Why the rent is too damn high but the TVs are not

You should be able to raise a family on one single income. But @shoe0nhead is right to ask — how do we get there? First, let’s talk about making more money. And later this week we’ll answer the next question: how do we get costs down so that your money has value? https://t.co/YT4deiJfYy pic.twitter.com/04MTDkrt1O

— Blake Masters (@bgmasters) January 31, 2022

I can’t believe this moron is running for office and will probably win. But is he wrong? Isn’t it true that many Americans could survive on one income and that’s no longer the case? The neoliberals insist everything keeps getting better but it doesn’t feel that way.

So I guess I need to do some research to find what is true. And it starts with the graphic:

This blog post explains how author Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny, but not a car. Today, for most people, the opposite is true; they can afford a car but not a maid. Some things have gotten cheaper and some have gotten more expensive.

Life seems better in the 1950s for most middle-class families, but they had fewer and crappier clothes, electronics, toys, and cars. What was actually better was the cost of education, mortgages, and healthcare. Something “bring back American jobs” will have no impact on.

Housing is tricky. The chart shows almost no change but that’s because it looks at all US homes and gives an average. Wages are better, but they require degrees. And to find the jobs that pay those wages you need to move to parts of the country where housing is scarce, making it more expensive and often requiring two-income households. (I'd also guess the decrease in married households makes the cost of living look much worse compared to the good old days.)

Read this report from the Brookings Institute and you'll see that St. Louis has more houses that households, making housing cheap. San Francisco is the opposite, more households than housing, making housing expensive. And you can’t just pick up vacant homes and move them to where people live.

The rate of housing has not kept up with population growth, which is why you need two incomes to raise a family. I don’t see how an America First strategy is going to result in more housing to drive down prices so families will only need one income.

So if your plan to fix America's problem is to look back at how good we had it, you are going to trade off a lot of things that many Americans currently like (cheap electronics, cars, toys, and clothes). Unless you can clearly articulate a way to drive down the cost of education, healthcare, and housing, you're just another charlatan.