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Comment by jimbobbam | Hacker News Reader

My grandfather was a printer not to far from that Burger King, in a building now owned by the academy of art. In 1963 he had 5 children, a house in Daly City and 3 apartments across the street from Dolores park as well as a brand new home in Terra Linda. He died early, but extended family stayed in the business. It was union work, he as the youngest operator of the 4 color press. His wife my grandmother didn’t work. The printing business was cooked by the early 90s. I was laid off from Broadcom a year and a half ago- I think about the printing industry to Ai analogue all the time. I got lucky and got a job a startup making less than half of what I made before. I know much more capable and smart people laid off in the same round- that are still wondering what the hell to do.

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> he had 5 children, a house in Daly City and 3 apartments across the street from Dolores park as well as a brand new home in Terra Linda

How well would you need to be paid now in any career to support a family like that one while accumulating that wealth already early in life? Careers can evaporate just the same but what they leave behind is vastly different from 60 years ago.

> How well would you need to be paid now in any career to support a family like that one while accumulating that wealth already early in life?

The answer is that you don't do it by getting paid (as in exchanging labor for wages). You do it by finding a way to scale your wealth with other people's labor.

Aah, so by definition only a select few can do it

I would say only a few do it and they are self-selected. The ones that do it have a sense of agency that is lacking in the ones that dont do it. Some people never notice their own agency they believe it comes from outside them.

Very convenient, if you're someone who benefits from this arrangement, to be able to tell yourself that a brute numerical fact (if you profit off others labour, there must be those whose labour is profited off of) just so happens to by divine coincidence to go hand in hand with the profiteers just happening to have some nebulous quality that morally justifies the whole arrangement.

You sound like you may be lacking agency. Agency is simply being aware that one can make decisions for themselves based on their own metrics. .

"if you're someone who benefits from this arrangement, to be able to tell yourself that a brute numerical fact".

I think this is the root of your confusion. Humans have long demonstrated the pattern of gathering in groups to survive. These groups usually worked out a way to pool resources to increase the chances of living a comfortable life.

"(if you profit off others labour, there must be those whose labour is profited off of)"

Security markets are open to everyone. There are no restrictions on who can participate. Many companies compensate workers with stock, or other retirement plans that provide ways to buy securities.

What you're describing is slavery. Our current systems are trying to move from slavery to at will labor. I find your comment out of touch with our current circumstances.

Our current timeline is no different and the security markets is the idea we manifested to create co-operation. Now certainly our timeline is FUBARed. If I wasn't so numb I would weeping everyday at the news but the world is still co-operating. Hard to believe but it could always be worse.

"just so happens to by divine coincidence to go hand in hand with the profiteers just happening to have some nebulous quality that morally justifies the whole arrangement."

What nebulous quality? Agency is well defined and a term of art in psychology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_%28psychology%29

It’s not only agency, and it sounds like you do your own thing which is great, but the pressure coming with it is not bearable by many. It’s kind of similar to competitive sport, thousands train and put the effort chasing a wild goose, but only handful make it big. That’s why it raises a question many others: is it really worth it?

And for that, I agree with you, it’s self-selected to take the suffering jounrey

It is suffering and I'm not sure it is worth it. I didn't notice the suffering until the later stage of life.

That’s the answer to a different question. We were talking about a printer who probably wasn’t acing the stock market in the ‘60s but his salary covered all that. Question stands, if anyone can offer a good equivalence for something similar today.

> Question stands, if anyone can offer a good equivalence for something similar today.

Then no, it's not possible for the average worker, largely because the advance of technology raised the bar on labor, requiring more (and increasingly expensive) education, all while that 60s worker and their generation, caught in a Reaganite zeal, pulled up the ladder behind them in housing and destroyed public goods.

Good faith counter point

>>” to scale your wealth with other people's labor”

Or you can scale your labor with openly available AI?

So labour doesn't really scale. It's measured in hours, and you only get so many of those in a week.

If you're using "scale your labour" to mean "scale your output". Well, two cases: your selling your labour as an employee, or your output directly. Either way: the market won't value them above their cost of substitution, which is just the cost of substitution of your original, non AI labour, plus the cost of the AI (an ever cheaper commodity).

r/overemployed disagrees. there is real wealth in productivity gains.

