The flat-chested look was also en vogue in the 1920s.
On yesterday’s Open Thread (posted Saturday), I posted a link to Mike Benz podcast, explaining how the purchase of bomb materials by Brian Cole in June 2020, which was about the same time when 70 Never Trumpers, Military intelligence and other high Federal officials met, might relate to “The Transition Integrity Project” (TIP).
It was a war-gaming exercise by Democrats that literally rehearsed how to stop Trump even if he won the November 2020 election outright
Flopping Aces outlines Benz hour-long YT exposition via X.com. EXCERPT:
The TIP documents were written as a “war game.”
But what they rehearsed wasn’t “what if Trump refuses to leave?”
What they rehearsed was:
“How do we prevent Trump from taking office even if he wins?”
And their strategy relies heavily on one thing:January 6.”
THIS LINKED PAGE includes a couple other highly relevant documents such as Molly Ball’s infamous Time Mag boast from February 2021, that interests supporting the Democrat Party heroically just saved democracy (by killing it).
The dots connecting J6 to an actual Fedsurrection conspiracy are being identified. Benz himself call it an adaptable outline that a serious Federal prosecutor may follow.
Flopping Aces introduces hit thread very ominously:
“If you think January 6 was spontaneous chaos, buckle up.
Because in June 2020…seven months before the riot, Washington insiders held a secret war game called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) that literally rehearsed a “January 6 breakdown.”
Not metaphorically. Not vaguely. Literally.”
TJ, as I noted in another comment I’ve long suspected that might be the case.
Also remember how Hillary’s team tried to intimidate enough Electors in 2016 to either give her a win or throw the election into the House.
Well the paintings aren’t actually representational of what humans really look like in detail (take a gander at her fingers).
I was struck by all the straight lines and angles, especially with the first woman depicted and the last. In the headdress as well.
Reminds me of the designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. I didn’t realize that he designed so many styles, many of them rather conventional looking automobiles as well as cameras and watches, but the distinctive angular ones I remember are cars like the Lotus Esprit, the BMW M1, and the DeLorean.
The Blaze retracted their story about the female alleged J6 pipe bomber who was fingered based on gait analysis:
“An attorney for the Capitol Police officer has since denied the allegations on her behalf, and CBS News reported that the FBI ruled out her involvement, citing three unidentified sources who said there was a video of her playing with her puppies at the time the device was planted.”
Well, that settles it! https://www.theblaze.com/news/trump-doj-announces-arrest-of-j6-pipe-bomb-suspect
Susan Crabtree from Real Clear Politics said that Dan Bongino is leaving the FBI, and that the announcement of Brian Cole Jr.’s arrest was rushed to give Bongino a win as he exits.
Christopher B—
Yes. But now to prosecute those responsible? That’s our finish line. Time is running out (5 years limit), unless charged as Conspiracy (then 10 years).
It looks like this week will be a showdown in the Indiana Senate over the redistricting plan passed by the Indiana House of Representatives. The rino senators who oppose the bill are playing the victim card claiming that proponents are swatting them but their reasons for opposing the bill are weak. Unfortunately, several of the opponents are retiring, and others are not up for reelection until 2028 so it does not look good for the bill. Indiana governor Mike Braun needs to clean house, or Senate, like Texas governor Greg Abbott did with the rinos in the Texas legislature who opposed school choice.
Ask Henry VIII, he should know.
Affordability is the new buzz word. I don’t think it means the same thing to conservatives as it does to the left.
We think in terms of bringing wages up and bringing prices down through market mechanisms of supply/demand.
The left means increasing the availability of government payments/increased subsidies of basic living expenses.
About $1.5 trillion of the federal budget goes to safety net/welfare payments/credits/subsidies.
To get an idea of how that money is distributed, I posed this scenario to Grok:
“Let’s look at the US safety net/welfare supporting low wage individuals. Here’s a scenario. two adult one child family making $45,000 agi. Live in king county, washington. no company health insurance. how much would be the value of all the programs this family would be eligible for.”
Here’s the numbers (from Grok):
(If you don’t like Grok put the question to any of the AI programs.)
