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I am really trying to avoid commenting on HN but your math makes little sense. Even 10-15 years ago, $5/meal was more than reasonable to eat well. For a just a

by _8j50 3y ago

I am really trying to avoid commenting on HN but your math makes little sense. Even 10-15 years ago, $5/meal was more than reasonable to eat well. For a just a 2 adult household, that is $15/day and $450/mo. What I was paying eating cheap fastfood and making ~10/hr pre-2015 was twice that. Just last year, trying to live strictly off of delivery apps like doordash and ubereats as a single person I could barely crack 1200/mo. 1k/mo is 12000/yr. 2k/mo rent for a 3 bedroom is 24k/yr. Being able to pay groceries and rent on $36k/yr only for that isn't so bad. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to ruin anyone's plans to live a better life, but when someone says "the economy is great", that's relative to post-covid and two multi-decade wars the US fought and a global recession not even two decades old. I almost want to beg and plead people to realize the amazingly prosperous times they live in. The great depression and grear famines were not so long ago. The dust bowl can still come back. Multiple wars at the same time at a global scale is still a very much impending realistic possibility. Another war in th middle east is brewing. A dictator wanna be is being nominated in the US for president. Appreciate what you have so you can fight to keep it! Things can get much better but also much worse. We must be sober minded in fighting for a better future without forgetting what we have. There has never been a more prosperous time and place to be alive in the history of mankind than now in America, especially when you consider the marvels of medicine and technology available today. Again, things could be much better on many fronts, but what good is that fight if what little you enjoy now is gone? Things like being most prosperous and powerful country and the center of tech and medicine don't tend to come back once they are gone for a country if you look at history. Maybe we need to celebrate thanksgiving more than once a year?

ajross 3y ago
> when someone says "the economy is great", that's relative to post-covid and two multi-decade wars the US fought and a global recession not even two decades old. No? It's relative to pretty much all of 20th/21st century data. Can you point to some numbers that you think tell a different story? We are vastly wealthier than our grandparents. Real[1] median household income is 50% higher today than in the 80's. See: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N It's down a little (like 5%) across the pandemic, which is what everyone seems to be freaking out about. But that correction is behind us now and things are looking good again, which is causing a somewhat counter-intuitive anti-anti-freakout a-la your comment. Which is what the linked article is about. Cheer up, basically. You've been fooled by the discourse into believing things that aren't true. [1] Where "real" means "inflation-adjusted"
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
  I have no idea about the numbers but wouldn't median household income be 50% higher because both adults work (and they have no kids) now?
  - candybar 3y ago
    Labor participation rates among women haven't changed drastically since the 80's. Also: https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/06/22/us-households-have-a-lot-more-income-than-1967-and-its-probably-not-just-because-of-the-rise-of-dual-income-households/ https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/06/22/us-household... > In fact, this is also a period when the number of two-income households shrunk, from 35% in 1987 to 32% in 2020. During this time period, overall household income increased by 18.5% (inflation-adjusted with the CPI-U-RS). For households with just one earner, income increased by almost the exact same amount (19.1%). Income of two-earner households did increase even more (37.7%), so seeing the full distribution would be very useful.
  - ajross 3y ago
    The way to address "not knowing anything about the numbers" is to actually look up some numbers and not just pontificate incorrectly. Real median personal income shows essentially an identical curve: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
      I haven't pontificated, I asked a question, and I really didn't want or cared enough about the topic to do a search, so I asked the question in case somebody already knew

by _8j50 3y ago

ajross 3y ago

> when someone says "the economy is great", that's relative to post-covid and two multi-decade wars the US fought and a global recession not even two decades old. No? It's relative to pretty much all of 20th/21st century data. Can you point to some numbers that you think tell a different story? We are vastly wealthier than our grandparents. Real[1] median household income is 50% higher today than in the 80's. See: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N It's down a little (like 5%) across the pandemic, which is what everyone seems to be freaking out about. But that correction is behind us now and things are looking good again, which is causing a somewhat counter-intuitive anti-anti-freakout a-la your comment. Which is what the linked article is about. Cheer up, basically. You've been fooled by the discourse into believing things that aren't true. [1] Where "real" means "inflation-adjusted"

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
I have no idea about the numbers but wouldn't median household income be 50% higher because both adults work (and they have no kids) now?
- candybar 3y ago
  Labor participation rates among women haven't changed drastically since the 80's. Also: https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/06/22/us-households-have-a-lot-more-income-than-1967-and-its-probably-not-just-because-of-the-rise-of-dual-income-households/ https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/06/22/us-household... > In fact, this is also a period when the number of two-income households shrunk, from 35% in 1987 to 32% in 2020. During this time period, overall household income increased by 18.5% (inflation-adjusted with the CPI-U-RS). For households with just one earner, income increased by almost the exact same amount (19.1%). Income of two-earner households did increase even more (37.7%), so seeing the full distribution would be very useful.
- ajross 3y ago
  The way to address "not knowing anything about the numbers" is to actually look up some numbers and not just pontificate incorrectly. Real median personal income shows essentially an identical curve: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    I haven't pontificated, I asked a question, and I really didn't want or cared enough about the topic to do a search, so I asked the question in case somebody already knew