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 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Consumerism was different then too. Sure you had adverts for products, but those products generally lasted a lot longer, and most had the hand skills, or at leat knew someone who had, to fix them and keep them going. Nowadays everything has planned obsolescence to keep you paying money for their updated products.

I have a Chevy truck from 1978 that needs less major repairs than any vehicle I've had from the last 3 decades. Still running, AC works, and easier to do maintenance.

Adeptus Doritos wrote:

nfe wrote:
Want to retry this so we can have a good faith conversation?

Sure, I'll need a minute. I'm still waiting for my sides to come down from orbit, the idea that the generation that has psychological breakdowns over a cartoon frog is just as tough as the guys that charged Normandy and survived death camps is probably the funniest thing I've heard in a long time. I almost thought you were making a serious statement, and then you laid that one on me. Well played, good sir. Well played.

Want to address the psychology of the generation that didn't like black people drinking from the same water fountains? Was that too part of the good old days and their sturdier mentality? Or are you just ignoring that for the sake of your little quip about today's snowflake generation?

There's a reason why a lot of replies don't take your — anecdotal at best — data points seriously.

Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Consumerism was different then too. Sure you had adverts for products, but those products generally lasted a lot longer, and most had the hand skills, or at leat knew someone who had, to fix them and keep them going. Nowadays everything has planned obsolescence to keep you paying money for their updated products.

I have a Chevy truck from 1978 that needs less major repairs than any vehicle I've had from the last 3 decades. Still running, AC works, and easier to do maintenance.

That's simple survivorship bias at work. When it comes to long lasting appliances and cars then those that survived the first few years tend to not fall apart a few years later (if we ignore extreme misuse and accidents). There's been build enough junk in the past. You just don't know of it because it didn't survive long enough. People also have stuff from the 80s, 90s, or 00s that's in good working condition today. The only reason it's not older than your 78 truck is the linearity of time, not some magical manufacturing ability of the good old days. Nice build quality is not something that was exclusive to the past or that died out.

We could also just look for somebody who still drives an old-timer from the 40s or 50s (to complain about how so many cars in the 60s and 70s were not build to last) and to counter your personal anecdote. Maybe you just got one of the lucky trucks where 70s quality assurance did their job well so it survived till today unlike every other 78 truck that didn't?

Also: The good old 1925 build quality at work:

The Phoebus cartel existed to control the manufacture and sale of incandescent light bulbs. They appropriated market territories and fixed the useful life of such bulbs. Corporations based in Europe and America founded the cartel on January 15, 1925 in Geneva. […] The Phoebus cartel created a notable landmark in the history of the global economy because it engaged in large-scale planned obsolescence to generate repeated sales and maximize profit.

Doesn't dispute the fact that modern technology has built in planned obsolescence, and are not made to be easily repairable like older products were.

I'd also be willing to bet that companies like apple and android put code into their 'updates' that slow down older devices, further prompting folks to upgrade. (I have no proof here, just a strong suspicion)

 gorgon wrote:

nfe wrote:
I think there's a lot of biscuit tin history at work here.

I assume that expression suggests I'm lying,

It refers to misremembered and romanticised perspectives of generations past. There's a tradition of biscuit tin art in the UK showing idealised, quaint images of traditional Ye Olde Britain.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
I think this idea that people used to be able to support a large family comfortably while working an entry level job their entire lives is entirely fictional. Surely your grandparents learned a trade or worked their way up wherever they worked?

It isn't. Yes, tradespeople comprised a larger percentage of the workforce but there were plenty people who worked the same station in a production line or as a cleaner their whole lives.

But yes, people also have way more stuff now. The standard of comfort is much higher. My wife's parents grew up without indoor plumbing. I'm sure the poorest person I know with a job at least has access to a toilet. And a place to leave that is heated and air conditioned. And a smart phone and internet access and a car with air bags and lots of other things my grandparents didn't have. Life has gotten a lot, if not better, certainly more convenient. But all those conveniences cost something.

This is a common way of understanding relative wealth across generations, but it is fallacious. You can only compare people's relative socioeconomic position in their historical context. A family that struggles to afford to live in 2019 aren't wealthier than Henry VIII because they have a TV, central heating, and a flushing toilet.

