10 ms·

Then again I think it's inarguable (I'm clearly wrong, people will argue with it) that modern life for most of us is incomparably better than the lives most of

by simonh 5y ago

Then again I think it's inarguable (I'm clearly wrong, people will argue with it) that modern life for most of us is incomparably better than the lives most of us had in the past. My kids are 17/18 now, while I was the same age back in the early 80s. There's no comparison. The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. One drag on this is property prices. A huge amount of people's incomes go into property, but that's largely something we do to ourselves and each other. There's a very inflexible housing market here in the UK, so we're all in competition for the best houses, and bid up their value against each other.

willcipriano 5y ago
> My kids are 17/18 now, while I was the same age back in the early 80s. There's no comparison. The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. Most people aren't having children[0], largely because they can't afford them. This is probably selection bias. My kid has a better life than I did, but that's mainly because I have avoided the addictions my parents had. [0]https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/us-population-grew-in-2021-slowest-rate-since-founding-of-the-nation.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/us-population...
- reissbaker 5y ago
  Largely because they can't afford them. Number of children inversely correlates to income [1], with the poorest families having the most children and the richest families having the fewest. You're right that birth rates are falling, but I don't think you're right about largely why. 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
  - flerchin 5y ago
    This is an interesting point. You seem to be implying that rising incomes are causing people to choose to have fewer children. However, it could just as easily be that having children is a drag on people's incomes.
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      Maybe the people with the high incomes live in areas where the cost of having children is higher? You often hear about people making 200k at Google on here sharing a two bedroom apartment with a roommate. Personally lack of a additional bedroom in my home prevents me from having another child, and home prices prevent me from moving.
      - telotortium 5y ago
        Nobody at Google making $200k has to share a two-bedroom apartment, even in the Bay Area. I was easily able to afford a $2000/month 1-bedroom in Mountain View in 2014 on a salary around $110k, and the same apartment today has only increased in price by 30%, whereas starting salaries have increased much more. Is it more economical to share a 2-bedroom apartment when you're starting out? Of course, and many new grads share apartments both for money and, just as importantly, social benefits in a place where you might not know anyone else.
    - reissbaker 5y ago
      It's probably too much of a broad trend for that to be the case. As entire countries get wealthier, their birth rates drop: it's true in the US, Japan, Germany, Sweden, wherever. If you see a GDP per capita line going up, you will also see a birth rate line going down in nearly all cases. I suspect it's more likely something else: for example, access to and usage of birth control, access to other family planning controls, abortion, etc. Edit: or even just access to entertainment that isn't "having sex." I remember a conversation with a (very) old woman who'd had many, many children; she said that... well, there wasn't much else to do back then...
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        And the old woman did not have access to IUDs. Nowadays, you can have sex with zero risk of pregnancy.
        giantg2 5y ago
- giantg2 5y ago
  I don't know. Better how? Bigger houses, fancier possessions, etc? Sure. It seems there's less freedom, and less exploration by kids today. Everything is recorded and documented. It's too expensive or too dangerous for kids to go do stuff. If you make a mistake today, it will follow you forever - little chance to apologize and fix whatever broke (seems more people want to use full force of law to press charges or sue over minor issues even when the person wants to make it right). I wasn't in the early 80s and didn't have complete free run, but the independence and responsibilities that came with it seem far better than the digital nightmare kids are living in these days. Just my opinion.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    > less exploration by kids today. I don't see how this can be true. By the time I started high school a decade ago I realized that 90% of human knowledge was freely available to me on the internet. And I explored every crevice of it. The world is at our fingertips in a way it never was before.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Yes, information is accessible. I don't really call that exploration unless they are doing something with it for real. You can watch all the YouTube videos or read Wikipedia articles, but that's lacking if there's no real world experience/implementation. Watch a video with a science experiment? Great, now try it. It also can't teach how to be independent, interact with friends, or what to do if you get lost (without having your cell phone solve it for you). My friends and I would ride our bikes around the neighborhood and on trails, go fishing, build lean-tos or whatever in the woods, shoot model rockets, play sports, etc. Sure, some TV and video games too. We even had dial-up later on. But we were out in the world, being active, and thinking for ourselves. Those experiences are much more formative than consuming content created by someone else.
