8 ms·

What crack was the YTber on? Income has only raised ~15% (on average), while inflation has been at 30%... meanwhile in the past century, money has lost 96% of

by smaudet 2mo ago

What crack was the YTber on? Income has only raised ~15% (on average), while inflation has been at 30%... meanwhile in the past century, money has lost 96% of its value... Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable...

sarchertech 2mo ago
What is the time period for you numbers?
smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Durable goods have deflated compared to wages while health care, housing, and education soared. If you are given the job of spinning this (or take it upon yourself in a bid for access), focusing on the former to the exclusion of the latter is how you do it. "Think of the iPhones! Never mind that rent in a mid-rate city is 1 iPhone and 2 big screen TVs every month!"
- rayiner 2mo ago
  It’s true there’s a spin in that direction. But I think there’s also a tendency to take things for granted in the other direction because they have become so cheap. Food and clothing used to make up significant line items for ordinary people. I remember in the 1990s seeing ads for discount cereal (“it comes in a bag on the bottom shelf but it’s just as good as the branded stuff!”). When was the last time you saw a commercial like that? A lot of the durable goods that became very cheap were a huge quality of life improvement that we simply take for granted. In 1970, which was when boomers were about the same age as Gen Z is today, only a third of americans had air conditioning. Today it’s almost 90%—basically only the people in very temperate climates don’t have it.
  - smaudet 2mo ago
    > A lot of the durable goods that became very cheap were a huge quality of life improvement that we simply take for granted. Like the previous poster mentioned, I'm not sure that's really such a quality of life improvement. First of all, food. I don't know where you shop, but the cost has definitely doubled, even tripled. Second of all, the idea that it's some "good" that these things are "cheap" relative to wages - before they may have been expensive, but they were also investments. It doesn't really matter that much, because you can save to obtain them, and don't need to worry about re-obtaining them. Being in a situation where durable goods are cheap, but cost of living is high, means that you are disproportionately struggling - you can't save anything, any good that these products provide is outweighed by it being too expensive to live...
  - Xirdus 2mo ago
    The food also became qualitatively different over the same period. We're not eating the same meat, bread, fruits, cheese etc. that our grandparents did at our age. Durable goods became much less durable, too. Furniture is the biggest one I'd say - they're just not built to last anymore. Whether it's planned obsolescence or just extreme cost cutting, we aren't comparing apples to apples here.
    - xyzzyz 2mo ago
      Yes, the furniture became less durable as it became much cheaper. You can still buy durable furniture, but people just aren't interested in it for the most part.
      - Xirdus 2mo ago
        But the durable furniture you can still buy is now several times more expensive than 30 years ago, much more than the inflation. Apples to apples, they became less affordable, not more. If you add up the cost of replacing everything every so often, the downtime caused by the replacing, and the periods where your possessions are a little broken but not enough to replace them - there's a strong argument that lower prices caused our quality of life to go down, not up.
        xyzzyz 2mo ago
        I don’t think it’s true. I have been recently to a store here in Virginia that specializes in furniture made by Amish in USA, and while significantly more expensive than IKEA/Wayfair sort of stuff, I doubt that it was significantly more expensive than similar stuff 30 or 50 years ago.
  - hollerith 2mo ago
    Most working-class and many middle-class American women made their own clothes until the 1960s. It was too expensive to buy ready-made clothes. A company named Simplicity prospered by selling patterns: the woman would tell the company what style and size she wanted, then the company would send her a package consisting of instructions and pieces of paper in the precise shapes needed to make the garment. The woman would attach one of the pieces of paper to fabric with pins, then use lines and symbols printed on the paper to know where to cut, then attach the next piece of paper, etc.
swiftcoder 2mo ago
> Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable... I'm pretty sure "stuff" in this context is mostly manufactured goods, and those have fallen in absolute price. Examples abound in the tech sector: even adjusted for inflation, a MacBook Neo is the cheapest Mac ever released, and so on...
- rayiner 2mo ago
  Manufactured goods, food, and clothing. Note that we tend to think of these things as not being a big deal, but that’s colored by the fact they’re so cheap. In 1970, a wall mount AC was about $400, when the median family income was under $10,000. Lots of people simply could not afford one. Today, a wall mount AC is still $400, while the median family income is over $80,000. People dismiss the fact that an AC unit has gotten 90% cheaper in real terms. But you wouldn’t do that if everyone in your family was huddled around a single AC unit in one room during a southern summer, as was very common in the 1970s.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Average temperatures were also lower in 1970 and we didn't put as many of the jobs in places where you absolutely needed an AC. What's average income less average house price? Has that gone up or down?
    - rayiner 2mo ago
      > Average temperatures were also lower in 1970 Yes, but not enough to change whether you want AC or not: https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/washington-dc/yearly-days-of-85-degrees https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/washington-dc/yea.... In DC in 1970 you had 98 days above 85 degrees. The year before was 80 and the year after was 71. Last year was 72 and the year before was 93. There are more warm days, but you wanted an AC in the DC area back in the 1970s too. > and we didn't put as many of the jobs in places where you absolutely needed an AC I don’t think that’s true. The south and mid atlantic was always a huge share of the population. And the midwest was a bigger share than today, while the temperate west coast was a smaller share. You need AC in Chicago too: https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/chicago/yearly-days-of-85-degrees https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/chicago/yearly-da.... Even in the 1970s in Chicago you had 30-60 days over 85 every year.

