But at least they could afford a house, right? I think a lot of people would accept living in a house without AC and more likely to catch fire. Is a house like that cheap today? No, right? It's crazy expensive as well.
>If they had a car they most likely shared it. It was far less safe, didn't have AC, guzzled gas and polluted.
Car technology in the past was worse, we know that. Cars were more affordable though.
>Never ate out and spent a third of earnings on cheap grocery store staples.
Like today then.
>We're benefiting greatly from the increase in productivity. We just view our great-grandfather luxuries as our necessities.
Young people are rotting at home unable to go ahead with their lives because wages nowadays are not enough to pay for a house and a family. Why do people try to deny this obvious reality? Productivity didn't benefit everyone equally and people in the past had more opportunities to build a life inside a standard that was socially acceptable.
Eehhhh... I really don't think that's true.
First, adjusted for inflation, new car prices really aren't that different than they were 10-30-50-70 years ago. You have to compare like for like, no cheating comparing a modern luxury car to Ford Pinto. For example the cheapest car in 1970 cost about $2000, with no frills like a radio, passenger wing mirror or floor matts. That's equivalent to about $17000 today. A base Nissan Versa today starts at $18000, yet includes power windows and an A/C.
Second, the maintenance requirements today are much, much lower than in the past. There's a whole list of expensive stuff you just don't have to think about with modern cars until long after those old cars would be at the junk yard (chassis lube, spark plugs, spark plug wires, carb and distributor, wheel bearings etc). That's a lot of labor you don't pay for, to say nothing of the parts!
Third, despite being heavier, more convenient and safer, modern cars have lower fuel consumption. Coming back to our Pinto vs Versa example, the Versa gets at least 50% better fuel economy.
Fourth, cars today just last longer. It used to be a minor miracle when a wasn't rusted out after 10 years or the engine still ran after 100k miles. Today, your car might be still under warranty at that point.
> Why do people try to deny this obvious reality?
Because it is not at all obvious that that is, in fact, reality. It doesn't help to complain about easily-disprovable things like the affordability of cars.
Rent is always going to go up there even if they build more. Same in other places. As long as rent setting tools exist to collude - we will see the rent not go down. You're not gonna dump $100m in new buildings and not maximize your return.
There may be fewer people in manhattan, but that's mostly because fewer people live in each living unit. The same number of living units is being demanded by the market because of evolving living preferences.
If you allow sufficient living units to be built, it doesn't matter how much landlord try to collude, they won't be able to keep rent high. Someone will break when the vacancy rate reaches 15%.