Most of us actually don’t realize how well off & safe we are in modern USA compared to the many other countries & this may be more of a conversation about how we perceive risk, individually. Flying as a passenger can trigger anxiety while driving on crowded city streets seems safe, though we know driving is much more dangerous. We are exposed to crazy videos, accessed by a device I hold in my hand & have with me 24/7, so we think the crazy stuff is all around us, when maybe it’s not. Our modern conveniences (and seemingly higher standard of living) with 5G radiation & ingesting microplastics…the result of which may just spell our doom. Is it the stuff we can’t see that we need to be concerned with?
Good piece, and things are overwhelmingly getting better for humanity. Folks who want to argue against this do so on the basis of either a superstitious ideal that hearkens back to some ideal past, or on the basis of simple (understandable) ignorance.
I know white Americans felt a sense of normalcy and relief during the time period you discuss, but my brain immediately went to black Americans and how awful this period was for them. I am confident that very few black Americans yearn for the good old days of Jim Crow. That's really just a tangent, though, and doesn't take away from the main idea here.
If anyone is interested in reading about this era, Isabella Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns" covers the Great Migration through several very personal lenses. It's good reading.
I really think the nostalgia is coming off of the trauma of two World Wars and a Depression. Even though it was the height of another war, the cold war, the XYZ/ABC political chaos and assasination of a president and I could go on and on for how chaotic that time frame really was. Nostalgia is weird.
To be honest, I was skeptical at first, as I typically am when articles start with phrases like “investigating internal biases”, but I REALLY enjoyed this! I know I’ve suffered a ton from this lately due to more involvement online, moving to a bigger city where negativity seems more widespread in certain places, and I’ve focused on negatives. But you really highlighted some amazing upwards trends in how much better societies have gotten and what you can get for the same dollar amount. Plus, how much technological advances have helped us. EPA clean ups, clean roads, well kept neighborhoods, etc. This one really hit home for me, thank you Michael!
Thanks! You're right about the internal biases part. Identity politics have kind of ruined that as a useful psychological investigation. But I'm glad you appreciated it. It is hard to step away sometimes and consider just how much we are fed in our media when stepping outside is a whole different world.
Very true. Perception based on what others tell you your reality is versus your true reality can be quite different, but hard to actually differentiate.
I think, for me, that I thought that things would improve way more than they did. Example: The way I was treated back in the 1980s as a female engineer. Compare that to the way my daughter, a female engineer, is treated. She is treated better than I was, but I always thought that it would be better or different by this time. Perhaps I'm impatient. Perhaps I wanted it all "fixed" for my children's generation.
I stopped reading when I saw a house price of 170k . Why game your comparisons ? Starter homes if you can find them where I live are over 500k for low quality tract homes(Western Canada) I bought a starter home in the mid 90's for 80k (5 acres+ 10yr old 1500sqft house) I wouldn't want to guess it's current purchase price
I'm gonna chime in here too. Housing prices in America are at record highs - even and especially starter homes. Starter homes in Massachusetts aren't under 350,000k right now. Unless they're total tear downs. My house, a starter home without question, no dishwasher, no AC, 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, and under 1,100 sf, sold for 345K in '21 and is now worth 480K. OH! and the commute to Boston? 1-1/2 hours. So it's value is not boosted by proximity to the city. Granted Massachusetts is in the top 3 most expensive states to live in (I think that's still accurate as of this year.)
While I'm certain 170K is a real figure in the middle states, a lot of us living in this country cannot afford housing or rentals. It's a real crisis. So I agree with A longer name in terms of that statement feeling like it's missing some context.
You are correct. housing at the extremes is... well... extreme right now and the plague of averages is just that. As I mentioned to A Longer Name, the 1950s number also took averages and there was a lot of pressure in those same areas of the country only offset by the extreme suburbanization that was happening at the time.