by smaudet 2mo ago

sarchertech 2mo ago

What is the time period for you numbers?

smallmancontrov 2mo ago

Durable goods have deflated compared to wages while health care, housing, and education soared. If you are given the job of spinning this (or take it upon yourself in a bid for access), focusing on the former to the exclusion of the latter is how you do it. "Think of the iPhones! Never mind that rent in a mid-rate city is 1 iPhone and 2 big screen TVs every month!"

rayiner 2mo ago
It’s true there’s a spin in that direction. But I think there’s also a tendency to take things for granted in the other direction because they have become so cheap. Food and clothing used to make up significant line items for ordinary people. I remember in the 1990s seeing ads for discount cereal (“it comes in a bag on the bottom shelf but it’s just as good as the branded stuff!”). When was the last time you saw a commercial like that? A lot of the durable goods that became very cheap were a huge quality of life improvement that we simply take for granted. In 1970, which was when boomers were about the same age as Gen Z is today, only a third of americans had air conditioning. Today it’s almost 90%—basically only the people in very temperate climates don’t have it.
- smaudet 2mo ago
  > A lot of the durable goods that became very cheap were a huge quality of life improvement that we simply take for granted. Like the previous poster mentioned, I'm not sure that's really such a quality of life improvement. First of all, food. I don't know where you shop, but the cost has definitely doubled, even tripled. Second of all, the idea that it's some "good" that these things are "cheap" relative to wages - before they may have been expensive, but they were also investments. It doesn't really matter that much, because you can save to obtain them, and don't need to worry about re-obtaining them. Being in a situation where durable goods are cheap, but cost of living is high, means that you are disproportionately struggling - you can't save anything, any good that these products provide is outweighed by it being too expensive to live...
- Xirdus 2mo ago
  The food also became qualitatively different over the same period. We're not eating the same meat, bread, fruits, cheese etc. that our grandparents did at our age. Durable goods became much less durable, too. Furniture is the biggest one I'd say - they're just not built to last anymore. Whether it's planned obsolescence or just extreme cost cutting, we aren't comparing apples to apples here.
  - xyzzyz 2mo ago
    Yes, the furniture became less durable as it became much cheaper. You can still buy durable furniture, but people just aren't interested in it for the most part.
    - Xirdus 2mo ago
      But the durable furniture you can still buy is now several times more expensive than 30 years ago, much more than the inflation. Apples to apples, they became less affordable, not more. If you add up the cost of replacing everything every so often, the downtime caused by the replacing, and the periods where your possessions are a little broken but not enough to replace them - there's a strong argument that lower prices caused our quality of life to go down, not up.
      - xyzzyz 2mo ago
        I don’t think it’s true. I have been recently to a store here in Virginia that specializes in furniture made by Amish in USA, and while significantly more expensive than IKEA/Wayfair sort of stuff, I doubt that it was significantly more expensive than similar stuff 30 or 50 years ago.
- hollerith 2mo ago
  Most working-class and many middle-class American women made their own clothes until the 1960s. It was too expensive to buy ready-made clothes. A company named Simplicity prospered by selling patterns: the woman would tell the company what style and size she wanted, then the company would send her a package consisting of instructions and pieces of paper in the precise shapes needed to make the garment. The woman would attach one of the pieces of paper to fabric with pins, then use lines and symbols printed on the paper to know where to cut, then attach the next piece of paper, etc.

swiftcoder 2mo ago

> Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable... I'm pretty sure "stuff" in this context is mostly manufactured goods, and those have fallen in absolute price. Examples abound in the tech sector: even adjusted for inflation, a MacBook Neo is the cheapest Mac ever released, and so on...

rayiner 2mo ago
Manufactured goods, food, and clothing. Note that we tend to think of these things as not being a big deal, but that’s colored by the fact they’re so cheap. In 1970, a wall mount AC was about $400, when the median family income was under $10,000. Lots of people simply could not afford one. Today, a wall mount AC is still $400, while the median family income is over $80,000. People dismiss the fact that an AC unit has gotten 90% cheaper in real terms. But you wouldn’t do that if everyone in your family was huddled around a single AC unit in one room during a southern summer, as was very common in the 1970s.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Average temperatures were also lower in 1970 and we didn't put as many of the jobs in places where you absolutely needed an AC. What's average income less average house price? Has that gone up or down?
  - rayiner 2mo ago
    > Average temperatures were also lower in 1970 Yes, but not enough to change whether you want AC or not: https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/washington-dc/yearly-days-of-85-degrees https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/washington-dc/yea.... In DC in 1970 you had 98 days above 85 degrees. The year before was 80 and the year after was 71. Last year was 72 and the year before was 93. There are more warm days, but you wanted an AC in the DC area back in the 1970s too. > and we didn't put as many of the jobs in places where you absolutely needed an AC I don’t think that’s true. The south and mid atlantic was always a huge share of the population. And the midwest was a bigger share than today, while the temperate west coast was a smaller share. You need AC in Chicago too: https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/chicago/yearly-days-of-85-degrees https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/chicago/yearly-da.... Even in the 1970s in Chicago you had 30-60 days over 85 every year.