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Comment by chr1 | Hacker News Reader

Cost of a great apartment by 1920 standards is affordable to anyone before they are 30, the problem is that they want to add lots of nice but non-essential things to that house driving the price up.

If you subsidize building houses, you merely will drive up standard of living without moving childbearing age.

The problem is about priorities not resource constraints.

And solution will be either enough people/countries dying childless and miserable to force the remaining to assign higher priority to children, or technological development of artificial womb and lifespan enhancing drugs to make it possible to have children at 40 when their brain starts to work.

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This is definitely not true. As recently as the 50s the cost of a 2/2 house was about 14% of a single median personal income per month. [1] In contemporary times median personal income is about $45k, so that'd be about $525 per month. And they paid lower taxes as well. In contemporary times people pay dramatically more for housing without getting much of anything more in return. People often claim overall housing size has increased which is true, but lot sizes have slightly decreased. So all that means is in the 1950s you also had a much bigger yard instead of walk-in closets or whatever.

[1] - https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Housi...

> Cost of a great apartment by 1920 standards is affordable to anyone before they are 30, the problem is that they want to add lots of nice but non-essential things to that house driving the price up.

This statement is not true in locations where you can make decent money.

Can you point to such places for sale in a reasonably sized city?

Cuz where I am, any appartment priced cheap is instantly bought up and remodeled into an unaffordable 2020's standards appartment.

Exactly. If you subsidize the abundance for everyone, the effect will just be raised expectations floor.

>Cost of a great apartment by 1920 standards is affordable to anyone before they are 30, the problem is that they want to add lots of nice but non-essential things to that house driving the price up.

Absolute bullshit drivel because there's no GrEAt ApARmenTs by 1920 STanDArDs available in any major cities like there were in the 20s. Everyone has to rent a GreaT ApARtMENt bY 1920 StAnDaRDs instead because they just LOVE renting GrREAT ApaRTmeNTs BY 1920 StanDARds instead of buying them for the equivalent of a car payment today.

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