That said, the poorest people I know (in the UK) don't have anywhere to live and I know a whole lot that can't afford to turn their heating on. They aren't fine just because they have a smartphone that they absolutely need because their benefits are tied to online forms that they need to fill in constantly and they can't afford to travel to a library to use the internet (and the closer libraries have shut down).

Okay, we can now sum up the thread.

"Corporations make things suck so nobody can live on a single low to mid income anymore."

"My grandparents did it with far less, they just didn't spend as much as we do now."

"So what? You're grandparents hated black people."


With a side dose of:

"Life expectancy sucks, we need more UBI."

"No, we need to eat better, exercise, and endeavor to make good choices."

"NO U."



Comparisons are skewed because of different prices of goods vs. cost of transportation to acquire said goods vs. income vs. cost of living/utilites per generation, but the Bell Curve is on average about the same. What are the major differences? For one, there wasn't an overabundance of luxury items at that time. Hell, some appliances that we take for granted were luxury items for older generations. I'm willing to bet that most people here live in a household with multiple vehicles, computers, game systems AND smart phones. Maybe THAT skews the data.

 Just Tony wrote:
Okay, we can now sum up the thread.

"Corporations make things suck so nobody can live on a single low to mid income anymore."

Nah. It's housing.

Comparisons are skewed because of different prices of goods vs. cost of transportation to acquire said goods vs. income vs. cost of living/utilites per generation, but the Bell Curve is on average about the same. What are the major differences? For one, there wasn't an overabundance of luxury items at that time. Hell, some appliances that we take for granted were luxury items for older generations. I'm willing to bet that most people here live in a household with multiple vehicles, computers, game systems AND smart phones. Maybe THAT skews the data.

It doesn't. That things we take for granted were once luxuries is irrelvant because they're no longer luxuries specifically because they are produceable at a cost that makes them commonplace.

Adjusted for inflation, a TV cost c.£6500 when introduced. A mobile phone was around £5500 in the early 80s.

https://www.castlecover.co.uk/historic-home-utility-prices/

We only have one car, one tv, no desktop, my personal laptop is dying, so the work laptop is the home computer, and my wife and I have one mobile phone each, both of which were bought over two years ago.
I've actually gone back to doing field work so I can actually earn the money to pay for much needed renovations around the house (most of which I'll do myself) and to replace those technological items we deem necessary.
Then we might be able to start saving up a little bit. Working in the back office just doesn't pay enough to pay the bills and provide for my family, so now I'm in Angola over the holidays while my wife and kids are in the Netherlands.
It sucks, especially because she moved to the Netherlands because I was going to work in the office and be home more, but a man does what he must.

nfe wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

nfe wrote:
I think there's a lot of biscuit tin history at work here.

I assume that expression suggests I'm lying,

It refers to misremembered and romanticised perspectives of generations past. There's a tradition of biscuit tin art in the UK showing idealised, quaint images of traditional Ye Olde Britain.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
I think this idea that people used to be able to support a large family comfortably while working an entry level job their entire lives is entirely fictional. Surely your grandparents learned a trade or worked their way up wherever they worked?

It isn't. Yes, tradespeople comprised a larger percentage of the workforce but there were plenty people who worked the same station in a production line or as a cleaner their whole lives.

But yes, people also have way more stuff now. The standard of comfort is much higher. My wife's parents grew up without indoor plumbing. I'm sure the poorest person I know with a job at least has access to a toilet. And a place to leave that is heated and air conditioned. And a smart phone and internet access and a car with air bags and lots of other things my grandparents didn't have. Life has gotten a lot, if not better, certainly more convenient. But all those conveniences cost something.

This is a common way of understanding relative wealth across generations, but it is fallacious. You can only compare people's relative socioeconomic position in their historical context. A family that struggles to afford to live in 2019 aren't wealthier than Henry VIII because they have a TV, central heating, and a flushing toilet.

That said, the poorest people I know (in the UK) don't have anywhere to live and I know a whole lot that can't afford to turn their heating on. They aren't fine just because they have a smartphone that they absolutely need because their benefits are tied to online forms that they need to fill in constantly and they can't afford to travel to a library to use the internet (and the closer libraries have shut down).

