The Extraordinary Rise in the American Standard of Living Since 1970
The best time to be alive and build things.
Our friend Michael Magoon has written an excellent article comparing the standard of living in 1970 compared to 2024. You can read it here:
This is a summary of his findings:
Please consider subscribing to his Substack From Poverty to Progress.
When human beings are free to innovate and enjoy free markets to share their products and services, life gets better for everyone.
Edit: Ooops! I see that Magoon did address some of this in his piece. I'll just leave this here for context.
This is great, and I certainly agree with your general point of increased abundance and affluence. And yes, people refuse to look at the good things and gripe about the problems. But I think it's somewhat disingenuous to not include the main gripes for contextualization, even if you think they're overstated (I know you didn't make this personally, but were just sharing).
For instance, inflation adjusted...
Median home price 1970: $130,000
Median home price 2024: $420,000
4 year university, annually, 1970: $6,700
4 year university, annually, 2024 $26,000
Childcare, 1970: $3,900 (rough estimate, stats are shaky)
Childcare 2024: $15,000
So housing burden 15-20% of income in 1970 to 30-45% of income, 2024
Childcare ~3% – 7% of Household Income 1970 to ~12% – 18% of Household Income 2024
Public College (annual) ~11% of Family Income 1970 to 25% of Family Income 2024
Now the upside of this is that even accounting for this surge in housing prices, the median 1970 family had $45,045 left over after housing costs, and the 2024 family had $52,312.
If you have no kids in childcare or college, that's a big net win, and more to your point of "we're better off.". If you do have kids in childcare or college though, or you need to buy health insurance or pay for care, you're considerably worse off.
When looking at the circumstances in which they live, people have a negativity bias. They assume things are worse than they are and they assume things will get worse not better!