Could capital owners try to capture it all? I'm sure. But it's not a natural result of the technology, it's just whether we choose to allow it or not.

> Could capital owners try to capture it all? I'm sure. But it's not a natural result of the technology,

Unless the capability to create high productivity enabling AI is in the hands of every person, or the control of the centralized means of that AI production is with a representative government (as opposed to capital-controlled government), it is a natural result of current AI technology for capital to capture all the productivity gains.

> it's just whether we choose to allow it or not.

It will probably some combination of the above. Capital will still have disproportionate but not absolute control over the technology, but popular discontent and anger, hopefully channeled through electoral process and not violent revolution, will force sharing the productivity gains with broader population.

>>Unless the capability to create high productivity enabling AI is in the hands of every person,

The capability is definitely there, the agency or education probably isn't. Those are both personal and infrastructure choices. None of those are tech issues.

Most people predict Citizens United will cause some kind of upheaval eventually. Maybe AI will be the thing that finally causes it, but if you ban that, it'll just be something else, proving my point its not a natural result of the technology but more a matter of all that is happened so far.

I found that that stock market is the way to scale income. One can't make big money with just their hands unless they are an artist.

Very few artists earn a living in art let alone become wealthy. The art world is highly competitive, though real talent and innovation are rare. But making it big in art is more about self-promotion and marketing than artistic ability. So success is only marginally correlated with what they do with their hands, as opposed to what's done with their mouths.

The number of artists that succeed is irrelevant to my comment. No one needs to tell me about the life of an Artist or the Art world. My dad was a fine art painter, my mom was a potter, another uncle is a kinetic sculptor, one uncle made pastel's of Sulky races to get by. I have a cousin that was a pioneer in computer graphics attending the Media Lab while it was still in the architecture department.

I was raised in the art world by a multi-generational art family. None were wildly successful all managed to make enough for a good life. Farmers, bakers, masseuses, carpenters,... all work with their hands generally only artist can take rubbish and turn it into big money. The criticism of the art world you put forward is very one-dimensional.

Your family certainly has an impressive record of success in the art world. My father was a talented painter but didn't attempt to sell his work. He was an even more talented pianist but rarely performed publicly. My sister is an exceptionally talented painter and sculptor. I encouraged her to put her work out there but never did, a real shame.

I'm also an artist, primarily a printmaker. I've made my living otherwise, though my work sells at a modest pace.

I know many artists in galleries but only a few earn enough to pay their bills. Artists who do earn a living are good self-promoters of their work or build reputation through family connections to patrons. The shy ones remain unknown. Hardly a "criticism of the art world" just a summation of decades-long observation.

For every artist turning rubbish into big money there are many who only turn rubbish into garbage. Perhaps my comments are "one-dimensional", but so is implying that turning rubbish into big money is easy to achieve.

I agree with what you are saying. My point is mostly that artist occupy a strange spot in our culture. They are the only “trade” that I know of that can fabricate items that have a value beyond their utility.

Making a living at art is a big sacrifice. Maybe I should have said earn a living rather than big money. The big money comment was focused on stock market returns which was really my point.

It’s hard to make big money using just one’s hands outside of the stock market.

My judgement may have been skewed by families like the Calder. Alexander Calder was a third generation artist.

My families success was much closer to middle class. The big advantage they had was time To focus on their curiosities.

It’s true that being embedded in any societal effort will increase the odds of success for the young raised in the environment.

I never mentioned the simplicity of earning only that it was possible. I have observed this being done. It was not fast or easy but is possible.

My uncle always had good reviews but his pieces were never purchased by the art world. His work was purchased or rented by the science museum world.

I’m glad you are able to sell some prints. The most important thing is creating.

The challenge of selling art is tough. Earning a living leveraging one’s artistic training is easier then the gallery path.

My uncle worked his whole life and never sold a piece to the art world. Society did find values in his objects. One has to take success even if the form is unexpected.

I went to art school and studied industrial design a career I wanted since puberty.

