this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 month ago (2 children)

There's a famous Agatha Christie quote where she mentions that when she was young, she never imagined she'd be rich enough to own an automobile or poor enough to not have servants in her house. At some point, the affordability of one shot way past the other.

In my lifetime, I've seen huge cost increases in housing, and huge cost decreases in most technological products. When I was a kid, the normal TV size was something like 20 inches, and cost more than a month's rent for a typical apartment. In 1990, the average rent was $447, according to this. I found a Sears catalog from 1989 with a 25 inch TV selling for $549, and a 20 inch TV for $318. It would be hard to convince someone from 1990 that one day the cheapest, shittiest apartments in the poorest neighborhoods would rent for more than a 60-inch TV per month. Or that the typical ambulance ride costs something like a month's salary of a factory worker.

That's the real problem with old people's sense of money. The human tendency is to assume that all products cost the same multiple of those products prices in their early adulthood, so the luxury products of their youth remain the luxury products of today. These old people are stuck in some kind of Agatha Christie style of cost comparison, without the self awareness, and thinking that someone who owns a cell phone should be able to afford to buy a single family detached house, or couldn't possibly be bankrupted by a single Emergency Room visit.

[–] slappypantsgo@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I totally agree with you that this is true, but I think it’s more a problem with reactionary thinking than anything else. The way I see it, the type of thinking that leads to reactionary comments is individualistic solutions to social and economic problems because you’re not allowed to question affordability.

People of all ages pull this shit. I can’t count how many times some millennial on reddit made unwanted suggestions for a poor person’s budgeting or grocery purchases. It is obviously difficult for older folks to understand things they’re not experiencing, but I don’t think that’s the primary issue.

Ask any traitor lunatic under 40 what to do about high prices, they’ll tell you exactly.

[–] TheCriticalMember@aussie.zone 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I definitely see this a lot. Any time someone complains about the unaffordability of life you get a swarm of people prying into their personal details desperately trying to figure out how that person's situation is their own fault.

[–] slappypantsgo@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

Exactly. I never want to hear from someone making >$300,000 that I should be eating lentils all week.