The prices for houses have gotten insane in the past 4 years even exceeding the heights of 2007. Here's a source for housing. It is slightly higher than what I listed and I'm afraid I made a slight error however, Zillow doesn't have the average prices as significantly higher (compared to your experience)
I took the average from Zillow and it's US based. If I gamed my comparison, I also gamed it to be cheaper in the past since it also discounted prices in the cities. It might be low but it's low on both comparisons. The argument still stands that the homes aren't even on the same level of quality, size, ammenities, etc.
By all means lets ignore that in the real world example there's a 5x difference in those figures🙄🤣. If you took figures
from a place in the US with a growing housing market.(Texas or Florida for example )The figures will be a lot closer to mine than yours....I think the actual numbers are important. Using an avg places like Kansas and other mid states mask rapid rises and lack of affordabilty in growth states ,clouding the actual picture.
As noted in my example the quality has dropped substantially, which I expect is also similar to growing US markets like Texas and Florida.
Remember, we aren't talking average home prices but average starter home. If I was going to follow your recommendation and focus on a growing market, then I'd have to do the same with the 1955 example which would balance it out again. I've given you apples to apples and you are demanding apples to oranges and accusing me of ignoring data. That's just playing funny with the numbers.
I'm also not sure what you mean by quality. The quality today is significantly better, even with tract homes. Code standards are higher, materials are better quality, and ammenities are much better.
??? Both my housing examples are starter homes not sure why you've decided its apples to oranges. My time line comparison is significantly tighter 90s-24, if you extrapolated to the 50s the difference would be even greater . Ive worked in the housing sector while finishing materials appear higher over all quality is lower. Plywood used to be used everywhere, now its chip board, lumber quality for walls has dropped dramatically as well. So no not higher quality just a fancy wrapper..
What's apples to oranges is that I used average data from the 50s and from today. Apples to apples. You want me to compare the 50s data against growing markets, read higher cost. That's apples to oranges. I looked, and can't find growing market data for the 50s and so I resist changing today's data to a different market.
In the 50s most markets were growing markets. Today we have markets that are seeing fairly dramatic contraction like the mid west, that skews the data. If you compared Austin circa 1950 to Austin today I doubt you have a 1x price increase . Same goes for Orlando, or Miami as well as most other locations people actually want to live
Really interesting, thank you. As someone once said, it is much easier to belive the bad stuff. This is why I make a point of seeing and acknowledging pockets good/kind/positive. Super important I think.
I agree that “Things are getting better in almost all areas.” The below from the book, Rational Optimist, which always strikes me as something we forget that some of the things we have today, even the wealthiest people in the past did not have:
“Today, of Americans officially designated as ‘poor’, 99 per cent have electricity, running water, flush toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 per cent have a television, 88 per cent a telephone, 71 per cent a car and 70 per cent air conditioning. Cornelius Vanderbilt had none of these. Even in 1970 only 36 per cent of all Americans had air conditioning: in 2005 79 per cent of poor households did.”
Another book, Factfullness, provides data supporting the idea that the world is improving. The authors analyzed trends and data to see whether our lives are improving or worsening and showed that things are generally better, regardless of what we read in the news media or social networks. More here: https://tinyurl.com/ytuy8sss
Do the stats distinguish between rural and urban? Seems over the years rural stats on crime would be pretty consistent while urban stats probably go through cycles.
I thought about pulling that thread but ran out of time. Rural crime has largely stayed the same and rural living is what most people seem to discuss with the idyllic time before. But if we go back to a rural town we find we can immediatly get back to that time before. The angst is largely a product of urban / suburban living.
Most of us actually don’t realize how well off & safe we are in modern USA compared to the many other countries & this may be more of a conversation about how we perceive risk, individually. Flying as a passenger can trigger anxiety while driving on crowded city streets seems safe, though we know driving is much more dangerous. We are exposed to crazy videos, accessed by a device I hold in my hand & have with me 24/7, so we think the crazy stuff is all around us, when maybe it’s not. Our modern conveniences (and seemingly higher standard of living) with 5G radiation & ingesting microplastics…the result of which may just spell our doom. Is it the stuff we can’t see that we need to be concerned with?