He died last year.

https://www.normantuck.com/

> My point is mostly that artist occupy a strange spot in our culture. They are the only “trade” that I know of that can fabricate items that have a value beyond their utility.

Thank you for the clarification. You're right artistic success usually requires enduring arduous effort. Art, well, visual art, is making something out of very little. Hard to explain why the value of art is quirky. The word "value" is ambiguous, has multiple meanings.

I think paintings, prints, etc., are approximate expressions of an artist's visual imagination. Material value of painted canvas is negligible, price can be assigned by dealers and other players. Real value is individual, created when a viewer strongly resonates with an artistic expression. OTOH market/art-world value is mutable. I've often remarked that it won't be decided which of the art created today is "good" until 50 years after we're all gone.

> The most important thing is creating.

It's true, motivation to make art is more than selling art. A very successful artist in his sixties told me he feels a need to create art whether it sells or not. I've donated prints to schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. It's gratifying to know my work will be around long after I've passed on. That's more important to me than money.

I visited your uncle's website. His kinetics are superb, entertaining but also expressing visually complex, 4 (or more) dimensional ideas. Translating to concrete form is an admirable accomplishment.

BTW I think industrial design is underappreciated. Shape, color, etc., of utilitarian objects has to be determined by at least one real person. Some of these objects are endowed with subtle beauty. Working with beautiful things makes the labor less burdensome.

If you're happy to live life to a 1960s standard, it'd be quite cheap. If I'm interpreting the stats properly [0], he expected to put two children through high school and the other 3 would have been contributing a lot to the family quite early on. It'd also be interesting to check whether it's legal to build the same apartment in Daly City's current regulatory environment because that isn't a given.

Plus, the US government at the time was less than half the size of the private sector [1] so we'd expect he was contributing less to dead-weight government projects and corruption.

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_104.10.a...

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Governme...

Obviously I’m interested in the modern equivalent of whatever that man had. If those apartments were on the outskirts of the city, then something equivalent today. If society expected the kids to finish no more than high-school then but university today, then university it is.

And I want to understand if there’s any chance to do it the same way with salaried work, not with clever investment over decades, or winning the lottery, or getting an inheritance. Which are all valid ways to have a lot of wealth but don’t tell me the value of salaried work in the US today.

The modern equivalent to what the man had is what the man had. You'd need to be paid maybe a bit less to support a family like he had because everything has gotten slightly more efficient over the years. If you want to define things by means and medians, the median worker had a median lifestyle then and a median lifestyle today.

If you want much more than he had, you're going to need to pay much more for it. Bit of an obvious one.

It really isn’t though. The median person in 1963 didn’t need say internet or computers or smartphones, because no one expected them to have one. Good luck even applying for a job today without at least a computer and internet, and possibly a smartphone capable of running very specific apps.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my computer, but as the GP indicated the rest of society expect very different things from you today – more equipment, more education, etc. Those things aren’t just increased living standards, they are increased job requirements.

Sure. There is no way that old mate in 1960 could have afforded all that stuff and thread ancestor is pointing out that people around today can't afford a 7 person family and have all that stuff in 2026.

So we've moved from a world where it was impossible to afford all that stuff and a 7 person family to a world where ... still can't be done. People have raised their standards to the point where they can't afford 5 children, savings and a lifestyle that they think is reasonable. Not much of a mystery there to interrogate. There has never been a generation that could afford the lifestyle they want and it appears there still isn't.

But that’s not the same world

The current world has different technology and economics

In order to match the same lifestyle of the past you would have to be subject to the economic and technological structure of the past

Which you can emulate and it is objectively cheaper but you choose

This is literally the operational principle of the Amish and mennonite communities

I think you misunderstand my point. The ancestral post to this thread is pointing out that a normal worker in 1963 -- with probably just one income -- could support 5 children while owning 2 houses and 3 apartments. Then someone argues, more or less, that this is not possible only because we prioritize different today -- most likely referring to things like more education, more technology, better healthcare, etc.

My post, and the GP post I'm agreeing with, are saying that most of those aren't optional "lifestyle upgrades" that you choose instead of 5 children and 5 homes. Much of it, like education and technology, are requirements for getting and holding a normal job.

