Agree, but if we take a wholistic approach, most things were more affordable. This is a satirical take not a literal financial comparison and I designed it to be that, but I think no can disagree that life in 80s and 90s was way more affordable.

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xnx 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Disagree. Presenting partial information like this distorts and confuses people's understanding.

	▲	syel 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You are right, I think I mention that most experiences on the site are satirical but I don't mention it on the landing page to this experience, will add this today, will also add "not inflation adjusted' until I change the numbers to adjust for inflation.

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megaman821 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some things yes and some things no. It is not and cut-and-dry as you think.

Look up the inflation adjust prices for a computer or a "big-screen" TV and realize almost no one pays anything near those prices for any consumer good. On the other hand there are a lot more people in the US and it is not like land is sprouting up from nowhere, so the price of land is a lot more.

Most things though fall into what people's personal preferences are. Cars have more luxury, house are bigger and have better finishes, movies are huge spectacles, one person can't watch 8 infants, you get more than an aspirin from formerly untreatable diseases; roll all this back and prices will drop.

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ihumanable 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I find this graphic a good one https://www.visualcapitalist.com/inflation-chart-tracks-pric...

Obviously it's partial (or else there would be a billion lines) but it gives a good broad view of what things have gotten more or less expensive.

- TVs, toys, software, and cellphone services are cheaper.

- Clothing, funishings, and cars roughly flat.

- Healthcare, education, childcare, food, and housing are all more expensive by more than 50%.

So this is the moment we are in, we can certainly find things that were cheaper but your average consumer buys a TV once every few years, they buy food and pay for housing every day.

I don't think people are ignorant of the upsides of this deal, they are just capable of also recognizing the downsides.

	▲	megaman821 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Almost nothing can make labor-dominated services drop though. I guess you could have guest worker visas that pay half the going wage, and there would be a lot of people that take that deal, but most Americans would hate that. Grocery inflation is not nearly as bad as the food inflation overall, which is driven by food-away-from-home just absolutely skyrocketing. Billions of words have been spilled about housing, so I will boil it down simply. It is a mixture of policy and preference. It doesn't have to be the way it is, we just need to collective will to change things.

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neaden 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I 100% disagree with this and don't think it is particularly close? Sure there are some specific locations that are much more expensive, and there are some locations that are much cheaper. Overall if you want the same things it is way more affordable today than the 80s and 90s. But our standards have risen a lot and things that used to be considered middle class are now considered poor.

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ozlikethewizard 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Anything that could be considered in the base layers of Maslov's heirarchy is certainly less affordable. Food, shelter, health, education. Sure lots of consumer goods have got cheaper, but if you've got a big TV and no house to put it in are you actually any richer?

	▲	neaden 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Let's take these one at at time 1. Households in 1980 spent a large share of their income on food then today, and CPI tracks food expenditure and it's below wage increases. So this one is a victory for today vs the past. 2. Shelter is difficult because we expect much more today than the past, houses have gotten much much larger. One big issue is interest rates, which were about twice as high in the 80s than in recent times. If you want to buy a small house without air conditioning and other amenities that are now standard you can do it cheaper than what you would have paid back then. So another victory for today. 3. Health is once again hard, because a lot of the increased cost is for things that weren't around back then. We can just call this one a draw 4. Education. This is the one that is most clearly an increase above inflation. Some of this is due to decreased funding by governments, some due to admin bloat, but mostly it's just that labor is getting more expensive and education is a very labor focused sector. So victory for the past. So overall I have to say you are incorrect, the past was more expensive than now and less affordable for a middle class person. I also have to say I find this whole thing kind of odd, I was born in the 80s and remember what it was like, I would not want to switch places with my parents economically.