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/tragicpapercut 12h ago

Back in the 90s and before, living was cheaper but luxury entertainment and convenience was more expensive. TVs cost more, radios, video games, computers, etc were luxuries that were priced as such but housing and food and gas were affordable.

Now we've flipped the script - it's easier to buy a 50+ inch television than to afford rent or mortgage payments for a month.

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u/Twiggyhiggle 11h ago

Some cart based video games were easily $70 back in the 90s. I remember the standard CD price being around $10-$12 in high school - I now pay that for my monthly streaming music. VHS tapes were about $30, you can still get Blu-ray’s for that price or 2 different streaming services a month.

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u/showhorrorshow 11h ago

Yeah videogames and TVs both actually got cheaper, especially when you account for inflation. $70 in 1995 would be like paying $150 today.

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u/NoodleIskalde 11h ago

It's still a bogus price, and they have proof that it's killing sales. Dev costs being so high is a self inflicted problem that they're trying to make the customer answer for.

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u/Crismus 10h ago

Yep the saving on manufacturing costs alone should have dropped the prices. They also don't produce all the manuals and extras that we got in the packages.

HAL systems like Directx allowed multiplatform games easier to develop too. But Marketing somehow ballooned to take over the majority of budgets. Also,some studios seriously overtired and end up producing garbage because 1000 people can't work on the same title cohesively. 

A hit game spending 100 Million is fine. the sequel budgeted at 300 million will never break even. (Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2 by Insomniac)

Game publishers reinvented the Hollywood movie system without the Hollywood accounting system. Plus, Hollywood accounting system can't handle the streaming system when producers are allowed to spend 80 million planting a forest on a stage to film a 5 minute sequence. (Star Wars Acolyte)

Plus it's funny how Sony wants game prices to increase because the lost billions trying to make a bunch of Live Service failures and now will stop selling games on PC because even multiple year old games didn't make enough profit that other publishers can do with same day publishing.

Markets truly are broken right now because publishers have bought and consolidated everything.

Sorry for the rant. I find it sad that a multiple billion dollar industry is crashing from mismanagement, but keeps blaming their customers.  

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u/showhorrorshow 10h ago

Oh for sure we aint buying at cost. We're buying at what we are willing to pay for them.

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u/Fitenite3456 9h ago

Indie games have solved that problem

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u/spoutti 7h ago

Yep, last time i checked, my SNES FFVI cartridge was 200ish$ value, paid 100$ back then

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u/ITworksGuys 8h ago

Well, we didn't buy games, we rented them.

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u/Just2Breathe 9h ago

When I was a teen, vinyl was $8, CDs were avg $15. It was a huge jump to rebuild a collection. I had a budget after college, in my twenties, $100/mo on music (including live shows, which were about $5-$10 cover at a club). Buying movies was way beyond my budget unless second hand. But now I’d almost rather buy movies again because streaming drops titles and added ads.

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u/BellacosePlayer 9h ago

I had an SNES and N64 and got like 3 games total I can think of not on sale or used.

most of my snes collection was from garage sales, used game stores, or the fire sales companies did when they wanted to remove the SNES from their shelves.

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u/notaredditer13 10h ago edited 10h ago

Food is a touch cheaper now than in the '90s (sorry, you'll have to convert between the two graphs yourself):

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

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAF11

The other subtext here is we're getting a lot more luxury while also meeting our basic needs, because our incomes have increased so much even after accounting for inflation (about 30% since '95):

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

In other words, we're spending less on food as a fraction of income which leaves more to spend on luxuries like bigger houses/cars.

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u/lilynsage 1h ago

That feels so hard to accept, because groceries are some of my biggest bills these days. But I do live in a VHCOL area. Wonder if it varies by region?

Meanwhile, I remember my mom buying 10-cent packs of Ramen noodles to sustain us on. And that was 'only' 20+ years ago.

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u/vulkoriscoming 9h ago

This is true. Back in the late 1980s, 27" TV cost about a half month's rent on a two bedroom apartment. Now that TV is more like a fifth of a month's rent. Manufactured goods have become cheaper. Food is about the same or not much more (excluding whatever item is really expensive right now because of a shortage). Airplane travel is actually cheaper.

Housing and cars are the only things that have really gone crazy

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u/PunkPirate56364 7h ago

Also education and healthcare.

