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Comment by spiderice | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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...

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

Prove it!

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