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Various threads lately have had me thinking about how incredibly wealthy we are as a country, and how it definitely was not always so. For example, I made this comment a couple days ago about how everyone was just flat super poor back in 1900, and we're literally at least 10x richer now. I had likewise told the following story in the old place, in context of wealth to afford vast quantities of food (and how that may interplay with societal obesity):
I didn't completely spell it out, but that was my wife's father's story when he was a child in Canada. (I also hedged on the number; my best memory was that it was precisely one 50lb bag and one 5lb chunk). That was not that long ago.
Yesterday, I read an obituary for a 95 year old who was born in a homestead dugout in New Mexico. Literally born in a hole in the ground.
Perspective on how utterly ridiculously quickly we went from basically universal poverty to nearly universal wealth is often lacking in many conversations where it could be quite beneficial. Sure, some in the capitalism/communism debates (or more generally the sources/causes of wealth and how it interacts with society's choices/governance), but also in obesity conversations (as mentioned) and even fertility conversations. Born in a homestead dugout. And you don't want to have a kid because of a car seat?!
I still don't properly know how exactly to craft an argument that comes to a clean conclusion, but I really feel like this historical perspective is seriously lacking in a country where the median age is under 40 and many folks no longer have communal contexts where they get exposed to at least a slice of history from their elders.
If we look at the 3-5 basic categories (food clothing Shelter plus the lifestyle inflation ones of transportation and medical care) we see that 1950 wasn't absurdly much poorer than 2024, while houses are signficantly better compared to 1950 a lot of houses are pretty old stock so they aren't as much better as you'd expect.
A Cadillac series 62 was 1.8k in 1950 dollars, which appears to be about 2/3rds of an annual salary.. I can't buy a car that crappy new, so I'll look at the car I can buy, a Nissan Versa for 17k. My salary as a freaking Gym desk worker is 40k/year, so a Nissan versa to me is cheaper than a cadilllac series 62 was for the average family in 1950.
Medical care is weird, but I pay $280 a month for insurance, which covers things I don't need, but it also covers 3 "prepaid" doctors visits a year. It also fully covered me for the $100k hospital bill I got when I broke my leg. Medical care has gotten a lot more expensive and is one of the few places where I feel wealth doesn't go as far.
Food is so cheap it may as well be free. Famous health nut bryan johnson has a diet that costs a little less than $20 a day. This is Health nut food mind you but I eat it because I'm too lazy to think about food anymore. 1950 food prices were worse but only like 2x worse it seems?
Clothing may as well be free. I don't even spend $300 a year on clothes.
Shelter though.... yeah this sucks. I currently live with my parents, but otherwise I'd have to shell out 1.4k a month for the smallest apartment I can live in.
Basically if housing costs could go down (Build more housing goddamnit) then the concept of being poor would go from a minor joke to a total joke
That's apples and oranges though. Judging by the results of a Google search, the former was a rather fantastic looking, comfy luxury sedan, while the latter is just an average, plain modern sedan.
Indeed, the modern equivalent of the Series 62, being any upmarket SUV, will run you 50-70 kilodollars now, or a year and a quarter the average salary of 60 kilodollars.
Of course, that's also ignoring that those modern luxury SUVs are arguably more than twice the car the 62 was, in that you're not just sitting on a flat bench, you can put stuff in the back, and if you crash it at 100 mph you'll almost certainly survive. That is reflected in the purchase price.
Isn't the modern equivalent a present-day Cadillac luxury sedan instead?
In terms of being a land-yacht I think only the Escalade really compares; their luxury sedans are 12-18" shorter and 6" narrower (or rather, were, as the longer of the two is no longer produced).
I don't really understand why you'd want an automobile that long but market research is quite clear in that people prefer utterly massive cars. I guess they don't like turning corners particularly quickly, I dunno.
Disregarding the trope concerning penis size, I can think of a couple of things:
Health problems. Due to sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy living in general, many middle-aged people have painful back problems, in which case they'll prefer to use cars that are high-riding, and those are normally big.
Safetyism. Heavier cars are more safe if you get into an accident.
The middle-class suburban soccer mom / NASCAR dad lifestyle entails carrying large amounts of baggage (heh) around on a regular basis (shopping at the mall once a week or every two weeks, taking the kids to practice). Thus, bigger and heavier card are handy.
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