| ▲ | janalsncm 2 hours ago |
| > working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years Really depends on the group of people you are including. In the US the middle class has been eviscerated to the point where raising a family on a single income is not a realistic goal for most people. |
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| ▲ | gruez 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| >to the point where raising a family on a single income is not a realistic goal for most people. Was this ever true? During the 1950s, (the perceived heyday of American middle class wealth) the female labor force participation rate was 35%[1], which was close half of the male labor force participation rate. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 |
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| ▲ | janalsncm 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 1) Based on your numbers, 65% of women were not working at that time. 2) That 35% number was likely even lower for married women. 3) Racism was still a systemic problem and was bad. Black men were excluded from the GI bill for example. 4) In spite of that, the median American household needed only 2x their salary to buy the median house. That number is 5x today, and after taxes the ratios are 2.2x then vs 6x today, when two adults are often working rather than one. 5) In short, Americans are working much harder today. | | |
| ▲ | gruez 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | >4) In spite of that, the median American household needed only 2x their salary to buy the median house. That number is 5x today, and after taxes the ratios are 2.2x then vs 6x today, when two adults are often working rather than one. Sources for these numbers? Also, housing is only a fraction of your costs. | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Compare the median house in 1950 with one today. | | |
| ▲ | janalsncm an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s not hard to do. A lot of them are for sale today and will sell over asking, no contingencies. | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | A housing development nearby my home was built in the early 1960s (I think). If you look closely at the homes, they are all of two designs, made into four by mirror images. But it's pretty clear that over time the homes were remodeled, gut remodeled, extended, garages added, and so on, so they are significantly improved over the original. I've been in a couple, and the hallways are pretty narrow and everything is very cheaply built. If you want to see what they were like originally, see the old Bob Hope movie "Bachelor in Paradise", filmed at a just-built suburban community. |
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| ▲ | dumberquestions an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Have people's standards for what a house constitutes gone up, or are affordable options that people would be very willing to buy less available now? | | |
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| ▲ | VirusNewbie 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The reason the 'middle class' is smaller is because more families have become "upper middle class". All the data shows this. You can argue that housing is too much or that inflation hasn't benefited the right things, but to say that the middle class is shrining just doesn't match reality. |
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| ▲ | janalsncm an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | “Upper middle class” has nothing to do with it. In 1950, the median household could buy a house with 2 years of income. That is, 50% of households could do this. Today, the median house costs $400k. Only the top 12-14% of households make 200k per year. So proportionally, the % of households that have the same buying power as a median 1950s household has shrunk roughly 4x. | | | |
| ▲ | t-writescode an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The only way one can claim that the middle class isn’t shrinking is to have a floating definition of the middle class. If you lock it in any way to something like “home ownership and simple vacations once a year” (which was absolutely possible in the 90s), it has plummeted. | | | |
| ▲ | smallmancontrov an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The data that deflate with CPI? The metric notorious for laundering forced substitution into voluntary substitution? The American Dream is to Owner's Imputed Rent a house? I love BLS, they do a lot of thankless work very well, but if you give someone else control of the inflation basket you are letting them pick any slope for these graphs that they want. Don't do that. It's the economic equivalent of handing your passport to an employer, talking about your net worth in public, or signing a blank check. Just don't. Yeah, we're all busy, you probably don't have time to construct a basket more sophisticated than "gold" or "housing" -- but even though those both have big problems, they still aren't as bad long-term as CPI. Or maybe you disagree and think the CPI basket and hedonic adjustment methodology compounds better for your purposes, but if so you should be able to roughly account for the dramatic difference and articulate why. |
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