It's true that society has changed, but we are allowed to lament some of those changes without turning Amish. For example, I don't think that our technology and education is the main driver behind not being able to afford children and houses. Part of it is incompetent management of the housing market -- as someone once said, a house can be affordable or a good investment, but not both. Another part is that median income per person has not grown proportionally to GDP per capita since the 1960s, leading to a more extreme accumulation of wealth at the top, which is in turn entirely down to politics (e.g. an overcomplex tax code with plenty of loopholes).

If you're outside the US (like myself), the graphs arguably look a bit better, but there's still a lack of housing due to increased regulations on construction -- how energy efficient new houses should be, where you are allowed to build them, which old houses you are allowed to destroy to make room for new ones (for historical reasons), etc. In addition to the welfare states becoming less efficient over time, leading to less real income with less benefits from the state. (Which are not much better than inefficient monopolies in less socialist countries, to be fair.)

</end of political rant>

I’m aware of your argument and disagree. I know plenty of people who are unhoused and have no intentions on becoming housed anytime soon.

Whether or not you agree with that philosophy or not living by yourself in a tent in the forest is absolutely an option

“My post, and the GP post I'm agreeing with, are saying that most of those aren't optional "lifestyle upgrades"”

My disagreement is that they are optional, like everything else in life

You aren’t willing to take the tradeoff of not having indoor plumbing or whatever but the claim that using modern technologies and living according to capitalism isn’t an option is incorrect

Ultimately that’s a choice among infinite options

Giving up internet and phones still doesn't let me afford 5 houses and 5 kids, not even moving to a tent in the woods offsets that much expense

You can get internet and a phone for < $20/month. It will have all the apps, you don't need a computer.

... You really can't though? My cheapest phone plan ever was $30,15 years ago, and didn't include the phone

My phone plan is $7/month, right now. US Mobile.

Go to the library and use their computer: consider it a parallel to walking into a business with a resume and a firm handshake.

I agree with you and the math checks out

The challenge is that this is a hard argument to make to most people because they aren’t aware of the hedonic treadmill

I could easily afford the life my grandfather had in 1950, but I wouldn’t have a fuel injected motor, vaccines, a laptop or a job in computing.

My air would be full of lead and my drinking water would be cloudy and smell like sulphur.

That life is possible in San Angelo Tx today on ~15,000 a year, the equivalent of his salary in 1950

Who the fuck can afford even one house, let alone several, on $15,000??

Well if you get your friends and family to help to build them (which is what people used to do) and then cut a deal for cheap land in remote Nebraska

Just pretend like it’s 1950 and use the tools and build the community you need to do it like they did back then

No fair using nail guns

I grew up in remote Nebraska. You can't afford it there either, especially on remote Nebraska wages

How much wealth? Not really that much if you move to the middle of the country. You're thinking of San Francisco (well, Daly City) of the 2020's, which San Francisco absolutely was not in 1963. Nice place, sure, but still heavily working class, blue-collar and union. You could have 5 kids and a few apartments on a reliable, but not spectacular, income today in many cities (and suburbs of such) in the US.

That doesn't really pass the smell test for me.

How do you get this "reliable, but not spectacular" income in one of these places? What are these places?

Go become a plumber or union carpenter in Lansing, Michigan or Birmingham, Alabama or Utica, NY. Median home prices well below $300,000. You must be supremely arrogant to not know cities like these and jobs like these exist.

You can buy a 5 bed 4 bath house in Tulsa, OK for under $400K

OP mentioned 5 properties and 5 children. Taking your suggested budget as reference today we’re talking close to $1.5-2m just in properties alone. That’s 10-20 times the median wealth per adult in the US while supporting a very large family by today’s standards.

I know many software engineers with similar assets, most done have 5 children but they don’t want them either.

Software engineers now are paid much better than printers were then

Maybe the secret is in what you print?

The worst of all is that people will still argue that, in this day and age, labour has not been completely devalued and that you are wealthier than your grandfather.

That kind of story was not uncommon at all in the past, today you would have to be a literal multi-millionaire to have that lifestyle.

If you're ok with 1963 living standards, you can in fact have the grandfather's same lifestyle today at a very reasonable cost.

