[quote=sdrealtor]get off it BG, I am not addressing your values but rather society at large’s value. Growing up people I knew didnt have 3 TV’s or eat out every week. My best friend’s father was VP of sales and Marketing for a pretty large international company. They drove 2 simple american cars, lived in 1800 sq ft 2 story home w/ a 1 car garage, never travelled to Europe and rarely travelled anywhere but FLA to visit family. He had a big time job. When he retired, he was one of 2 co-founders of what was the #1 sports memorabilia company in the country and sold out at the peak when they went public for 8 figures and never altered their lifestyle much. Another good friends father was a physician and drove a Dodge dart until the wells fell off. They like most of the people I know lived simple comfortable lives but saved and retired comfortably.
I listen to the lifestyle CAR says she grew up around and wonder how much here and her DH’s parents retired with? I wonder whether they were living beyond their means and not saving much? I don’t know? Maybe she can fill us in?[/quote]
One other note about the way you are looking at things…
You’re thinking longitudinally when determining whether or not today’s families are better off than families were in the 1960s-1980s. Humans measure status/wealth laterally — they compare themselves to their peers at a given point in time.
Technological improvements, more efficient manufacturing/distribution methods, etc. might improve our lives over time; we might have three TVs that cost less than one TV did in the 1960s or 1970s. It doesn’t mean that we are spending a greater portion of our income on “wants” than we were in those earlier decades.
What would be more instructive when talking about wealth would be to compare apples to apples — what were the income/wealth/lifestyle differences between certain occupations in the 1960s-1980s vs. today? What were the lifestyle differences in the 1970s, for instance, between a family of four with a doctor as head-of-household vs. a plumber as head-of-household, and how does that compare to the differences between those households, today? If we analyze these differences between a variety of professions and family types, what would that look like? From everything I’ve seen, the differences between these families has grown significantly over the past few decades. THAT is at the root of many of our problems, IMHO.