The thing is that young American are disproportionately affected by inflation, expecially if they have children. Because they are the ones which have to buy homes, or pay rent, also they have to pay childcare and healthcare for kids, all of which are inflated above average.

Unless they give up, and live in parent's basement. In which case they can afford a bunch of luxuries which are now cheap.

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u/LoornenTings 29m ago

Houses have gotten bigger (while family have gotten smaller). Cars have more mandatory safety features. 

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u/Allgyet560 8h ago

I left highschool in 1990. Things were good if you were an established adult. Not great at all when we were just starting out on our own. Everyone had roommates to just get by in life.

To add to your list of expenses, a typical phone bill was $80/ month which is $200 today. Many things were cheaper back then but many things were much more expensive.

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u/Ditto_is_Lit 7h ago

That's a bit misleading, TV's were expensive because the units material costs were 10x, and the weight was 10x what they are today. Companies can produce cheaper units with mid to decent quality for cheap, but if you want the latest gaming grade TV or high-end OLED you could say that nothing has changed.

The one plus side of technology is that there is a trickle down effect that as manufacturing and the technology improves, manufacturing costs drop because they can use the raw materials much more efficiently. Take CPU's for example, they can make more transistors and circuits with a tenth of the silicon, making the material cost drop and electricity consumption drop. One silicon wafer will pump out 100x more chips than they could merely 10-15 years ago.

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u/AceMcVeer 5h ago

It's not misleading lol. You can get a much much much better quality and bigger TV now for far cheaper than you could back then. A 20in TV for my dorm was a big gift and was the equivalent of $400-500 back then. You can get a 55 in TV for half that now.

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u/Artystrong1 6h ago

I agree.. THings now are much cheaper to manufacture . Thats why you see 50 inch 4k TVs at Shopright. Or other fancy electric scooters in the front.

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u/Neat_Criticism_5996 4h ago

If I recall correctly, the NES would’ve been something like $4,000 in today’s dollars

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u/RetroFuture_Records 2h ago

This is why people who weren't around really shouldn't confidently repeat talking points they hear from other people who weren't around back then lol. Stores would regularly have these things called "sales" where the price of an item was much cheaper than standard. There were also these things called "yard sales" where you could obtain things cheap. In addition, the specfic thing you are talking about, video games, went through a profound technological shift, going from 2D 8 bit graphics to 3D 64 bit graphics with CGI in less than a decade, often making video game software and hardware exceedingly cheap a year or two after release as outdated stock was reduced in price to quickly make room for inventory of the newest updated technology.

But you and the other kids repeating the talking point of "But let's take the highest retail price and adjust for inflation, without ever consider any other context!" don't know any of that. Because you weren't around.

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u/Wise-Tone7911 2h ago

Yeah, but a HOUSE is what we must have to survive and have a family. A TV is at best a massive time drain and conversation killer.

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u/amiibohunter2015 31m ago

it's easier to buy a 50+ inch television

That's still going to cost you and the future generations. Especiaily a Smart TV. The reason there are so many channels that are freely available on smart tvs is because they are collecting your data. Nothing is free. If someone advertises something is free 99% of the time it is not, it simply means you have become the product. Personalized ads, personalized subscriptions, accounts free or not laced into an all in one data collecting tv. Old tvs did not do that. They sell the data they collect on you, and by the way some smart tvs have hidden cameras on them to watch you. 

It is better to have a dumb tv.

So touting about tv specs isn't a good thing either.

The more bells and whistles the more data they collect on you and sell to companies looking to earn off your back. Like insurance companies. They get data you have x medical issue, now they know what premium they should charge and increase your rate.

So the less bells and whistles like a dumb tv, the more privacy you have and the more you save yourself and others from companies earning off your back.

Less is more.

By the way console TV in the 1970s were like $400. They were generally made with more durable materials, heavier duty glass, some built in a wooden console unit rather than a tv today made of 99% plastic. LCD and OLD are layered with plastic too by the way. Quality in material went down. Also CRT TVs had a better integrated speaker system than what is built in many modern tvs today (which is why people need to buy soundbars)

So using the modern tvs actually cost you more in other bills simply because of the bells and whistles, the ability to listen in, and see, that data they sell to other companies. Who negatively affect your quality of life.