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Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Really? The standard of living is so much higher now I cannot imagine how these two situations are equivalent. You can live the old single income lifestyle if you so desire.

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That really depends what you mean by "standard of living".

If you mean a disposable fast fashion material wealth like Zara, sure; things have never been better.

Yet every indicator of spiritual well being is in the gutter. Suicide, drug use, alienation, the feeling of belonging.

We have BS jobs, to earn money to buy BS we dont need, to read BS on the internet, to ignore our kids.

Not really. Sure, you can survive with a single income. But you often can’t own two cars, a house, and a cabin in the mountains, and raise 3+ kids with a single income. like you use to be able to do.

Further, nobody has much free time today, despite technology doing most of the things that we used to spend our time on. Instead of technology giving everyone free time, everyone just had to work more in order to get the same lifestyle.

Edit: though yes, quality of life is better in many ways.

Prove it!

Across the US population, people spend 3.5 hours per day on work and 5.2 hours on leisure and sports[1]. Remember that a substantial part of the population does not work much (children, students, retirees, unemployed), so it's untrue that nobody has much free time today.

Even the full-time employed spend on average 3.27 hours per day on leisure and sports on weekdays and 5.94 hours per day on weekends and holidays[2].

Checking the same survey from 20 years ago[3], average work has decreased a bit (was 3.69 hours per day) and average leisure and sports increased a bit (was 5.11 hours per day).

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm

[2] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11B.htm

[3] https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a1_2003.pdf

> But you often can’t own two cars, a house, and a cabin in the mountains, and raise 3+ kids with a single income. like you use to be able to do.

This doesn't sound believable to me. This sounds like a luxurious lifestyle for America at any point.

As an example, the Dodge Coronet was $2k in 1950, and median annual income was $3300, so that's 60%. A 2023 Honda Civic is $23k, and median annual income is $57k, so that's 40%. So that's actually better today, especially because the Civic is a far better car than the Coronet.

I think this is lifestyle inflation.

Median personal income in the US is $40,480 as of 2022 [1]. That puts the Civic at 57%.

Moreover, Dodge was a mid-level marque in 1950. The proper comparison would be the Plymouth Deluxe, Chrysler’s entry-level full-size car, which had an base price of $1,386 [2], which comes out to 42% of income.

[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N [2]: https://www.jdpower.com/cars/1950/plymouth/deluxe/2-door-cou...

All right then. If we're going entry level, let's go entry level. That's the Kia Rio LX at $16450[0]. We'll select the column that says "wife not in paid labor force"[1] from the census statistics for 1950 since we're going with solo income so that's $3315.

Let's do the math:

- 2023: 16450/40480 is 40.6%

- 1950: 1386/3315 is 41.8%

Even if it were 42% to 57% that's nowhere near 2 cars comfortably then and not now. And that's not even counting that the Kia Rio is a futuristic marvel compared to the older vehicle.

This other business about the cars being more affordable seems like a total fiction.

0: https://www.kbb.com/kia/rio/

1: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1952/demographi...

But you won't be able to afford anything (housing especially) where you're competing against dual income families.

Manufactured goods are genuinely higher quality and/or cheaper. Services are more expensive. Zero-sum type good (housing in most metros) are higher, for complex reasons, but boiling down to the ratio of availability to demand. But if you want a manufactured home, in the middle of nowhere, you can get a higher quality house today, for lower cost relative to that quality than in the past.

There are a lot more full-time DINK households these days (in my own circle of family/acquaintances, at least a third of them would qualify, despite them all being 40+), and they're often competing against households with kids that might have at best 1.5 incomes for not just housing but any number of goods (cars, appliances etc.). As soon as there are supply constraints of any sort (and there's been a number recently) it's going to drive prices up to the detriment of households with smaller total incomes, making the "choice" to remain a single-income household not a very realistic/attractive one.

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