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Comment by bluefirebrand | Hacker News Reader

> For example has the median/average home size grown since then

Sure. Let's compare to the 90s.

According to Google, New detached homes are 10-20% larger in square feet today than they were in the 90s.

Also according to Google, new detached homes are 3.3x more expensive, inflation adjusted, than the 90s. Of course mortgage interest rates play a part here too, but that's a really bad starting point

And that's just for starters.

There are also places in the USA where the minimum wage has not increased since the 90s, and there may actually still be people trying to get by on a wage of 5.50 an hour.

I know all of this is oversimplifying things to an extent. Economics is hard. But it's not that hard...

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I was around in the 1980's and people weren't buying a home and a yearly family vacation on a single income, that era was long gone. If you're talking about those "Good Old Days" then you're talking about the postwar economy that was decisively long gone by '80s.

They were buying a home and a yearly family vacation on two modest incomes, though. Try doing that now.

They might have been "buying" a home with a long-term mortgage, and by the 1980's you were seeing the rise of individual credit card debt as a way to finance a previously unobtainable lifestyle. The 1980's saw the first "cash back" card and rewards cards followed, along with a culture of assuming debt to consume.

What you saw in the 1980's ended much like it did in 2008, it wasn't sustainable and it went bust just as it would over and over and over since. BUT people want more, they want to pay less for it, and many more people want that. If you're a politician you don't win by fighting against that, you swim with the currents and find scapegoats to blame instead.

> They might have been "buying" a home with a long-term mortgage

Oh thanks for reminding me, people used to buy houses on 20 year mortgages now to make them remotely affordable they have to be 30-year mortgages

Good catch!

I take it from the shift in tone that you understood my point, although you don't particularly care to discuss it. I get it, no one ever wants to hear that biggest changes have been:

More people

More money

More people with more money

More competition for something previously limited to far fewer people historically

Costs rise

Expectations rise

Debt rises

And now if you've been keeping track we're at the "people who can't afford delivery finance their Doordash with a short-term loan" stage of the game.

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