re: Affordability

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You’re comparing today’s households to those of 40 years ago. The discussion is about whether people feel financially squeezed today.

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40-50 yrs ago families/people made financial decisions by cutting back or doing without. If you could not afford something you just did not get it or have it. In today's mindset there is the complaint that prices are high and affordability is gone but I just have not seen anyone I know start "going without" because they cant afford it.

In a caplitalist economy there will always be the low income people who due to their own fault or just fate itself are in that situation but there are more safety nets for these people than ever before. Many of these people who have problems with basic needs are not giving up the nail salons and ultimate phone plans because there is a free lunch line or an Obama phone right around the corner.

When I was 25 (67 now) I did not think I would ever be able to buy a house. By the time I was 38 I bought one and damn near paid cash for it. I have two millenials that I spawned and I see how they look at life building. They do not want to start at the lower level and work their up the scale on houses, cars, clothes, trips, etc. They want it all now because my generation that raised them gave them all this stuff.

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shows hospital care, childcare, medical services, and college costs rising much faster than overall inflation

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All of them also involve heavy government intervention (childcare less so.) Before TOPS, tuition at LSU was about $1200 a semester (IIRC) before room and board. After TOPS, fees are equal to, or greater than tuition. Obama federalized student loans in 2010, and that made things so much better.

Government intervention is to blame for every "affordability" problem in the US, including requiring car safety systems which may prevent a hundred deaths a year (ETA: individually for each safety system; blind spot warnings backing up out of a grocery parking lot will not save your live in a 10mph collision), but impose millions of costs on all consumers, to requiring backup cameras, etc. 34k people died in the US in motor vehicle accidents, which created the excuse for Forward collision warning, lane departure, blind spot, rear cross traffic warnings, automatic emergency braking, pedestrian automatic emergency braking, rear automatic braking, blind spot intervention, lane centering assistance, lane keeping assistance, adaptive cruise control, automatic crash notifications, and auto high beams.

Yet all of that can be controlled by "pay attention, and check your mirrors." Thousands upon thousands of dollars of shite we didn't need in 2001. If you check the death rates from 1993 to 2021 they have decreased from 16.3/100k to 14.2/100k, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been added to car costs since. Worth it?

Reduce government influence. Why are we all subsidizing tranny surgeries for prisoners in Leavenworth, transing kids, paying for trains to nowhere in California, $100B in federal taxpayer $ for NYC alone (2023) for all kinds of questionable shite, etc? Stop spending so much goddamned money, inflation drops to normal levels.

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People complaining about affordability while posting from an iPhone 16 while sipping a Starbucks latte.

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Lmao what ? Are you making up things in your head again?