For a two-adult, one-child family with $45,000 adjusted gross income (AGI) in King County, Washington, no employer-sponsored health insurance, and assuming married filing jointly, U.S. citizenship/residency, and no other assets/debts disqualifying eligibility, you could qualify for several federal and state programs. This totals an estimated $50,000–$58,000 in annual benefit value (cash, vouchers, subsidies, tax credits). These are approximations based on 2025 guidelines—actual amounts depend on exact expenses (e.g., rent, utilities) and verification. Programs like SNAP and housing have waitlists; tax credits are claimed annually. Eligibility assumes the child is under 18 and no disqualifying factors (e.g., felony convictions). Use official calculators (e.g., WA DSHS, IRS) for precise figures.
Total Estimated Annual Value: $50,000–$58,000Cash/Tax Credits: ~$9,000 (EITC $6,500 + CTC $2,840 + LIHEAP $500).
Food/Health: ~$22,000 (SNAP $9,216 + Health $12,000).
Housing: ~$18,000–$24,000 (largest variable).
Other: ~$600–$1,200 (WIC).
As % of Income: 111–129%—subsidies could cover most essentials, but waitlists (e.g., housing) delay full access.
Apply via WA DSHS (snap/medical) or IRS (tax credits). For housing, KCHA waitlist. Consult a navigator for exacts. Sources: DSHS/HCA 2025 guidelines, IRS 2025 EITC/CTC tables, KCHA AMI, USDA WIC/LIHEAP 2025.
I used the $45,000 figure, as I’ve read this is where the maximum (or close to it) benefits are still available. Some programs phase out as income continues to increase, creating a perverse incentive.
Here’s some of the info on the programs:
SNAP (Basic Food)– Gross income limit $4,442/month ($53,304/year) for family of 3; net after deductions <130% FPL ($36,780/year). $45K AGI qualifies with shelter/earned income deductions (~$9,000 off).
Medicaid/CHIP (Apple Health)– Partial—Adults ineligible for full Medicaid (138% FPL = $36,780/year; $45K exceeds). Child eligible for CHIP up to 317% FPL (~$84,000). Adults qualify for subsidized Marketplace plans.
Child: Free Apple Health (medical/dental/vision, $4,000–$6,000 value). Adults: ~$800–$1,000/month subsidy for Silver plan ($9,600–$12,000/year).
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)– Max for family of 3: $6,960. Phase-out starts $29,640 joint; full at $63,398. $45K qualifies for ~$6,000–$6,500.
$6,500
Refundable federal credit; claimed on 2025 taxes (filed 2026). WA state EITC: Additional 25% (~$1,625), but requires federal claim first.
Child Tax Credit (CTC) —$2,200/child (full at $45K; phase-out $400K joint). Refundable up to $1,700.
Section 8 Housing Voucher– Income <80% AMI ($99,900 for 3 in King County). Preference for <50% AMI ($49,950). $45K qualifies for waitlist.
$18,000–$24,000 (subsidy covers 70–100% of rent)
Voucher pays ~$1,500–$2,000/month toward 2-bed apt (avg. rent $2,500). Waitlist 6–18 months; value based on fair market rent.
WIC (Women, Infants, Children)— Up to 185% FPL (~$55,000 for 3). $45K qualifies for child <5.
$600–$1,200 Vouchers for nutritious foods (~$50–$100/month/child); nutrition education. Covers child if under 5.
LIHEAP (Energy Assistance)– Up to 150% FPL (~$46,800 for 3). $45K qualifies.
So when the left says housing is unaffordable, they mean there isn’t nearly enough Section 8 housing. Wait lists are a year or two.
When they say food isn’t affordable, the mean they want SNAP program expanded.
When they say healthcare is unaffordable, they want Medicare for All.
I would say we’ve already set a pretty good precedent for government largess– we just need to increase the programs/raise the maximum wage threshold. The left wants these payments to cover people up to $120,000 in high living cost areas.
President Trump is scrambling to grow the economy to make life more affordable– how much easier would it be to just increase these programs.
Until Congress takes the deficits/increased debt as the crisis it is, the clamor for more spending will increase.
Since the goal of Socialism is to make everyone equally poor, the country may have to go bust and even then if Venezuela is the example, we’ll just shift who the favored groups receiving government benefits are.
Henry VIII was a neck man. He didn’t care about ….. ?
I have a new post up about the “Affordability” issue.
I think the midterms, and possibly the 2028 election, will depend largely on how Trump handles this issue.
Linked Brian E’s above comment at the CB post.
