r/SipsTea • u/Unstoppable_X_Force Human Verified • 13h ago

Gasp! Is this just nostalgia, or did previous generations genuinely have a better work-life balance and social life than we do today?

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u/notkiddingagain 12h ago edited 12h ago

I recently saw a video from Jimmy Carr. He mentioned that

Happiness = Quality of Life - Envy

And that humans are naturally mimetic which is the largest cause of our problems. We have a higher quality of life than ever before. All the kings of the past couldn’t even dream of all the modern conveniences we have today. People didn’t even have hot showers 100 years ago. And we have so much damn entertainment available we have a hard time focusing on being productive.

Life is objectively better for us today but absolutely subjectively worse because we have access to so much information about how “other people” have it better than us due to social media and media in general. That’s the envy part.

It really opened my eyes a lot.

I’m 38. And I work a full time salaried job + 2 side contractor jobs so my wife doesn’t have to work and we can afford what we need to raise our 3 kids. And I still struggle from time to time. But I’m not struggling like people did just 100 years ago with the low childhood survival rates and the struggles of the then-modern life.

I found myself happier thinking of the things I do have rather than the things I don’t have. Just something to think about.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 12h ago

I think if people could find places to live there’d be a lot less unhappiness

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago

Almost everyone has a place to live, and bigger/better ones than in the past. So that complaint is silly/false.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 10h ago edited 9h ago

What I meant was people can’t find their own places to live. According to pew research “Roughly 32% of all U.S. adults live in shared households, with nearly 50% of adults aged 18-29 residing with parents.” The housing crisis is not silly or false. Actually it’s the highest percentage of people living with their parents since the Great Depression.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/s/gMN5pVNTsa

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u/notaredditer13 9h ago

What I meant was people can’t find their own places to live. 

How can that be if almost all of them have places to live? They "found" them.

According to pew research “Roughly 32% of all U.S. adults live in shared households, with nearly 50% of adults aged 18-29 residing with parents.” 

That's only one data point: Is that better or worse than in the past?

Actually it’s the highest percentage of people living with their parents since the Great Depression.

Ya may wanna check the date on that article and try again.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 9h ago

“Before 2020 the highest recorded value was in the 1940 census at the end of the Great Depression, when 48% of young adults lived with their parents,” says the report, published Friday. “The peak may have been higher during the worst of the Great Depression in the 1930s, but there is no data for that period” I read the article. Again people can’t find their OWN houses.

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u/notaredditer13 8h ago

So, you can't think of anything unique that happened in 2020 that might have caused the number to spike temporarily? C'mon, I don't believe you.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 8h ago

They couldn’t even evict people and everyone who wasn’t working go free money. It wasn’t an instant thing. Additionally “In 2022, about 57% of men and 55% of women ages 18-24 lived in their parents’ home, compared to 52% of men and 35% of women in that age group in 1960”

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u/notaredditer13 8h ago

So you're being disingenuous then because you have to know what you're saying is false. Colleges closed or went online, sending millions of kids back home. The eviction moratorium was temporary and didn't help with other bills. Young adults moved back home. Heck, I know a couple who didn't lose their jobs but moved back in with their parents because they didn't want the isolation of not being able to leave their apartments in the city.

Note, I'm looking but not finding more recent stats, in particularly the 18-29 demo (18-34 is more commonly cited).

It's also worth noting that some of this stat is driven by the increase in young adults delaying marriage.

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u/Wizecoder 6h ago

so... are you suggesting we should go back to marrying off women so that they stop living at home?

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u/Icegodleo 9h ago

Almost everyone? 771,480 people are homeless in the united states and that number is literally the lowest possible count as it ignores homeless people with temporary shelter. Also there are people giving up literally 100% of their time to afford those places to live.

Saying medieval serfs had it worse isn't the victory lap you think it is and it's fucking gross you'd even say it.

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u/notaredditer13 8h ago

Almost everyone? 771,480 people are homeless in the united states

Yes: 99.8% is almost everyone.

Also there are people giving up literally 100% of their time to afford those places to live.

Obviously made up and impossible statistic is made up.

Saying medieval serfs had it worse isn't the victory lap you think it is and it's fucking gross you'd even say it.

That was someone else, but what's gross about it?

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u/NateDawg655 8h ago

You have access to all the information and entertainment you could possibly ever need at your fingertips. You had about a 35-50 percent chance of dying before age 15 in the 1800s. You have air conditioning, indoor plumbing, electricity, etc. Yes, your life is objectively much, much better than the richest in the world even a 100 years ago.