Yeah, humans are terrible at risk assessment. The book How Risky is it Really dives into that.
https://amzn.to/4gelTqR
Good piece, and things are overwhelmingly getting better for humanity. Folks who want to argue against this do so on the basis of either a superstitious ideal that hearkens back to some ideal past, or on the basis of simple (understandable) ignorance.
I know white Americans felt a sense of normalcy and relief during the time period you discuss, but my brain immediately went to black Americans and how awful this period was for them. I am confident that very few black Americans yearn for the good old days of Jim Crow. That's really just a tangent, though, and doesn't take away from the main idea here.
If anyone is interested in reading about this era, Isabella Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns" covers the Great Migration through several very personal lenses. It's good reading.
I really think the nostalgia is coming off of the trauma of two World Wars and a Depression. Even though it was the height of another war, the cold war, the XYZ/ABC political chaos and assasination of a president and I could go on and on for how chaotic that time frame really was. Nostalgia is weird.
To be honest, I was skeptical at first, as I typically am when articles start with phrases like “investigating internal biases”, but I REALLY enjoyed this! I know I’ve suffered a ton from this lately due to more involvement online, moving to a bigger city where negativity seems more widespread in certain places, and I’ve focused on negatives. But you really highlighted some amazing upwards trends in how much better societies have gotten and what you can get for the same dollar amount. Plus, how much technological advances have helped us. EPA clean ups, clean roads, well kept neighborhoods, etc. This one really hit home for me, thank you Michael!
Thanks! You're right about the internal biases part. Identity politics have kind of ruined that as a useful psychological investigation. But I'm glad you appreciated it. It is hard to step away sometimes and consider just how much we are fed in our media when stepping outside is a whole different world.
Very true. Perception based on what others tell you your reality is versus your true reality can be quite different, but hard to actually differentiate.
I think, for me, that I thought that things would improve way more than they did. Example: The way I was treated back in the 1980s as a female engineer. Compare that to the way my daughter, a female engineer, is treated. She is treated better than I was, but I always thought that it would be better or different by this time. Perhaps I'm impatient. Perhaps I wanted it all "fixed" for my children's generation.
The issue is everything we want fixed is rooted in millions of years of biology that we need to understand better so we can make it better.
Great reminders on how good we've got it and how we will still freak out about it!
I stopped reading when I saw a house price of 170k . Why game your comparisons ? Starter homes if you can find them where I live are over 500k for low quality tract homes(Western Canada) I bought a starter home in the mid 90's for 80k (5 acres+ 10yr old 1500sqft house) I wouldn't want to guess it's current purchase price
I'm gonna chime in here too. Housing prices in America are at record highs - even and especially starter homes. Starter homes in Massachusetts aren't under 350,000k right now. Unless they're total tear downs. My house, a starter home without question, no dishwasher, no AC, 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, and under 1,100 sf, sold for 345K in '21 and is now worth 480K. OH! and the commute to Boston? 1-1/2 hours. So it's value is not boosted by proximity to the city. Granted Massachusetts is in the top 3 most expensive states to live in (I think that's still accurate as of this year.)
While I'm certain 170K is a real figure in the middle states, a lot of us living in this country cannot afford housing or rentals. It's a real crisis. So I agree with A longer name in terms of that statement feeling like it's missing some context.
You are correct. housing at the extremes is... well... extreme right now and the plague of averages is just that. As I mentioned to A Longer Name, the 1950s number also took averages and there was a lot of pressure in those same areas of the country only offset by the extreme suburbanization that was happening at the time.
The prices for houses have gotten insane in the past 4 years even exceeding the heights of 2007. Here's a source for housing. It is slightly higher than what I listed and I'm afraid I made a slight error however, Zillow doesn't have the average prices as significantly higher (compared to your experience)
https://www.zillow.com/learn/buying-starter-home/
Then you missed the best part! This is also US based so that's a consideration on pricing.