The video shows the Catherine Parr portrait, and you can see the difference in the apparent shape above and below her neckline. Above her neckline she’s round, but below the neckline she appears flat. I’d imagine that if the painter depicted her shape below her neckline accurately with light and shadow, the dark color of her clothing and the 400 years of aging are making it very hard to see.
In this portrait you can see her fully clothed shaped better because of the highlights, and that she’s probably wearing a corset.
But there are styles in portraiture and portraits aren’t always intended to be literal. Very famous example here. Fifteenth-century Italian merchants’ heads did not swell up when they moved to Flanders. People wanted to be depicted fashionably, with notable exceptions.
I can see why she found the Steve Moore ‘affordability’ issue that she was responding to to be irritating.
IrishOtter49, you are so right about the 1920s, except that young women weren’t wearing any corsets! Watching some 1930s movies, I noticed that the actresses aren’t wearing bras OR corsets most of the time.
Some programs phase out as income continues to increase, creating a perverse incentive. — BrianE
An excellent post by Brian. So I am nitpicking here, but the “perversity” depends on how the phase outs occur. The worst is a situation where a family’s net take home income goes down, if the salaried income goes up a tiny bit above some arbitrary threshold. But as long as net take home aways goes up with increasing salary, it is not so bad.
Personally, I have a problem with a situation where the net gov. benefits add up to a reasonably comfortable living, with no work at all. Excluding severe disabilities etc.
Way back when, pols on the right were in favor of the EITC program. Now, I think many in the illegal immigrant population have figured out how to scam that system. I imagine the Dems have put some fine print into that program to facilitate the rip off.
Real incomes are not declining. Suggest ‘affordability’ is an issue because the evolution of relative prices has been such that the prices of the more noticeable components of your consumption bundle have risen in relation to the less noticeable components. (Either that or it’s another propaganda campaign generated by various operators around the Democratic Party). Not sure what a salutary policy response to the phenomenon might be other than correcting defects in the tax code and regulatory regimes which generate deadweight loss and render the costs of certain goods and services higher than they would be otherwise. There are three problem sectors: housing, schooling, and medical care. There are all manner of vested interests preventing any amelioration.
Would be agreeable to limit sector-specific subsidies to medical care, long-term care, schooling, legal services, and shipping-and-transportation – with extensive subsidies in the first three and subsidies on the margin for the latter two. Otherwise, systemic common provision would be manifest in various sorts of cash transfers. Cash transfers have to be structured to contain perverse incentives, of course.
I read Brian E’s comment, David Foster’s post, and the AstralCodexTen post that Foster cited. (I also read the Stephen Moore post in Hot Air, the less said about it the better, and alexthechick’s comment on it is spot on.)
I think it’s pretty simple to harmonize the varying views of affordability, at least if we’re interested in reality and not in narrative.
Stuff is cheaper, no doubt about it, especially electronics. Usually what isn’t cheaper is stuff that has had legal constraints on what can be offered, with the low-quality and cheaper end of the market abolished, like with cars or what happened with light bulbs when incandescents were “banned”. This is a hardship for poorer people and pointing out that what they can’t buy now is higher quality than what they once could have bought is almost literally “qu’ils mangent de la brioche”.
Status can’t really get cheaper, since it’s relative at every point in time. We can’t all live where Bill Gates lives, we can’t all attend Harvard, we can’t all get invited to the Met Gala and Oscar de la Renta won’t make all our dresses if we do. (I know he’s dead but they’re still making dresses with his name on them.)
Services are more expensive, and for higher education and health care, have become so at rates far exceeding inflation; with health care at least there’s been increasing quality but that cannot be said for higher education.
Housing is a combination of “stuff” and “status”. The price of housing per square foot per person, adjusted for inflation, had hardly changed over forty years. New houses have mostly better stuff, definitely cheaper stuff, are almost always bigger than in the past, but the low-quality and cheaper end has been removed from the market.
My own house, after adjusting for inflation, has literally doubled in market value since I bought it in 2014 and I could not afford to buy it today even though our family income has doubled (in nominal dollars). So a person making in real dollars what I made in 2014 would have no hope of affording the house that I bought without any kind of hardship or special circumstances (conventional 30-year mortgage). This has happened because I live near Seattle and many people have been moving there from California, where they sold a house for $1M and bought one for $500K, or from overseas, and that demand has priced middle-class people out of single-family houses in an ever-expanding ring. Most of the places where most people want to live have been seeing this.