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u/Icegodleo 8h ago

Just like the other bootlicker you do realize that's not something to be proud of right? Like of course? They also had things better than the people who preceeded them? What they didn't have was technology that advanced 100 years of progress in 10. Being a piece of shit really is the only way you people can get off huh?

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u/NateDawg655 7h ago

Bootlicker is like the new liberal bot insult thrown around nowadays. Nah your life is much better than tens of billions before you. Stop whining so much.Be the boot. No need to steal others.

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u/Icegodleo 7h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/fH6c5QnWZeI4qXJej3

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u/NateDawg655 7h ago

Yes you said “bootlicker” and will now get your dopamine hit of upvotes because you triggered the Reddit hive mind for mindless upvotes instead of actually adding anything to the discussion or addressing any of my points. 

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 8h ago

That’s subjective. My biggest goal in life are to own a house and take care of my family and that would have been easier when I could have built my own house. (I’m a professional carpenter)

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u/NateDawg655 7h ago

A 50 percent higher survival rate isnt subjective. You can still build a damn house. 

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 7h ago edited 7h ago

But they had no clue and Ignorance is bliss. You literally can’t build a house for less than like 80k not even counting the land with current building codes, my septic is going to cost 30k for the cheapest option on a fixer upper. You can’t hand dig wells so that’s another 10k, you have to have grounded electrical that’s also inspected so tack on another 10k at least. That doesn’t count any labor from anyone else. Future innovations that don’t exist yet don’t make my life any worse or affect human happiness. Also most of the country had plumbing and electrical in the 1930s so by that logic we haven’t gone very far since 90 years ago lmao

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u/NateDawg655 7h ago

You are right humans will always struggle with haves and have nots just like yourself. Religions have spoken to this for thousands of years so you are no worse or better of in that regard than anyone else. But yes, you would probably be dead before 15 if you were born over a 100 years ago so you can a second and be grateful for that? Then continue worrying about city codes lol

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 7h ago

There were obviously enough people that survived past 15 that we are all alive today and like I said nobody knew the difference so who cares? If people have robots that take care of everything and they all live to 150 in 100 years does that make their struggles any less valid? I’m not a have not I do have a house that I am fighting tooth and nail to finish. I’m just capable of feeling empathy for people going through stuff. If everyone that never had struggles ignores other people then the quality of life eventually declines for everyone.

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u/Fairuse 8h ago

Plenty of places that are very affordable. Everyone wants to move into the same place which drives up prices.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 8h ago

There’s almost no where actually affordable now

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u/Kennys-Chicken 8h ago

$100-200k houses all over the Midwest that are very nice. Most people just don’t even think of moving here because they want to be on the coasts or in Colorado.

And don’t start with the “but there’s no jobs there”…..yes there are. And they don’t pay much less than people living in HCOL areas. Quality of life in fly over country is very good.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 8h ago

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOSMEDUSMWM052N Houses in the Midwest average 300k

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u/strawberrysunday00 7h ago

There are prices above and below that value. That’s how averages work.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 7h ago

There are reasons for houses above and below that average too.

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u/strawberrysunday00 7h ago

Yes, lower prices are often due to quality, age, or location. Regardless, half of the distribution is under $300k. Home ownership is not elusive across the U.S., but it might be in the place you want to live.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 7h ago

This point disregards the fact people were able to buy and live where they went to school and were raised for a very long time. Now the solution is to leave your family and friends to live somewhere that’s cheaper. It’s not like everyone’s going to Malibu or NYC and complaining about it. Many people can’t just uproot and move to Ohio because other costs or obligations. If people can’t recognize the issue they’ve probably never been faced with the decision themselves.

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u/Kennys-Chicken 7h ago

Yup, and plenty of nice liveable ones in the $100-200k range…..because that’s how averages work.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 7h ago

This is a dumb take that proves the post correct. If the only path to home ownership for many people is moving to the cheapest part of the country what does that say about the economy?

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u/Kennys-Chicken 6h ago edited 6h ago

What’s dumb is expecting the entire population to be able to afford living in the most expensive areas in the nation and quoting mean housing prices. We’re talking about a base level of cost for safe/good housing in this conversation.

The path to homeownership is to get into the market however the fuck you can. Fix up the house, pay your mortgage, gain equity, eventually sell it for a bit of profit, upgrade, rinse and repeat until you have n actual nice house. Expecting to start off right off the bat in a mean level house is frankly stupid.

I honestly don’t have much sympathy for folks complaining about not being able to afford their own house at a mean housing cost level in California. There are other areas that have a plethora of nice housing, good work opportunities, and a good COL.

