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

ideagames.fun

81–90 of 105 posts

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

meh. Yes cars are safer now. But this is about affordability. And cars lasted much longer back then and were much easier and cheaper to maintain. You could get second hand cars that would still run for years, and you or a friend could fix them yourself. Drinking and driving has nothing to do with affordability so I don’t know what you’re going on about.

> And cars lasted much longer back then and were much easier and cheaper to maintain. I lived through those "amazingly affordable" decades, and while the engines were simpler (if you're driving a '68 Caprice 327 V8 without all those pesky environmental gadgets), no way they were more reliable. What was reliable was oil leaks, and burning oil. My parents popped a bottle of champagne when the station wagon hit 100k mil…

I can get to work with oil leaks and burning oil.

The argument that cars weren't more affordable is that... cars were replaced much more often? Meaning people could afford to replace them with new ones more often?

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

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this graphic a good one https://www.visualcapitalist.com/inflation-chart-tracks-pric... Obviously it's partial (or else there would be a billion lines) but it gives a good broad view of what things have gotten more or less expensive. - TVs, toys, software, and cellphone services are cheaper. - Clothing, funishings, and cars roughly flat. - Healthcare, education, childcare, food, and housing are all more expens…

Almost nothing can make labor-dominated services drop though. I guess you could have guest worker visas that pay half the going wage, and there would be a lot of people that take that deal, but most Americans would hate that. Grocery inflation is not nearly as bad as the food inflation overall, which is driven by food-away-from-home just absolutely skyrocketing. Billions of words have been spilled about housing, so I…

Two of these items, health care and education, have been inflated in America specifically by poor policy choice (some of which was perhaps enacted for good reasons, but had unfortunate effects). So they might be more controllable if there is a will to modify the system (even if, in the former case, it will be difficult and require stepping on many toes that currently benefit from the mess).

The less said about the mess that is American health care, the better. It is the one area where monopoly effects plague almost every part of the system. Whether it is pharmaceutical companies charging monopoly prices for new drugs (knowing that consumers don't directly chose, or directly pay for, what is prescribed)... or often monopolistic hospitals conjuring up obscenely high prices, billed often deliberately confusing and obtusely, designed for insurers to negotiate down... or insurers (a quasi monopoly, since it's what your employer choses, and your employer has limited choice) themselves coming up with confusing plans with a myriad of exceptions, where even a fully insured person can end up bankrupt after a major heath scare.

In practice, the "Bennett hypothesis" (the idea that increased generosity of financial aid leads to higher tuition) is the most likely explanation that I see for high education inflation. Perhaps a symptom of just how loose things were could be seen with the "ITT Technical Institute" type institution that spent far more time recruiting students via slick advertisements and taking their student loan money, versus working with businesses and developing a solid education program that created employable students. A working system would've never let ITT Technical Institute last for as long as it did. I think the expanded loans were made with good intentions, but they unfortunately were not clamped down stringently enough.

It would be interesting to see this chart repeated for other countries. Many of them probably don't have the issue with higher education and health care that the US does, but perhaps one could find other interesting issues. Some of which is not controllable... and perhaps some of which is.

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

#83
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take these one at at time 1. Households in 1980 spent a large share of their income on food then today, and CPI tracks food expenditure and it's below wage increases. So this one is a victory for today vs the past. 2. Shelter is difficult because we expect much more today than the past, houses have gotten much much larger. One big issue is interest rates, which were about twice as high in the 80s than in recent…

My great granddaddy spent the summer of 1918 in a shack on the farm, sequestered by his parents to protect him from the Spanish Flu. No tv, no radio, no electric lights, no HVAC, no Internet. It cost nothing for him to live there other than the food delivered by someone paid a pittance to leave a plate on the porch. Comparing to past prices usually ignores current affordances we take for granted. I myself suffered fr…

I'm really curious how old you are. The great grand-dad part makes you think you're my age or a bit younger, but then I grew up very middle class and I don't know if I've ever even seen a black-and-white TV.

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

#84
post #23

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 me…

Agree, but if we take a wholistic approach, most things were more affordable. This is a satirical take not a literal financial comparison and I designed it to be that, but I think no can disagree that life in 80s and 90s was way more affordable.

> if we take a wholistic approach, most things were more affordable.

I don't know exactly what "wholistic" means, but in actual numbers, corrected for inflation and median wage growth, this is 100% the opposite of true.

A few things are more expensive in CPI terms, housing among them. Almost nothing is actually significantly more expensive as a fraction of median income.

And it's really distressingly weird that people can't see this. I mean, if cars were so cheap in the 70's or whatever why did we inexplicably have so few of them?