      - colinmhayes 5y ago
        I think this is a lot of nostalgia talking. Learning things through the internet absolutely forced me to be independent. If I wanted to find something all I needed was to look for it. Instant messaging made it easier to interact with friends, not harder. I can't deny that the experiences youth have today are different than those that were had pre-internet, but I will absolutely push back against the notion that they are worse. Building stuff with your hands is undoubtedly a cherished childhood experience for many, but just because kids are interacting over the internet doesn't mean they're not thinking for themselves. In fact, I would say they're thinking for themselves even more since the options are so much vaster. Is building an elaborate world in minecraft or roblox really that different from building lean-tos or model rockets?
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Note that the selection bias has existed throughout history. Every kid assumes that having children is the natural order of things, because their sample usually consists of their friends and all their friends' parents (by definition) had kids. However, when I look at my parents' friends (or even siblings), a lot of them were childless or died young. U.S. fertility rates today [1] aren't appreciably different from what they were in the late 70s and early 80s. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fert...
circlefavshape 5y ago
> My kids are 17/18 now, while I was the same age back in the early 80s. There's no comparison. The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. Where do you live? I don't think my kids' day-to-day lives are any better than mine was at their age in Ireland in the 80s. edit: ah sorry, you're in the UK, I hadn't noticed. What about your kids' lives is better than your life was?
- TheGigaChad 5y ago
- tartoran 5y ago
  Grew up in the 80s in Easter Europe under stringent economics where food was ratioed and such and yet I think out childhood was better than that of children today. There were plenty of things that sucked, especially for the parents and comparatively to today we had nothing and yet... I think something went horribly wrong despite the ‘prosperity’ we’re enjoying now.
  - ses1984 5y ago
    I think your point of view is mostly driven by nostalgia. I agree there are some things about today's society that are terrible, but a lot of those problems, we bring down on ourselves.
    - cryptica 5y ago
      I don't think that's true. My parents are far happier than I am. They have a far more optimistic view of the world than I do because they've had it far better.
      - ses1984 5y ago
        What makes them happy that is unavailable to you?
avgcorrection 5y ago
Buying a house or home is the biggest expense that most people will have in their lives, and people have to pay back that loan over decades. And you mention that as a “drag” and dismiss it as “something we do to ourselves and each other”… what? It’s irrelevant whose “fault” it is. Of course that kind of thing will have a huge impact of what kind of life one can afford “on a modest salary nowadays”…
- frankus 5y ago
  I think this is one of the biggest drags on the economy of the anglosphere, along with healthcare costs (which on some level could be connected). The cost to construct brand new housing is considerably under US$100k per person where I live (US smaller coastal city, considering a smallish walk-up building), if you exclude land costs. At current interest rates, that could be financed at around $200/month, around $1/hour of full-time work. In reality, a unit that costs $200/month in construction financing might cost ten times that to actually rent. Most of that reflects the cost of acquiring the land. In principle, there is no reason that land needs to be particularly expensive in a lot of the places where it is. My guess is that a lot of the current price reflects land's status as an investment vehicle, which is largely an intentional policy choice (albeit one that might be politically infeasible to substantially change).
  - frankus 5y ago
    Forgot to add that it steers a lot of investment into a zero-sum speculation game that could be going into investments that create (rather than transfer) value.
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    Land is expensive because everyone wants to live within the same 5-mile radius around the "good jobs". There's lots of land in the U.S; there are very few corporate headquarters of growing companies. At the same time, it's hard to fault buyers for this. Commuting sucks (what price do you put on 2 hours out of your day?), and the difference between a "good job" and an "okay job" can be an order of magnitude in income these days.
  - 5y ago
thr0wawayf00 5y ago
