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Comment by lp4v4n | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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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.

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

"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'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

(voiceover) technology is part of economics.

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.

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

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.

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