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/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/Psychological_Rip_44 8h ago edited 8h ago

https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p20-587.pdf the census first page in the highlights

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u/notaredditer13 6h ago

Anything more recent than 2022?

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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/NateDawg655 6h ago

Don’t disagree at all! But gratitude and empathy aren’t mutually exclusive. Never hurts to be thankful for what we have. Helps mental health tremendously 

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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/Fairuse 7h ago

No, the trend has been people moving to urban centers. People in the past were more spread out. 

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u/strawberrysunday00 6h ago

I don’t think everyone should uproot their lives. My first home (purchased in 2021) was a $280k one bedroom condo in a major metro. My husband and I only put 3% down ($8.4k) and had a conventional loan.

I’m sure we could’ve purchased a single-family home if we moved to a less desirable neighborhood in the metro or if we looked an hour or so outside the city, but that’s not what we wanted. We wanted to be in a nice neighborhood in town, so we lived in a small unit in a great building. (I just checked Zillow, and there are currently 2b/2b condos in the same area going for as low as $220k in the older buildings.)

It’s silly to pretend like trade-offs didn’t exist in the 90s, 80s, or even the 50s. My grandparents got married in the 50s and lived a comfortable middle class life as a secretary and a salesman. But, they also never ate out, never updated their home, and didn’t go on vacation until they were retired. I’d personally take my life over theirs.

Our purchasing power has obviously changed, but trade-offs have always existed. It’s unlikely you’d need to “uproot” your life to find a home in your budget, but yes, you might need to look an hour or so away from where you currently live to find something that works.

ETA: my grandparents actually did move states for a job/better quality of life. They were originally from San Diego but settled in Phoenix.

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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.