Obviously the standard of living is in decline. An article such as this provides some evidence, as does the well known fact that the male median wage has been in decline since 1973.
I can't fathom how anyone can claim that virtually any American is better off than his counterpart from any time in the past. So let's do a thought experiment: can you pick a past time in USA history where you'd like to be transported, keeping everything else (such as your economic quintile) equal, where you'd be better off? Or forget about keeping things equal, would you rather go back a hundred years and be in John Rockefeller's shoes? There's a good argument to be made [1] that you're better off than he was.
I don't much care for safer cars, longer life expectancy, instant world wide communications compared to the freedom of living a much better life during one of the most prosperous times in US history. Quality of life experiences feels like it was much better before the 21st century race to the bottom. What's the point of living "better" if you're going to be chained to a desk or job for 50-60 years, or constantly have to retrain decade after decade?
Does anyone have statistics on how many "traditional" single-income households there are in the U.S.? I live with my wife and four kids (home schooled) in a fairly large house, with a single income under that is apparently under the starting salaries for newly minted software-engineering graduates in the big urban areas.
You can still do that if you're willing to make sacrifices. A colleague of mine gets by on one income - I don't know what he makes now, but he started at $35k about five years ago. And this is in the SF bay area.
When you do the math having both spouses working doesn't increase your standard of living very much because of taxes and child care.
It provide an interesting view on the late 60s to mid 70s in the US.
I don't know if there's any reasonable way you can actually measure "standard of living", since it arguably includes "happiness" which is difficult to quantify.
John D. Rockefeller also did live to a rather old age. Not everyone in that era was as fortunate.
Maybe you missed the sub-title, which is "For the first time since the 1880s, more young Americans are living with their parents than with a romantic partner."
"I can't fathom how anyone can claim"
I can't fathom that you mean this literally so I assume you offer this in the rhetorical sense. You may wish to consider "Don't Get Offended":
"One oft-underestimated threat to epistemic rationality is getting offended. While getting offended by something sometimes feels good and can help you assert moral superiority, in most cases it doesn't help you figure out what the world looks like. In fact, getting offended usually makes it harder to figure out what the world looks like, since it means you won't be evaluating evidence very well."
http://lesswrong.com/lw/gux/dont_get_offended/
I am guessing that, in reality, you do have the power to fathom such a thing. If you need help, there are thousands of well-reasoned essays on the web, which make the point that you claim to have difficulty fathoming. Google will steer you to them.
Or you can play Devil's Advocate to your own mind, and make the case yourself, to yourself.
[1] - http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...
"If the median price of a house has increased by 75% but the house is 50% bigger, the effective price increase is barely above inflation."
can be reconciled to this:
"For the first time since the 1880s, more young Americans are living with their parents than with a romantic partner."
People are angry about the decline in the standard of living, and for most us, the justification for that anger is obvious.
There is no need to be rude. I posted twice in this conversation and linked to sources both times. I'm not sure how that gives the impression that I am being unreasonable.
>ask yourself whether this...can be reconciled to this...
It certainly can because they are measuring two separate things. Housing costs are up, but on a rate basis they are not as far up as most think. More Americans are living at home. The former is likely partially responsible for the latter, but it is unlikely that it is the only cause. As the article suggests, another cause is likely that younger people simply aren't living with romantic partners as much as the number of people living alone is also higher.
Inflation adjusted wages have been quite stagnant while measures of inflation are rather dubious to say the least. My old car is indeed a bit more reliable than my previous old car but both were reliable - I can't see that compensating for more or less everything costing more relative my relatively fixed income.
Not that I think white Americans deserve some extra-consideration but the recent decline in the life expectancy of white Americans [1], coupled with indeed further medical discoveries, seems like a demonstration that the effective decline in wages is able to outpace even these better medicines.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/health/life-expectancy-dec...
- Housing
- Education
- Quality of jobs
- Career growth
- Job security
These are less accessible than 30-40 years ago, while surely you can enjoy the magic of Facebook on your shiny iPhone, which were admittedly unavailable then.
