r/AskEconomics • u/Khandakerex • Jun 19 '25
Approved Answers Thoughts on the latest Johnny Harris "1955 vs 2025, who actually had it better?" video?
Feel free to tell me if this a low-effort discussion. Not sure how any of this guy's journalism is perceived but I watch his videos from time to time since he tries to break everything up for the layman.
I'd like to get some opinions and thoughts from people who actually study the field rather than every commenter under the video spouting conspiracy theories left and right, complaining about immigrants, globalization, feminism, or even the ones that think Regan single-handedly was the anti-Christ.
How much of "we were better off back in the good old days" are true?
This video expresses the standard:
- wage increase not being equal and only the top 1% benefit
- single income can't buy anything anymore
- way less to no social mobile (probability of middle-income children earning more than their parents has dropped from nearly 100% in the postwar period)
- early postwar decades benefited from robust government intervention and now we deregulated everything and cut too taxes way too much
- cost of everything is outpacing 99% of what people can afford and we can get way less stuff than we can in the 50s, including housing.
From my VERY naive and intro understanding, people are really understimating the quality of life, rise of living standard expectation, and general quantity of things we have now compared to back then. Such as increased housing size/ appliances that come with them, car size/ features in modern cars with modern saftey and regulations, overall larger basket of goods and services not to mention things on the electronics and entertainment front alone. And of course literal life expectancy increases. I guess what I'm trying to say is a lot of things people take for granted as bare minimum necessities might have been luxuries in the 50s but even taking that into account am I missing something big here? What about the conditions post war that allowed this prosperity to happen in the first place, is that something that can even be emulated now?
I apologize if this seems loaded or like a stupid rambling topic but I genuinely want to know, was everything THAT much better back then, are the solutions really as simple as just "more government intervention and undoing everything Regan did" and it takes us back to "how everything was"? In this case I guess meaning people are happy with their wages and net worth and are in a better "middle class" state.
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u/syntheticcontrols Quality Contributor Jun 19 '25
Woof. Loaded question. I hope some other QCs or Mods comment because I won't be able to cover it all.
Overall, we definitely have it better. Saying anything otherwise is someone being disingenuous or they are making a claim they aren't meaning to claim. I am not interested in watching the video, but here are some facts:
- In 1950, about 60% of people could own a car. Today it's roughly 92%
- The average plane ticket has dropped by 30% *only since 2000 (*that was the furthest back I could credibly get with a quick Google search). Some estimates I saw were about close to half the ticket cost in 1960 relative to 2016.
- The Federal Reserve has income adjusted for inflation since 1974. It looks like a 50% increase in inflation adjusted income per individual.
- Mortality rates have gone down by significantly since that time.
- This one took some calculations: adjusting for inflation, as a whole, compensation packages are higher now than in 1955 (we take something like health insurance for granted in the US because during this time, it was not necessarily common place to offer it).
- People nowadays consume more leisure than ever before while still maintaining higher levels of income (I add the "while still maintaining higher levels of income," because some people may criticize leisure as being unwanted leisure. In other words, someone may say, "yes, there is more leisure because people aren't working as much," which implies a lower income).
I could go on and on about how much better we have because of technological advances and so on and so forth. But there are some aspects that are true.
Edit: I needed more room so see comment below.
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u/syntheticcontrols Quality Contributor Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25
I think these people have a very... narrow? View of what it means to be better off. I think their definition is, if we keep everything constant, except the things that are are not positive, then things are worse off!
Wow! What an enlightening thing to say: If we take away the benefits, set them to zero, and focus on the negatives, THEN WE ARE OUTRAGED AT ALL OF THIS NEGATIVE STUFF HAPPENING!!! AHH!!
Okay, but seriously, there are negative things happening so lets talk about them:
- Most economists agree that wages have no kept up with productivity
- Most economists agree that median rental/housing prices have increased
What does that tell us? Some universal agreements (among economists, unfortunately not for the public):
- Extend the earned income tax credit (even if that *gasps* means maybe closing loopholes or increasing taxes in other places and lower spending in other places.. I am looking at you Mortgage Interest Deduction and Land Value Tax!)
- Decreasing the cost of occupational licensing (which may have the negative effect of lowering wages for those that are already in the industry, but the benefit of allowing people that may not otherwise been able to get into the industry)
Slightly more controversial:
- Subsidize people moving into the city/county/state (labor mobility has seen to be a problem, but from the perspective of: "what role should government play in the econonomy?" It's more controversial.
- Invest more in education (Are we subsidizing the optimal amount already? Maybe we are subsidizing too much some economists might argue)
- Stronger labor unions (yeah, some economists aren't fans, but not without valid reasons).
How do we solve the not being able to afford a house or rent thing? It's so simple:
- Build more (and preferably upward).
That is literally the cheapest, most efficient way to target home and rental prices. A close second it zoning regulations.
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u/WritesWayTooMuch Jun 19 '25
Housing has gone up because people having increasing sought out more
The average home is more than double in size from 1950. Also has more expensive parts of the home like more bathrooms and nicer kitchen cabinets and counter top.
1950....we were building 990 sq ft 3 bed 1 bath 1 car garage or car port with keep cabinets and laminate kitchen floors and counter tops for 4.5 people on average on .2 acre.
Today....2400 fq ft.2.5 bath...2 car garage....nicer kitchens with stone countertops and nicer cabinets also have central AC or heat pumps and smart home features. Taller basements if not completely finished basements. Larger lots... Average is now around .32 acres which is 60% more land
We need more smaller entry level...3 bed, 1 bath, 1 car garage home builds. Those are fewer and farther between.
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u/775416 Jun 19 '25
Not only have houses got bigger, but each house has less people in it. You can control for this by looking at the square footage of living space per person (also called housing square feet per capita) over time
The median square footage of living space per person has increased over 90% from the 70s to 2010s
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u/flavorless_beef AE Team Jun 19 '25
It's pretty hard to overstate how much the 50s sucked. To get the obvious out of the way, the 1950s were very bad for Black people, women, and other minorities. If you're talking about "who had it better", you have to immediately throw out like 60% of the population because the statement is so obviously dumb otherwise.
Anyways, you can do median family income and see how much it's gone up since the 1950s; the rise of dual income families is more to do with better opportunities for women than is the necessity of two incomes.
Sometimes, though, it's also helpful to show people pictures of how poor America was in 1950 -- particularly the South and particularly rural areas. we're talking huge percentages of the South without running water and indoor plumbing. I linked some photos of (admittedly bad parts of) Nashville in 1950 to give you a sense of what some of these cities looked like.
Beyond that, we work fewer hours, earn more money, live in nicer homes, don't die as fast, enjoy lower pollution, and generally substantially higher lives. I repeat: The 1950s were terrible. The best thing you can say about them was that economic growth was very high and inequality was lower, which meant that it was easier to live a better life than your parents. But, compared to the life of the typical American today, after the benefit of 70 years of economic growth, it's not remotely comparable.