealth and getting one over on the next guy more than it is on having a place to live. Corporate homeowners have nothing to do with this.

[vablings]

One issue is that if you plan to have an expanding family your home needs to retain its resale value to allow you to sell it and move into a larger home to suit your family needs.

[mlinhares]

Life is much harder when you don't have a roof over your head or when that roof can be taken away from your or take more from your salary than you were anticipating. I don't think people understand the psychological safety of knowing you will not pay a single dime more on a loan for your home for 30 years. It completely erases that worry from your head.

[ahf8Aithaex7Nai]

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve lived in the city my whole life and have seen rents rise. That’s been extremely frustrating for me because I’ve been at the mercy of market trends and have worried about what would happen if, at some point, I didn’t earn as much anymore, or if rents rose so much that they became too expensive even for me. What would I do then? The worry that, despite a relatively good income, I might be at risk of poverty in old age because I have to hand over a good portion of my take-home pay to a landlord month after month is very frustrating in the long run.

A year ago, my partner and I bought a small house a short distance (40 minutes by car) from the city, and I moved into a much smaller, cheaper, and less central apartment in the city. I still spend a large part of my time in the city, but I’m also at the house regularly, especially on weekends. I’ve been much more relaxed ever since, because I know that I can give the city’s rental market the middle finger at any time and retreat to our house.

[nxm]

Then come the property taxes

[100percentjake]

This seems like FUD. Anecdotally, even with property taxes, insurance, and all the rest of it, my 1,000 sq-ft 40s constructed house is 60% the cost of what my girlfriend was previously paying to rent a 1bd apartment on the outskirts of our town. And that is with a "first time homebuyer" $0-down mortgage I got through a local credit union.

[mlinhares]

The landlord also pays property taxes, so this comment must be trolling.

[ipdashc]

> disproportionately affects people's sense of content and wellbeing

It's probably not just homeownership, but the cost of real estate as a whole. And not even just residential. Isn't the often-lamented "loss of third places" at least in part due to those places not being able to pay rent unless they heavily monetize?

I've also heard the theory that the arts often take off in an area when real estate prices drop and it suddenly becomes possible to build cheap art studios and such. No proof or anything, just something I've heard random people talk about online, but it makes some sense.

[amanaplanacanal]

The arts are often the first step towards gentrification. The artists move in for the cheap rent, then the rest see all the arts and think "I want to live there!" Then pretty soon the artists can't afford it any more and move somewhere else.

[throw0101d]

> It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours […]

Do a search for "the housing theory of everything".

It has been an idea growing in popularity over the last few years, especially in the Anglo-sphere where housing/shelter costs seem to be worse than other places. (One hypothesis I've seen for this is because of Common law, which can give NIMBYs more power to challenge (new) things.)

[applfanboysbgon]

Singapore is surveyed as either the happiest or second-happiest country in Asia (IIRC), with at one point a >95% homeownership rate due to government policy (although I believe that's now closer to 90%, in part due to foreign immigration?). It seems self-evident that having a home is somewhere on the order of 1000000x more important than being able to buy lots of cheap junk that barely matters.

[ch4s3]

Finland is consistently ranked as the happiest country in the world and has a home ownership rate comparable to the US. Denmark ranks 3rd and has a slightly lower home ownership rate than the US. Oh, and Singapore ranks 36th[1], while the US is 23rd[2].

So you're probably wrong on all points here.

[1] https://data.worldhappiness.report/country/SGP

[2] https://data.worldhappiness.report/country/USA

I'm curious what people are quibbling with here? Romania has the world's highest rate of home ownership at 96% and only ranks as 34th in happiness. Or maybe Kazakhstan but I can't verify the data on that, and it's right beside Romania in happiness. Switzerland has the world's 4th lowest rate of home ownership and ranks 10th happiest. It seems like from a data perspective there is no empirical support for the idea that home ownership directly correlates to societal happiness.

[vablings]

I might also point out that Finland has very good social programs, probably some of the best in Europe

[ch4s3]

Right, my point is that you can't boil happiness down to a single causal factor and if you could the evidence doesn't support home ownership being that factor.

[applfanboysbgon]

> my point is that you can't boil happiness down to a single causal factor

This is not a claim I ever made. The claim I made was that homeownership was of significantly higher importance than affordability of cheap consumer goods. Obviously there are other factors.

[ch4s3]

Well your alleged correlation doesn’t support that claim, and I showed a number of counter examples.