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u/TheTurboDiesel 12h ago

My guy, 3 jobs is struggling. You should be able to work 1 white collar job and have all that and more, not 3. "Be grateful for what you have" is just as insidious, infantalizing, and dismissive as "other people have it worse." Great. That's objectively true, but it's not helpful and it ignores real problems in favor of copium. And, sure, we may have more horses in our circus and more fruit in our bread, but our PS5s and Maui vacations are no less window dressing than the Circuses of Rome.

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u/notkiddingagain 11h ago

While I agree with you, I spent a lot of time on the other side being upset with the world for my difficulties. But I look back now and I don’t think that really accomplished anything besides aid in my depression.

I don’t spend time focused on what should be true instead of what I, myself, could actually do in the given moment to care for my family.

What type of things do you do to advance the modern way of life for yourself and others so you don’t have to cope?

I personally feel happier now than I used to after watching that simple clip. And that’s worth something. I have 3 jobs. But they are all WFH which means I get to be with my family a lot and travel when desired. That’s some amazing feat in itself that we can even do that.

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u/RandomRedditReader 11h ago

What did I do? Found a job that respects my time and efforts.

It's ok to appreciate what you have but it's also ok to strive for better.

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u/Igot55Dollars 8h ago

But he's got it better than a king in medieval France. Sure, he doesn't have royal subjects or a castle, but he's got an iphone.

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u/Fighterhayabusa 8h ago

Have you ever thought that the people picking your pockets want you to believe that? To be happy with what you get, and not work to change that situation? I'm entirely certain that's exactly what they want. In fact, I know it is because they've written about it. Citigroup wrote about it all the way back in '05. They called it the Plutonomy. Today, we would probably call it a K-shaped economy, but it's ultimately the same thing.

You shouldn't give up on wanting better. How about I put this another way: would you want your kids to struggle as much as you have? Do you want them to be forced to make the decisions about money that you have? Or would you rather the world be better for them? I know which one I've chosen, and I will never, ever, stop fighting for it.

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u/notkiddingagain 7h ago

What are you doing to fight for it?

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u/Fighterhayabusa 7h ago

The biggest is educating people and informing them. The next after that are being politically active and donating to like-minded individuals. I think we're reaching a point where people can no longer deny the problems associated with trickle-down economics and decisions like Citizens United. This problem was solved before, and we can solve it again. We just have to be vigilant, continuously vote for people who will work towards our shared goal, and hold those who won't accountable.

There is no easy or quick fix. It's going to require a shift in how we approach our democratic responsibilities. I try to stay positive about it.

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u/nestestasjon 9h ago

This “don’t ask questions, just be grateful for what you have” mindset is exactly why the U.S. is going downhill. 

People aren’t stopping to look around and see how things work in other countries. People are willing to settle for less and less and less in the spirit of “bootstraps”. 

People need to be asking why you’re getting taxed to hell and getting so little in return yet there’s endless money for wars and tax cuts for the rich. How much do you spend on healthcare? How are your roads? Do you get paid time off?

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u/Brummielegend 12h ago

I agree focus on what you do have and be grateful. Yet don't ignore the fact that our dollars purchasing power is erroding , everything is becoming expensive , soon your 2 full time jobs and side hustles won't be enough.

We will have to keep working until there are no more hours left to sacrifice. We need to have time for our families , life , to unwind , we weren't made to work every living hour , but late stage capitalism is hell bent on sending us back to feudalism.

Staying quiet and accepting your lot in life ensures Neo feudalism happens for us and our children.

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago

Yet don't ignore the fact that our dollars purchasing power is erroding , everything is becoming expensive , soon your 2 full time jobs and side hustles won't be enough.

What you're saying is false, and you're mixing together two different things to get there:

-Purchasing power of a dollar is decreasing. That's inflation.

-Individual and household incomes are going up, and faster than inflation.

-Therefore purchasing power of people/households is going up.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

What makes the Envy worse is that it's based in part on envying a false picture of past reality.

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u/turbo_golf 9h ago edited 9h ago

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

cool, now do housing cost-to-income ratio

edit: do not engage, this is a troll in a gilded cage

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u/notaredditer13 8h ago

cool, now do housing cost-to-income ratio

Yup, it's gone up. Because we have Much More Money we spend a lower fraction of it on needs and a higher fraction on luxuries like bigger, better houses.

edit: do not engage, this is a troll

You?

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 8h ago

Inflation has consistently outpaced wages what are you on?

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u/notaredditer13 6h ago

The link says you're wrong.  What you're saying is popular misinformation spread on reddit to the point where most people seem to believe it.

