[WillPostForFood]

Yes I agree they are MUCH more expensive relatively. But they are more expensive entirely by choice, not because of inflation or stagnant wages. People want better cars, and that costs more. The government demands lower emissions, that costs more. Safety costs more. There is no world where you get all that for the same percentage of income.

you would've been living it up with a new car and a nice home with a 30min commute

And you be killed or paralyzed after a fender bender. Death rate per 100,000,000 miles dropped from 5 in 1970 to 1.4 in 2023.

[majormajor]

> People want better cars, and that costs more. The government demands lower emissions, that costs more. Safety costs more. There is no world where you get all that for the same percentage of income.

Hell, we did it with computers. Let's figure out how to do it in more places.

Isn't that supposed to be the main job of the economy? Increase productivity? So that we all get more for less? Make the pie bigger, don't just make your own slice bigger?

If there's "no world" where all that can happen, most of the "taxes will hurt innovation, actually" arguments fall EXTREMELY hollow. Let's connect a few dots:

- Streets are in disrepair

- You can't afford the lifestyle you used to (by "choice")

- It's far harder for people, especially the young, to find a job (many end up hiding on disability and such that didn't exist much several decades ago in the first place)

- The wealthy have more money, and proportionally more money, than any time in the last century

Maybe instead of choosing the more expensive car we should start choosing to put some of that money to use repairing our basic infrastructure and trying to increase whole-society productive output instead of bottom-line ROI.

[WillPostForFood]

It is happening with cars too, it just that features are being added even faster than the price can come down. If you wanted Ford F-150 in 1970, you could do most of it, but it would have been a multi-million dollar car. You get all that for 50k. You are getting a lot more per dollar.

This reminds me the housing discussing - a part of the affordability problem is that houses have gotten much bigger. And have air conditioning. And have to comply with strict building codes. And have to be fire safe.

[thayne]

> There is no world where you get all that for the same percentage of income.

There is if we are comparing 2026 to the 70s. Technology has increased productivity overall. If those gains were distributed more evenly, it is more likely that the cost of, say a car, would be similar to the same percentage of income.

[WillPostForFood]

Productivity is up ~3x since 1970, but the car price has gone up 25x. It is driven by the massive increase in features/complexity on cars, and that means it will cost a bigger percentage of income. There is no possible redistribution of gains that would have driven income up 25x to match the car prices.

[danaris]

> There is no world where you get all that for the same percentage of income.

This is only true because real income has barely budged since the 1970s.

If real income had tracked productivity during that time, we would have plenty. But it didn't. All the increases have been siphoned off to feed the ultra-wealthy, in a variety of ways.

[WillPostForFood]

real income has barely budged since the 1970s

This is not true. Real income has more than doubled since 1970.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=o1gV

All the increases have been siphoned off to feed the ultra-wealthy

No, the productivity gains are eaten up by expensive items with low perceived value. You don't think about the $1000 catalytic converter in your car, or $5,000 set of airbags. You just think you are paying more to do the exact same drive to work that you could have done in a $2,000 1970s car. And that's true! Nonetheless, there is real added cost and value to the car.