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I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable

66 points by syel

by megaman821

6 subcomments

Even with these cherry-picked examples, plug in how things actually were. That $8,200 station wagon with at 48 month loan and the terrible 80's loan rates of 10-12% would be like $750/month now. Most of those cars wouldn't make it to 50k miles without a major repair. There were almost no safety features, seat belts weren't required to be worn and you could drink and drive. This weird fetishization of the past is a mental illness.

by tectec

4 subcomments

Pensions used to be free and great, until the company stole from the pension before they went bankrupt and you were left with nothing.

by dgrin91

0 subcomment

Some of these felt very cherry picked. E.g. 8% interest rate in banks? That probably means mortgage rates were 10-15%, where as they are now 5-6%
$0 pensions? Thats just a lie? The pension comes out of your paycheck. Its literally a line item on your pay stub.
Also this site would be better if you overlay inflation or something to highlight when/where costs rose. E.g. using the CPI inflation calculator the $7400 for a new car would be $28k today. $28k wont buy you a F150 today (starts at ~40k) but its a good chunk of the way, and there are other cars you can buy for $28k easy.

by SirMaster

0 subcomment

8% savings accounts? It says today 0.01% below that, but there are definitely high yield saving accounts in the 4-5% range today...
So sure it's half as good, if 8% really was common back then... but weren't loan interest rates even higher back then than today too?

by prewett

0 subcomment

I think this is misleading unless you at least include the price after inflation. "OMG, transportation is out of control. The original Model T only cost $850!!" Well, $850 in 1908 was about $28,000 in 2025 [1], which not unreasonable, seeing as how the starting price (list) of a Honda Civic is about $24,000.
The 2025 Civic is a way better car, though.
[1] https://kevinsautos.com/faq/how-much-did-a-ford-model-t-cost...

by aaaronic

1 subcomments

I'm pretty sure I did not get to keep my shoes on through TSA in 2004. It may not have been mandatory nation-wide until ~2006, but the origin is a 2001 incident.

by MyHonestOpinon

3 subcomments

Nice work please continue with this effort.
On the car comparative. I have a 2010 RAV4, and my wife drives a 2023 RAV4. I love mine, but even if it was perfectly kept. It is smaller, lighter, it has less equipment, I have seen older RAV4s and they look even smaller than mine. What is is the opposite of shrinkflation ? I don't know if it is social pressures or what is is causing us to expect things that are bigger and more expensive.

by SirMaster

0 subcomment

Subsidized smartphone is definitely still here.
I got my 17 Pro ($1100) from ATT for free which is almost twice the cost of the phones back then. And my monthly cost is only $35/mo as well for the 3 year term, for unlimited data too, which is cheaper than the data plans back then.

by syel

0 subcomment

I spent the last 2 months building ideagames.fun : satirical browser experiences about work, money, and modern life. The Middle Class Museum is a guided tour of things that used to be affordable. Starter homes. Pensions. Blockbuster Friday. Each exhibit has a "Today:" line. "Today: $450,000. You are renting Gary's basement." Built in vanilla HTML/CSS/JS — no frameworks, no backend, no database. Runs entirely in the browser. Would love any feedback on what works and what doesn't.

by bklosky

1 subcomments

This is straight up AI generated economic disinformation. Are you seriously claiming that computers cost more in real terms today than 20 years ago?? Some of these goods (housing) do cost more, but a lot of these examples don't make any sense.

by neutronicus

1 subcomments

A townhouse can still be had for <300k in Baltimore

by tim-tday

2 subcomments

Inflation adjusted?

by MarkusQ

4 subcomments

Not adjusting for inflation and quality really damages the integrity of the comparisons, as does cherry picking your base examples.
Taking your first, the $47K 3 bedroom starter home with a yard. In 2026 that would be $200K (cumulative inflation is a little over 4x[1]); picking a random US city[2] and looking on Zillow[3] I find that...yeah, you can get a comparable home today.
There are certainly arguments to be made about tradeoffs, quality issues (though those aren't as obvious as you might initially suppose[4]) and so on. But just listing unadjusted price comparisons like this is disingenuous.
[1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1980?amount=1 [2] https://www.randomlists.com/random-us-cities [3] https://www.zillow.com [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4C62HC1HSo

by pjc50

1 subcomments

Obligatory HN web design complaint: this uses horizontal instead of vertical scrolling, which is fine-ish, but does not work when using the scrollwheel.

