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Comment by hyperfuturism | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. Has the wages not been stagnating, and has house prices not been creeping up, has US national debt not been going exponential, has energy consumption not been relatively more flat?

For example, the comment mentions that the the "Median Sale prices for new houses sold" is in dollars. Yes, he is correct. But looking up an inflation adjusted median price gives the same result, that house are more expensive than before. So yes, he is right that the graph can be technically misleading, but the point of "WTF Happened in 1971" still stands.

I think there are many midcurve takes, where one would argue how 1971 is wrong, but isn't it the case, in reality - that housing, college, wage, etc. have all been doing worse for a few decades now.

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Up until 2017, the price of a house had been creeping up, but so had the size of the median house. One you adjust for inflation and square foot, it was pretty steady.[0]

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

This has absolutely no relevance to housing prices. I can't go to a store, see that 2k square feet is too much, and ask for 500 square feet. Housing is all or nothing. You either rent or buy an entire unit, or none of it.

There is no option to rent 500 square feet because it's illegal in most cities to have units smaller than 600-750 square feet.

Why illegal?

Cui Bono

Like most of the housing crisises: racists mostly. Because for a glorious-to-them moment in time they could keep minorities and other undesirables priced out.

This is a good point people often miss. It's not that houses are more expensive today in (hrs worked / square foot) people just work more for a larger house.

I think the takeaway isn't that material living standard in the U.S.A. have declined but that they've only increased a little.

> Has the wages not been stagnating

Yes and no. A larger share of wages have been diverted to non-wage income, like health insurance especially in the US. There's also increased inequality and issues with trying to measure wages over several decades as the typical household changes -- see "where has all the income gone" [1]

> has house prices not been creeping up

Sure, but this is a separate topic. The dates line up by coincidence. There's a long history of urbanism (zoning, suburbanization, etc.) and migration (immingration and rural -> urban migration) as well as atomizing households (fewer nuclear families meaning need more housing units) that led to this.

The point is 1971 is nonsense even if a lot of the trends over 3-5 decades make sense, but for disparate explanations. And any topic has 2-5 separate subtopics that matter (eg. income is tied to healthcare costs, inequality of capital gains vs labor income gains, etc.)

1. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2008/where-has-all-th...

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