[PunchyHamster]

> I'm curious what people are quibbling with here? Romania has the world's highest rate of home ownership at 96% and only ranks as 34th in happiness.

which means they are happier than 35th, the France, which has double GDP per capita

So you're probably wrong on all points here by your own data

[ch4s3]

I'm sharing Gallop survey data about happiness, it's the "happiness" data everyone uses, and what OP was referring to as well. I'd challenge the idea that GDP per capita correlates to happiness. Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than France and I'm not sure that tells us anything about who is happier.

> probably wrong on all points here by your own data

again, it's not my data its the data OP referenced initially, I just linked to it.

[threetonesun]

Also if you buy lots of cheap junk for your apartment and then have to move, you will not be happy.

[vel0city]

In some ways I actually liked the moving every few years aspect of renting. Every move made me really re-evaluate all the junk I had and if it was really worth it to hold on to. Do I really want to have to move this thing I didn't even really use to yet another place? I got to live in a lot of different places, have some different lifestyles, have some different roommates, and live a pretty different kind of life every now and then.

Living in the same place now for years makes it too easy to just hold on to junk, it makes it too easy to just fall into the same routine.

There's some pros and cons each way. It really depends on what you're wanting in life at the moment.

[threetonesun]

True, although I've also moved houses and turned everything over. Having lived at the current place for a while I find it's important to, every five years or so, turn everything over and re-evaluate it. Even if my domicile isn't changing I'm still changing as a person.

[pibaker]

Singapore is also a city state and has a land and housing policy that can't be easily replicated elsewhere. Tell Americans they will be shoved into government built high rises with racial quota and see what happens.

[applfanboysbgon]

This is a misrepresentation of Singapore's policy. Nobody is being "shoved" anywhere, it is voluntary. And it is possible to replicate elsewhere. Taiwan reached 88% at one point; the Soviet Union was also known to have virtually eliminated homelessness, although in that case your description would have been accurate. Still, a home is better than no home. Government policy absolutely should be making a baseline of cheap housing available for everyone, even if it's not a 5 bedroom McMansion on an acre of land.

[sarchertech]

A lot of that cheap junk is clothing and food, which now both make up a much lower percentage of total income than they did 100 years ago.

[usui]

What's the point of being able to spend less on cheap junk if the surplus is eaten up and outspent by important things that inflated during that timespan?

[inigyou]

And you don't even have a choice. If junk was expensive and houses were cheap, you could scale your junk consumption. You can't scale your house consumption.

[Xirdus]

You can to a degree. You can buy/rent a way too small house/apartment for your large family (what many immigrants do). You can also get roommates. If worse comes to worst, you can move another hour or two away from the big city.

[applfanboysbgon]

> If worse comes to worst, you can move another hour or two away from the big city.

It is rarely the case that someone who can't afford housing in their current location can afford to move away from their support networks to a place with no jobs. Places with significantly cheaper rent almost invariably give you significantly less income, if you can even get a job without connections (which are important in general, but especially important in rural areas where everyone knows each other). That can work out for you if you have substantial savings or a comfy remote tech job, but if you have those you probably don't need to move in the first place.

Your other points are valid ways to technically scale housing down but, I think, bring with them a significant decrease in quality of life that far outweighs what is gained by being able to afford 500 big macs and 10 pairs of shoes.

[usui]

I feel like these are much worse than the alternate reality where I simply have to spend more on or lose access to consumables, if I had to choose one or the other. For people that use the same smartphone for 10 years, never shop for clothes, never go out to eat, etc., it seems unfair that we'd construct a dichotomy (assuming it's even a valid one) and choose the one that worsens the resources that everyone needs rather than the more fungible one.

[watwut]

> If worse comes to worst, you can move another hour or two away from the big city.

I would loose a job, easy access to friends, access family nearby in the process. All those matter, I value all three.

Meanwhile, if I dont buy latest toy, whether phone or sports equipment or netflix subscription, I adapt and dont care in 3 days.

[Zigurd]

Making the concept a little more abstract can help: if you have personal access to capital because you've got collateral, that has numerous beneficial effects, as some of the other commenters here have pointed out. This effect might be less strong in the US because we have relatively well run capital markets that you can invest in. This would be a book length post to dive into all of the details of it but the net effect is plain to see. It's one of those things that looks a little irrational but in practical terms it's a proven benefit.

[jordanb]

Manufactured consumer products and food have gotten much more available. Housing, education, and healthcare have gotten less available.

Recently the trend in food and consumer products getting cheaper has also reversed.

[cucumber3732842]

>policy heavily favor home owners

Policy doesn't "favor" favor homeowners. It screws everything else because it can.