> The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. I really don't think this is the case. In the US, the cost of many fundamental necessities like healthcare and housing are becoming further out of reach for more and more people. In addition, the suicide rate has been increasing among youth, which shouldn't be happening in a world where modern life is incomparably better. If a "modest salary" is equivalent to the minimum wage in the US, then you're automatically spending above the generally accepted 30% rule for housing spending if you choose to live in a city, which is where the jobs are. I think certain aspects of life have improved: entertainment has become cheaper, consumer technology is becoming more accessible (although the pandemic has really strained families that don't have access to a good internet connection, which is not a given in this country.) I really don't think life has demonstrably improved in the US from the 80's to today, it was much easier to have a comfortable life on a lower salary back then than it is today.
- michaelt 5y ago
  Medium-term quality-of-life comparisons tend to involve a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons. For example, in the 1990s only the richest people would have a flatscreen TV, or a phone capable of browsing the web, or an internet connection faster than dial-up. Today, even a person working a minimum wage job can have all of those. But if healthcare, college education and rent have got more expensive over the same period, is that a net improvement in quality of life?
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Also, the trend of measuring quality of life in number and variety of screens available to stare at is a lot weirder than the previous trend of measuring in number of chickens consumed.
    - francisofascii 5y ago
      Very true. We replaced "a chicken for every pot" with "a smart phone for every hand".
  - 5y ago
crispyambulance 5y ago
> The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. It really depends on how you define "quality of life" and what one means by "better". Material comforts and the bare necessities are ONE THING, but if you buy into the idea of "Maslow's hierarchy of needs", we have a huge and growing problem with those higher-level needs (and perhaps even the most base one, psychological) in recent times.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  The base one is "physiological", psychological is higher up. However, we are having problems with that due to bad food giving us diabetes, pollution in the water, and too much physical labor destroying bodies in blue collar work (the Sacklers really seized on this to get people addicted to opiates) and not enough physical labor causing health problems in white collar work (diabetes, heart disease, nerve damage from too much sitting).
coldtea 5y ago
>that modern life for most of us is incomparably better than the lives most of us had in the past. It is, if we measure it against the average (or even worst) of the past (and go quite far back), and also include things like slavery, etc. as if they are non-separable parts of the past, and not something we could have skipped even in the past (and many places did). >My kids are 17/18 now, while I was the same age back in the early 80s. There's no comparison. The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. Is it? I'd take the 60's or 80's any day - less rat racy, easier employment, more value for your money, more optimism, less wage inequality, better off middle class, less surveillance, less bureucracy, more relaxed life, and so on. Also a better top-10 and nicer looking cars. And I (and perhaps others) would also gladly take fewer modern technology items over a simpler, more sustainable lifestyle. I don't consider things like some improved smart fridge, or smart bulbs, or a car GPS and mobile phone much of a quality of life improvement. If anything, some of those are net negatives. And things that have been worse, e.g. seggregation, they were not "1960s didn't have advance technology to avoid that", they're just cultural choices. We often mix these two ups, like we couldn't have, say, 1980 living, technology, etc. AND gay rights.
- yazantapuz 5y ago
  Well, if I had been born in the 60's i will not have survived my cancer diagnosis.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  > easier employment Unemployment ranged from 5.40% to 10.4% in the 80s and is 4.2% now. Only the last few yeas of the 60s had lower unemployment than 2021. In 1960 people spend 24% of their income on food, vs 8.6% today. And for most Americans the food was FAR worse in 1960s, cold chain and logistics improvements mean that average Americans have access regularly to foods that were luxuries in 1980. > nicer looking cars Those cars were death traps. There were twice as many fatalities per 100k Americans in 1960 vs today with fewer people driving fewer miles per capita. > more sustainable lifestyle The US of the 60s and 70s was so choked by smog and industrial pollution that Nixon created the EPA. Cars now get 2x the mpg vs 1960. Forrest coverage was lower, and numerous species that have now recovered were going extinct, like the bald eagle. > better off middle class The middle class wasn't better off, it was larger. The poverty rate in 2017 was half of what it was in 1960. And since 1960 many families have moved from the middle income quintile to one of the top quintiles. The middle class in the US didn't disappear into poverty, most of it just became more wealthy. The 1960s sucked, there was political upheaval, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile crisis, global spanning totalitarianism, frequent political assassinations, Jim Crow, and on and on.
cryptica 5y ago
