Linked by Howard Fosdick on Mon 19th Nov 2012 09:15 UTC
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RE[5]: Comment by deathshadow
by Alfman on Sat 24th Nov 2012 17:37
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by deathshadow"
zima,
"The link is from 1996, but its general premise still very much holds"
It doesn't make sense to throw out past knowledge, of course. However many economists were dumbstruck with what has happened since then. Clearly they were not on the money.
"So, maybe another factor: you're simply starting to feel the more 'real' costs of living on this planet... free lunch nearly over."
Couldn't agree more. The western standard of living isn't necessarily sustainable nor scalable.




Member since:
2005-07-06
[...]
"Either way, possibly an important factor is what kind of houses people want and/or expect - and they're a bit different than in the past"
That's true, but even so I think today's middle class is financially worse off than yesterday's middle class.
The link is from 1996, but its general premise still very much holds - people often have the tendency to look at the past through rose-tinted glasses, that's one of major biases of our memory. Meanwhile, we often get much better bang-for-buck.
BTW, you have rather low car and petrol prices, anyway... And personal anecdote WRT food prices: at least 1.5 year ago they also seemed distinctly lower than in a fairly typical recent EU member state (so a more impoverished place, with much lower wages) - and that in coastal Florida, so also likely not the cheapest of US places.
So, maybe another factor: you're simply starting to feel the more "real" costs of living on this planet (maybe boiling down to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_welfare_and_ecological_foot... ), free lunch nearly over.
Edited 2012-11-24 10:08 UTC