Where can I get a house, 3 apartments, a car, and money for raising 5 children at a very reasonable cost?

Houses are cheap everywhere outside of major metro areas. And raising kids is cheap if you have a stay-at-home spouse, send the kids to public school, and never fly. So basically if you recreate the typical 1963 suburban living experience, this is totally workable on (for example) a teacher's salary.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225082

The kids are basically free (in dollar terms), if the kids go to public school, you don't fly, and you have a stay-at-home spouse who cooks and clips coupons. You also don't have to be wealthy to own property. Outside of major metros, you can get a house for $200-300k, so two houses is $400-600k and the three-unit rental building is probably less than that. And they're probably all mortgaged, not owned outright.

Any US remote tech job will support that if you live in the countryside of some flyover state.

I don't know about the cost-of-living reality in the flyover states, but are you sure you're taking into account the 5x multiplier that kids represent for that specific example?

I think that just in terms of food expenses, having to feed five children + one spouse might be pretty challenging. Let alone if we factor in things like healthcare plans, among other things.

Another thing: the GP's grandfather was a blue collar worker, you're talking about a white collar remote worker who by definition is a high earner and not somebody average.

This talking point that things are not harder today and everybody would be able to have the same affluence of 60's people if at least they were not so demanding sounds completely unrealistic.

Food is very cheap if you eat like Americans did in 1963. No restaurants, no prepared food, relatively little meat. Rice, bread, beans, potatoes, squash, etc.

Healthcare is cheap if you consume healthcare like a person in 1963. No need for MRIs, anti-depressants, chemotherapy, most childhood vaccines, braces for the kids' teeth, etc. The big exception is labor & delivery, where what used to be standard (a long hospital stay for recovery) is now so outrageously expensive that it's not even an option.

Very curious what living standards you’re thinking of

A 1963 house is what we'd think of today as a starter home. Available medical care was very limited, so you don't need modern health insurance. No braces for the kids. One small car, and it can be a really old beater and still be better than 1963 cars (no seatbelts or catalytic converters back then). One landline phone, no internet, no cell phones, etc.

The "he lived in Daly City" thing is a bit of a red herring. Daly City was not a 15 minute drive from the center of the hottest industry in the world in 1963. So substitute Fresno.

Anyway, if you can find a woman who wants to be a SAHM to your five children in a Fresno starter home, where she clips coupons and cooks meals from scratch with no appliances, you can achieve a 1963 standard of living pretty easily on a schoolteacher's salary.

> The "he lived in Daly City" thing is a bit of a red herring. Daly City was not a 15 minute drive from the center of the hottest industry in the world in 1963. So substitute Fresno.

This is a key point. I grew up in a nice middle class neighborhood 20 minutes from DC. Back then DC was the murder capital of the country, there were no tech jobs in northern VA, etc. Today it’s much more expensive, but it’s also full of tech engineers. The town has moved upmarket. It’s not a Honda Accord, it’s an Acura.

People vastly underestimate the savings a woman clipping coupons and cooking meals from scratch can bring.

I don't underestimate it, I know pretty clearly what it's not worth because it's all my SIL-SAHM does in life. It's possibly the difference between them being homeless or hungry, but the last few years of inflation have obviously offset whatever it had been worth before. They'll never penny pinch themselves out of poverty. It's the behavior of a household not thriving.

How naïve

My wife comes from a lower middle class family so she’s a big deal finder and coupon clipper and cooks at home. We spend $1,100 a month on groceries, for 2 adults and 3 kids. Lunch for me most days is some bread and cheese, or a hot dog, or rice with an egg over it. She goes to three different discount grocery stores and if we eat beef it’s from Grocery Outlet. Sometimes a packaged item from ALDI (like their pulled pork).

That's heroic. I hope you tell her so (though you sound like you would).

I try to! But my family is the opposite, so at first I was offended, like "do I need to make more money?" LOL.

> A 1963 house is what we'd think of today as a starter home.

Not every house at that time was a post war levitown style shack. AC wasn’t even terribly uncommon in 1960s construction.

