Wow. I'm in my 60's and have problems with this statement. How old are you? If you want to live like the 50's, better get ready for 1 car, 4 kids and 1200 sq feet houses (or less) in suburbia. And you better get rid of those robots and get companies to return salaries to 50's levels. Oh, pensions, gotta get them to do pensions again.
Toss the computers also, as we need to reestablish clerical positions to give the at-home spouse something to do once the last child's in school.
Our house currently has 1 car, 0 kids, and a 1600 sq foot house, and has been that way for the past 5 years (we rented a condo for two years before that). This sounds like mostly a step up for me, especially the kids.
We haven't been able to justify having any kids yet still, and I'm nearly at the age where it starts becoming harder to have them (happens for guys in their mid 40s).
My parents had me and a house in their 20s. I just had shitty credit, student loans, and roommates.
Look the the 1960's to today, as more women entered the workplace, labors share of the fruits of their labor was halved as productivity doubled.
To go into more detail check out Elizabeth Warren's book: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke
From the summary:
In this revolutionary exposé, Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren and financial consultant Amelia Tyagi show that today's middle-class parents are increasingly trapped by financial meltdowns. Astonishingly, sending mothers to work has made families more vulnerable to financial disaster than ever before. Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but has 25% less discretionary income to cover living costs...
And...if we zoom out a bit...the gap in income inequality has increased. That is, the result of those two-incomes and less discretionary income is more wealth concentrated in fewer hands at the top.
It's really interesting. You know how some economists said that in the future we would have shorter and shorter work weeks due to increases in productivity? Well we did and gave most of that benefit to women, then a "totally organic" movement decided that women need to be put to work and the shorter weeks disappeared leaving families worse off than before.
Housing prices rose not because of two-income households but because of housing shortages. Because homes for sale are in short supply, the homeowner can pick and choose the highest bidder.
Yes, supply has been limited. But demand - as well as what the market will bear* - has also increased. Price is a function of all three.
* We had the 30 yr mortgage and now 40 yr and 50 yr mortgages are seen as a way to make buying a home more affordable. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. The longer term lowers the monthly payment (temporarily) but at the same time demand is increased. When demand is increased...wait for it...prices increases.
On the other hand, as unpopular as this might be to say, limiting mortgages to 25 yrs, 20 yrs, or less would lower demand. Yes, please, also increase supply.
If you want a comparable example, look at student loans. More loans, larger loans and lower rates...increased demand, as well as what the market could bear and...prices went up, up, up.
This isn't rocket science. It's Economics 101. Unfortunately, most of our political "leader" are versed in law, not basic economics.
Everything you said is true. I kept my original comment short to emphasize the shortage as the main cause of price increases. A shortage occurs when supply is less than demand. It can happen even as both increase, as long as supply increases more slowly than demand.
I like to view housing as a game of musical chairs. If you have 100 chairs but 300 people competing for the chairs, 200 people will necessarily walk away disappointed. If people get dual incomes and longer mortgages (with lower monthly payments), that's like giving people faster legs. There are still 100 chairs and 200 people disappointed at the end of the day.
This ^
Though, I think we need to find data to support the claims in this thread. More income and more demand in housing could increase prices,but also increase the viability of building houses and just as plausibly lead to an increase in home construction.
Toss the computers also, as we need to reestablish clerical positions to give the at-home spouse something to do once the last child's in school.