We have problems, but I intuitively agree with this narrative of progress and want to see good data to back it up.
I do wish there were more choice - the ability to buy 1950s-70s grade housing, medical care, etc., for a lower price - but that seems to be becoming rarer.
Square foot per household: https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes... (annoyingly, this data comes from the US Census but I can't seem to find it on their site - but it does match up with every other source)
Interesting, semi-related: https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization
Very interesting, about older housing: https://mountainmath.ca/teardowns
From there it's just simple division to see the square foot per person.
> the ability to buy 1950s-70s grade housing, medical care, etc., for a lower price
If you want 50s style housing (aka dated interior and 280 sqft per person) - there are plenty of options. Go on Zillow and limit your price to $75k and you'll see plenty of homes available. 600sqft homes aren't the average, but they certainly still exist. You may think "aha, but you can't find a home in NYC!" - but keep in mind, only 16% of the world lived in urban areas in 1900 (and only 29% in 1950!) If you want an old car, those are cheap too. Old phones, TVs, radios, etc etc are all basically free. Dated medical care is the one thing you obviously can't get.
No, if you want to party like it's nineteen (forty) nine, go ahead. Live without a car (the majority of households had no car in the 40s) - you can get around by bike if you're lucky, and if you're in a car-centric area you can ride along with your coworkers, family and friends, or hitchhike, as people did. Your small housing will be very inexpensive. Your old-fashioned diet will consist of staples like flour, potatoes, milk, bread etc that have gotten extremely cheap relative to your income. Costs that would have been a solid chunk of your budget in the 40s (new clothing, for example) have gotten so cheap as to be almost unrecognizable.
I say this all as someone who did live a life of consuming very little for several years. If you do want to live in a smaller space, not have a car, and simply consume less (water/electricity/money/resources) it is certainly possible, even in our modern world. Give it a shot! You'll be surprised.
You're right, they're a little scarce in my city but there are at least a few homes in the $75K range that don't seem uninhabitable:
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1010-Lombrano-St-San-Anto... https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/139-Prelude-Pl-San-Antoni...
That is really interesting to me, as the local market seems to have totally exploded in price recently. A few of my friends are paying prices that would have seemed ridiculous in January 2020 when we were looking at houses. Maybe it's mostly housing in the middle of the price spectrum that's inflating.
My main takeaway is that it is actually a reasonable and healthy market, keeping the value of building roughly proportion to the value of the land/location.
Cool stuff, thanks!
That is to say - not only are the houses almost three times larger, but the average American has nearly -four- times more personal space today vs in the 1950s.
The improvements in cars have been crazy - I wrote a comment about that recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26389885
Only 3.4% of jobs in America require very heavy strength according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the US employment rate at 56.8%, that's 1.9% of the population that has to do a very strenuous job.
Compared to even very recent generations, we live in palaces, we drive in luxury, we work cushy jobs, and we have endless entertainment.
>All of it needs to be more evenly spread.
Absolutely. Among the world, of course, but even within America the inequality is still huge. The fact that we live with this inequality while having the resources to fix it is a stain on our collective conscience.