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Back then the price for a new home was $10950 ($98408 adjusted for inflation). A working class man with a decent middle class job made 4130 dollars a year. He was able to afford a home on one income and was able to either do this as a single person or have a wife/girlfriend who maintained the home and care for the children. Nowadays this is impossible especially with houses in places like the Bay Area where most of the jobs are concentrated costing 1 million dollars for a crappy 2 bedroom in a bad neighborhood (it's 248000 nationwide which is more than 2x higher than it was back then adjusted for inflation). Many people are living in poverty. Life was better when you only need 100,000 to retire comfortably and drive Cadillacs.
We need housing prices to come down so that Americans can again afford to buy a house without liar loans, without no money down- FHA, government sponsored guaranteed to fail loans, and so that Americans can afford to buy a house without everyone in the household working at one or two jobs to do it. We don't have enough jobs for this to happen. Also, raising children benefits from a stable home life with child-rearing done by a parent and not by strangers in child-care centers. Is it the best way to live as a society? Or are lower housing prices better for all of us, except the owner class that is selling real estate and housing for a living?
Raise interest rates and prick this bubble in housing. The only thing that is supporting this current housing bubble 2.0. is a balloon of hot air or ZIRP. As soon as you raise rates, housing prices are going to crash.
Nobody "stole" anything from anybody; the natural workings of supply and demand will even out any imbalance unless restrained by the unnecessary use of force by Big Brother.
If someone feels cheated, it's likely due to ignorance of how an open market works; the cost of true luxuries -- rare wines, for example, will naturally go up because the supply is finite, and a larger supply of wealth is available to compete for it.
but the price of recent technical advances tends to fall, and fall quickly. In 1950, you had to pay about $450 for a 21-inch black-and-white TV set (where service was available) Today, a smaller amount of considerably-inflated dinero will buy a much-improved version of the same thing (It's up to you to decide on, and pay for your own cable package, however).
And the p/c on which you're typing your discontents probably has more computing power than the mainframes I used to get five seconds of time on back in the winter of 1967-68.
It all boils down to the changing nature of human want, and what's available to satisfy it. But there are always those who will try to kick even when both legs are broken.
I disagree with your entire post. Free markets? Where?
Power of my pc...a TV set....cable...what???
I'm talking about pension raiders, criminal banks and puppet politicians. Just to get started. Systematic corruption. Not a freaking cable bill.
there's twice as many people today in america than there was in 1955. 165 mil vs 320 mil.
i don't know if that has anything to do with why prices are so high for everything, you would think that prices would be lower with more people, i mean, technically, if a business can sell more items they can lower the price on those items and take a smaller profit per item since they're selling more of them, i'm no expert on economics, so i don't know the answer to why prices for things aren't lower. Someone in this thread talked about great electronics at much more affordable prices than even a decade ago, i remember paying 1500 to 2000 for a really nice big screen tv, now you can get a really nice one for under a grand...why are laptops going down in prices but houses aren't affordable unless you're a billionaire. Not sure about that one, i'm sure there's an answer.
There are still new homes available that I can buy for less than twice my annual salary, not here where I live, but even new a couple of hours away. It's a matter of choices, where to live, where to work, what career. Some people are not as well off as average middle class in the 1950s, but then plenty of people back then couldn't afford to buy a house either, and made the same complaint and comparison to 1900.
There are still new homes available that I can buy for less than twice my annual salary, not here where I live, but even new a couple of hours away. It's a matter of choices, where to live, where to work, what career. Some people are not as well off as average middle class in the 1950s, but then plenty of people back then couldn't afford to buy a house either, and made the same complaint and comparison to 1900.
Back then the price for a new home was $10950 ($98408 adjusted for inflation). A working class man with a decent middle class job made 4130 dollars a year. He was able to afford a home on one income and was able to either do this as a single person or have a wife/girlfriend who maintained the home and care for the children. Nowadays this is impossible especially with houses in places like the Bay Area where most of the jobs are concentrated costing 1 million dollars for a crappy 2 bedroom in a bad neighborhood (it's 248000 nationwide which is more than 2x higher than it was back then adjusted for inflation). Many people are living in poverty. Life was better when you only need 100,000 to retire comfortably and drive Cadillacs.
In 1955 I was six years old. My dad had purchased in 1952 a new 3 bedroom, 2 bath house built on a slab with a single carport on a quarter acre lot in Phoenix with a $1 down GI loan for $9500. As a tool and die maker, he made $100 per week and that was enough to support 7 kids and a stay at home wife.
But our lifestyle was a lot different than now. My mother cooked all our meals; we never went to restaurants. We had just one car without AC that dad took to work so we walked or biked everywhere. We had one black and white TV with a rabbit ears antenna that received 4 local stations. The TV stations were on the air about 12 hours per day.
There were no video games or internet so we mostly rode our bikes, played ball, roamed the alleys searching for treasures, and played unsupervised doing things that would curl the hair of todays parents. My mother could not be a helicopter parent. There is no way to micro manage 7 kids.
I became very familiar with tube radios, shortwave antennas, gasoline, home made gunpowder, and electricity. Due to my observations of cause and effect, I turned those early experiences into a gainful career as an electrical engineer. Of course, I almost killed myself a few times but oh the stories....I've considered writing a script for a TV show about that era.
Unfortunately we cannot go back. What many people don't understand is how we were able to achieve that relatively good standard of living at that time. The USA had won the big war. We created the world's most productive manufacturing sector that could supply a bombed out Europe and Japan with needed goods. Because of that, our standard of living temporarily was supreme.
All that relative strength ended by about 1975. Rather than whining, the best solution is to make sure that your kids receive the best possible education that you can provide. My 3 kids have all achieved that and they are all gainfully employed in healthcare.
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