It's worse for most people. Evidenced by unhappiness, drug/antidepressant use, declining birth rates, institutional distrust and breakdown of social relationships. Before, people ate less on average but the food that they did eat was far higher quality (all organic, local produce). Nowadays you have to go to a Michelin star restaurant to get the same quality produce as the average poor person would get every day in the old days. Real estate was cheaper and it was possible to buy a house near your job with savings alone. There were fewer regulations so you could build your own house yourself without worrying about compliance with thousands of different council laws. The family bond was stronger and based on honesty and shared values (now it's more individualistic). If you had the skills to produce something useful, the market was less competitive so it was possible for essentially anyone to improve their standard of living through education and hard work. Also, employees had stronger bonds with employers and it wasn't uncommon for the business owner to sell or handover management of the business to their top employees (and the pool of employees was far smaller/less competitive). Nowadays, it's not possible for certain people to climb out of poverty because their competitors are big corporations who have access to easy money from banks and governments. Also within corporations, the level of competition is extreme, often counter-productive and the environment is toxic, suppressed and censored. Also, there is constant gaslighting in the media telling everyone how good things are when it doesn't match observable reality at all.
- zip1234 5y ago
  I disagree that the food was better for them previously. For as 'bad' as the foods are that we eat today, we have access to plenty of vitamins and nutritional issues in childhood are much less prevalent. Read about iodine deficiency for an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency. That said, there is certainly plenty of truth to the house building/land use issues. I don't think anywhere has fully handled the new technology of the automobile well as the handling of automobiles has been a major driver of the issues in housing. Unchecked automobile use allows much more land to be used, but conversely encourages dumb land use rules that encourage sprawl and add miserable amounts of noise, pollution, and render most public space (roads) uninhabitable by people. I think the next century will have society figuring out a better balance or some new solutions.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
NoGravitas 5y ago
My childhood in the 80s was much more comfortable than my children's current life. Some of that is just that I'm paid worse than my father was at the same age, but a lot of it is the rising cost of healthcare and housing. The things that are better today for us are mostly pretty trivial - kids movies on demand via Netflix rather than on a schedule via HBO, for example.
paganel 5y ago
> The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. It highly depends. I'm in my early 40s now, still not owning a property, me and my SO are finally one step away from getting into (quite considerable, for our standards) debt so that we can take that out of the way. 30-40 years ago property was a lot more easier to get hold of, even for the less financially fortunate. Forgot to mention that we do not have kids, partially because of the stress of not owning a property just yet.
- erosenbe0 5y ago
  Why are you so fixated on owning property? Plenty of families don't own property due to moving for better jobs every few years or military. Do you have a marketable skill or licensure, some savings, and the ability to take care of your health? Great. You will be an awesome parent. Get to work
  - paganel 5y ago
    > Why are you so fixated on owning property? P Because the prices will only go up, judging by what happens further West (I live in Eastern Europe). Five, six years ago I used to believe that wouldn't have hold true going forward, reality contradicted me. I do not want to "chase better" jobs into my 50s or, God-forbid, into my 60s, I'm content with what I have on that front. No, we do not have (more than emergency) savings, no, we do not have a strong family-support network, no, I don't believe we're the only ones in our age cohort that are in that situation.
    - erosenbe0 5y ago
      I understand now. Definitely property values haven risen proportionately faster than wages in most of the big cities of the USA. This causes wealth distribution by age to be suboptimal. 40 y/o have too little wealth compared to 70 y/o.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    Because moving house every few years is awful on kids, changing school, losing friends Kids need stability, and renting does not provide that.
iso1631 5y ago
> There's a very inflexible housing market here in the UK, so we're all in competition for the best houses, and bid up their value against each other. Well yes, prices rise to the maximum amount that people can afford because the alternative is not living at all. Quite simply there aren't enough houses in the place where the jobs are. The only way to change that is to build more houses or move jobs. 40 years ago the average 18 year old could look forward to owning a modest 3 bed semi with a nice garden with a couple of kids and an annual holiday, all from a single wage Today they can look forward to hopefully being able to afford somewhere if they get 2 incomes, both in the top 80%ile range. Kids are unaffordable as both parents have to work to pay the mortgage, and there's no extra for a holiday, let alone childcare costs. But you can veg out in front of netflix after your 2 hour commute instead of watching Neighbours at half five.