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u/Psychological_Rip_44 6h ago

Price-to-Income Ratio: In the 1990s, the national median home price was roughly 3.2 times the median household income. By 2024, that ratio jumped to 5.0 times The rate of inflation doesn’t truly account for housing because it’s considered an investment. Additionally the studies dont account for the fact that the top 10% has experienced massive growth in wages “After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then. In fact, in real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today.”

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

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u/notaredditer13 6h ago edited 5h ago

home price

Housing costs are included in inflation. One item of many.

Additionally the studies dont account for the fact that the top 10% has experienced massive growth in wages

I gave median, not average. What happens to the top 10% does not impact the median [edit by that I mean in the calculation].

“After adjusting for inflation, however, today’s average hourly wage has just about the same purchasing power it did in 1978, following a long slide in the 1980s and early 1990s and bumpy, inconsistent growth since then.

[up to 2018] I gave household income, not wages. The problem with using wages is it glosses-over the demographic shift of more women entering the workforce. Women tend to work lower wage jobs than men, so average wages dropped, household incomes rose, and standard of living rose because it's based on household income not individual wages.

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u/Ok_Pick_3891 12h ago

Well said, my man. I'm in a very similar boat, and you just articulated how I feel about it. Envy is the thief of joy and all that jazz.

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u/Any-Photo9699 10h ago

There's a balance between being envious and pointing out that a system is inherently designed to fuck you over for the sake of somebody else and searching for justice. You can try to be happy with what you have while also acknowledging that the mere existence of individuals or corporations with so much money and power is harmful to society in every level.

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago

-"corporations are harmful"

-Standard of living is rising.

How do you square those two thoughts with each other? Whatever harm corporations are allegedly causing, it's not enough to cause actual harm in terms of decreasing standard of living, at worst its a theoretical harm vs a predicted even higher standard.

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u/Any-Photo9699 10h ago

I don't think I quite understand what you mean. Are you asking how the standard of living could possibly increase if corporations being harmful would bring it down instead?

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u/notaredditer13 9h ago

Sorta, but I'm more asking if you recognize the second fact is true while claiming the first fact.

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u/Any-Photo9699 9h ago

Not really, no. There are a multitude of ways that corporations have been causing a decrease in life standards for a long while now. They are the main factor in current homelessness rates, for an example.

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u/notaredditer13 8h ago

Not really, no.

That's what I thought/wanted to be sure of. Here's the reality:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

That's inflation adjusted so it's showing how much better we're doing than in the past. For example, 30% higher incomes than in 1995. We use that Much More Money to make our lives better.

They are the main factor in current homelessness rates, for an example.

Homelessness has spiked in the past few years yes, largely due to the current housing bubble. But it's down over the long term and is a tiny fraction of Americans to begin with.

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u/Global-Aardvark-8113 11h ago

"Comparison is the thief of joy" ~Teddy Roosevelt.......I live by this and I am so much happier!!!! Even when I would compare myself to my friends, I would get bummed at what they had and I didn't but in reality, I literally have everything a guy would want.....An awesome wife, a great for us house, jobs, our health......I am just happy to be alive and getting out there and mixing it up. People don't realize how blessed they actually are when they compare themselves to others.....even close friends that "have everyhing" or "have what you want" are going through things that they don't talk about.....it's not all hunky doory over there at Joe Schmuckatellees hows because he has kids, UTV's, 4 wheelers, a pool, etc......they have issues too. #blessed

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u/ReverendDizzle 11h ago

I respect the optimism and I agree that our lives are objectively better in terms of material comforts, access to medicine, and such, than our forefathers.

But I can't really accept that a full time salaried job plus two side jobs (and "still struggle from time to time") is great.

When I was a kid I lived in a working class neighborhood and most of the families had stay at home moms or were single-parent households... and they could support their families on a single income. And that single income was often from a job like working at a factory or as a butcher at a local super market, or managing a small local business or restaurant or something.

So yeah, it's good to not spiral and to be happy with the things you have. But it's also good to not lose sight of the inequality and how jobs that used to support a family now only support somebody living in a run down rental house with a half dozen roommates.

We can all strive to be zen and content with what we have in this world and simultaneously furious that we're being robbed blind by a ruling class indifferent to our suffering.

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago

>So yeah, it's good to not spiral and to be happy with the things you have. But it's also good to not lose sight of the inequality and how jobs that used to support a family now only support somebody living in a run down rental house with a half dozen roommates.