by wang_li

1 subcomments

Lots of problems with this. The noted lack of inflation adjustment. The savings interest item ignores the fact that loan interest rates were 10%+ when you could get a good rate on your savings account. The student loan one is just wrong, the average student loan debt in 2026 is $43k. You ignore the point of the avocado toast (what used to be called the latte factor) simply so you can make some pithy comment. If you don't buy $14 toast 5 days a week, you can save $3500 per year. If you do that for 5 years you have a great addition to your downpayment for a home. Or you can use the money saved to buy a brand-new Nissan Versa, a perfectly fine starter car for a young couple with 1 or 2 young kids, for $17,000. Blockbuster Friday comes out to 4 movies a month for $16. Compared to $16 for a streaming service that you can watch every single night. And everyone knows the experience of going to a video rental store and walking the aisles for what felt like hours trying to find something to watch, just a different kind of scrolling. In 30 years of working in IT, cubicles have been the norm. 30m from where I'm sitting right now there is a ping pong table. The break room is huge and has plenty of large, cushioned seating that you can lie down on and take a nap if you need to. As well as small private meeting spaces if you just have to get away from everyone. This is not a tech startup or FAANG. The summer job is still true for most state universities. Utah State University 2026 tuition and fees is $4500 per semester.
If you don't want to pay subscriptions, don't subscribe to those services. You can trivially buy Bluray, DVD, and CDs. Or you can get DRM free music from multiple sources. You can stream spotify and youtube for free. OTA TV is still a thing.
Apparently, I'm in a contrarian and argumentative mood today.

by sollewitt

1 subcomments

This is US centric, but you can show this to anyone in any major city in the western world and they will nod.
The problem is global. Any time you are told the problem is immigrants in your country or that your local politicians didn’t build enough housing - that’s not the root cause.
The root cause is the inevitable centralization of all wealth in corporations who can dodge taxes. This affords them the ability to accrue assets endlessly, buy politicians, achieve monopolies and bump up the prices.
There are 3 things that need to happen to restore the first frames: 1) some things like housing and healthcare must not be asset classes. It is unsustainable to demand profit growth year over year from either. 2) the wealth needs to be redistributed. It is a systemic risk for corporations and individuals to have accrued as much wealth and power as nations (and it doesn’t seem to be good for the mental health of those at the top) 3) we all need unions so workers can advocate for themselves and even the playing field. Including tech.
I’m not a communist, I think capitalism broadly works, but it requires regulation. We deregulated and it’s made a mess, we need to wind that back and patch the bad logic.

