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littlecranky67 • today at 9:00 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

It is just an example, but you come to the base of my argument: CPI basket is an average - and you cannot use it to make statements about individuals. If Netflix is nothing to you, then look at houses: My granparents (born even after 1920s) had an outhouse. That means, every time you need to use the bathroom, you left your house through the garden - come wind and weather. That meant in the winter, you were walking through the snow and do your business in a small, smelly outhouse without no access to running water whatsover at sub-zero degrees. Yet there are people running around saying that our grandparents could afford houses, while we can't anymore.

The quality of the house your grandparents (for 1920 probably your grand-gran parents) is vastly different. Those houses cannot be compared at all, when I take my dump in the heated warmth in a nicely smelling place listening to some music over my airpods.


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versteegen • today at 10:19 AM

Getting offtopic... for my father growing up in the Netherlands, the early 50's was still as you describe: an outhouse with a bucket, no running water, an uninsulated house with a roof that let in snow; he caught every illness. They had electricity but no appliances (except a radio?). By the time he was 18, they had a heater, fridge, freezer, washing machine, he had a (rusty) Mercedes and they got a TV soon after. So progress has been very uneven and if you only go back 40 years goods are far more comparable.