by simonh 5y ago

willcipriano 5y ago

> My kids are 17/18 now, while I was the same age back in the early 80s. There's no comparison. The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. Most people aren't having children[0], largely because they can't afford them. This is probably selection bias. My kid has a better life than I did, but that's mainly because I have avoided the addictions my parents had. [0]https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/us-population-grew-in-2021-slowest-rate-since-founding-of-the-nation.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/us-population...

reissbaker 5y ago
Largely because they can't afford them. Number of children inversely correlates to income [1], with the poorest families having the most children and the richest families having the fewest. You're right that birth rates are falling, but I don't think you're right about largely why. 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
- flerchin 5y ago
  This is an interesting point. You seem to be implying that rising incomes are causing people to choose to have fewer children. However, it could just as easily be that having children is a drag on people's incomes.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    Maybe the people with the high incomes live in areas where the cost of having children is higher? You often hear about people making 200k at Google on here sharing a two bedroom apartment with a roommate. Personally lack of a additional bedroom in my home prevents me from having another child, and home prices prevent me from moving.
    - telotortium 5y ago
      Nobody at Google making $200k has to share a two-bedroom apartment, even in the Bay Area. I was easily able to afford a $2000/month 1-bedroom in Mountain View in 2014 on a salary around $110k, and the same apartment today has only increased in price by 30%, whereas starting salaries have increased much more. Is it more economical to share a 2-bedroom apartment when you're starting out? Of course, and many new grads share apartments both for money and, just as importantly, social benefits in a place where you might not know anyone else.
  - reissbaker 5y ago
    It's probably too much of a broad trend for that to be the case. As entire countries get wealthier, their birth rates drop: it's true in the US, Japan, Germany, Sweden, wherever. If you see a GDP per capita line going up, you will also see a birth rate line going down in nearly all cases. I suspect it's more likely something else: for example, access to and usage of birth control, access to other family planning controls, abortion, etc. Edit: or even just access to entertainment that isn't "having sex." I remember a conversation with a (very) old woman who'd had many, many children; she said that... well, there wasn't much else to do back then...
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      And the old woman did not have access to IUDs. Nowadays, you can have sex with zero risk of pregnancy.
      - giantg2 5y ago
giantg2 5y ago
I don't know. Better how? Bigger houses, fancier possessions, etc? Sure. It seems there's less freedom, and less exploration by kids today. Everything is recorded and documented. It's too expensive or too dangerous for kids to go do stuff. If you make a mistake today, it will follow you forever - little chance to apologize and fix whatever broke (seems more people want to use full force of law to press charges or sue over minor issues even when the person wants to make it right). I wasn't in the early 80s and didn't have complete free run, but the independence and responsibilities that came with it seem far better than the digital nightmare kids are living in these days. Just my opinion.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  > less exploration by kids today. I don't see how this can be true. By the time I started high school a decade ago I realized that 90% of human knowledge was freely available to me on the internet. And I explored every crevice of it. The world is at our fingertips in a way it never was before.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Yes, information is accessible. I don't really call that exploration unless they are doing something with it for real. You can watch all the YouTube videos or read Wikipedia articles, but that's lacking if there's no real world experience/implementation. Watch a video with a science experiment? Great, now try it. It also can't teach how to be independent, interact with friends, or what to do if you get lost (without having your cell phone solve it for you). My friends and I would ride our bikes around the neighborhood and on trails, go fishing, build lean-tos or whatever in the woods, shoot model rockets, play sports, etc. Sure, some TV and video games too. We even had dial-up later on. But we were out in the world, being active, and thinking for ourselves. Those experiences are much more formative than consuming content created by someone else.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      I think this is a lot of nostalgia talking. Learning things through the internet absolutely forced me to be independent. If I wanted to find something all I needed was to look for it. Instant messaging made it easier to interact with friends, not harder. I can't deny that the experiences youth have today are different than those that were had pre-internet, but I will absolutely push back against the notion that they are worse. Building stuff with your hands is undoubtedly a cherished childhood experience for many, but just because kids are interacting over the internet doesn't mean they're not thinking for themselves. In fact, I would say they're thinking for themselves even more since the options are so much vaster. Is building an elaborate world in minecraft or roblox really that different from building lean-tos or model rockets?
nostrademons 5y ago
Note that the selection bias has existed throughout history. Every kid assumes that having children is the natural order of things, because their sample usually consists of their friends and all their friends' parents (by definition) had kids. However, when I look at my parents' friends (or even siblings), a lot of them were childless or died young. U.S. fertility rates today [1] aren't appreciably different from what they were in the late 70s and early 80s. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fert...

