9 ms·

Inflation basically. In the 1950s you could afford a nice middle class lifestyle, own a home, raise multiple children, all on a single income and no college edu

Inflation basically. In the 1950s you could afford a nice middle class lifestyle, own a home, raise multiple children, all on a single income and no college education. When women entered the workforce en masse, everything seemingly doubled in price. Both spouses working to maintain the same lifestyle. When everyone got college degrees, they became required even for jobs like bartending. When everyone got mobile phones and high speed internet, suddenly you're expected to work around the clock and on weekends. All to maintain more or less the same lifestyle, albeit more technologically advanced.

YZF 5y ago
That wasn't true everywhere though, in the USA in the 1950's it might have been true but in the rest of the world? Whenever I try to think about these large scale systems I end up realizing how difficult it is to predict the outcome. Everything people are buying has to be produced. Everything produced needs people (or automation) producing it. Somewhere there is an equilibrium. What's happening globally has an impact (e.g. we possibly had a better standard of living by taking advantage of places that had a lower standard of living). Competition (and inequality) has an impact because not getting ahead of the game can put you in the bottom rungs where you're really doing badly. In a game where only the top 20% are doing well there is fierce never ending competition to be in that 20%. In a game where everyone has some guaranteed basic standard of living you would expect the competition to be less fierce. Another note is that people used to work crazy hours during the industrial revolution. Similar story there, you had to get some work if you didn't want to be poor, and it was easy for employers to take advantage of employees.
- doktorhladnjak 5y ago
  The 1950s were a unique time in the American economy. The rest of the developed world had just come out of WW2 with large portions of its cities, industrial production, and overall economies severely disrupted or outright destroyed. Meanwhile, the US was unscathed and had spent the war further building up its industrial capacity. It was never sustainable, only something possible for a point in time.
  - oblio 5y ago
    Yeah. I remember reading somewhere that the US was making 80% of the cars worldwide in 1950 or so.
    - HPsquared 5y ago
      They were also probably buying 80% of the cars produced worldwide.
      - oblio 5y ago
        Both of which were obviously not going to be sustainable at that rate for long :-)
  - throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
    US economy was almost a full autarchy in the 50s and 60s - imports and exports as percentage of GDP were at all time low - at about 3-4%. Meaning 96-97% of the economy was done by Americans for Americans - it was a closed system. The stagnation in standards of living since the 80s is fully engineered - it's a choice. Tax cuts, regulatory changes, disarming the antitrust, union busting, deregulation of finance and similar changes redistributed $47 trillion to the top 10% from 1975 through 2018 (1), enough to give every worker in the bottom 90% a raise of $1140 per month. (1) https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/ https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-ameri...
- insert_coin 5y ago
  > In a game where everyone has some guaranteed basic standard of living you would expect the competition to be less fierce. And how can you, or anyone, guarantee something like that? The standard of living we have, however imbalanced it might be, is a byproduct of fierce competition. To guarantee any kind of basic standard of living, specially one without even more fierce competition, the only alternatives are: a much much lower standard of living, much lower, or, a much much intense exploitation of natural resources. Pick your poison, as they are both catastrophic, and there is no third option.
  - YZF 5y ago
    I guess the question is what is the cost of a "basic" standard of living. e.g. a shelter, not starving, healthcare, education. As long as that cost is low enough then it doesn't take much to guarantee it. You can certainly see some countries (e.g. Scandinavia, or Australia, or even Canada) finding a different balance point than other countries (e.g. the US). In other words, governments, regulations, unions, can (and do) influence that curve and bring it to a different (better?) place. Competition does play some role in incentivizing people but I don't think it's the entire story when it comes to progress/improved standard of living. When 8 hour work days were introduced was there some sort of sharp drop in productivity or innovation or standard of living? Or when the work week was shortened to 5 days from 6 days? I don't think so.
    - insert_coin 5y ago