You just saying "it isn't" doesn't make it so. Sorry, but you're just making things up.

And yes, an average person today has a much better life than a rich person did hundreds of years ago. It's laughable that you'd claim otherwise. It isn't fallacious at all. And if you're going to complain that your grandparents were able to get by on much less money, then you can't ignore that your grandparents also got by with much less stuff they didn't need. What did your grandparents do for a living?

He didn't claim that a poor person today doesn't have a better life than a rich person hundreds of years ago, he claimed that this doesn't make the poor person richer than the rich person hundreds of years ago because "rich" is a relative concept whereas material standard isn't. Like, he explicitly explained this and you went on to make the exact same argument again without understanding what he was saying.

Seriously, this thread might as well be renamed "people who don't understand academic concepts mock said concepts".

Nobody claimed that a poor person is rich. He's not talking about academic concepts that are hard to understand. He just isn't making sense. Because saying that poor people aren't rich is a nonsensical response to what I said.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Doesn't dispute the fact that modern technology has built in planned obsolescence, and are not made to be easily repairable like older products were.

I'd also be willing to bet that companies like apple and android put code into their 'updates' that slow down older devices, further prompting folks to upgrade. (I have no proof here, just a strong suspicion)

They've already admitted they do this, they claim it is to help protect the older phones from being overtaxed but that is pretty hard to believe.

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-is-slowing-down-older-iphones-batteries-faq/

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Consumerism was different then too. Sure you had adverts for products, but those products generally lasted a lot longer, and most had the hand skills, or at leat knew someone who had, to fix them and keep them going. Nowadays everything has planned obsolescence to keep you paying money for their updated products.

I have a Chevy truck from 1978 that needs less major repairs than any vehicle I've had from the last 3 decades. Still running, AC works, and easier to do maintenance.

Older cars rusted out like crazy, though. Modern cars last longer overall, and people tend to trade them in too early.

Easier to maintain though...yeah, no question. In one of our cars it's hard to change the headlight bulb without taking gak apart.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Nobody claimed that a poor person is rich. He's not talking about academic concepts that are hard to understand. He just isn't making sense. Because saying that poor people aren't rich is a nonsensical response to what I said.

He is making sense, you just aren't understanding what he's saying, as evident by the last part of your post (which isn't what his argument was). You mixed up "being rich" with "having an objectively higher material standard of living". They're not synonymous.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Nobody claimed that a poor person is rich. He's not talking about academic concepts that are hard to understand. He just isn't making sense. Because saying that poor people aren't rich is a nonsensical response to what I said.

He is making sense, you just aren't understanding what he's saying, as evident by the last part of your post (which isn't what his argument was). You mixed up "being rich" with "having an objectively higher material standard of living". They're not synonymous.

I didn't mix up those things at all, though. But possibly he was actually responding to something that wasn't actually said, which made it not make much sense. So I guess it doesn't matter.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
He didn't claim that a poor person today doesn't have a better life than a rich person hundreds of years ago, he claimed that this doesn't make the poor person richer than the rich person hundreds of years ago because "rich" is a relative concept whereas material standard isn't. Like, he explicitly explained this and you went on to make the exact same argument again without understanding what he was saying.

Seriously, this thread might as well be renamed "people who don't understand academic concepts mock said concepts".

There's a reason I stopped responding...

 Albino Squirrel wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Nobody claimed that a poor person is rich. He's not talking about academic concepts that are hard to understand. He just isn't making sense. Because saying that poor people aren't rich is a nonsensical response to what I said.

He is making sense, you just aren't understanding what he's saying, as evident by the last part of your post (which isn't what his argument was). You mixed up "being rich" with "having an objectively higher material standard of living". They're not synonymous.

I didn't mix up those things at all, though.

Yes you did. Right here:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:


And yes, an average person today has a much better life than a rich person did hundreds of years ago. It's laughable that you'd claim otherwise.

The post you were responding to didn't make that claim, and the only way to make that interpretation is through assuming that "rich" is a measurement of objective standard rather than a relative term. You blatantly didn't understand the post you were responding to. It's right there, everyone can see it!

 Polonius wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
So, any hypothesis on why the death rate among Young Adults is growing faster in the 2000's than anytime since WWII?

