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I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

ideagames.fun

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Re: I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

#11

Post by pjc50 »

MarkusQ wrote: post #3

Not adjusting for inflation and quality really damages the integrity of the comparisons, as does cherry picking your base examples. Taking your first, the $47K 3 bedroom starter home with a yard. In 2026 that would be $200K (cumulative inflation is a little over 4x[1]); picking a random US city[2] and looking on Zillow[3] I find that...yeah, you can get a comparable home today. There are certainly arguments to be mad…

Not adjusting for inflation makes it look completely stupid.

There's one good effort - comparing a car to the salary of a car-worker. But it only has half the comparison (what are today's car workers earning?). That's the comparison that Marx would recognize: how long do the people making something have to work to buy the thing they made?

Re: I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

#12

Post by pjc50 »

syel wrote: post #9
MarkusQ wrote: post #3

Not adjusting for inflation and quality really damages the integrity of the comparisons, as does cherry picking your base examples. Taking your first, the $47K 3 bedroom starter home with a yard. In 2026 that would be $200K (cumulative inflation is a little over 4x[1]); picking a random US city[2] and looking on Zillow[3] I find that...yeah, you can get a comparable home today. There are certainly arguments to be mad…

Thanks for the feedback. The whole experience/site is mainly satirical/humorous. It's not inflation adjusted cause I didn't want it turn into a finance piece tbh, but you're definitely right, if inflation adjusted most cards need to be re-built to account for inflation and better judge what we're getting today vs what we used to get

It's about money! How is it not a finance piece?

Re: I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

#13

Post by syel »

tim-tday wrote: post #7

Inflation adjusted?

No, as it's mainly supposed to be a humorous/satirical take similar to other experiences on the site. I didn't intend for it to be a finance piece originally but I know if inflation adjusted, whole experience will change.

Re: I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

#14

Post by pjc50 »

tectec wrote: post #4

Pensions used to be free and great, until the company stole from the pension before they went bankrupt and you were left with nothing.

You'll never guess who was responsible for the biggest pension scandal in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell (yes, father of Ghislaine)

Re: I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

#15

Post by syel »

pjc50 wrote: post #14
tectec wrote: post #4

Pensions used to be free and great, until the company stole from the pension before they went bankrupt and you were left with nothing.

You'll never guess who was responsible for the biggest pension scandal in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell (yes, father of Ghislaine)

I've seen this story in the Tetris movie, he came off as a terrible businessman who was stealing people's money to save his company from bankruptcy

Re: I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

#16

Post by pjc50 »

gadders wrote: post #5
tectec wrote: post #4

Pensions used to be free and great, until the company stole from the pension before they went bankrupt and you were left with nothing.

Pensions used to be great when you had final salary ones.

Unfortunately people stopped smoking.

(the downside of 20th century work on increasing life expectancy is that most of it happens in retirement, making pensions much more expensive)

edit: I have not done the maths, but I would not be surprised to discover that the total average pension paid to someone retiring at age 65 in 2026 was much more than the total average pension paid to someone retiring at age 65 in 1986, while at the same time the weekly amount of the earlier one would be higher. Because the more recent one has to spread the money over more years.

(inflation adjusted as well)

Re: I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

#18

Post by syel »

pjc50 wrote: post #11
MarkusQ wrote: post #3

Not adjusting for inflation and quality really damages the integrity of the comparisons, as does cherry picking your base examples. Taking your first, the $47K 3 bedroom starter home with a yard. In 2026 that would be $200K (cumulative inflation is a little over 4x[1]); picking a random US city[2] and looking on Zillow[3] I find that...yeah, you can get a comparable home today. There are certainly arguments to be mad…

Not adjusting for inflation makes it look completely stupid. There's one good effort - comparing a car to the salary of a car-worker. But it only has half the comparison (what are today's car workers earning?). That's the comparison that Marx would recognize: how long do the people making something have to work to buy the thing they made?

Will review the numbers this week and see how I can update all numbers to adjust for inflation while keeping the satirical angle

Re: I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

#19

Post by megaman821 »

Even with these cherry-picked examples, plug in how things actually were. That $8,200 station wagon with at 48 month loan and the terrible 80's loan rates of 10-12% would be like $750/month now. Most of those cars wouldn't make it to 50k miles without a major repair. There were almost no safety features, seat belts weren't required to be worn and you could drink and drive. This weird fetishization of the past is a mental illness.

Re: I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

#20

Post by briffle »

MarkusQ wrote: post #3

Not adjusting for inflation and quality really damages the integrity of the comparisons, as does cherry picking your base examples. Taking your first, the $47K 3 bedroom starter home with a yard. In 2026 that would be $200K (cumulative inflation is a little over 4x[1]); picking a random US city[2] and looking on Zillow[3] I find that...yeah, you can get a comparable home today. There are certainly arguments to be mad…

> Not adjusting for inflation and quality really damages the integrity of the comparisons, as does cherry picking your base examples.

But then they also need to make sure to also match salaries to inflation too.. Because wages have not kept up with inflation, which is the reason for most of this..

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