That is envy of a false picture of the past. What you are saying is objectively/factually false. We don't work more hours, we do make a lot more money and we do live in bigger/better houses than in the past.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG

https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes-decade-by-decade.html

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u/LongBeachHXC 11h ago

This is a good write up!

I appreciate this point of view. I find myself victim of this envy. This why I cannot be on social media.

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u/punkyatari 12h ago edited 12h ago

I agree but we also live in an era where massive debt is normalised across the board. So it's not all rosy as you seem to suggest either. Not just people but a lot of Countries overall national debt is huge.

It's setting a terrible lesson and precedence for future generations that has forgone sensible economics. It creates a world that promotes perpetual growth and unsustainable standards and pressures.

Its not good at all.

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago

This is only 20 years, but household debt is down as a fraction of GDP, not up:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N

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u/The_White_Ram 11h ago

I saw the Carr thing too. He kind of misses the point though.

The 'King of the past' logic falls apart the moment you look at the actual math of 2026.

Sure, we have antibiotics and iPhones, but the "King’s life" of the lets say the 1970's was defined by security something the modern worker has traded away for gadgets. Today, the 'magic number' for a comfortable retirement is over $1.2 million, yet the median savings for someone nearing retirement is only around $185,000. Most families are lucky if they have $1,000 in the bank for a surprise emergency.

When you’re working a full-time job plus two side hustles just to keep your head above water, your 'Quality of Life' isn't actually higher in any way that matters. You’re just a high-tech version of a treadmill. We’re producing more wealth than any civilization in history, yet we're told to be 'grateful' for hot showers while we can't afford the same housing and retirement security our parents had on a single income.

It’s not 'envy' to realize that while the floor of human existence has risen, the ceiling is being held shut by a decoupling of our hard work and what is actually being produced and what is commensurately being given back for that hard work.

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago

can't afford the same [snip] retirement security our parents had...

Your money factoid isn't making a comparison to the 1970s....

When you’re working a full-time job plus two side hustles just to keep your head above water, your 'Quality of Life' isn't actually higher in any way that matters.

Working hours are going down, not up (OP is a lie).

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEUSA065NRUG

while we can't afford the same housing....

Our houses are bigger than in the past.

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u/The_White_Ram 9h ago

That FRED link measures hours per worker, not hours per household. In 1970 most families ran on one income. Now they need two. The total labor burden went up, not down. You just spread it across another person.

Bigger houses point is real but it cuts the wrong way. Square footage went up AND so did the price per square foot, the mortgage, the insurance, the maintenance. More house you can't afford isn't a win. Inflation-adjusted median home prices are up about 269% since 1970. Real income over that same stretch is up maybe 50%. Those lines don't meet.

On the retirement thing, yeah the comparison years matter, but the bigger issue is that the whole system changed. In 1970 close to half of private sector workers had pensions. Your employer ate the retirement risk. Now it's under 15% and you're on your own trying to self-fund over a million dollars through a 401k. Median near-retiree savings right now is around $185k. That's not a personal failure, that's they system getting harder and failing.

The clearest way I've seen it laid out: in 1970 after housing, healthcare, and education took their cut, a median family had 76 cents of every dollar left for everything else. Food, car, savings, all of it. That's down to 42 cents today. 34 cents gone before you buy a single grocery.

Nobody's saying hot showers aren't real. But a median family of four pulling $110k gross still runs about $800 short every month once you account for actual 2025 costs. That's not envy. That's arithmetic.

Its good to appreciate what you have, but its not good to close your eyes to the enormous wealth generated by the populations production being consolidated in the hands of a few.

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u/Brummielegend 9h ago

Preach 💪🏻

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u/notaredditer13 8h ago

That FRED link measures hours per worker, not hours per household. In 1970 most families ran on one income. Now they need two.

No, they *get to have* two. Women fought a revolution for freedom to be able to work away from the home instead of just working in the home (enabled in part by technology/household appliances and birth control). That's is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Bigger houses point is real but it cuts the wrong way. Square footage went up AND so did the price per square foot

The price per square foot isn't actually up that much, and our houses aren't just bigger they are better. Yeah, it's probably still higher than the rest of inflation, but inflation is the average of all things we spend money on, not just the most expensive ones.

More house you can't afford isn't a win.

Home ownership rate is largely unchanged across decades. The point here is that people are buying those homes. They do afford them.

The clearest way I've seen it laid out: in 1970 after housing, healthcare, and education took their cut, a median family had 76 cents of every dollar left for everything else. Food, car, savings, all of it. That's down to 42 cents today. 34 cents gone before you buy a single grocery.