It's almost certainly social media, right? Young adults are engaging in less risky behavior (drugs, drinking, unprotected sex), while social media is a completely radical shift in how we interact with the world.

From what information I can find about countries with the most social media use, I'm not seeing any trend of increasing suicide rates in the years when social media use was rising. Not to say it couldn't be a factor. But something to keep in mind from an article I found:

"And while the climbing rates are cause for concern, experts point out that they don’t tell the whole story. In fact, the U.S. suicide rate is similar today to the rate of 30 years ago. Deaths by suicide fell markedly in the 1980s and 1990s before rising again at the turn of the century. What’s more, while some countries, such as Russia, have seen dramatic declines in suicide rates since the 1990s, their rates are still well above those in the United States."

Stress and misery have many ways of killing people, even if it isn't by suicide. Drugs come to mind. And the cost to one's health can make them more susceptible to all manner of other causes.

I can admit there is a lot more stuff that people nowadays seem compelled to have that my parents never needed while I was growing up - cell phone, cable, internet, security services, other entertainment subscription services, etc.

Now a person can get along fine without all of this and many people do, simply because they can't afford it. I can just see in my household I am squeezed a bit by all of these expenses that amount to hundreds of dollars a month, but I bow to the pressure and keep them for everyone.

I could 'get along' without internet/cell phone in the same way I could 'get along' by riding a bike everywhere--technically possible, but not realistic. I am expected to have an email, cell phone number, and communicate by those things both socially and formally. Obviously a job can't require me to have those, but its kind of like they can't require you to have your own car.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I could 'get along' without internet/cell phone in the same way I could 'get along' by riding a bike everywhere--technically possible, but not realistic. I am expected to have an email, cell phone number, and communicate by those things both socially and formally. Obviously a job can't require me to have those, but its kind of like they can't require you to have your own car.

Quite so.

I applied for a job a few weeks back, and they told me after offering me the job that all shifts would be communicated via a facebook group which I'd have to join. Now, it's good that I use facebook, and had I taken the job, would have been able to join their group page, but someone who didn't have facebook, or refused use it to for data protection reasons? What about a potential lack of internet before shifts being announced (a genuine issue I had in my former job, where the wifi hadn't been established by my landlord when it was supposed to be, and I had two weeks of no internet, no mobile data, and no way of knowing when my shifts for my new job were)? Can they/should they be able to require someone to set up an account on a public social media site?

Even in many universities, having a smartphone is a course requirement.

So, it's not really a case of being "compelled" to have the latest stuff, but rather that many layers of society expect it.
You're expected to have some kind of email account, a phone number, many jobs require online application, etc etc.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Consumerism was different then too. Sure you had adverts for products, but those products generally lasted a lot longer, and most had the hand skills, or at leat knew someone who had, to fix them and keep them going. Nowadays everything has planned obsolescence to keep you paying money for their updated products.

I have a Chevy truck from 1978 that needs less major repairs than any vehicle I've had from the last 3 decades. Still running, AC works, and easier to do maintenance.

Cars are one of the few things that have gotten more reliable over time as a whole. Manufacturers have gotten better at knowing how tough any given part needs to be and the swap to fuel injection means cars run at a better tune for longer which extends the life of the engine and components.

You can pull duds and gems out from any time period, but for the most part cars now are more reliable and go longer periods without maintenance than they used to do.


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 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I could 'get along' without internet/cell phone in the same way I could 'get along' by riding a bike everywhere--technically possible, but not realistic. I am expected to have an email, cell phone number, and communicate by those things both socially and formally. Obviously a job can't require me to have those, but its kind of like they can't require you to have your own car.

Quite so.

I applied for a job a few weeks back, and they told me after offering me the job that all shifts would be communicated via a facebook group which I'd have to join. Now, it's good that I use facebook, and had I taken the job, would have been able to join their group page, but someone who didn't have facebook, or refused use it to for data protection reasons? What about a potential lack of internet before shifts being announced (a genuine issue I had in my former job, where the wifi hadn't been established by my landlord when it was supposed to be, and I had two weeks of no internet, no mobile data, and no way of knowing when my shifts for my new job were)? Can they/should they be able to require someone to set up an account on a public social media site?

Even in many universities, having a smartphone is a course requirement.