by nayuki

0 subcomment

A bunch of refutations:
None of the prices are inflation-adjusted. That gives more sticker shock than reality.
> The Starter Home / No bidding war. / Gary just... bought it.
That was back when land was plentiful and cheap, and homes had fewer features and comforts. Now all the desirable land is taken, and existing homeowners don't want to increase density, so prices go up and newcomers get pushed farther out. NIMBYs and exclusionary zoning are a large part of the problem.
> The Pension / Your employer saved for your retirement.
I dislike the old-style "defined-benefit" pensions, because you are completely at the whim of your employer. They set the arbitrary terms of tenure (how much pension you receive in relation to how many years you work), pay-in, and payout. You're also reliant on your company staying solvent to pay you in retirement. Nope, I much prefer "defined-contribution" self-funded pensions where your account is segregated from everyone else, and usually you get to choose excellent low-cost broad-market index funds. In Canada, DC is RRSP, and I guess in the USA it's 401(k) and IRA. DC also allows you to job-hop much more easily because the amount you contributed to your retirement account is clearly yours and not a matter of company policy.
> One-Income Household / Dad worked. Mom stayed home.
I think that arrangement was bad for women's autonomy and rights, but someone more qualified than me can speak about it.
> National Park Vacation / Pay $5. No reservation required.
Well, the growth in parks didn't match population growth. Or there's a growth in domestic and international tourism in general.
> The Savings Account / The bank paid you 8% a year
I'm pretty sure that happened during a period when annual inflation was 10~15%, meaning that you lost money by "saving" cash. Also, interest is taxed at a much higher marginal rate than capital gains, so it's dumb to invest in cash instead of stocks. It is true, though, that in much of my adult life, the savings account interest rate is around 0~2%, making it a completely meaningless financial product to me.
> c. 1994 / The Family Computer / $2000
You can buy an entry-level laptop for about $500 since the year 2010. The barrier to entry in getting a computer went down gradually each year.
> c. 2000 / The $1 Slice / A massive, greasy slice of New York style pizza
I bought a $1 slice in NYC in the year 2019 and it was a decent size. I haven't visited afterward so I can't say.
> The DVD Collection / You owned your media.
You can still buy Blu-ray discs of your favorite movies. Most people choose not to out of short-term convenience.
> Flying / Free bags, shoes on
Those features aren't "free". It costs the airline money and opportunity cost to move your luggage (excess room can be used for paid cargo shipments). Those features have just been unbundled so that people who don't need the feature don't pay it, people who need it pay it, and you don't have the non-users subsidizing the users. That's like saying a $50 buffet is "free" even though you'd be equally satisfied with a $20 meal paid à la carte.
> 401k Matching / Free money
Lolno, there's no such thing as free money. "Employer pays" still affects how much the employer spends on you, which ultimately affects their calculation on who to hire and how much to pay them. It only affects the split of how much of the employer's money gets paid to you as an unrestricted salary versus restricted programs like healthcare insurance and pensions.
> The 99-Cent App / No accounts
I'm pretty sure you need an Apple or Google account to buy the app in the first place. After you bought the app, you can reinstall it for free on any newer phone that you buy.
> The Subsidized Smartphone
I heard that the old days were not good, because the 2-year contract forced you to buy a higher tier cellular service plan than if you brought in a fully paid-off phone. Also, there are significant fees for breaking the 2-year contract.
> Buying a House in a City / you could still buy a 2-bedroom in Austin for $210,000
Yeah, thank NIMBYs for that again. When residential construction can't keep up with demand (mostly due to regulatory reasons), prices go up.
> The Stimulus Check / Billionaires blame inflation on you buying groceries with it.
You don't believe that printing money causes inflation? WTF
> Remote Work / Your company saved millions on office real estate.
You make it sound bad. I think it was great - zero time spent commuting, access to amenities at home such as a kitchen, more privacy, better mood.
> The Subscription Everything / You own nothing.
Renting isn't necessarily worse than owning. There is a break-even point that is different for every person. Renting Netflix for $0.01/month would be awesome. Maybe most people will be happy to pay $10/mo to have access to an enormous media library. $100/mo would be unreasonable. Consider the alternative - how much per month does it cost to purchase physical media to derive the same amount of enjoyment from entertainment?
> The Tip Screen / barista ... ask you to subsidize their wages because the corporation won't
"The corporation" ultimately receives money from customers who pay for the product. If no customer paid tips, "the corporation" can't magically create money out of thin air to pay the employees more; the corp would need to raise prices on the menus (which I agree with).
No, the question isn't whether "the corporation pays", because that's nonsense; it's whether people are obliged to pay because it clearly says so on the menu price, or generous people "voluntarily" pay more towards the barista's wages because they are socially "expected to".
> The End. / You own nothing. You subscribe to everything. Your rent is higher than your parents' mortgage.
It's worth repeating: Renting is not necessarily worse than owning. For housing, many people have done the analysis and I can point you to a heap of YouTube videos explaining the situation. There are both financial and non-financial aspects (e.g. Realtor fees, breaking a mortgage) to this comparison.

by maldusiecle

1 subcomments

Yeah it's really messed up that middle class people can't afford to...rent movies...anymore?