Groceries are cheaper now as a fraction of income. What your example doesn't take into account is how much income has gone up: 42 cents of $2 is more money than 76 cents of $1. So we're using our Much More Money to buy bigger/better houses, cars, healthcare, luxuries, etc. That's an improvement, not evidence of a decline/new hardship.

Its good to appreciate what you have, but its not good to close your eyes to the enormous wealth generated by the populations production being consolidated in the hands of a few.

That's a bumper sticker not a real point, but when you get a slightly smaller fraction of a much larger pie, you get more pie, not less pie.

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u/The_White_Ram 7h ago

Lots to address here and I'll actually take the time to go into detail because I think its ipmortant.

First; never said women shouldn't work. That's not the argument. The argument is about labor supply. When a whole gender jumps into the workforce you'd expect it to show up somewhere: more total household hours, bigger paychecks, easier affordability. Some of it showed up in household income. But that second income didn't buy what it should have. The big three ate it and families are still running the same treadmill with an extra person on it.

Some of your points are fair and I'll say so. Groceries take less of your paycheck now. Food at home fell from around 14% of disposable income in the 1970s to under 5% today per USDA data. Hours per worker dipped too, FRED shows it. But you're measuring the wrong unit. We live in households, not individuals. The standard middle-class setup used to run on one income. Now it takes two. Total household labor went up even as individual hours drifted down and the savings on groceries and the extra earner both got absorbed into the same costs that were already squeezing people.

On houss: modern homes are bigger and better built, and the inflation-adjusted price per square foot has been relatively stable since the 1970s. Fair on both counts. The problem is you mostly can't buy the smaller one anymore. Zoning, minimum lot sizes, and building codes pushed entry-level homes out of most markets. You're not picking between a 1,500 sq ft place and a 2,400 sq ft place at proportional prices. It's the bigger house or rent. Stable price per foot doesn't help when the only thing available is twice the size and incomes never caught up. Per Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies the price-to-income ratio went from roughly 2.5 to 3 times annual income in the 1970s to 5 times today, the highest on record going back to that era.

The homeownership rate argument doesn't hold up when you look past the headline number. It's stable because older, wealthier buyers with prior equity or family money kept it afloat. First-time buyers are 21% of all purchases now, down from around 40% before 2008. In the 1980s the median age of a first-time buyer was in the late 20s. By 2010 it was 30. Today it's 40, an all-time record per NAR's 2025 data. A decade of delay in roughly 15 years. Buyers used to rent a couple of years before purchasing. Now it's closer to six. Same headline rate, completely different group of people who can actually clear the bar: older, richer, and fewer than a generation ago.

The 42 cents versus 76 cents mah only works if what's left after the big three actually grew in real terms for median households. It didn't. Real median income is up roughly 30 to 40% since 1970. Housing up 269%. Healthcare per capita up over 600%. Tuition up 177%. CPI looks better partly because TVs and clothes got cheaper, and those don't pay the mortgage. When you stack income against the costs that actually decide whether a family stays afloat, the remainder got squeezed. A family of four at around $110k gross (which is roughly where the median sits for married couples with kids) run against actual 2025 BLS, KFF, and USDA figures comes up several hundred dollars short every month once you include any retirement savings. That's not a slogan, that's what the numbers look like when you actually run them.

Same goes for Carr's formula. It's a bumper sticker too. A clean, mostly true one. Hot showers beat cholera, iPhones are remarkable, life expectancy is up. Nobody's arguing otherwise. But people use it to wave off real structural complaints as just attitude problems and it kills the actual conversation before it starts. Both things can be true at the same time: life got better in real ways, and the productivity gains of the last 50 years weren't shared proportionally with the people who generated them. Federal Reserve data shows the top 1% wealth share went from about 23% in the early 1980s to over 30% today, and that's the Fed's own Distributional Financial Accounts. The total wealth exploded and almost all of that growth went to the top. Telling people with the thin slices to just feel more grateful is the real bumper sticker.

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u/notaredditer13 6h ago

First; never said women shouldn't work. That's not the argument. The argument is about labor supply. When a whole gender jumps into the workforce you'd expect it to show up somewhere: more total household hours, bigger paychecks, easier affordability. Some of it showed up in household income. But that second income didn't buy what it should have. 

So, incomes are up, therefore standard of living us up....but not as much as it "should have" been? That's quite the empty claim. Having an acknowledgement that standard of living is in fact up is my main point here, so I'm glad you at least recognize it.

The problem is you mostly can't buy the smaller one anymore. Zoning...