So, it's not really a case of being "compelled" to have the latest stuff, but rather that many layers of society expect it.
You're expected to have some kind of email account, a phone number, many jobs require online application, etc etc.

I’d be interested if someone pushed the point with that company whether they’d have to revise their system.

At my work (which is a university) they brought in a system that required you to have a smartphone, but if you pushed the point with them they’d eventually admit that they could give you a dongle instead of using a personal smartphone. You had to kick up a stink though (probably because it cost them money/time if people asked for dongles). I know a couple of people who did that because they either had a phone that was too old or had a personal policy of keeping their work technology separate from their personal technology.




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 MDSW wrote:
I can admit there is a lot more stuff that people nowadays seem compelled to have that my parents never needed while I was growing up - cell phone, cable, internet, security services, other entertainment subscription services, etc.

Now a person can get along fine without all of this and many people do, simply because they can't afford it. I can just see in my household I am squeezed a bit by all of these expenses that amount to hundreds of dollars a month, but I bow to the pressure and keep them for everyone.

The problem (here at least) is the price of rent and housing. It’s gotten so bad, even just in the last 10 years but definitely the last 20 or 30.

My Dad bought and paid off his house in a few years working a low skill low pay government desk job while raising 4 kids in a 1 income household. I have a job in a relatively cutting edge engineering field and if I bought a similar house I’d be paying it off for the next 25 years while living tight with no kids. Even my sisters who bought in to housing ~10 years ago are a lot better of, but house prices have gone up enough that paying it off is a lot slower as interest became a bigger chunk of repayments.

Even if you don’t buy a house, rent is bloody expensive as are essential utilities.

We could argue that maybe I have more “stuff” than my dad did at the same age (though he managed to buy cars and bikes without too much worry), but really that stuff is so cheap compared to housing that it makes almost no difference.

I think that’s where older folk are a bit disconnected from the current generation, back in the day if you worked hard and didn’t waste your money on luxury items, it’d get you somewhere in life and those folk think the current generation are suffering from not working hard enough and wasting too much money on TV/coffee/eating out. But the reality is these days, those things are so insignificant compared to housing, and a lot of kids are already working long hours in stressful jobs where they get burned out.

I’ve done the math, I can stop eating out, stop buying coffee, cancel my Netflix and it’s going to make sweet feth all difference to my ability to buy a house, and that’s on an engineer’s salary. God forbid I decide to have kids, would be completely screwed.

Albino Squirrel wrote:

nfe wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

nfe wrote:
I think there's a lot of biscuit tin history at work here.

I assume that expression suggests I'm lying,

It refers to misremembered and romanticised perspectives of generations past. There's a tradition of biscuit tin art in the UK showing idealised, quaint images of traditional Ye Olde Britain.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
I think this idea that people used to be able to support a large family comfortably while working an entry level job their entire lives is entirely fictional. Surely your grandparents learned a trade or worked their way up wherever they worked?

It isn't. Yes, tradespeople comprised a larger percentage of the workforce but there were plenty people who worked the same station in a production line or as a cleaner their whole lives.

But yes, people also have way more stuff now. The standard of comfort is much higher. My wife's parents grew up without indoor plumbing. I'm sure the poorest person I know with a job at least has access to a toilet. And a place to leave that is heated and air conditioned. And a smart phone and internet access and a car with air bags and lots of other things my grandparents didn't have. Life has gotten a lot, if not better, certainly more convenient. But all those conveniences cost something.

This is a common way of understanding relative wealth across generations, but it is fallacious. You can only compare people's relative socioeconomic position in their historical context. A family that struggles to afford to live in 2019 aren't wealthier than Henry VIII because they have a TV, central heating, and a flushing toilet.

That said, the poorest people I know (in the UK) don't have anywhere to live and I know a whole lot that can't afford to turn their heating on. They aren't fine just because they have a smartphone that they absolutely need because their benefits are tied to online forms that they need to fill in constantly and they can't afford to travel to a library to use the internet (and the closer libraries have shut down).

You just saying "it isn't" doesn't make it so. Sorry, but you're just making things up.

I didn't just say it isn't. I followed it with an explanation. Many families survived on a single entry level wage two to three generations ago because the relative cost of housing was so much lower than it is today.

