I think you're out of touch with what "almost everyone" considers an acceptable standard of living. I know plenty of people who have a single car or none at all, live in apartments living pay check to pay check with no kids at all because they are afraid they can't afford them. They would love to have what you described, minus the no cell phones/internet.

A random idea I had a few years ago was, what if someone started a “recent modern Amish” community, where they just intentionally keep the community’s tech usage either fixed at 1960s or 1990s, or maybe a fixed number of years in the past like 30 or 50 (meaning, the time target moves forward by a year each year).

So the kids growing up now might be playing the original Nintendo NES, or maybe an N64, they’d have phones and even computers, etc.

It could even be a little more nuanced like, the community could vote in certain classes of more modern goods.

I feel there is something unsound with that comparison, because you could also apply it to kings of history, simply by listing things that technologically unavailable or unaffordable.

Imagine transmigrating King Louis XVI (pre-revolution) into some working class professional with a refrigerator, a car, cable TV, etc. I don't think it's a given that he'd consider the package an upgrade.

“Pre-revolution” is doing a lot of work in that sentence

The point is to compare the daily life the monarch would have considered "normal."

"Pre-revolution" is just to preempt any "Hurr hurr he'd be ecstatic not to have his head chopped off LOL."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Louis_XVI

now tell us how they calculate those inflation adjusted dollars-- what basket of goods? prices in which markets?

They've cited and linked their sources. What's the issue?

The "issue" is the comparison is much more complex than people may be led to believe. It's not a simple "adjust the dollars to be the same" calculation.

There are a lot of assumptions that go into making that calculation.

If I tell you that the value of a dollar you hold has gone down or up this year versus last year because of the price fluctuation of an item you never have or never will purchase, such as hermit crabs in New Zealand.

Would you believe your dollar is worth more or less? What if the price of a good you do spend your dollars on has an inverse relationship with the price of hermit crabs in New Zealand? Or what if the prices of the items you do buy haven't moved at all?

The issue is that it doesn't support his preconceived notion that everyone is doing terribly.

Actually I outlined what I believed the issue is before you replied and it's not that.

Your post is just a more verbose version of what I said.

Your "concerns" are all well known and accounted for when calculating things like the consumer price index.

You're assuming my "concern" is that the OP is wrong. Which is why i specifically took the time to talk about value being up or down.

I get you're just pissed off for whatever reason, but I'll still try to explain more.

My point is not addressed when calculating the consumer price index because i'm saying that a single selection of prices and goods to produce a single price index does not tell a person what the value of their money is unless they just happen to be literally the median consumer.

Are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me you buy every single item that is used in that consumer price index? In every city? You're just not being serious if that's the case.

You're confusing a price index that minimizes the error in measuring inflation when applied to a large varying amount of people with what i'm advocating which is a price index that's personalized to and minimizes the error in measuring inflation for an individual. Other people's buying habits and prices for things in places where they live don't need to go into a personalized price index.

I'm not pissed off.

It's tiring watching people with no idea what they're talking about repeat the same "what about ..." arguments when professionals in the field have spent decades developing and maintaining models that have been proven over that time to be helpful.

It's also not a coincidence that nearly 100% of the people trying to poke holes in those models are people who disagree with the results generated from them, and that nearly 100% of those people don't have a clue about the topic at hand.

Of course a broad based index that is designed to represent the behavior of hundreds of millions of people is less accurate for you (or me, or anyone) personally than a model based solely on an individual's behavior. I don't know anyone on earth who would argue otherwise.

As a reminder, you started off by making a very lazy statement broadly criticizing a post that included well cited economic data showing that the inflation-adjusted median household income has increased substantially since the 1960s, which was in response to yet another terminally online doomer incorrectly claiming that your average American is worse off today than they were then.

You're now claiming that your issue with the provided data showing that people are overall financially better off today than they were in the 1960s is that that data isn't tailored to you (or any other individual) personally? I think that just demonstrates the validity of my original comment, because that's an absurd criticism.

FYI, you don't need to "advocate" for a personal price index. Track your spending over time and calculate it. If you want get much use out of it, you're going to want to incorporate the CPI data for your metro area as well (which exists and is publicly available) so you can both compare your spending to the median and backfill missing data as needed (for example, historical childcare expenses when you become a new parent).