You wanna add a deck to your home. You pay the people the government says you need to pay a grand or two and you're GTG (by which I mean, good to spend further money actually doing the project). Landlord wants to add decks to his triple decker so that he can make the place nicer (more $) while also hitting the egress requirements bird with the same stone and it's an instant 4-5 figure bunch of bullshit where half a dozen worthless interests who add nearly no value in the base case exercise their enshrined in law right to sink their teeth into what should be a petty project.

And it's not just some slum lords triple decker, it's a 10-unit condo, it's those new luxury apartments and on and on and on and on. Everything about owning property, improving property, etc, etc, is ungodly expensive and exclusionary because there's a mile long list of jerks with their hand undeservingly in the pot.

Don't get me started on the financialization that underpins all this, it's just as tileted too.

Policy "favors" homeowners by somewhat exempting them from the worst of this because the buck stops with them. When they get screwed there's nobody else to pass it on to, so they push back.

[paxys]

Not hard to see why that is the case. No amount of flatscreen TVs is going to make up for the lack of food, shelter and medicine.

[inigyou]

CPI disagrees.

[watwut]

The articles with similar claim I have seen attributed disproportional value to, basically, stupid crap: better phone, more entertainment (streaming movies), cloth I buy once in a while, cheaper gym nearby, some or other luxury I would miss for roughly 3 months and then forgot.

And that leads us to "only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income" - precarity does matter. If I am one sickness or two paychecks from not being able to pay rent, it causes a lot more actual real material insecurity then "having slower phone while everybody else has equally slow phone".

Likewise, if you have trouble to find a job, fear of loosing it makes you work 12 hours a day in a job you hate, it affects you a lot more then whether you can stream movies.

[xnx]

Possibly referencing the "Chart of the Century": https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-8...

[JKCalhoun]

Oh, thank god, TVs are less expensive.

;-)

[pixelatedindex]

Can’t really spy / collect data if they’re expensive

[krackers]

This may not account for enshittification. Clothes are "cheaper" in both senses of the word. Same for furnishings.

[xnx]

Possibly. The source data does include hedonic adjustments.

[PunchyHamster]

It's very likely. It's place we rest, do some of the fun part of life and a place to call our "own" in world where increasingly nothing is.

On top of that having that high mortgage or even rent hanging over your head, making sure you can't really downgrade work to something more fun but maybe less paid can be stressful too. Especially in the firing season where you might be let go and take months to find new job.

And housing taking higher and higher part of the income is also effectively getting us poorer or at least stagnate.

[eagerpace]

I love to see metrics that evolve over time. Land is a finite resources, as such it inevitably trends up as the best and easiest locations are consumed. So I think the correlation here has to be understood from that baseline.

[everforward]

Land is finite but not meaningfully so at this point. If my early morning napkin math is right, we could give every person on earth about 6.4 acres of land.

Land where people want to live is scarce. Obviously a variety of factors but one of them is that land is bifurcating the way income is. Small amounts are growing in value rapidly and the rest is declining (or growing more slowly). Urban property is skyrocketing, rural property in coal country is struggling.

[Zigurd]

Land as a finite resource only affects first tier real estate market markets. You can see this vividly in China where there's a housing glut on aggregate, but not in first tier cities.

[dfxm12]

That's too simplistic. The best (and maybe even easiest) locations and local population evolve over time as well. Land can be developed in different ways, allowing for different density. Different people buy property for different reasons, which affects its value.

[cosmic_cheese]

When it comes to housing I think the key thing is stability.

Certainly many would prefer to own if that’s a possibility, but easily the worst part of renting for most I think is the need to move periodically, whether that be to keep housing costs within budget, because their landlord decided they’d like to give the condo to their niece, or because the their apartment complex changed hands and the new corporate giant owner is doing a terrible job at managing it.

At least, that’s why I hated renting. If I could stay the same place for 10+ years without getting priced out, without being kicked out for the landlord’s personal use, and without corporate enshittification (which often takes place alongside rent hikes), I doubt I would’ve purchased.

Owning isn’t a perfect bed of roses but at least my costs stay somewhat pinned and I don’t need to move unless I personally decide to. It’s such a weight off my shoulders that I won’t need to go through the stressful ordeal of apartment hunting every year around renewal time just to have options in hand in case things don’t work out.

[lotsofpulp]

Your comment got me thinking how youtube videos are a bad place to get any information that is not showing how to do a hands on activity.

[dfxm12]

Many forms of media and social pressure point to owning your own home as a measure of personal success. It probably is. If it wasn't, rich people wouldn't buy so many. Plus it's harder to kick you out of a place you own than a place you rent.

Additionally, buying a house is probably the easiest way to build some kind of generational wealth. It's easy to see this as yet another way the older generation is pulling up the ladder behind them.