      > You can certainly see some countries (e.g. Scandinavia, or Australia, or even Canada) finding a different balance point than other countries (e.g. the US). Three very resources rich regions. They are exploiting their natural resources to compensate for their (relative) low productivity. > When 8 hour work days were introduced was there some sort of sharp drop in productivity or innovation or standard of living? Or when the work week was shortened to 5 days from 6 days? I don't think so. Yes there was a drop, if you consider everything relevant. When the 8 hour work day was introduced new workers were still being added to the workforce. Almost half the population in productive age joined the work force in the later part of the 20th century alone and women were for the most part not working when the 5 day work week became a thing for example. Individually the work hours came down, but as a whole we work much much more today. But we don't have that luxury now, we don't have an untapped work force to lean against. And of course, the elephant in the room: our declining and aging population. Fewer and fewer working adults will have to provide for an increasingly large number of retirees. The situation particularly in the west is dire. Pension funds are at very high risk of collapsing almost everywhere and the solution will not be to work less. Maybe, because politicians are politicians, the 4 day work week will be a thing, but retirement will creep into the 70s, it's already being proposed in some countries. Increases in leisure time will be only on paper, done only in exchange for votes.
missedthecue 5y ago
The lifestyle that the typical American lives 30 year old lives today is well in excess of the one lived by today's 90 year olds when they were 30. We're not trying to "keep up" with the 1950s in any sense. And also, any inflation graph I look at shows no "doubling in price" at any point. Or anything that looks loosely like it.
- dheera 5y ago
  The 90 year old didn't have bosses calling them at 2am when they were 30.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    That is not a norm today either.
- drbobmd5 5y ago
  There is still something to be said of the cost of basics has increased by an order of magnitude. I would argue that today's 30 year olds certainly have access to more options that simply didn't exist in the 50s or at least weren't commonplace, hence more things to spend one's pay on, but it would be near impossible to raise a family of four modestly on a middle class wage in most American cities/suburbs.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    Impossible is a term that is probably much stronger than you meant to use. I grew up in a family of 8 (many adopted children) in American surburbia, on one income, and we never wanted for much. The breadwinner never even breached a six figure income. And this was not long ago. I have likely been around the sun fewer times than you have.
    - n4r9 5y ago
caymanjim 5y ago
You can still do this. You might not have people in your social circle and family who meet these criteria, but it's happening all around you. Just anecdotally in my own family, I've got 20something nieces and nephews who own homes and are raising multiple children on single salaries with a stay-at-home parent, two cars, and a comfortable life. Sure, it's not easy, but it's not that unusual. They're happy, comfortable, and self-sufficient.
- necrotic_comp 5y ago
  I mean this without any snark or anything - where ?
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    Some in NJ, some in the San Diego area. If you're outside the ultra-urban expensive bubbles like SF and NYC, it's not hard to survive on the salary of a full-time skilled tradesman. People have a habit of increasing their spending to rise with their salary and then thinking it's not possible to live on less salary. In the suburbs and in smaller cities, mid/upper five figures with medical benefits is enough to buy a home and raise a family. The median US salary for full-time salaried workers is about $50k.
  - ekerstein 5y ago
    If you have decent credit and salary you can buy a home for only 5% down. With 10-15k saved you can then buy a starter home in a smaller city or maybe outside the metropolitan area of a midsized city.
adamredwoods 5y ago
As a arm-chair historian, I feel there has always been an ebb and flow of balanced-working versus over-working. For example, reading stories of Carnegie's steel plants with 12-hours work days, 7 days a week in 1894: >> The demanding conditions sapped the life from workers. "You don't notice any old men here," said a Homestead laborer in 1894. "The long hours, the strain, and the sudden changes of temperature use a man up." Sociologist John A. Fitch called it "old age at forty." https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegie-steel-business/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegi... Modern times show us the '996 icu' work culture rising: https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU My greatest fear is that there will not be enough jobs for everyone, and Andrew Yang's proposal for UBI will become even more important, but the 'cult of over-working' will keep it from ever being implemented: https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/ https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/