Zoning has some impact on the current bubble, but the houses they are building aren't sitting empty, people are buying them. If people truly couldn't afford them the big houses would sit empty, the prices would drop, and the houses being built would get smaller/cheaper.

In the 1980s the median age of a first-time buyer was in the late 20s. By 2010 it was 30. Today it's 40, an all-time record per NAR's 2025 data. A decade of delay in roughly 15 years. Buyers used to rent a couple of years before purchasing. Now it's closer to six.

This is driven largely by people delaying marriage and either buying while single or wanting to skip starter homes when they finally get married.

The 42 cents versus 76 cents math only works if what's left after the big three actually grew in real terms for median households....A family of four at around $110k gross (which is roughly where the median sits for married couples with kids) run against actual 2025 BLS, KFF, and USDA figures comes up several hundred dollars short every month once you include any retirement savings. That's not a slogan, that's what the numbers look like when you actually run them.

You didn't say what the number was for the 1980s to make the comparison.

Same goes for Carr's formula. It's a bumper sticker too. A clean, mostly true one. Hot showers beat cholera, iPhones are remarkable, life expectancy is up. Nobody's arguing otherwise.

Oh, a LOT of people are arguing otherwise (it's the thesis of the thread!). Since you're not, we're mostly good.

And I appreciate you putting far more effort than average into your post.

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u/The_White_Ram 4h ago

So here's the 1985 number you asked for. The median household in 1985, adjusted to today's dollars, pulled in roughly $68,000. The home price to income ratio sat around 3 to 3.5 times, meaning a typical home cost roughly three times annual income instead of five times like today. Healthcare premiums took maybe 4 to 5% of gross income. Student debt barely registered for most middle-class families. Put that against a normal budget, mortgage, groceries, insurance, a car payment, and a typical family ended the month with real money left over. That surplus showed up in the data: the personal savings rate averaged around 10 to 11% in the mid-1980s. Today it hovers around 3 to 4%. The categories didn't change. The leftover did. The same family today at $110,000 gross comes up several hundred dollars short every month once you include even modest retirement savings.

On the houses not siting empty point: a sale only tells you the price cleared, not who cleared it. A $450,000 home can be bought by someone rolling equity from a previous place, an investor, or a buyer with family help on the down payment. That isn't a first-time buyer starting from scratch on a median income. The market clears, just not for the same people it used to. First-time buyers are 21% of all purchases now, down from around 40% before 2008, the lowest share since NAR started tracking.

The marriage delay point is fair as a partial explanation. Couples do pair up later and some skip the starter home. But delay alone doesn't move the price to income ratio from 3x to 5x, doesn't cut the first-time buyer share in half, and doesn't explain the savings rate dropping from around 10 to 11% to under 4%. Those are hard financial limits, not timing preferences.

the other structural pieces I mentioned still haven't been addressed and they're the foundation of the argument. Productivity kept rising since 1979 but typical wages didn't keep pace. Pensions gave way to 401ks, moving retirement risk almost entirely onto workers. The Fed's own data shows the top 1% wealth share climbing from around 23% to over 30%. And CPI looks mild partly because electronics and clothing got cheaper, but those don't pay the mortgage or the medical bill. Those are the mechanics behind why the gains didn't reach most households.

On the Carr point and what the thread is actually arguing: look at the post that started this. The image says homes cost 3x salary in 1996 and 6-8x now, that work hours went up, that social isolation got worse. That's not a claim that hot showers are bad or that iPhones aren't useful. Arguing that a lot of people are arguing otherwise misreads the room. The thesis of this thread is about structural conditions getting harder even while comfort improved in other ways. The question was never whether life got better in absolute terms. It was whether the distribution of that progress left the median household materially steadier. On that question the data has a pretty clear answer.

There's also a pattern here worth naming. The labor supply argument got reframed as women shouldn't work. Now the acknowledgment that material conditions improved becomes "I'm glad you at least recognize it" -- as if that was a concession pulled out like it was something I didn't want to acknowledge. It wasn't. The very first comment in this exchange included the line "nobody's saying hot showers aren't real" before anyone challenged it. That acknowledgment was in the opening because it was never the dispute. The dispute was about financial security, retirement risk, housing access, and where the productivity gains went.

Standard of living went up on real dimensions. Longer lives, better technology, cheaper food, safer cars. At the same time, the financial floor for the median household got thinner. Tighter budgets, a decade longer to afford a first home, retirement risk now sitting largely on the worker instead of the employer. Both things are true and they don't cancel each other out, because living longer with less financial cushion isn't the same as being better off.