[frig57]

Everything better now than it once was? Hard disagree, take me back to the early 2010s

[shipman05]

The early 2010s, the age of financial bailouts, Occupy Wall Street, and two "forever" wars.

No one ever thinks they're living through a Golden Age.

[cpburns2009]

The 2010s were the beginning of the decline. The '90s and 2000s were the Golden Age.

[JKCalhoun]

See ya, I'm time-traveling back to the 70's, ha ha.

[anovikov]

The catch here is that homeownership rate is the highest in history now except 2000s speculative subprime bubble when a lot of purely investment properties were bought at 103% mortgage by people who could not afford the risk.

[carlosjobim]

In almost every place in the world, at almost any point in history, the propaganda will always tell you that you've never had it better than you have it now.

But once you start digging and thinking, you start realizing that it's not true.

I understand that most hackers reading the above sentence are already raging, but were you actually there to know that things were worse in the past, or has it been hammered so strongly into you that you're now greatly offended at suggestions that it isn't true?

[bluGill]

There are a lot of factors. Some things are worse than the past. However other things are better. There is no universal correct weighting of these different factors.

In general I think that nobody would be willing to go far back in time. You don't need YouTube, but would you want to live without it? How about electric lights? Safe drinking water? Flush toilets?

[carlosjobim]

It depends on what your situation would be and where, when you go back in time. Most people in the world today live in absolute misery, so that's not much argument. The enormous abundance of game animals in the past is just one factor which is mostly forgotten today.

In a world without clocks, no electric lights are needed. The safest and highest quality drinking water comes from springs and streams, still today. Flush toilets aren't needed if you live rurally. And so on.

Not to forget, that the less you are used to comforts, the more physically and mentally fit you will be as a person.

[bluGill]

Game animals were rarely that in abundance. It happened after plagues but then populations rebounded and life was a constant struggle.

[carlosjobim]

You've been told that life was a constant struggle, you weren't there. Many would say that life today is a constant struggle.

But we have abundant evidence in art, architecture, inventions, and every fruit of human creativity, showing that people weren't in a constant struggle.

Especially, we have evidence in literature from the past, giving a more nuanced picture than that of constant struggle for everyone everywhere.

[bluGill]

Literature only happened in agricultural societies and mostly by the elites. While it gives us a picture historians have to work really hard to read between the lines to figure out what life was really like for most people. If you were the elite in any time your life is much better than typical.

Many would say life is a constant struggle. However few have any clue what others experience is like. Even the filthy rich consider life a struggle.

[gravypod]

"No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist. He has too much to do." - William Levit (the Levittown one)

[pbhjpbhj]

His point appears to be that each person should only look after their own interests?

Is that your intent in posting it?

Many of us, my siblings and our families inclusive, owe our lives to socialised medicine.

[PunchyHamster]

I think it's more that communism appeals to those that didn't really made it or worked for what they have.

> Many of us, my siblings and our families inclusive, owe our lives to socialised medicine.

commonly mistaken with communism, yes.

Country having strong social services and caring about their citizens is not the same as communism.

[pbhjpbhj]

Social medicine was a contrast to a quote that appeared to promote individualism

[bell-cot]

> His point appears...

No, Levit said that in 1948, when Americans were vastly better-connected (socially) than today, "Godless Communism" was their #1 fear, and everybody was aware of communism's easy appeal to those who felt dispossessed.

I'd read the quote as a clever way to say "let me sell millions of cheap houses to Americans, and you'll never have to worry about the commies".

[gravypod]

Yes, exactly. The idea was that people could be content with our system if people's material conditions were good. We seem to have lost this insight and continued for the next 50-60 years to degrade the quality of life.

[pbhjpbhj]

Thanks for expanding on the quote with some context, appreciated.

[smaudet]

What crack was the YTber on?

Income has only raised ~15% (on average), while inflation has been at 30%... meanwhile in the past century, money has lost 96% of its value...

Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable...

[swiftcoder]

> Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable...

I'm pretty sure "stuff" in this context is mostly manufactured goods, and those have fallen in absolute price. Examples abound in the tech sector: even adjusted for inflation, a MacBook Neo is the cheapest Mac ever released, and so on...

[rayiner]

Manufactured goods, food, and clothing. Note that we tend to think of these things as not being a big deal, but that’s colored by the fact they’re so cheap. In 1970, a wall mount AC was about $400, when the median family income was under $10,000. Lots of people simply could not afford one. Today, a wall mount AC is still $400, while the median family income is over $80,000. People dismiss the fact that an AC unit has gotten 90% cheaper in real terms. But you wouldn’t do that if everyone in your family was huddled around a single AC unit in one room during a southern summer, as was very common in the 1970s.