wolfretcrap 5y ago
But your data doesn't account whether women wanted this arrangement or not, the way things are now clearly demonstrates women wanted greater freedom even if they've to leave their home and kids, so this what it is happening.
- acidbaseextract 5y ago
  Eh, want is a subtle thing. There's a lot of research around women's declining happiness since the 1970s[1], which implies this change is not an unalloyed good. I blame marketing. A lot of marketing tells women what to want, and marketers certainly have zero incentive to steer women away from consumerism, a career to finance that consumer lifestyle, or the idea that such a lifestyle is "freedom". [1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-rights-happiness-wellbeing-gender-gap https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
watwut 5y ago
> When women entered the workforce en masse, everything seemingly doubled in price. Both spouses working to maintain the same lifestyle. Gentle reminder that female employment was not 0. Depending on age, it was in between 35% and 39%. While it is significantly lower then male employment, the idea that no woman worked outside of house is a fantasy. They did earned less money then men and faced discrimination. But their salaries were important either to feed themselves, kids or generally add to family income. Notably, Rosa Parks was employed and her unemployability after bus sit in was a big issue for her.
- heterodoxxed 5y ago
  Yes for the most part, plenty of women always had jobs. The feminist movement was about women who wanted careers, which is why so much of its appeal was amongst the middle to upper-middle class who were unfairly being kept out of prestigious professional roles.
  - watwut 5y ago
    I wonder why this was downvoted rather then argued against if someone happens to disagree. The characterization of the feminism movement of that time as being predominantly middle class white women movement is valid. Imo, that is why it ended up being successful. Some people think that career or prestigious professional roles is frivolous demand, but I personally strongly disagree. Just like it is legitimate for men to want them, it is equally legitimate for women to seek good jobs with good pay, good conditions and respect. Just like middle and upper class guys on HN seek jobs that they like and that challenge them, women wanting these is equally valid. Yet moreover, issues like domestic violence were really acute for many middle class women too, having good job makes escape so much more easier. Career is not just frivolous thing, it is safety. Yet moreover, middle class men get sick, injured die and career makes you safer. And second, discrimination on the jobs was as acute. Those women (and their families) needed work, full stop. Them being paid less or having bad working conditions was something that impacted them a lot. It was not just pocket money where the difference does not matter.
danielbarla 5y ago
While there's definitely been a drop in the purchasing power of lower and middle classes (though [1]), monetary inflation alone does not seem to explain this trend in a satisfactory manner. In all honesty, most software developers I know could probably sustain a really decent living working 50% of the time they are doing now, if they really wanted to. But for whatever reason, we _don't_ want to. It's almost like our expectations are what have inflated. [1] Some things have gotten ridiculously expensive, like housing. However, other things have not, we're just buying much, much more of them. It's hard not to draw comparisons between our own children's environment and our own upbringing, as cliche as that might be, but they have a lot more "stuff" than we did, be it phones, tablets, sports classes and coaches, you name it.
misja111 5y ago
The difference in working hours is not as big as you make it seem. In the 1950s it was normal to work on Saturdays. Nowadays, it Europe at least, the 40 hour working week is standard. Also most women used to work until they had kids, and some returned back to work when the kids had grown up. And then there's the difference of lifestyle: In the 1950s most people did not own a car or a television. A family home would many times be smaller than a present one, even though families had more kids. And finally nowadays it's pretty normal to go on holiday abroad twice a year. In the 1950's this was unheard of.
rocknor 5y ago
> In the 1950s you could afford a nice middle class lifestyle, own a home, raise multiple children, all on a single income and no college education. This was a unique situation, only in the US, which was a small fraction of the world population. The majority of the world was in poverty. The average human lifestyle has seen drastic improvements since then. This comment seems to suggest that things have been getting worse, but it's the exact opposite at the global level. Things have never been better.

