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And yet home ownership rate is higher today than it was at any time between (1965-1997) with an upward trend. If housing was so easily affordable back "then", w

And yet home ownership rate is higher today than it was at any time between (1965-1997) with an upward trend. If housing was so easily affordable back "then", why didn't everybody buy a house? Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

magicalist 4y ago
Note that's the somewhat unintuitive "proportion of households that is owner-occupied". Kids moving back in with their parents after college, for instance, would still count as owner occupied.
- staringback 4y ago
  Average household sizes are also shrinking and are significantly smaller than 1965: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...
DeRock 4y ago
It would be interesting to see that metric normalized for average population age. US over time has skewed older (and will continue to do so).
echelon 4y ago
People are looking at modern times as if they're worse, when they're almost strictly better than everything that came before us. Far less of the world lives in poverty. People in developed nations have more access to information, entertainment, lifestyle choices, etc. Big media sells fear. Social media amplifies rage. They both create a miasma of doom that isn't reflective of the upward trajectory we've been on and continue to ride. The Boomer era economics were not the norm and comparing ourselves to them is a great deception. Postwar America was growing and factory to the entire world. That was unsustainable and the differential between the US and the rest of the world (especially developing economies in Asia) has diminished. We can't compare Boomer McMansions and low cost of infrastructure and development to our modern state in any sort of fairness. Our wages grew too much, and that's a good thing! (Automation will bring us right back to this recipe anyway, and we're getting there.) Compare America today against the broader world history and you'll see that we're wealthy, growing, and improving by almost all measures.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  These types of arguments basically always reek of bootlicking to me. It's always a vague "things were better" when the material reality of the situation is everyone feels insanely economically insecure and feels a massive amount of anxiety. We're watching the aggregation of wealth by massive corporation and the loss of "good jobs", while wealth concentrates in the hands of those who already possess it. I refuse to believe a future where me and all my community have a home and stable lives is unattainable, and anyone who tries to rationalize why we should be happy with scraps deserves their fate of a pitiful of indenture to Amazon
  - malandrew 4y ago
    That’s not the material reality you’ve described because you immediately followed with “…everyone feels…”. Material reality would be something measured in objective material benefits enjoyed. Everything people read and consume today teaches them to feel things are worse because doomscrolling produces greater engagement. It’s the same reason people feel “injured” (offended) by things that boomers in their day would find laughable. It’s incredibly profitable to sell people their own discontent.
    - lordnacho 4y ago
      > objective > material benefits > enjoyed There isn't a way to transmute "stuff consumed" into enjoyment/utility/value. We can sort of guess that people who were near starvation but are now eating regularly are somehow doing better, but we are so incredibly far from that world that it's worth asking ourselves whether it is really the same thing at all to say people with more TVs in their homes are better off. You're right about doomscrolling though. But there again, people are doing it more. It adds to GDP. Are people better off?
    - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
      [flagged]
- lordnacho 4y ago
  Aren't there a bunch of statistics that show stagnation for the great many over recent decades? Averages might be going up, but they are averages: an attempt to boil down a large number of data points into a single number.
dbjacobs 4y ago
From [1] we can see that home ownership had a run-up to 2008 as interest rates dropped and credit loosened, especially for younger people. When credit tightened home ownership took a major dive. [1]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership-by-age.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership...

magicalist 4y ago

Note that's the somewhat unintuitive "proportion of households that is owner-occupied". Kids moving back in with their parents after college, for instance, would still count as owner occupied.

staringback 4y ago
Average household sizes are also shrinking and are significantly smaller than 1965: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...

DeRock 4y ago

It would be interesting to see that metric normalized for average population age. US over time has skewed older (and will continue to do so).

echelon 4y ago

People are looking at modern times as if they're worse, when they're almost strictly better than everything that came before us. Far less of the world lives in poverty. People in developed nations have more access to information, entertainment, lifestyle choices, etc. Big media sells fear. Social media amplifies rage. They both create a miasma of doom that isn't reflective of the upward trajectory we've been on and continue to ride. The Boomer era economics were not the norm and comparing ourselves to them is a great deception. Postwar America was growing and factory to the entire world. That was unsustainable and the differential between the US and the rest of the world (especially developing economies in Asia) has diminished. We can't compare Boomer McMansions and low cost of infrastructure and development to our modern state in any sort of fairness. Our wages grew too much, and that's a good thing! (Automation will bring us right back to this recipe anyway, and we're getting there.) Compare America today against the broader world history and you'll see that we're wealthy, growing, and improving by almost all measures.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
These types of arguments basically always reek of bootlicking to me. It's always a vague "things were better" when the material reality of the situation is everyone feels insanely economically insecure and feels a massive amount of anxiety. We're watching the aggregation of wealth by massive corporation and the loss of "good jobs", while wealth concentrates in the hands of those who already possess it. I refuse to believe a future where me and all my community have a home and stable lives is unattainable, and anyone who tries to rationalize why we should be happy with scraps deserves their fate of a pitiful of indenture to Amazon
- malandrew 4y ago
  That’s not the material reality you’ve described because you immediately followed with “…everyone feels…”. Material reality would be something measured in objective material benefits enjoyed. Everything people read and consume today teaches them to feel things are worse because doomscrolling produces greater engagement. It’s the same reason people feel “injured” (offended) by things that boomers in their day would find laughable. It’s incredibly profitable to sell people their own discontent.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    > objective > material benefits > enjoyed There isn't a way to transmute "stuff consumed" into enjoyment/utility/value. We can sort of guess that people who were near starvation but are now eating regularly are somehow doing better, but we are so incredibly far from that world that it's worth asking ourselves whether it is really the same thing at all to say people with more TVs in their homes are better off. You're right about doomscrolling though. But there again, people are doing it more. It adds to GDP. Are people better off?
  - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
    [flagged]
lordnacho 4y ago
Aren't there a bunch of statistics that show stagnation for the great many over recent decades? Averages might be going up, but they are averages: an attempt to boil down a large number of data points into a single number.

dbjacobs 4y ago

From [1] we can see that home ownership had a run-up to 2008 as interest rates dropped and credit loosened, especially for younger people. When credit tightened home ownership took a major dive. [1]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership-by-age.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/08/homeownership...