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing though on the cost (you know, no one is going to prevent you from wearing a seatbelt) where is the equivalent today? A used Ford Focus off of Craigslist? A double-wide in a trailer park? As another pointed out, I think we're "fetishizing" the affordability of the previous decades, not the cigarette smoke in the restaurants. As per cherry picking: housing, transportation, education… These are kind of importan…

Americans just won't buy these "cheap" cars. Almost every American car-maker, and most foreign car importers too, have dropped passengers cars from their lineup year-after-year leaving only SUVs and trucks. Look at what Ford and GM offer in Latin America; small, affordable cars. Every now-and-then they try to bring something similar to the US and it's sales numbers are always dismal. The US is mostly rich (by world s…

There was something on here a year or two ago about how increasing emissions standards made it infeasible to continue manufacturing small cars. Big cars had more lenient standards. Also I think Honda quit making the Fit during the pandemic, since parts were limited and the larger cars were more profitable. So I think it's more complicated than just that people don't buy smaller cars.

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

#86
I think this is misleading unless you at least include the price after inflation. "OMG, transportation is out of control. The original Model T only cost $850!!" Well, $850 in 1908 was about $28,000 in 2025 [1], which not unreasonable, seeing as how the starting price (list) of a Honda Civic is about $24,000.

The 2025 Civic is a way better car, though.

[1] https://kevinsautos.com/faq/how-much-did-a-ford-model-t-cost...

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

#87
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that could be considered in the base layers of Maslov's heirarchy is certainly less affordable. Food, shelter, health, education. Sure lots of consumer goods have got cheaper, but if you've got a big TV and no house to put it in are you actually any richer?

Let's take these one at at time 1. Households in 1980 spent a large share of their income on food then today, and CPI tracks food expenditure and it's below wage increases. So this one is a victory for today vs the past. 2. Shelter is difficult because we expect much more today than the past, houses have gotten much much larger. One big issue is interest rates, which were about twice as high in the 80s than in recent…

If you want to buy a small house, you often can't. The rate of new construction has been low for a couple of decades, typically at or below 1% of the housing stock. Because people's preferences change over time, older homes are more likely in places that are not in demand anymore. New construction is mostly large homes and rental complexes due to political constraints. Condos and starter homes people could reasonably buy in their 20s are not getting built in sufficient numbers.

As for air conditioning and other modern amenities, they are not particularly expensive. Installing them can be, if you live in an area with a shortage of skilled labor.

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

#88
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take these one at at time 1. Households in 1980 spent a large share of their income on food then today, and CPI tracks food expenditure and it's below wage increases. So this one is a victory for today vs the past. 2. Shelter is difficult because we expect much more today than the past, houses have gotten much much larger. One big issue is interest rates, which were about twice as high in the 80s than in recent…

If you want to buy a small house, you often can't. The rate of new construction has been low for a couple of decades, typically at or below 1% of the housing stock. Because people's preferences change over time, older homes are more likely in places that are not in demand anymore. New construction is mostly large homes and rental complexes due to political constraints. Condos and starter homes people could reasonably…

I mean sure, in some places it might be hard to find a starter home. Do you think that wasn't true in the 80s and 90s as well? I can't find the data going back to the 80s with a quick search, but here is one that shows it's been going down since 2000 https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/08/who-is....

The narrative that millennials (of which I am one) are worse off economically than our parents is an attractive one to many people, but the fact is that it's not true, at least in the USA as a whole.

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

#89
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to buy a small house, you often can't. The rate of new construction has been low for a couple of decades, typically at or below 1% of the housing stock. Because people's preferences change over time, older homes are more likely in places that are not in demand anymore. New construction is mostly large homes and rental complexes due to political constraints. Condos and starter homes people could reasonably…

I mean sure, in some places it might be hard to find a starter home. Do you think that wasn't true in the 80s and 90s as well? I can't find the data going back to the 80s with a quick search, but here is one that shows it's been going down since 2000 https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/08/who-is... . The narrative that millennials (of which I am one) are worse off economically than our parents is an at…

I think there is enough evidence that millennials had a slower start than their parents. They were worse off by many important metrics (home ownership in particular) in their 20s, but they've largely caught up by 40. Younger generation X was impacted in the same way, which is why you don't see much change since the 2000s.

The number of homes built by decade was relatively flat from the 1950s to the 2000s. When you adjust for population, it becomes clear that housing construction has slowed down over time. When the supply of new housing becomes scarce, it tends to favor the highest bidders: large single-family homes and financialized schemes such as market-rate rental complexes.

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And cars lasted much longer back then and were much easier and cheaper to maintain. I lived through those "amazingly affordable" decades, and while the engines were simpler (if you're driving a '68 Caprice 327 V8 without all those pesky environmental gadgets), no way they were more reliable. What was reliable was oil leaks, and burning oil. My parents popped a bottle of champagne when the station wagon hit 100k mil…

I can get to work with oil leaks and burning oil. The argument that cars weren't more affordable is that... cars were replaced much more often? Meaning people could afford to replace them with new ones more often?

> The argument that cars weren't more affordable is that... cars were replaced much more often?

nobody was making that argument

cars weren't replaced more often; people drove the same car for longer than they do now, in part because they more easily repairable

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