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

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

#91

Post by psadauskas »

neaden wrote: post #55
psadauskas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just "adjusting for inflation" isn't good enough. Minimum wage was $4/hr. Now its $8. An elementary school custodian could afford a mortgage, a car, support a family of 4 and go on vacation on just that single income. They had healthcare and a pension. You could work over the summer and pay for a year of college at a state school. Yes, the house now is more energy efficient. The car is safer. But if the price of ever…

"An elementary school custodian could afford a mortgage, a car, support a family of 4 and go on vacation on just that single income. " Can I ask what you are basing this off of? I'm fairly skeptical of this claim.

The head custodian at my elementary school (in the 80s) was a friendly guy that loved talking with the kids. He'd talk about his life, ask us if we did anything fun over the summer, and tell us where he went with his wife and kids. The school was in a small town in the rural midwest, not particularly affluent, but not poor either.

The elementary school where my kids went (in a much more wealthy district) doesn't even have a custodian that I'm aware of, just a 3rd-party cleaning service that hires immigrants for as cheap as possible, and I'm sure doesn't offer healthcare or even full-time work. They have too many highly-paid administrators to afford a custodian.

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

#92

Post by insane_dreamer »

FeloniousHam wrote: post #77
insane_dreamer wrote: post #75

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 grew up in that era too (born late 60s). My dad repaired the cars we had, and they definitely lasted a long time. Granted, I grew up in Europe (we had Peugeot, VW, etc.) so maybe the build quality of the US cars was worse--I can't say.

Yeah, they used way more oil than today, and they were more polluting, and they were less safe, and there were less rules (I can remember six of us kids piling into a VW Bug with my dad). But we're discussing affordability.

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

#93

Post by neaden »

psadauskas wrote: post #91
neaden wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"An elementary school custodian could afford a mortgage, a car, support a family of 4 and go on vacation on just that single income. " Can I ask what you are basing this off of? I'm fairly skeptical of this claim.

The head custodian at my elementary school (in the 80s) was a friendly guy that loved talking with the kids. He'd talk about his life, ask us if we did anything fun over the summer, and tell us where he went with his wife and kids. The school was in a small town in the rural midwest, not particularly affluent, but not poor either. The elementary school where my kids went (in a much more wealthy district) doesn't even…

Ok so you're moving the goalposts here. What you said was a custodian (who I'm assuming did a lot more than just clean) and now you've switched to a head custodian and are comparing him to contract workers. So you're comparing two different jobs in two different school districts. Now is it possible that they've eliminated or reduced those positions? Sure, but you haven't actually shown that at all. Like I could easily counter with the fact that the school my wife teaches at still has a head custodian but I don't know what his family situation is and we'd just be trading anecdotes. So do you have any actual evidence for your initial claim? Because the overall stats with wages and prices are the opposite from what you claim.

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

#94

Post by no-name-here »

0xffff2 wrote: post #83
readthenotes1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From googling just now, color sales exceeded black and white by the 70s. However, new black and white models were still being introduced even into the 90s in the U.S., particularly in the budget or portable segments, and were still being sold new into the 2000s.

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

#95

Post by no-name-here »

bananamogul wrote: post #35
maldusiecle wrote: post #24

Yeah it's really messed up that middle class people can't afford to...rent movies...anymore?

There's 4,000 movies available for free on YouTube. More if you pay for YT Premium. That's just one example...any streaming stick will give you loads more. True, you have to have Internet, but you're going to have Internet regardless. Compare to the 1980s where you had to drive to a Blockbuster and pay $3 or $4 a pop for VHS. And you can still rent movies. Heck, if you want to live in the 1990s, your local pawn shop…

All good points - and that 1980s rental cost would be ~$11 inflation adjusted - for a rental at VHS quality where you also had the costs of driving to pickup/return the tape.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

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

#96

Post by ben_w »

gadders wrote: post #76
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, w…

I'd retire later if I got a higher pension rate. i.e. Opt to retire at 65, but you get a defined contribution pot Opt to retire at 70, you get final salary pension.

FWIW, the UK state pension does go up if you defer it: https://www.gov.uk/deferring-state-pension/print

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

#97

Post by ben_w »

MarkusQ wrote: post #44
alex43578 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the implicit expectation that people making something should have some correlation with their ability to buy that thing? The assembly-worker making a Civic and a 7 Series BMW are doing effectively the same thing, but the BMW assembler shouldn’t be getting paid 3 to 4x.

The reference to Marx and (implicitly) the labor theory of value renders the GP unserious. Just looking at the people doing the assembly (and not all the people in the supply chain), ignoring the time aspect (I doubt there's any product that costs more than one of the people assembling it would expect to make over the time it would take them to single-handedly create the product from scratch), and so on. It's a nonse…

> It's a nonsensical position, meant to invoke a certain sort of feels, and nothing more.

It may be so, but those feelings are part of the disconnect and they themselves cause all sorts of problems - or benefits, if directed appropriately, e.g. the IKEA effect is part of the same thing: we put in effort so we think the result is worth that effort.

Marx being wrong doesn't mean trade unions didn't rise for much of the 20th century on the basis of similar feelings, being in error didn't stop the USSR being one of the world's two superpowers for about half a century.

If the employees are satisfied their labours will bear fruits then they historically have not minded much that billionaires skim the cream; but when they are not satisfied, revolutions come. Those are messy and unpleasant, but they come anyway.

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

#98

Post by jpfromlondon »

megaman821 wrote: post #19

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…

It was common (at least here in europe) to simply buy your car, with the proliferation of finance and lease it is now the norm to essentially rent your own car for two to four years before inevitably having to trade it in for another, perpetually on the strap.

This has driven the actual price of vehicles both used and new to astronomical levels under the assumption that you will have it on-plan rather than own it outright.

Major things aside, it's the every day minor erosions in qol that depress me...for example cereal boxes used to be stiffer, chocolate had more cocoa solids, products were on average better quality, to get that same quality requires you to know and spend a lot more, we aren't imagining it, there was a sweet spot somewhere between 2003 and 2016.

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

#99

Post by MarkusQ »

ben_w wrote: post #97
MarkusQ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reference to Marx and (implicitly) the labor theory of value renders the GP unserious. Just looking at the people doing the assembly (and not all the people in the supply chain), ignoring the time aspect (I doubt there's any product that costs more than one of the people assembling it would expect to make over the time it would take them to single-handedly create the product from scratch), and so on. It's a nonse…

> It's a nonsensical position, meant to invoke a certain sort of feels, and nothing more. It may be so, but those feelings are part of the disconnect and they themselves cause all sorts of problems - or benefits, if directed appropriately, e.g. the IKEA effect is part of the same thing: we put in effort so we think the result is worth that effort. Marx being wrong doesn't mean trade unions didn't rise for much of the…

Sure. Lying to people and telling them they're somehow oppressed just because other people are more successful than they are can be used to stir up a revolution and get a lot of the useful idiots killed.

That's why it's important to call the nonsense out.

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

#100

Post by plytow »

MarkusQ wrote: post #99
ben_w wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a nonsensical position, meant to invoke a certain sort of feels, and nothing more. It may be so, but those feelings are part of the disconnect and they themselves cause all sorts of problems - or benefits, if directed appropriately, e.g. the IKEA effect is part of the same thing: we put in effort so we think the result is worth that effort. Marx being wrong doesn't mean trade unions didn't rise for much of the…

Sure. Lying to people and telling them they're somehow oppressed just because other people are more successful than they are can be used to stir up a revolution and get a lot of the useful idiots killed. That's why it's important to call the nonsense out.

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