YZF 5y ago

That wasn't true everywhere though, in the USA in the 1950's it might have been true but in the rest of the world? Whenever I try to think about these large scale systems I end up realizing how difficult it is to predict the outcome. Everything people are buying has to be produced. Everything produced needs people (or automation) producing it. Somewhere there is an equilibrium. What's happening globally has an impact (e.g. we possibly had a better standard of living by taking advantage of places that had a lower standard of living). Competition (and inequality) has an impact because not getting ahead of the game can put you in the bottom rungs where you're really doing badly. In a game where only the top 20% are doing well there is fierce never ending competition to be in that 20%. In a game where everyone has some guaranteed basic standard of living you would expect the competition to be less fierce. Another note is that people used to work crazy hours during the industrial revolution. Similar story there, you had to get some work if you didn't want to be poor, and it was easy for employers to take advantage of employees.

doktorhladnjak 5y ago
The 1950s were a unique time in the American economy. The rest of the developed world had just come out of WW2 with large portions of its cities, industrial production, and overall economies severely disrupted or outright destroyed. Meanwhile, the US was unscathed and had spent the war further building up its industrial capacity. It was never sustainable, only something possible for a point in time.
- oblio 5y ago
  Yeah. I remember reading somewhere that the US was making 80% of the cars worldwide in 1950 or so.
  - HPsquared 5y ago
    They were also probably buying 80% of the cars produced worldwide.
    - oblio 5y ago
      Both of which were obviously not going to be sustainable at that rate for long :-)
- throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
  US economy was almost a full autarchy in the 50s and 60s - imports and exports as percentage of GDP were at all time low - at about 3-4%. Meaning 96-97% of the economy was done by Americans for Americans - it was a closed system. The stagnation in standards of living since the 80s is fully engineered - it's a choice. Tax cuts, regulatory changes, disarming the antitrust, union busting, deregulation of finance and similar changes redistributed $47 trillion to the top 10% from 1975 through 2018 (1), enough to give every worker in the bottom 90% a raise of $1140 per month. (1) https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/ https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-ameri...
insert_coin 5y ago
> In a game where everyone has some guaranteed basic standard of living you would expect the competition to be less fierce. And how can you, or anyone, guarantee something like that? The standard of living we have, however imbalanced it might be, is a byproduct of fierce competition. To guarantee any kind of basic standard of living, specially one without even more fierce competition, the only alternatives are: a much much lower standard of living, much lower, or, a much much intense exploitation of natural resources. Pick your poison, as they are both catastrophic, and there is no third option.
- YZF 5y ago
  I guess the question is what is the cost of a "basic" standard of living. e.g. a shelter, not starving, healthcare, education. As long as that cost is low enough then it doesn't take much to guarantee it. You can certainly see some countries (e.g. Scandinavia, or Australia, or even Canada) finding a different balance point than other countries (e.g. the US). In other words, governments, regulations, unions, can (and do) influence that curve and bring it to a different (better?) place. Competition does play some role in incentivizing people but I don't think it's the entire story when it comes to progress/improved standard of living. When 8 hour work days were introduced was there some sort of sharp drop in productivity or innovation or standard of living? Or when the work week was shortened to 5 days from 6 days? I don't think so.
  - insert_coin 5y ago
    > You can certainly see some countries (e.g. Scandinavia, or Australia, or even Canada) finding a different balance point than other countries (e.g. the US). Three very resources rich regions. They are exploiting their natural resources to compensate for their (relative) low productivity. > When 8 hour work days were introduced was there some sort of sharp drop in productivity or innovation or standard of living? Or when the work week was shortened to 5 days from 6 days? I don't think so. Yes there was a drop, if you consider everything relevant. When the 8 hour work day was introduced new workers were still being added to the workforce. Almost half the population in productive age joined the work force in the later part of the 20th century alone and women were for the most part not working when the 5 day work week became a thing for example. Individually the work hours came down, but as a whole we work much much more today. But we don't have that luxury now, we don't have an untapped work force to lean against. And of course, the elephant in the room: our declining and aging population. Fewer and fewer working adults will have to provide for an increasingly large number of retirees. The situation particularly in the west is dire. Pension funds are at very high risk of collapsing almost everywhere and the solution will not be to work less. Maybe, because politicians are politicians, the 4 day work week will be a thing, but retirement will creep into the 70s, it's already being proposed in some countries. Increases in leisure time will be only on paper, done only in exchange for votes.

missedthecue 5y ago

The lifestyle that the typical American lives 30 year old lives today is well in excess of the one lived by today's 90 year olds when they were 30. We're not trying to "keep up" with the 1950s in any sense. And also, any inflation graph I look at shows no "doubling in price" at any point. Or anything that looks loosely like it.

dheera 5y ago
The 90 year old didn't have bosses calling them at 2am when they were 30.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- missedthecue 5y ago
  That is not a norm today either.
drbobmd5 5y ago
There is still something to be said of the cost of basics has increased by an order of magnitude. I would argue that today's 30 year olds certainly have access to more options that simply didn't exist in the 50s or at least weren't commonplace, hence more things to spend one's pay on, but it would be near impossible to raise a family of four modestly on a middle class wage in most American cities/suburbs.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Impossible is a term that is probably much stronger than you meant to use. I grew up in a family of 8 (many adopted children) in American surburbia, on one income, and we never wanted for much. The breadwinner never even breached a six figure income. And this was not long ago. I have likely been around the sun fewer times than you have.
  - n4r9 5y ago

caymanjim 5y ago

You can still do this. You might not have people in your social circle and family who meet these criteria, but it's happening all around you. Just anecdotally in my own family, I've got 20something nieces and nephews who own homes and are raising multiple children on single salaries with a stay-at-home parent, two cars, and a comfortable life. Sure, it's not easy, but it's not that unusual. They're happy, comfortable, and self-sufficient.

necrotic_comp 5y ago
I mean this without any snark or anything - where ?
- caymanjim 5y ago
  Some in NJ, some in the San Diego area. If you're outside the ultra-urban expensive bubbles like SF and NYC, it's not hard to survive on the salary of a full-time skilled tradesman. People have a habit of increasing their spending to rise with their salary and then thinking it's not possible to live on less salary. In the suburbs and in smaller cities, mid/upper five figures with medical benefits is enough to buy a home and raise a family. The median US salary for full-time salaried workers is about $50k.
- ekerstein 5y ago
  If you have decent credit and salary you can buy a home for only 5% down. With 10-15k saved you can then buy a starter home in a smaller city or maybe outside the metropolitan area of a midsized city.