circlefavshape 5y ago

> My kids are 17/18 now, while I was the same age back in the early 80s. There's no comparison. The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. Where do you live? I don't think my kids' day-to-day lives are any better than mine was at their age in Ireland in the 80s. edit: ah sorry, you're in the UK, I hadn't noticed. What about your kids' lives is better than your life was?

TheGigaChad 5y ago
tartoran 5y ago
Grew up in the 80s in Easter Europe under stringent economics where food was ratioed and such and yet I think out childhood was better than that of children today. There were plenty of things that sucked, especially for the parents and comparatively to today we had nothing and yet... I think something went horribly wrong despite the ‘prosperity’ we’re enjoying now.
- ses1984 5y ago
  I think your point of view is mostly driven by nostalgia. I agree there are some things about today's society that are terrible, but a lot of those problems, we bring down on ourselves.
  - cryptica 5y ago
    I don't think that's true. My parents are far happier than I am. They have a far more optimistic view of the world than I do because they've had it far better.
    - ses1984 5y ago
      What makes them happy that is unavailable to you?

avgcorrection 5y ago

Buying a house or home is the biggest expense that most people will have in their lives, and people have to pay back that loan over decades. And you mention that as a “drag” and dismiss it as “something we do to ourselves and each other”… what? It’s irrelevant whose “fault” it is. Of course that kind of thing will have a huge impact of what kind of life one can afford “on a modest salary nowadays”…

frankus 5y ago
I think this is one of the biggest drags on the economy of the anglosphere, along with healthcare costs (which on some level could be connected). The cost to construct brand new housing is considerably under US$100k per person where I live (US smaller coastal city, considering a smallish walk-up building), if you exclude land costs. At current interest rates, that could be financed at around $200/month, around $1/hour of full-time work. In reality, a unit that costs $200/month in construction financing might cost ten times that to actually rent. Most of that reflects the cost of acquiring the land. In principle, there is no reason that land needs to be particularly expensive in a lot of the places where it is. My guess is that a lot of the current price reflects land's status as an investment vehicle, which is largely an intentional policy choice (albeit one that might be politically infeasible to substantially change).
- frankus 5y ago
  Forgot to add that it steers a lot of investment into a zero-sum speculation game that could be going into investments that create (rather than transfer) value.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Land is expensive because everyone wants to live within the same 5-mile radius around the "good jobs". There's lots of land in the U.S; there are very few corporate headquarters of growing companies. At the same time, it's hard to fault buyers for this. Commuting sucks (what price do you put on 2 hours out of your day?), and the difference between a "good job" and an "okay job" can be an order of magnitude in income these days.
- 5y ago

thr0wawayf00 5y ago

> The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. I really don't think this is the case. In the US, the cost of many fundamental necessities like healthcare and housing are becoming further out of reach for more and more people. In addition, the suicide rate has been increasing among youth, which shouldn't be happening in a world where modern life is incomparably better. If a "modest salary" is equivalent to the minimum wage in the US, then you're automatically spending above the generally accepted 30% rule for housing spending if you choose to live in a city, which is where the jobs are. I think certain aspects of life have improved: entertainment has become cheaper, consumer technology is becoming more accessible (although the pandemic has really strained families that don't have access to a good internet connection, which is not a given in this country.) I really don't think life has demonstrably improved in the US from the 80's to today, it was much easier to have a comfortable life on a lower salary back then than it is today.

