Quote:
Originally Posted by suburbanite
It was also possible to pay for college (or a substantial part of it) with a part-time job, afford a home and support a family in many places with a single middle-class income, etc.
I think it's fair to say that "stuff" has become substantially more attainable, while many of the fundamental building blocks of the Western lifestyle like education, home ownership, reasonable retirement, etc. are increasingly out of reach for many. Whether this translates into an objectively higher standard of living is a different question, but it's always felt a bit Brave New World to me to use the availability of cheap consumer products as a barometer on quality of life.
|
things like housing aren't that much more expensive though, in most US metros. The coastal cities are expensive but that's because they are large cities and have restricted supplies.
Someone living in middle America (or Canada) can buy a house easily still. I mean go look at suburban areas of Austin, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Ottawa, Calgary, etc.
The standard educated suburban middle class lifestyle these days is a 2-3,000sf home, 2-car garage, yard, 2-3 cars which are newer and better outfitted than ever before, higher quality building finishes than ever before, lots of toys, tech, regular, expensive vacations, etc.
The way these things have been financed has changed a lot, with the rise of cheap debt and higher overall debt loads, but from a physical abundance standpoint society is very much wealthier than ever.
The differences are mostly in demand perspectives which have changed since a generation ago. Cities are far more popular places than they were in the 1960's, so yea, you can't afford a rowhouse in a hip Brooklyn neighborhood like you could in 1980.. but that neighborhood is also now full of cool coffee shops and bars, etc., not full of crime and dilapidated buildings like it was in the 1980's. A suburban house within commuting distance of Manhattan on the LIRR is just as affordable as always though.
Education has indeed gone up in cost substantially, but so have university-level incomes, and servicing that debt is also a lot cheaper than it once was. People couldn't afford to go into 100k of debt in 1980 to go to university as they would have been paying 10-15% interest on those loans. Someone going to college today can go to school, graduate, and make modest payments off of an excellent income from their job on their debt. It's the same thing for housing, which has gone up in price but also has cheaper debt servicing offsetting most of that.
The places that have had real "quality of life declines" are places that have grown to be different places than they once were, and have had restricted housing supply for whatever reason be it NIMBYism or planning policies. The places, like most of middle america, that have not had that restricted supply vs. demand, are wealthier than ever.
A lot of Millennials simply don't make the choice to be in middle America, trying to fight it out in LA or NYC or SF or Seattle or something and complaining that they can't buy that 3,000sf detached 15 minutes from downtown that they grew up in Dayton, OH or something. The difference isn't that they are poorer than their parents, it's that they are living in a high cost metro which has restricted supply factors limiting housing options to higher cost, denser forms. And sure, those cities weren't as expensive like that in 1980 either, but again, the cities have changed too. In 1980 LA was still sprawling across the valley with nearly unlimited new detached housing supply. It ran out of land. There is still lots of affordable housing stock in Riverside.
Prev
Linear Mode