I grew up in the 1960's. We lived in a suburb of Detroit where my father was a mechanical engineer who worked on drive trains and suspensions for Cadillac. My mom was a homemaker. We had one car. The house where the six of us lived was 1/3 the size of the one just my wife and I live in today. We had a black and white TV that got the network broadcasts, a single dial phone, a washer, a dryer, a stove, a toaster and a small refrigerator. My mom had a plug-in steam iron. My dad did the lawn with a push rotary mower and trimmed the sidewalks with hand clippers. We kids had bikes and board games. I did not know anybody with air conditioning. The most luxurious things we had were time, leisure and the outdoors that nobody minded us losing ourselves in for hours at a time. This isn't nostalgia by the way. I wouldn't go back. But if you could, somehow, you'd be shocked at how much less of nearly everything material there was.

Levittown-style homes for returning WWII veterans were poor quality -- "little boxes all made of ticky-tack" as the song goes, but even high quality homes of the midcentury were still tiny -- the average size of a US house in 1960 was 1,289 sq ft -- basically apartment sized. And typically only had one bathroom

https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes...

"little boxes all made of ticky-tack"

That song is about Daly City,[1] where some of the original houses still are pink, green, blue, and yellow.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boxes

Only 12-15% of the country had AC in 1963.

And even if you "had AC" it typically wasn't central AC. Even when I was growing up in the 1970s our only AC was a window unit in my parents' bedroom. On hot summer nights we would go and sleep on their floor.

Residential units? Or does that include businesses too? Cause 12-15% for residential units sounds high for 1963.

Air conditioning was extremely uncommon in my neighborhood when I was growing up in the 80s. I didn't personally know a single family that had a/c until the 90s. The only places that were air conditioned in my neighborhood in the 80s were businesses. I'm sure it was more common in the South.

That's more like the top decile than the average. The top decile in any era has it pretty good.

Most of the "life is too expensive today" complaints are some flavor of: Grandpa was a 90th percentile income earner and I am a 50th percentile income earner, so even though my life is objectively much better than Grandpa's in many ways (childhood vaccination, clean air, seatbelts, etc) the loss of status is much more salient than the gains in material well-being.

Here’s a counterpoint

https://americancompass.org/2023-cost-of-thriving-index/

That is just a huge mess of tautologies. Like the way they measure the housing you need to thrive is by the 40th percentile of rent. But today's apartments are much nicer than apartments in 1963, so the 40th percentile is buying a much better product today than in 1963.

This makes "thriving" a constantly moving target, because by definition 40 percent of people have housing that sucks too much. This does reflect realities of human psychology (our happiness is mostly about relative well-being, not absolute well-being), but it is not remotely useful for comparing material living standards over time.

Where can you find a starter home today on your grandfather's salary?

Fresno, like I said above. Go on Zillow and you'll find plenty of very nice 2BR and 3BR houses in Fresno that a teacher or auto mechanic can afford.

If you mean "where within commuting distance of the hottest industry in the world can I find a reasonably priced home" then yeah obviously you can't, but SF wasn't that in 1963.

It’s interesting to look at places like Westchester that were already upscale decades ago. Here’s the first listing I found in Scarsdale, NY, which has been an affluent Wall Street suburb forever: https://www.redfin.com/NY/Scarsdale/12-Stoneleigh-Rd-10583/h.... Sold for $645k in 2003 and $1.25 million this year. That’s 3% appreciation per year over the last 23 years. It’s exactly the rate of inflation.

Hudson Valley real estate is the best kept secret in the US. Plenty of places with good schools and a sub-1hr train commute to Manhattan can be had for under $500k still. Westchester is cooked, but add 15-30 mins north to your commute and it's still extremely accessible.

Size of house, availability of food and clothes, percentage of population that receives an education, etc.

Your point about affording the lifestyle isnt entirely incorrect, but it is skewed by what you choose to include vs ignore. Owning a house? Indeed, grandfather probably had it easier. More space per person in the primary residence? Grandson wins, most likely. Restaurant meals vs home cooked, international travel, ubiquitous air conditioning, threat of being drafted into the military (and actually being deployed!), expected lifespan, dental visit experience, number of sexual partners... I'd bet most grandsons have all of those significantly better than their gainfully-employed grandfathers.

