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Comment by Kareem71 | Hacker News Reader

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Kareem71·

People are poorer today on an inflation adjusted basis

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No, they really aren’t.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

I know the FED says we're not poorer, but their adjustment for inflation is just a marketing stunt.

If you look at the historical ratio of income to the price of housing you'll see we're making less compared to the cost of things every year.

Pull up a chart of "FRED:ASPUS/FRED:MEHOINUSA646N" on https://www.tradingview.com

edit: took a screenshot to save the trouble https://imgur.com/a/U5ml4Iq

If you look at the historical ratio of income to the price of computers we're literally orders of magnitude wealthier. You can't just pick one data point and blast off.

I mean, it’s not entirely implausible that housing is a better index of cost of living than computers.

Generally, regulated industries provide a better measurement (housing, healthcare, food, etc..) than unregulated ones (TV's, computers, etc..)

You're ignoring interest rates which allow the overall price to go up while keeping the monthly payment the same and the fact that houses have gotten a lot bigger over the decades [0].

[0]: https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/

If you look at the historical ratio of income to the price of housing

This has a lot more to do with governments making it illegal to build housing than the overall strength of the economy.

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