adamredwoods 5y ago

As a arm-chair historian, I feel there has always been an ebb and flow of balanced-working versus over-working. For example, reading stories of Carnegie's steel plants with 12-hours work days, 7 days a week in 1894: >> The demanding conditions sapped the life from workers. "You don't notice any old men here," said a Homestead laborer in 1894. "The long hours, the strain, and the sudden changes of temperature use a man up." Sociologist John A. Fitch called it "old age at forty." https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegie-steel-business/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegi... Modern times show us the '996 icu' work culture rising: https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU My greatest fear is that there will not be enough jobs for everyone, and Andrew Yang's proposal for UBI will become even more important, but the 'cult of over-working' will keep it from ever being implemented: https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/ https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/

wolfretcrap 5y ago

But your data doesn't account whether women wanted this arrangement or not, the way things are now clearly demonstrates women wanted greater freedom even if they've to leave their home and kids, so this what it is happening.

acidbaseextract 5y ago
Eh, want is a subtle thing. There's a lot of research around women's declining happiness since the 1970s[1], which implies this change is not an unalloyed good. I blame marketing. A lot of marketing tells women what to want, and marketers certainly have zero incentive to steer women away from consumerism, a career to finance that consumer lifestyle, or the idea that such a lifestyle is "freedom". [1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-rights-happiness-wellbeing-gender-gap https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

watwut 5y ago

> When women entered the workforce en masse, everything seemingly doubled in price. Both spouses working to maintain the same lifestyle. Gentle reminder that female employment was not 0. Depending on age, it was in between 35% and 39%. While it is significantly lower then male employment, the idea that no woman worked outside of house is a fantasy. They did earned less money then men and faced discrimination. But their salaries were important either to feed themselves, kids or generally add to family income. Notably, Rosa Parks was employed and her unemployability after bus sit in was a big issue for her.

heterodoxxed 5y ago
Yes for the most part, plenty of women always had jobs. The feminist movement was about women who wanted careers, which is why so much of its appeal was amongst the middle to upper-middle class who were unfairly being kept out of prestigious professional roles.
- watwut 5y ago
  I wonder why this was downvoted rather then argued against if someone happens to disagree. The characterization of the feminism movement of that time as being predominantly middle class white women movement is valid. Imo, that is why it ended up being successful. Some people think that career or prestigious professional roles is frivolous demand, but I personally strongly disagree. Just like it is legitimate for men to want them, it is equally legitimate for women to seek good jobs with good pay, good conditions and respect. Just like middle and upper class guys on HN seek jobs that they like and that challenge them, women wanting these is equally valid. Yet moreover, issues like domestic violence were really acute for many middle class women too, having good job makes escape so much more easier. Career is not just frivolous thing, it is safety. Yet moreover, middle class men get sick, injured die and career makes you safer. And second, discrimination on the jobs was as acute. Those women (and their families) needed work, full stop. Them being paid less or having bad working conditions was something that impacted them a lot. It was not just pocket money where the difference does not matter.

danielbarla 5y ago

While there's definitely been a drop in the purchasing power of lower and middle classes (though [1]), monetary inflation alone does not seem to explain this trend in a satisfactory manner. In all honesty, most software developers I know could probably sustain a really decent living working 50% of the time they are doing now, if they really wanted to. But for whatever reason, we _don't_ want to. It's almost like our expectations are what have inflated. [1] Some things have gotten ridiculously expensive, like housing. However, other things have not, we're just buying much, much more of them. It's hard not to draw comparisons between our own children's environment and our own upbringing, as cliche as that might be, but they have a lot more "stuff" than we did, be it phones, tablets, sports classes and coaches, you name it.

misja111 5y ago

The difference in working hours is not as big as you make it seem. In the 1950s it was normal to work on Saturdays. Nowadays, it Europe at least, the 40 hour working week is standard. Also most women used to work until they had kids, and some returned back to work when the kids had grown up. And then there's the difference of lifestyle: In the 1950s most people did not own a car or a television. A family home would many times be smaller than a present one, even though families had more kids. And finally nowadays it's pretty normal to go on holiday abroad twice a year. In the 1950's this was unheard of.

rocknor 5y ago

> In the 1950s you could afford a nice middle class lifestyle, own a home, raise multiple children, all on a single income and no college education. This was a unique situation, only in the US, which was a small fraction of the world population. The majority of the world was in poverty. The average human lifestyle has seen drastic improvements since then. This comment seems to suggest that things have been getting worse, but it's the exact opposite at the global level. Things have never been better.