Robert Gordon makes the point in his book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, that life expectancy improved twice as much from 1900 - 1950 as from 1950 - 2000.
> And our standard of living is obviously far higher than at any time in the past
Human health declined beginning with the agricultural era. I mean, you don't even have any knowledge of every time in the past, yet you are so confident in claiming our lives have never been better.
> the access to more and better medicines, having at our fingertips
You do realise that the extreme majority of illnesses experienced today are caused by the modern world and lifestyles? These medicines are designed to fix problems that didn't exist previously. The most commonly sold medicine is probably heart medication or something like that. These were things people did not experience 50,000 years ago, or even 500 years ago.
> safer and longer-lasting cars
Do you realise that most people just use cars to sit in traffic for hours going to a job they hate? You consider that a sign of how great things are?
> longer life expectancy
Well it is now declining, but quality over quantity. Sitting around at 90 years old watching tv isn't something I would count as life.
> ubiquitous and free to nearly-free instantaneous communication
social media and communication over the internet is a terrible replacement for real-life communication. Social media is actually really depressing. There are even recent studies that link time on social media with depression.
These forms of communication are usually just a sign of isolation.
> refrigeration
great for ice-cream
> lower pollution
lol? Climate change?
> I can't fathom how anyone can claim that virtually any American is better off than his counterpart from any time in the past
I can't even fathom how someone who hasn't lived in any time but now can make that statement. Literally any time in human history? How was it like, I don't know, 200,000 years ago? Tell us. You will mention lower life expectancy. That is mostly due to infant mortality rates. Many people lived until they were 70. They had actual lives, not sitting at a computer typing shit all day.
Everything you say is complete propaganda of a corrupt capitalist society and you don't even realise it.
For an account of living in agricultural (pre-industrial) society, I wholeheartedly recommend "The Peasants" by W. Reymont - the Nobel prize winning, extremely realistic account of how life was in a small village in central Poland around year 1900. In short: everyone was working pretty hard, but only the peasants who owned land were living a decent life. The others (a majority) worked on farms owned by the village's "elite" and always feared about their future (not to mention they sometimes didn't even own homes so they slept in for example their master's stable, next to the piles of horse shit). On the other hand, the work was more varied that most jobs today and there wasn't that much to do in the winters so everyone rested then.
Well sorry, the exact same 1200 ft^2 brick home built in the 50s, that you bought for 2 year's salary (with a high school education) in the 70's, NOW costs 6 times my salary (or 12 times the median salary for the area).
The $600 iPhone which I absolutely need for any modern job (thanks to BYOD) isn't gonna make a dent in the cost of housing, health care, and college these days.
I agree with your overall point that things like housing, healthcare, and education are much more expensive today and are much more difficult to acquire, securely, on a median income. However, when you say things like "I absolutely need a $600 iPhone for any modern job", it comes across like out-of-touch whining. No, you do not need the latest iPhone for any modern job. You want the latest iPhone. You can get a very capable, brand new Android phone for around $100 bucks.
If part of your job is conveying status, bringing an Android to work conveys a completely different kind of status than an iPhone. It may not feel good, but that doesn't mean $600 for an iPhone, even when you can barely afford food/rent, is poorly spent.
Functionally you don't need a smartphone to do most work. And that's coming from someone who works with the devices at a major telecom...
Location. Location. Location.
1,480 sq. ft., $23,000 http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/113-Bernal-Ave-Hickman-KY-...
918 sq. ft., $18,000 http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/309-W-B-St-Ramona-KS-67475...
1,056 sq. ft., $24,999 http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/943-Wisconsin-Ave-Beloit-W...
1,134 sq. ft., $27,000 http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4751-Bellm-Dr-SPC-20-Klama...
2,064 sq. ft., $28,500: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/908-Lelia-St-Newport-AR/10...
Everyone else who's not in this small minority still has a right to complain about coastal/urban housing prices.