[inigyou]

Average temperatures were also lower in 1970 and we didn't put as many of the jobs in places where you absolutely needed an AC.

What's average income less average house price? Has that gone up or down?

[rayiner]

> Average temperatures were also lower in 1970

Yes, but not enough to change whether you want AC or not: https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/washington-dc/yea.... In DC in 1970 you had 98 days above 85 degrees. The year before was 80 and the year after was 71. Last year was 72 and the year before was 93. There are more warm days, but you wanted an AC in the DC area back in the 1970s too.

> and we didn't put as many of the jobs in places where you absolutely needed an AC

I don’t think that’s true. The south and mid atlantic was always a huge share of the population. And the midwest was a bigger share than today, while the temperate west coast was a smaller share. You need AC in Chicago too: https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/chicago/yearly-da.... Even in the 1970s in Chicago you had 30-60 days over 85 every year.

[vel0city]

> The south and mid atlantic was always a huge share of the population.

The population share of the South and West regions of the US have grown while the population share of the Northeast and Midwest have shrunk.

https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=gr...

What are the fastest growing metro areas in the US these days? DFW, Austin, Houston, Phoenix, Orlando, Atlanta, Raleigh, Tampa, Nashville. Which ones are in the cooler parts of the country?

I agree overall its not like half the population moved to the Sun Belt, but a pretty large amount of the population growth in the US has been focused on the hotter parts of the country.

You're pointing to days over 85 as days you need AC. To me that's pretty warm, but not unbearable. Days where it never goes below 80F for a week or more at a time, or places with extreme humidity mixed with such high temperatures, now that's a place where you need AC.

[smallmancontrov]

Durable goods have deflated compared to wages while health care, housing, and education soared. If you are given the job of spinning this (or take it upon yourself in a bid for access), focusing on the former to the exclusion of the latter is how you do it. "Think of the iPhones! Never mind that rent in a mid-rate city is 1 iPhone and 2 big screen TVs every month!"

[rayiner]

It’s true there’s a spin in that direction. But I think there’s also a tendency to take things for granted in the other direction because they have become so cheap. Food and clothing used to make up significant line items for ordinary people. I remember in the 1990s seeing ads for discount cereal (“it comes in a bag on the bottom shelf but it’s just as good as the branded stuff!”). When was the last time you saw a commercial like that?

A lot of the durable goods that became very cheap were a huge quality of life improvement that we simply take for granted. In 1970, which was when boomers were about the same age as Gen Z is today, only a third of americans had air conditioning. Today it’s almost 90%—basically only the people in very temperate climates don’t have it.

[hollerith]

Most working-class and many middle-class American women made their own clothes until the 1960s. It was too expensive to buy ready-made clothes.

A company named Simplicity prospered by selling patterns: the woman would tell the company what style and size she wanted, then the company would send her a package consisting of instructions and pieces of paper in the precise shapes needed to make the garment. The woman would attach one of the pieces of paper to fabric with pins, then use lines and symbols printed on the paper to know where to cut, then attach the next piece of paper, etc.

[Xirdus]

The food also became qualitatively different over the same period. We're not eating the same meat, bread, fruits, cheese etc. that our grandparents did at our age.

Durable goods became much less durable, too. Furniture is the biggest one I'd say - they're just not built to last anymore. Whether it's planned obsolescence or just extreme cost cutting, we aren't comparing apples to apples here.

[xyzzyz]

Yes, the furniture became less durable as it became much cheaper. You can still buy durable furniture, but people just aren't interested in it for the most part.

[Xirdus]

But the durable furniture you can still buy is now several times more expensive than 30 years ago, much more than the inflation. Apples to apples, they became less affordable, not more. If you add up the cost of replacing everything every so often, the downtime caused by the replacing, and the periods where your possessions are a little broken but not enough to replace them - there's a strong argument that lower prices caused our quality of life to go down, not up.

[smaudet]

> A lot of the durable goods that became very cheap were a huge quality of life improvement that we simply take for granted.

Like the previous poster mentioned, I'm not sure that's really such a quality of life improvement.

First of all, food. I don't know where you shop, but the cost has definitely doubled, even tripled.

Second of all, the idea that it's some "good" that these things are "cheap" relative to wages - before they may have been expensive, but they were also investments. It doesn't really matter that much, because you can save to obtain them, and don't need to worry about re-obtaining them. Being in a situation where durable goods are cheap, but cost of living is high, means that you are disproportionately struggling - you can't save anything, any good that these products provide is outweighed by it being too expensive to live...

[sarchertech]

What is the time period for you numbers?