We're flooded in useless shit but can't afford the basics. So yes, underfloor heating, smart light bulbs and google maps are great but is it really all there is to life
This is the cost of food as % of household income in the USA over the last century: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/foodnew.jpg
My grandfather was born in western Europe, in what is today one of the wealthiest countries in the world. He was one of 14 children (of whom 8 survived), born to an illiterate peasant on a rural farm. This was pretty normal. You may have a retroactively gentrified image of what America was like in the 1940s - nearly half of homes didn't have an indoor toilet or electricity at the start of that decade.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...
and worker productivity vs income:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tobias-Arbogast/publica...
I'm 200% positive that both my grandparents and great grandparents had it better in pretty much every aspect (job security, housing, future perspectives) than we currently do. We have unlimited bread and circuses but scratch the surface and we're worse in every other aspects: I couldn't afford 14 kids even if 10 died instantly.
The only way I see long term housing becoming affordable is heavy taxes on single family homes as investment properties. Also open up zoning and allow builders to build.
Also naturally less kids, means less humans, means less demand.
Infant mortality back then was atrocious, my grandpa had two (out of 13) siblings die at birth. He grew up working on the small family farm that was the family’s primary food source with the little excess produced sold to buy supplies for it. A bad harvest meant the whole family starving for months. Healthcare was essentially non-existent.
Step into the 50s during the baby boom and the huge economic boon that came from the post war rebuild and things started to look up, but they were still crap compared to today.
The houses they could so easily afford looked quaint but were absolutely trash quality on average. The ones left today are the nicest from that era. The average ones were gone by the 70s. That’s available today too, go get a manufactured home and it will be roughly the same quality but with better insulation, plumbing and electrical.
>I couldn't afford 14 kids even if 10 died instantly.
You absolutely could if you fed, housed, treated, and schooled them the way they were back when this was common.
Job security was also terrible back then. There was a reason unions were more popular.
You’re really getting a rose colored view of the past and I’m not sure where it’s from.
I just wish people would vote for this.
See how you like it? Assume good faith and have some goddamn manners.
But no worries, even more improvements are on the horizon. Within 20 years, you'll get all that, but it's gold plated, and encrusted with diamonds too. People live until they are 200, houses rotate to always face the sun, and TVs are now so big they wrap 360 degrees around the entire room's walls. But you still gotta spend most of your waking hours in an office, copying numbers from one excel to another.
Is that really that good of an improvement? Do we measure quality of living purely in material wealth, and not in the time we get to spend with loved ones, or our passions?
In the distant past, a huge proportion of our lives was spent just making sure you had food to survive on. The part where we "spend a huge portion of our lives" seems to stick, even though food is no longer scarce.
Check out the book “Your Money or Your Life” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78428.Your_Money_or_Your...
"Anyone" unless you're part of the bottom 80% earners, unless FIRE means being homeless you'll need more money than what most people can attain if they saved 100% of their paycheck for 30 years
Not even close, unless your version FIRE is retiring at 63 instead of 67 and still get 80% of your pension
Average salary in germany: 42k gross, 23k net
Renting a small place : 500 euros (let's say it includes heating, electricity/gas)
Let's say you only eat potatoe and drink rain water: 3 * 1kg * 2 euros/kilos = 180 euros
Good job, after 15 years you have 210k euros you can retire at ~35 years old. This money will allow you to buy a flat in a ghost town and to continue your potatoe fuelled life until you die of old age at ~90
Now remember you have to pay water/electricity/gas, health insurance, property tax, &c.
e.g. in New York state, this is available:
https://info.nystateofhealth.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2024...
You can also switch to part-time in a low-stress role rather than retire completely ("baristaFIRE" or "coastFIRE"). The trick is that you don't want health benefits from your employer so that you can get much better ones from the state instead. Usually part-time doesn't qualify for benefits so that works well.
I'm not saying it's impossible but it certainly isn't "anyone at anytime". In France for example 48% of people earn bellow 2000 euros per months. If you play the game you have an OK life with health care, a good flat, a car, whatever... but if you want to retire before the legal age it's next to impossible, you just can't build enough savings. If you work in a big city you'll never be able to afford a flat there, if you buy cheap property far away you'll need to pay rent in the city + mortgage.
Best case scenario you'll need a 20 years mortgage, most likely 30. You cannot be in debt to more than 30% of your net income, meaning 2k net per month gives you a 600 euros mortgage, assuming 0% mortgage you can't even afford a 150k euros property over 20 years
https://fr.statista.com/infographie/25111/distribution-des-s...