And yes, an average person today has a much better life than a rich person did hundreds of years ago. It's laughable that you'd claim otherwise. It isn't fallacious at all.

I didn't claim otherwise. I said exactly this. I said that Henry VIII had a lower standard of living (in terms of objective amenities at least, he was probably much happier!) than the poorest families of today (excluding those homeless with little or no access to healthcare, housing, or food). The important point is that this does not mean he was POORER than those families of today. This is because 'rich' is a relative measurement of one's access to and ability to mobilise resources in the context of their particular sociohistorical context.

And if you're going to complain that your grandparents were able to get by on much less money, then you can't ignore that your grandparents also got by with much less stuff they didn't need. What did your grandparents do for a living?

I'm not complaining that they did. I, quite obviously, think it's great that they could. It does not follow that they got by with way less stuff that they didn't need. They got by with a lot of different stuff that they didn't need. In their case, many foreign holidays, a lot of art, a huge number of books, endless ornaments that we're constantly having to take to charity shops now...

That they didn't spend their disposable income on smartphones doesn't mean that they didn't have disposable income. They had much more of it relative to equivalent families today because their cost of living was so much lower relative to my grandfather's income!

What you're saying isn't true, though. What people worked entry level jobs their entire lives and still supported families comfortably. You're fabricating that.

People spend more on housing these days, sure. But also the average house size it twice what it was when my parents bought their house. So of course the houses cost more. And, just like cars, the houses now have a lot of expensive features and amenities they didn't have back then. There are still plenty of modest homes that are more affordable. But, of course, people today have a much different impression of what success is and what kind of house they should have, so they imagine they have things much worse than they really do.

The notion that housing is more expensive is a myth. Average cost per square foot on new houses hasn't changed much at all in the last 40 years.

But I see you're from the UK, so maybe things are different there.

https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-square-feet-per-person-as-in-1973/

My parents' house is larger than mine, and they paid less than a quarter of what mine is costing me.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
What you're saying isn't true, though. What people worked entry level jobs their entire lives and still supported families comfortably. You're fabricating that.

People spend more on housing these days, sure. But also the average house size it twice what it was when my parents bought their house. So of course the houses cost more. And, just like cars, the houses now have a lot of expensive features and amenities they didn't have back then. There are still plenty of modest homes that are more affordable. But, of course, people today have a much different impression of what success is and what kind of house they should have, so they imagine they have things much worse than they really do.

The notion that housing is more expensive is a myth. Average cost per square foot on new houses hasn't changed much at all in the last 40 years.

But I see you're from the UK, so maybe things are different there.

https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-square-feet-per-person-as-in-1973/

People used to be able to do a blue collar job, on the factory floor or the like, and take home a wage that would support a family. Entry level is not strictly true, but medium skilled manual jobs with no supervisory responsibilities did pay well enough to live and have a family and a house.

As for home size, yes, the UK is different:

https://www.which.co.uk/news/2018/04/shrinking-homes-the-average-british-house-20-smaller-than-in-1970s/

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
What you're saying isn't true, though. What people worked entry level jobs their entire lives and still supported families comfortably. You're fabricating that.

People spend more on housing these days, sure. But also the average house size it twice what it was when my parents bought their house. So of course the houses cost more. And, just like cars, the houses now have a lot of expensive features and amenities they didn't have back then. There are still plenty of modest homes that are more affordable. But, of course, people today have a much different impression of what success is and what kind of house they should have, so they imagine they have things much worse than they really do.

The notion that housing is more expensive is a myth. Average cost per square foot on new houses hasn't changed much at all in the last 40 years.

But I see you're from the UK, so maybe things are different there.

https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-square-feet-per-person-as-in-1973/

People used to be able to do a blue collar job, on the factory floor or the like, and take home a wage that would support a family. Entry level is not strictly true, but medium skilled manual jobs with no supervisory responsibilities did pay well enough to live and have a family and a house.

As for home size, yes, the UK is different:

https://www.which.co.uk/news/2018/04/shrinking-homes-the-average-british-house-20-smaller-than-in-1970s/

Your average UAW factory worker makes typically $17 an hour starting wages, and the average tops out above $20 an hour. That's for the type of work you're describing, which in America is earning a "livable" wage by a decent margin.