The fact that you listed "restaurant meals" and "number of sexual partners" as a plus tells me everything I need to know here.

Yes, the people who like living in the Pleasuredome of cheap and fast thrills have it better these days. The rare few who want a stable, thoughtful life with a lifelong partner far away from the racket? Well...

Options are generally a good thing, even if you dont explore them all. Much respect if you found one person and its just the two of you to the grave. But, you cant ignore the fact that women fought for years for sexual freedom, and that most people of both sexes prefer to be able to date and search for a long-term partner rather than be arranged, or to be pressured by parents, church or community to marry the first person they had sex with.

Secondly, you can't invalidate a list of net positives like longer life expectancy by objecting to one of the things on that list.

Disregard the grandfather for a moment.

How is today better than the situation 20 years ago?

Most of those measures, just less significantly compared to the grandfather.

In other words: everything to do with economics is worse and everything to do with the inexorable march of progress is better. Yeah sorry but no shit. Technology has progressed since grandpa's day.

"TVs are better and cheaper" is not a useful counterpoint when discussing the economy of the 2020s.

You’re being myopic. Yes, TVs being better and cheaper isn’t that useful. But ACs, dishwashers, washing machines, beds, cars… etc. are all useful counterpoints when discussing the economy and these are impactful. And beyond the normal big ticket items, smaller items (thank China and Walmart) are cheaper. And that adds up. Lamps being cheaper doesn’t seem like much but add that across all the furniture in the house.

"it's okay to be homeless because at least we have dishwashers and cheap lamps" is a new one to me. Usually people pick a more important excuse.

You sure can buy severely enshittified versions of all those products designed with a very limited lifespan for cheap.

Stuff was total shit back in the day, lol. Even in the 1990s cars regularly rusted out. Today you can drive a cheap Kia for decades.

The 90s was decades ago. I don't see many 2010 kia on the road.

You can't know the quality of new kia "for decades".

I still see 90s and earlier cars on the road all the time (nearly daily). I owned one until 2020, when someone totalled it while parked for me.

1990s cars aren't any more prone to rust than cars now, the rust is just hidden under the plastic panel. That plastic panel isn't doing any of the work of the frame though. Shit and gilded shit are both piles of crap even if one looks better at first glance. Especially when you consider how much thinner modern car frames are which means there is less to lose before failure, assuming the electronics even last that long.

Spoken like someone who has never spent time around old cars. The 90s cars were already enshittified

The luxury market has been commoditised.

No matter how many billions you have in the bank, you cant get a better netflix subscription, TV, or iPhone than the normal person. This is the 'march of progress' you speak of. The things people wanted and coveted most have been squashed to a market value most people can just afford, and then subsidised with credit plans to make them affordable by all.

This is the basics of modern economies. It is not separate to technology progressing. The technology progressing has become the foundation of all modern economies.

In what sense are movies a "luxury market" and in what sense have they not been "commoditised" (as per your definition) for 100 years...? Seriously, your answer to a conversation about an economy that squeezes the middle-class and serves more and more the ultra-wealthy is "but netflix"? Uninteresting conversation.

Do they sell tvs like this at Walmart?

https://www.cseed.com/en/indoor-tv/unfolding-tv.html

Netflix is a terrible example, it’s cheap entertainment for the masses. Why would a billionaire watch Netflix when they could get front row and/or box seats to any sporting event or concert in the world and fly there via private jet.

Who cares? It's probably not better than a TV anyone else can afford and why would a billionaire need a folding tv in one of their 24 room homes?

The fact that you can buy a 72" tv for less than $1k now is nuts, and I assume there is no secret HBO with higher quality content only for billionaires, they still have to watch the same shit as us, and there is some good stuff out there, even on Netflix (maybe not a lot, not anymore). Even rich people sometimes want to sit at home and just watch TV, it takes a lot of energy to go out to something every night, even if you can. I used to go to concerts every week, sometimes several, now it's far less as I get older and it becomes more draining. Box seats are not very good seats and if you get good seats you are still surrounded by other people that will ruin your time.

