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Comment by Gareth321 | Hacker News Reader

This is easily refuted. [In 1950, food, transport, and housing consumed 70.3% of median working household expenditure. Today is it 63.3%.](https://www.bls.gov/opub/100-years-of-u-s-consumer-spending....) In 1950, 87% of family households were married couples, and only 21% of married women participated in the labour force. Today, 62% of cohabiting couples have both partners working. Households are earning more, but prices rose almost commensurately. If you were correct, the proportion spent on necessities would be far lower.

I will concede that luxury goods are far cheaper, and perhaps one could make an argument that cheap TVs are a reasonable concession for expensive food and housing. I would not agree with that.

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You didn't compare apples to apples, housing in 1950 was radically different than housing in 2026. Homes today are significantly larger, better insulated, vastly more robust construction codes, more technology incorporated (not least of which is air conditioning, which was just starting to be a notable thing in the 50s, didn't become truly mainstream until the 70s).

Real estate is a very local thing, so I can't speak to your area, but 1950s equivalent homes in my area are still impressively cheap. Why? People aren't interested in a 900 to 1000sqft home with no central AC. There's cities in this country that will give a run down property like that to you for free if you agree to live in that little town for a certain number of years, or at least there used to be. Those things come and go.

Also, because that's not what they want, the neighborhood becomes a meth lab. But if people actually wanted those homes that issue would resolve itself.

The data doesn't all support this common misconception. Really, it's an intentional deception on the part of many people who know better.

Some reasons why your dismissal may not hold up:

1. In many jurisdictions, many of the homes built in the mid-century can’t be built anymore due to modern code and zoning ordinances.

2. Building the same 1950s home, if it’s legal at all, is more expensive than it was back then. Materials and labor are more expensive.

3. Air conditioning is more of a necessity as global temperatures increase and as employment centers move south. If I can’t get a job in Detroit but I can get one in Arizona, then yes I need air conditioning.

4. Consumers are generally not in control of what housing is available on the market. Builders don’t build homes for lower middle class people because they’re not profitable. Nobody is forcing them to build the kind of homes the lower middle class can afford.

Homes built today are being built with all corners cut, into a market that doesn't seem to care as long as there is a house. They may be big, but they're bigger than people actually need and there aren't any smaller ones, so that's a bit like saying phone users don't want headphone jacks. Better insulated, yes, probably. But was that ever a huge issue?

I don't disagree with your stats but the jump from "households have to work more" to "society is worse off" is a personal value judgement. Seriously would you rather spawn as a random person in the 1950s than random person now?

The housing is better. Square footage per person for example has approximately doubled.

Also, in Chart 1 on page 6, "expenditure share for non-necessities" in the US goes from about 32.5% in 1950 to fully 50% in 2002-2003.

It would be nice if you told us the page from which you got your, "in 1950, food, transport, and housing consumed 70.3% of median working household expenditure." Searching for your text verbatim fails, which is not particularly surprising because PDFs cannot be searched reliably.

Also because 1950 is considered by some to be a particularly prosperous time in the US, some might accused you of cherry picking. For example, in 1918-1919, the "expenditure share for non-necessities" was about 22%.

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