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Comment by BobbyJo | Hacker News Reader

Not just that, but our lifestyles have changed entirely. How many outfits did people own? How many cars? How often did they eat out? What kind of entertainment did they enjoy, and how often?

People could generally meet their basic needs because those were the only things they spent money on. Life was exceedingly bare-bones. Houses were small. Your life revolved around your job. You cooked all your own meals. You entertained yourself. The list goes on.

All of that said, house prices are alone just bad example. If you went somewhere with cheap land and no red tape, you could get a 70's house at 70's prices (adjusted for inflation) still.

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I watched "Apollo 10 1/2" recently. It's about what life in America was like in the late 1960s.

One thing is that mom cooked all the meals. People rarely ate out. I know that was true in my family at the time. Eating out was a major, major treat. Entertainment was going out the door and joining up with the neighborhood kids. The house was tiny.

It all was perfectly normal.

People rarely ate out because most people were single income families and there was one adult that had time for food preparation. Today prepared foods and eating out are a necessity rather then a convenience for most couples.

Food has also gotten much cheaper relative to what it was in the 1970’s. Some would argue that it has also reduced in quality.

Yeah, I rode in the back of a pickup with my friends on the freeway, too. No seats, no seatbelts. Nobody thought anything of it. It was fun, too.

People in the 1970’s bought different things than people do today. In the 1970’s people bought more formal clothing (e.g. suits) and formal dinnerware than people today. They bought more wrist watch’s and slide rules.

But if you add up all the plusses and minuses the two income family today has less disposable income then the single income family in the 1970’s when you exclude the cost of transportation, healthcare, childcare and housing.

It turns out one of the biggest drivers of home prices is school quality and income potential. So two cars for two jobs in a place you can find them and housing and childcare to ensure that children are safe.

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