michaelt 5y ago
Medium-term quality-of-life comparisons tend to involve a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons. For example, in the 1990s only the richest people would have a flatscreen TV, or a phone capable of browsing the web, or an internet connection faster than dial-up. Today, even a person working a minimum wage job can have all of those. But if healthcare, college education and rent have got more expensive over the same period, is that a net improvement in quality of life?
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Also, the trend of measuring quality of life in number and variety of screens available to stare at is a lot weirder than the previous trend of measuring in number of chickens consumed.
  - francisofascii 5y ago
    Very true. We replaced "a chicken for every pot" with "a smart phone for every hand".
- 5y ago

crispyambulance 5y ago

> The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. It really depends on how you define "quality of life" and what one means by "better". Material comforts and the bare necessities are ONE THING, but if you buy into the idea of "Maslow's hierarchy of needs", we have a huge and growing problem with those higher-level needs (and perhaps even the most base one, psychological) in recent times.

tehjoker 5y ago
The base one is "physiological", psychological is higher up. However, we are having problems with that due to bad food giving us diabetes, pollution in the water, and too much physical labor destroying bodies in blue collar work (the Sacklers really seized on this to get people addicted to opiates) and not enough physical labor causing health problems in white collar work (diabetes, heart disease, nerve damage from too much sitting).

coldtea 5y ago

>that modern life for most of us is incomparably better than the lives most of us had in the past. It is, if we measure it against the average (or even worst) of the past (and go quite far back), and also include things like slavery, etc. as if they are non-separable parts of the past, and not something we could have skipped even in the past (and many places did). >My kids are 17/18 now, while I was the same age back in the early 80s. There's no comparison. The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. Is it? I'd take the 60's or 80's any day - less rat racy, easier employment, more value for your money, more optimism, less wage inequality, better off middle class, less surveillance, less bureucracy, more relaxed life, and so on. Also a better top-10 and nicer looking cars. And I (and perhaps others) would also gladly take fewer modern technology items over a simpler, more sustainable lifestyle. I don't consider things like some improved smart fridge, or smart bulbs, or a car GPS and mobile phone much of a quality of life improvement. If anything, some of those are net negatives. And things that have been worse, e.g. seggregation, they were not "1960s didn't have advance technology to avoid that", they're just cultural choices. We often mix these two ups, like we couldn't have, say, 1980 living, technology, etc. AND gay rights.

yazantapuz 5y ago
Well, if I had been born in the 60's i will not have survived my cancer diagnosis.
ch4s3 5y ago
> easier employment Unemployment ranged from 5.40% to 10.4% in the 80s and is 4.2% now. Only the last few yeas of the 60s had lower unemployment than 2021. In 1960 people spend 24% of their income on food, vs 8.6% today. And for most Americans the food was FAR worse in 1960s, cold chain and logistics improvements mean that average Americans have access regularly to foods that were luxuries in 1980. > nicer looking cars Those cars were death traps. There were twice as many fatalities per 100k Americans in 1960 vs today with fewer people driving fewer miles per capita. > more sustainable lifestyle The US of the 60s and 70s was so choked by smog and industrial pollution that Nixon created the EPA. Cars now get 2x the mpg vs 1960. Forrest coverage was lower, and numerous species that have now recovered were going extinct, like the bald eagle. > better off middle class The middle class wasn't better off, it was larger. The poverty rate in 2017 was half of what it was in 1960. And since 1960 many families have moved from the middle income quintile to one of the top quintiles. The middle class in the US didn't disappear into poverty, most of it just became more wealthy. The 1960s sucked, there was political upheaval, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile crisis, global spanning totalitarianism, frequent political assassinations, Jim Crow, and on and on.

