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Comment by novok | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Just point out that before 1960 in the US that was very common as well.

> 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.

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.

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.

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