Manual labor jobs are on average providing middle class wages. I spent the year helping to manage a home improvement business, and we paid our manual labor minimum $15 an hour, some earning in excess of $20. These jobs are not overly challenging to find, you've just gotta be prepped to work. One thing I will state, as an employer, is that finding those employees is not an easy thing. We experienced a 100% turn over in staff because the labor that they would provide was sub standard. To much of my, and my co-owners time was spent going back to clean up after them. We even had employees steal from from a customer.

If I had anything to say as an employer, it was that the true challenge in the work force is finding people who are willing to earn their pay.


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To add an adendum, this isn't an attack on the "younger generation workforce". In my primary line of duty in the military, we're constantly getting new Airmen in, and by and large, they're a great crop of people. It's been more then two years since my unit has gotten a young Airman that was a dirtbag.

Yes, as djones points out, blue collar jobs still pay pretty well and someone can still support a family working a skilled blue collar job now, requiring no college education.

You know, I wouldn't be surprised though if a lot of workers in manual blue collar jobs don't work quite as hard or as effectively (due to not being as skilled) as those from three generations ago, which might also go toward explaining why they don't make as much. And, as I mentioned earlier, people a few generations ago did a lot more work at home as well, so their money could go farther (like building their own house, for example).

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Yes, as djones points out, blue collar jobs still pay pretty well and someone can still support a family working a skilled blue collar job now, requiring no college education.

You know, I wouldn't be surprised though if a lot of workers in manual blue collar jobs don't work quite as hard or as effectively (due to not being as skilled) as those from three generations ago, which might also go toward explaining why they don't make as much. .

Source? Why on earth would you assume laborers weren't laboring as hard as they used to, or for some reason people were more efficient in the past?

https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm

This page shows a steady upward trend in worker productivity.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
What you're saying isn't true, though. What people worked entry level jobs their entire lives and still supported families comfortably. You're fabricating that.

The average 1960s house price in the UK was about £2,500. Two and a half grand. The average manual worker was taking home £960 a year. So your average house cost about 2.6x the average manual worker salary. Today the average house (£233,000) is just over 15x a week minimum wage salary (£15,264).

There was no minimum wage in the UK until 1999 so it's hard to compare lowest full time earners, but £960 in the mid-60s is about £17,500 in todays money, so it's about 15% above minimum wage adjusting for inflation. The equivalent mid 60s earnings would be about £816, giving you a average house price of 3x salary.

In the US in 1964 the average house price was $20,200 and it sits at $380,300 today. A service worker in 1964 earned £4,100. Today, that's $30,524. Giving you house prices of 4.9x and 12.4x respectively.

People don't just spend more on housing, they spend massively more. To get the equivalent salary to house ratio today you need five 2019 workers for every one mid 60s worker in the UK, and two and a half for every one in the US.

When your main outgoing is so low, yes, you can sustain a family on a single entry level wage. Heck, pretty much every industrial city in the UK was built on this. There is an entire corpus of Glaswegian literature that revolves around working class women and what they got up to whilst their husbands worked their factory jobs.

People spend more on housing these days, sure. But also the average house size it twice what it was when my parents bought their house. So of course the houses cost more. And, just like cars, the houses now have a lot of expensive features and amenities they didn't have back then. There are still plenty of modest homes that are more affordable. But, of course, people today have a much different impression of what success is and what kind of house they should have, so they imagine they have things much worse than they really do.

The notion that housing is more expensive is a myth. Average cost per square foot on new houses hasn't changed much at all in the last 40 years.

Two fallacies here. Firstly, increasing house sizes is only relevant to new builds, not to old houses and both have increased in price thousands of percent, and whether or not houses are bigger is irrelevant if you size isn't of value to you or the locations don't work - house sizes and new homes both increasing as you move away from the densest workplace concentrations, obviously.

Secondly, you are still trying to compare objective measurements of worth across generations instead of relative ones. This just isn't meaningful. It needs to be assessed in context. Again, I'm not richer than Andrew Carnegie because my flat has a power shower.

Fundamentally, whether or not you believe people lived on a single low wage, that living costs relative to average earnings are much higher really isn't in dispute.