cryptica 5y ago

It's worse for most people. Evidenced by unhappiness, drug/antidepressant use, declining birth rates, institutional distrust and breakdown of social relationships. Before, people ate less on average but the food that they did eat was far higher quality (all organic, local produce). Nowadays you have to go to a Michelin star restaurant to get the same quality produce as the average poor person would get every day in the old days. Real estate was cheaper and it was possible to buy a house near your job with savings alone. There were fewer regulations so you could build your own house yourself without worrying about compliance with thousands of different council laws. The family bond was stronger and based on honesty and shared values (now it's more individualistic). If you had the skills to produce something useful, the market was less competitive so it was possible for essentially anyone to improve their standard of living through education and hard work. Also, employees had stronger bonds with employers and it wasn't uncommon for the business owner to sell or handover management of the business to their top employees (and the pool of employees was far smaller/less competitive). Nowadays, it's not possible for certain people to climb out of poverty because their competitors are big corporations who have access to easy money from banks and governments. Also within corporations, the level of competition is extreme, often counter-productive and the environment is toxic, suppressed and censored. Also, there is constant gaslighting in the media telling everyone how good things are when it doesn't match observable reality at all.

zip1234 5y ago
I disagree that the food was better for them previously. For as 'bad' as the foods are that we eat today, we have access to plenty of vitamins and nutritional issues in childhood are much less prevalent. Read about iodine deficiency for an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency. That said, there is certainly plenty of truth to the house building/land use issues. I don't think anywhere has fully handled the new technology of the automobile well as the handling of automobiles has been a major driver of the issues in housing. Unchecked automobile use allows much more land to be used, but conversely encourages dumb land use rules that encourage sprawl and add miserable amounts of noise, pollution, and render most public space (roads) uninhabitable by people. I think the next century will have society figuring out a better balance or some new solutions.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

NoGravitas 5y ago

My childhood in the 80s was much more comfortable than my children's current life. Some of that is just that I'm paid worse than my father was at the same age, but a lot of it is the rising cost of healthcare and housing. The things that are better today for us are mostly pretty trivial - kids movies on demand via Netflix rather than on a schedule via HBO, for example.

paganel 5y ago

> The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better. It highly depends. I'm in my early 40s now, still not owning a property, me and my SO are finally one step away from getting into (quite considerable, for our standards) debt so that we can take that out of the way. 30-40 years ago property was a lot more easier to get hold of, even for the less financially fortunate. Forgot to mention that we do not have kids, partially because of the stress of not owning a property just yet.

erosenbe0 5y ago
Why are you so fixated on owning property? Plenty of families don't own property due to moving for better jobs every few years or military. Do you have a marketable skill or licensure, some savings, and the ability to take care of your health? Great. You will be an awesome parent. Get to work
- paganel 5y ago
  > Why are you so fixated on owning property? P Because the prices will only go up, judging by what happens further West (I live in Eastern Europe). Five, six years ago I used to believe that wouldn't have hold true going forward, reality contradicted me. I do not want to "chase better" jobs into my 50s or, God-forbid, into my 60s, I'm content with what I have on that front. No, we do not have (more than emergency) savings, no, we do not have a strong family-support network, no, I don't believe we're the only ones in our age cohort that are in that situation.
  - erosenbe0 5y ago
    I understand now. Definitely property values haven risen proportionately faster than wages in most of the big cities of the USA. This causes wealth distribution by age to be suboptimal. 40 y/o have too little wealth compared to 70 y/o.
- iso1631 5y ago
  Because moving house every few years is awful on kids, changing school, losing friends Kids need stability, and renting does not provide that.

iso1631 5y ago

> There's a very inflexible housing market here in the UK, so we're all in competition for the best houses, and bid up their value against each other. Well yes, prices rise to the maximum amount that people can afford because the alternative is not living at all. Quite simply there aren't enough houses in the place where the jobs are. The only way to change that is to build more houses or move jobs. 40 years ago the average 18 year old could look forward to owning a modest 3 bed semi with a nice garden with a couple of kids and an annual holiday, all from a single wage Today they can look forward to hopefully being able to afford somewhere if they get 2 incomes, both in the top 80%ile range. Kids are unaffordable as both parents have to work to pay the mortgage, and there's no extra for a holiday, let alone childcare costs. But you can veg out in front of netflix after your 2 hour commute instead of watching Neighbours at half five.