I'm not rich, but there isn't much that I covet from rich people, because they really don't get that much better shit than we do anymore, they get more "luxury" and convenience and opportunity, but they still have the same technology as us, and it still sucks. 20 years ago, they had things we would want and could never afford, now the gap has shrunk considerably. They can pay 100-1000x for 1-5% quality gain on what a regular consumer can buy.

> 20 years ago, they had things we would want and could never afford

Like what?

It's 2026, so 20 years ago was 2006, and the biggest one that comes to mind is smartphones. The iPhone wouldn't launch until 2007, but the Blackberry existed, but was just very expensive. Of course it didn't have the same apps as we have today, but that was definitely something for rich people that we now take for granted. GPS navigation was also very different 20 years ago. The rich had $500 Tomtom computers for directions while everyone else was still printing paper maps. Photography was still a high end thing. An iPhone shoots better photos more easily than something from 20 years ago. A giant flat screen TV in 2006 was very much a rich person thing. Now that's like $400 at Costco. Video calling wasn't a thing in 2006 for a variety of reasons, but the equipment being expensive is the main one. These days there's a half dozen apps I can use to talk to someone on the other side of the planet. On yeah, in 2006, calling long distance was still kind of a thing. Translation is another one, Google translate came out in 2006, so just right at the cut off. Before that, a foreign language was just that, foreign. Today, I can whip out my phone and it will overlay my language in my camera view instead of hiring a person. Recording studios took a hit. A million dollar recording studio in 2006 is now a MacBook, some software, and some gear. Making music used to be expensive! Smarthome shit was stupidly expensive in 2006. I think most people still don't have that stuff, but it's much more accessible today vs 20 years ago to be able to tell Siri/Alexa/Google to turn off the lights.

Oh yeah, having a driver was very much a rich person thing in 2006. Now that's just called having an Uber account and it's nothing special. (Although if you have Zoox or Tesla Robotaxi access it still is.)

The access to information out there is stunning. The visuals for the Straight of Hormuz in 2006 would have been far more limited to rich people who actually needed that information. Today there's a dozen vibecoded play-by-play visualizations of the entire conflict.

Plenty of people could afford blackberries in 2006. Having uber is nothing like having a driver. A MacBook replaces about $50k out of a million dollar recording studio. The rest if it still costs pretty much a million dollars.

I’m not even sure what my point is.

Being a billionaire was never really about having stuff. It was and is about having power.

Plenty of rich people, that is. Having Uber is at least something like having a driver. I'm not rich enough to have a driver though so you'll have to tell me how that's not actually like having a driver. As far as a million dollar recording studio goes, the studio itself, the rent on the building, the sound isolation, sure, that's still expensive, but you can send a picture to ChatGPT and as it where to place the microphones where previously that would thake you knowing a sound engineer or $300/hr to be able to ask them how to mic something.

Point is, information wants to be free, and that sounds stupid because the world's changed since, but, like it or not, ChatGPT (et al) is, and has already changed the world. There's no putting that genie back in the bottle, all we can do is adapt.

You're dense. Likelihood of military service - way down. Widespread diseases like measles, tuberculosis and polio - gone. Number of people lifted out of poverty is in the billions since 1960s (economics). Access to credit - massively up (economics). Commercial air travel affordable to virtually anyone (economics). Abundant, clean, healthy food available to almost the entire world (economics). Government-insured bank accounts (economics). Tax-advantaged retirement investment opportunities (economics). You can also look at civil rights, access to justice (small claims court didnt exist in many places when this dude's grandpa was young), college participation...

> Widespread diseases like measles, [...] - gone

Funny you mention that, we're bringing measles back. Check out the graphs on https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html . Seems it started Jan 2025.

2500 cases? Call me when it reaches hundreds of thousands of cases, like it was every year up until the 1960s.

"When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’re doing."

Anyway good luck

This. Who cares about TV?

I love how countries calculate inflation now:

- Basic utilities, food, heating, energy, gas.. 50-100% increase in cost

- piano, railway carrage, something nobody uses - 0.34% increase

Thus inflation is only 5% - capiche?

It's been more than 100% btw

It feels like 200% is approaching, from an arbitrary start point of 2013.

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(voiceover) technology is part of economics.

What if having a residence at all is more important than having a large residence?

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