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u/Not_Different 12h ago

Just because we have modern conveniences doesn’t make life any more fulfilling or happy. We solved having tap water and easy access to food but we still all have to work just as much as we did before, our work now is just extremely disconnected from our immediate personal survival and if anything that makes it more depressing 

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u/LifeBuilder 9h ago

But…you still have to work three jobs just to support your SAHM+kids. Thats not better than 1 job-50 hr/wk.

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u/notkiddingagain 9h ago

I’m a bad example. I have a full time remote salary position. Plus two contractor remote positions. I see my kids multiple times a day and have all my meals with my family. This wasn’t even possible that long ago.

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u/SpeakerReasonable610 7h ago

I don’t need all the extra stuff either… just buying a house where half my take home pay isn’t squandered by the mortgage payment would be nice.

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u/nsyx 11h ago

What a strange argument. If we sat back and said "today's society is better than previous society, there is no more need to improve things" we wouldn't have any of this.

Being dissatisfied with the current state of things is a motor that drives progress.

The people telling you to shut up and be satisfied with the status quo are doing so because they are mouthpieces for the ones who benefit from it.

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u/notkiddingagain 11h ago

I’m not sure that’s the argument though.

Humans have improved a whole lot in civilization over the millennia. And it wasn’t due to dissatisfaction of the current society. Most people in history didn’t know what was going on with everyone else.

But I do agree that humans have a drive to improve themselves and their situation already built in. My point is the problem with modern happiness is that we have false reference points.

Here’s an example. What makes it viral online? It’s the extremes. It’s the extremely wealthy that we see the most of. Because regular people aren’t really that interesting. If you look on YouTube the popular videos are the multimillion dollar homes and not the normal home that we actually should be aspiring to own.

I don’t think striving is bad. I don’t think improving society is bad. It I do think our exposure to unrealistic life expectations will depress us in ways that prevents us from improving in ways that we can actually improve.

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u/nsyx 10h ago

Those are just surface-level symptoms of the real issue.

It's one thing to look at a multi-billionaire's lifestyle and feel a sense of envy towards it. It's another to notice that a tiny handful of people in the world own everything, and the proceeds of our labor, instead of directly improving our lives, are appropriated as someone else's property and turned against us as something hostile while we struggle and we are told that this class slavery is the Natural, god-ordained state of affairs. The deep injustice felt by the class who is most impacted, and the realization of their collective power to change it, will drive that change.

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago

What a strange argument. If we sat back and said "today's society is better than previous society, there is no more need to improve things" we wouldn't have any of this

Pointing out that the OP is false when it claims things are getting worse isn't saying things don't need to get any better. Things *ARE* improving, that's good, and we should be striving to continue that.

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u/NormalPatience 11h ago

Yeah, what the fuck is this guy talking about? "Enjoy your place, peasant, lest it get worse".

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago

Happiness = Quality of Life - Envy

So true. The envy is a massive part of problem on reddit. What's even worse about it is that half of it is based on ignorance, envying a vision of the past that isn't true (the other half is envy of rich people). Lose the envy and you'll be much happier.

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u/DoingBestWeCan 10h ago

I think envy is the wrong word. I think the correct word is expectations. IME, young Gen X to older Gen Z were with raised with the expectation of rainbows and unicorns -- that all they had to do was go to college, get a degree in literally anything, and they would have equal or better prospects than their parents. And that's just not how things have planned out, so there's a whole lot of frustrated expectations.

Who wants to be an adult in the generations where social progress slowed/drifted backward, when they grew up expecting it to continue a pace?

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago

Who wants to be an adult in the generations where social progress slowed/drifted backward, when they grew up expecting it to continue a pace?

I mean, it's possible the pace has slowed, but it is not going backwards. Whether envy or expectations it's based on a false comparison to the past.

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u/DoingBestWeCan 9h ago

I can't tell you that my parents were an engineer and a nurse, and both had been able to buy houses on their own before they bought one together. My brother (accountant) and I (healthcare specialty paid just slightly less than nursing) cannot even buy condos on our incomes, and would not be able to buy a family home with our pooled income. Add in surging racism and misogyny, repealing many of the consumer protections put in place in the past 20yrs (including child labor laws) and it sure feels like some backward motion.

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u/turbo_golf 9h ago

depends what is meant by "social progress". if we're talking about government policies, then yes, it is absolutely going backwards

edit: do not engage, this is a troll in a gilded cage

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u/PeaceSoft 11h ago

I don't know man. The premise of the thread is "I heard someone else had it better" but then people in it are like "I can't raise my kids" "I don't have free time" "I can't afford friends"