I took the average from Zillow and it's US based. If I gamed my comparison, I also gamed it to be cheaper in the past since it also discounted prices in the cities. It might be low but it's low on both comparisons. The argument still stands that the homes aren't even on the same level of quality, size, ammenities, etc.
https://www.zillow.com/learn/buying-starter-home/
By all means lets ignore that in the real world example there's a 5x difference in those figures🙄🤣. If you took figures
from a place in the US with a growing housing market.(Texas or Florida for example )The figures will be a lot closer to mine than yours....I think the actual numbers are important. Using an avg places like Kansas and other mid states mask rapid rises and lack of affordabilty in growth states ,clouding the actual picture.
As noted in my example the quality has dropped substantially, which I expect is also similar to growing US markets like Texas and Florida.
Remember, we aren't talking average home prices but average starter home. If I was going to follow your recommendation and focus on a growing market, then I'd have to do the same with the 1955 example which would balance it out again. I've given you apples to apples and you are demanding apples to oranges and accusing me of ignoring data. That's just playing funny with the numbers.
I'm also not sure what you mean by quality. The quality today is significantly better, even with tract homes. Code standards are higher, materials are better quality, and ammenities are much better.
??? Both my housing examples are starter homes not sure why you've decided its apples to oranges. My time line comparison is significantly tighter 90s-24, if you extrapolated to the 50s the difference would be even greater . Ive worked in the housing sector while finishing materials appear higher over all quality is lower. Plywood used to be used everywhere, now its chip board, lumber quality for walls has dropped dramatically as well. So no not higher quality just a fancy wrapper..
What's apples to oranges is that I used average data from the 50s and from today. Apples to apples. You want me to compare the 50s data against growing markets, read higher cost. That's apples to oranges. I looked, and can't find growing market data for the 50s and so I resist changing today's data to a different market.
In the 50s most markets were growing markets. Today we have markets that are seeing fairly dramatic contraction like the mid west, that skews the data. If you compared Austin circa 1950 to Austin today I doubt you have a 1x price increase . Same goes for Orlando, or Miami as well as most other locations people actually want to live
*... finishing materials appear higher quality , overall....
Really interesting, thank you. As someone once said, it is much easier to belive the bad stuff. This is why I make a point of seeing and acknowledging pockets good/kind/positive. Super important I think.
Thanks and totally agree!
Thank you for the shout-out Michael. At some point, the doom and gloom presented in the media may become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is our job to try and restore the balance by illustrating that, by and large, things are better than they have ever been.
I agree that “Things are getting better in almost all areas.” The below from the book, Rational Optimist, which always strikes me as something we forget that some of the things we have today, even the wealthiest people in the past did not have:
“Today, of Americans officially designated as ‘poor’, 99 per cent have electricity, running water, flush toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 per cent have a television, 88 per cent a telephone, 71 per cent a car and 70 per cent air conditioning. Cornelius Vanderbilt had none of these. Even in 1970 only 36 per cent of all Americans had air conditioning: in 2005 79 per cent of poor households did.”
Another book, Factfullness, provides data supporting the idea that the world is improving. The authors analyzed trends and data to see whether our lives are improving or worsening and showed that things are generally better, regardless of what we read in the news media or social networks. More here: https://tinyurl.com/ytuy8sss
Plus 1 for Factfulness (literally brought me back from the brink of hopelessness, not even kidding!).
I haven't read the Rational Optimist but I did read factfullness and now I'm chagrined I forgot to list it as well! It was a great read.
Do the stats distinguish between rural and urban? Seems over the years rural stats on crime would be pretty consistent while urban stats probably go through cycles.
I thought about pulling that thread but ran out of time. Rural crime has largely stayed the same and rural living is what most people seem to discuss with the idyllic time before. But if we go back to a rural town we find we can immediatly get back to that time before. The angst is largely a product of urban / suburban living.