Well, you’re living. Without disease, war or famine. The world’s knowledge at your fingertips.
I’m about your age, and while there is a lot of work to be done, one of the most difficult hurdles to solving them is the nihilism and civic disengagement in our generation and industry. We’re sitting in a golden age of human achievement at the centre of the first world.
> could make a very similar list focusing on income, cost of living and relative buying power on a timescale of 50 years or another on the environment on a scale of 20 years and both would be quite depressing
Real wages have gone up over the last fifty and twenty years. Living in cities has become less affordable. But that you’re citing that as a standard of wellbeing, it’s a massive improvement from the post-War era.
On top of that the added anxiety people experience because of living paycheck to paycheck.
It's becoming more and more like in the movie Elysium - all the technological wonders are there - just not accessible to the poor.
Again, you’re comparing this to a past where continuing to exist wasn’t a given.
...???
> just not accessible to the poor.
Homeless have iphones. A technology a king wouldn't ever be able to make. Thank capitalism and go outside.
1900: 47%
1950: 55%
2000: 66%
2022: 66%
Further, ownership going beyond certain numbers does not necessarily mean good either.
Keep in mind that the mentioned "social housing factor" does exist, but it is also almost entirely in the hands of Gen X and older because building social housing had already stalled by that time.
Imagine getting cancer 70 years ago. Imagine trying to find a song 70 years ago. Imagine trying to get directions, find a restaurant .....
Life is so much easier it's unfathomable, but you have to have gratitude.
How much you make a year?
K12 teacher should easily afford housing. Especially with a spouse and summer job, for crying out loud!
I also don't think it's a tradeoff we necessarily need to make.
Regardless, I'd rather live happier for less time than longer in poverty.
Finding a song was just different and a leisure commodity, people are still buying records. Directions were a similar task 50+ years ago as they were in the 90s, not that challenging to live day to day without Google Maps.
I think those are all pretty lazy, very fathomable examples.
"Remember buying music on discs! So hard". No. No it wasn't.
I also see this complaint from 2nd+ generation Americans. The 1st generation immigrant families I know save their money meticulously and end up buying one, two, three houses and renting them out. They do this amazing feat by saving almost all of their income and forgoing all luxuries for 10 years, then renting the rooms of the house they buy out, using the income to buy the second house that’s rented out, etc. They live a life of wise frugality, never drinking an espresso drink or watching Netflix, and scrupulously managing their income and savings - on accountant and K12 teacher incomes. The truth is you can buy a place for $700k in say Seattle for $140k down payment, which if you save 50% of your net income making a dual income of $120k/year takes less than 10 years.
Read the Jungle for a sense of what housing felt like pre-WW2. Compare it to what I described above happens today. Ask yourself what specifically is challenging you compared to other succeeding at it today and those succeeding at it 100 years ago. Maybe hold the post war era as a blip and outlier, and draw a line between you and the past without letting the outlier dominate your perception of your lot in life. Or move somewhere other than San Francisco.
Prices literally went up by a cool 100% or so over the past 5 years or so (if you account for the now ludicrous financing rates; 62% in raw prices) in Germany.
Housing in Cologne cost 3451 EUR/m² in 2017. We're currently up to 5508 EUR/m². Morgage rates went from ~1.2% pa to almost 4% pa over the past 3 years.
That's not normal.
Ultimately supply is the only way to decrease price.
Look, I know the economics. I don't like them. Fundamentally. Housing shouldn't be owned, at least not at scale.
My comment was mostly to point how how asinine your "if you are persistent you can do it" point is, being that both rent and morgages are skyrocketing. My rent got raised by 14 percent (it's coupled to inflation, that used to be a better deal) and you'd need about 200k/yr (pre-tax) household income right now to even get approved for a morgage here. It's essentially impossible for a working class person, unless you're on the top few percent of (labor based) income. And those people tend to have substantial capital too. Tech salaries don't scale this far here.
You could make a very similar list focusing on income, cost of living and relative buying power on a timescale of 50 years or another on the environment on a scale of 20 years and both would be quite depressing.
It feels very "well actually" wishful thinking by someone well off enough to ignore all the cracks.
At least it doesn't feel quite as deliberately misleading as the Steven Pinker "we redefined the poverty line, look at all the poverty that's going away" slight of hand.