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Comment by baked_ziti | Hacker News Reader

Decades of stagnant wage growth combined with decades of the "charge what the market will bear" mantra ensuring you're paying the absolute maximum you can possibly tolerate have resulted in people earning less with which to buy things that cost more. This setup is going to be difficult to navigate for a lot of people.

The cost of housing and rent outpace inflation by a wide margin and cost considerably more than they did in the past. The age of the typical home buyer has increased 10-20 years in the last 40 years. Living costs more now than it did 40 years ago. It's not such a surprise then that fewer are able to achieve, or are achieving later in life, what used to be very common life milestones.

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If you average things out over a longer period, we are still significantly better off than we were say 100 or 150 years ago. Really I think a lot of the "things aren't getting better" mindset is just a reaction to the fact that the beginning of our current societal "working memory" is the post-WWII economic boom. When your benchmark for prosperity is literally the best growth period on record, you're bound to be disappointed.

Please show an example of a 150 year gap where the average person wasn't significantly better off in written history. Otherwise your statement is tautological and thus worthless.

Also your growth contrast is so lacking in details I can't find a counterpoint as you didn't really make a point. Especially when what you are replying to is about inequality and you are talking about economic growth.

> Please show an example of a 150 year gap where the average person wasn't significantly better off.

I take this to mean where person living in year X was not better off than person living in year (X - 150). In that case, literally any time in human history before the industrial revolution. 150 years is an insignificant blip on the timeline of history.

As to your other comment, inequality and economic growth are intrinsically linked. The inequality people are complaining about is an unequal share in the economic growth of the society.

Before the industrial revolution? You're going to have to back that up because that sounds entirely untrue.

> You're going to have to back that up

Well, it's the internet, and I don't really have a horse in this race, so we can just agree to disagree.

> Please show an example of a 150 year gap where the average person wasn't significantly better off in written history.

AD 1200 - AD 1350

I think the average person was significantly better off in 1200 than in 1350

I mean...the entire period before the industrial revolution and the advent of modern medicine?

Some guy living in 1000BC China is probably going to be as well off as someone in 1000AD China, which is to say they both aren't well off at all. I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here.

I'm very pleased to have antibiotics, indoor plumbing, and climate control, but that isn't relevant. Being priced out of the housing market, or having difficulty finding an affordable rental are life-diminishing prospects. It's taking place, it's what is up for discussion in this thread, and it isn't millennial whining to want to be able to comfortably afford your living situation.

Housing where I live (Iowa) is perfectly reasonable, especially when compared to coastal metros. I agree that what is going on in those places isn't sustainable. I think people miss out on the fact that the housing crisis isn't universal though (which is not to say that it isn't very important in the places that it is a big deal).

Housing is perfectly reasonably priced in all sorts of places. Because demand is lower. Because jobs are fewer and the salaries for those jobs are lower. This isn't a coastal elites vs. working-class midwesterners issue, either.

If you work remotely it might be

But for purposes of this debate we are looking back over a 20-40 year period for wage stagnation and increasing housing, educational and health care costs. That is the relevant comparison, not 100 years ago.

And my point is that the period that we are looking back on was unsustainably good regarding a lot of factors.

This is really the crux of the issue. Wage stagnation and rent-seekers have priced-out most of the market, and it appears to only be getting worse. At some point a few people or corporations might own the majority of the housing, and be able to charge whatever rate they want to their renters and watch as their land values increase by 10% a year. Its really insane, and I don't see how it will end.

>I don't see how it will end.

Well, historically speaking, societies always tend to collapse when they can't figure out how to sustain themselves. So I think it's a safe assumption that our society will also collapse eventually.

>I don't see how it will end

Spoilers: it's going to be extremely ugly

While it seems to be a red rag to a bull for large swathes of the electorate in many countries, this is one of the things having a reasonable system of inheritance tax could presumably help reduce. The extent to which people can creatively hide/structure wealth to pass on to their children, creating a "landed gentry" class of sorts, seems to get worse with time. I certainly have observed anecdotally a large gap between those who inherited and were able to invest in property, and those who didn't and could not.

It was interesting to observe the Conservative party in the UK revisit this issue (again) at their party conference, it's amazing how much it riles large sections of the UK electorate when only less than 5 percent of families in the UK ever actually meet the threshold where it has to be paid...

Comparing an index (inflation) with individual parts of the index in order to claim that people are worse off is dumb.

If you want to know if people are better off, look at real income. It's very clearly increasing over the last few decades.

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