Housing and health care are very big ticket items in any middle-class salary. Over the 40 years from 1984:
The median annual family health insurance contribution is really hard to compare historically, because what insurance has to cover, and what deductibles etc typically are, has changed a lot even from when most of the commenters here were still working. Right now the median annual employee insurance contribution for family coverage is $6100–that’s the cost before anyone in your family has seen a doctor or filled a prescription.
We can eyeball what the equivalent might have been in 1984 if people had the same kind of insurance then as they do now using the medical care CPI, which has gone from 105 to 557 from 1984 to 2024, a 430% increase in nominal costs. Assuming that contribution would be proportional to the cost of medical care, a rough equivalent in 1984 might have been $1150, which is $3480 in 2024 dollars, a 75% increase.
Now of course medical care now is generally more advanced. But younger middle-class people hardly use any. They still have to pay the insurance premium, and the insurance premium is priced not on the health care used by younger middle-class people but the health care used by old and sick people.
That the median income has only gone up by less than half of the median increases in housing and health care doesn’t mean that everybody is poorer to that degree, but it does suggest that a lot of people below the median are having an objectively harder time economically than was the case forty years ago, and year over year since then of course.
But Henry certainly got around….
On the other side of the “affordability” question, with a few big exceptions a 1950s-style life is quite affordable on one income. Most people would find it Spartan, but it’s doable, and it’s actually quite a big improvement on the 1950s.
Your home appliances would cost a lot less; you could have more in her kitchen than Lucy did on “I Love Lucy”. Your car will almost certainly cost more, but you wouldn’t have more than one and it would be a much better and more reliable car. If you eat what people ate in the 1950s, you’ll spend a lot less than they did, and very likely you would eat much better than they did, not having to wait for Christmas for oranges or drinking freeze-dried coffee.
The big exceptions would be the cost of your house to begin with, and what you’ll be spending on health insurance and then health care on top of it, should you need it. Routing around your crappy public school could also be pretty expensive if you don’t homeschool. Most people in the 1950s didn’t plan on college so if you don’t either, you won’t have that financial burden, which would blow the whole thing if you had kids.
Chris Plante’s radio show today spotlighted an interview with Ilhan Omar, by Martha Raditz (or was it Margaret Brennan? What’s the difference?)
Omar was asked about the Somali frauds, and she said she wrote a letter about it to “the Secretary of Egg”. She repeated the phrase later. She must have meant Secretary of Ag(riculture). Martha (or Margaret) ignored the malapropism.
Some people/cultures can’t pronounce what in American English phonetics is called a “short ‘a’”.
(Ever speak to someone from South Africa? IOW, “South Efrica”?)
In any case the toxic Ilhan Omar has said—and continues to say—far more egregious things.
Yes, I was taught decades ago that the “a” in apple was a “short a”
But when I was studying to be an ESL instructor, that vowel sound was called the “ash” and denoted in the IPA as /æ/
It’s pretty uncommon in the world’s languages.
Damnit, I was just thinking about The Roman Empire. Now I can’t get this out of my mind.
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This is an important subject.
The flat-chested look was also en vogue in the 1920s.
On yesterday’s Open Thread (posted Saturday), I posted a link to Mike Benz podcast, explaining how the purchase of bomb materials by Brian Cole in June 2020, which was about the same time when 70 Never Trumpers, Military intelligence and other high Federal officials met, might relate to “The Transition Integrity Project” (TIP).
It was a war-gaming exercise by Democrats that literally rehearsed how to stop Trump even if he won the November 2020 election outright
Flopping Aces outlines Benz hour-long YT exposition via X.com. EXCERPT:
The TIP documents were written as a “war game.”
But what they rehearsed wasn’t “what if Trump refuses to leave?”
What they rehearsed was:
“How do we prevent Trump from taking office even if he wins?”
And their strategy relies heavily on one thing:January 6.”
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4356430/posts
THIS LINKED PAGE includes a couple other highly relevant documents such as Molly Ball’s infamous Time Mag boast from February 2021, that interests supporting the Democrat Party heroically just saved democracy (by killing it).
The dots connecting J6 to an actual Fedsurrection conspiracy are being identified. Benz himself call it an adaptable outline that a serious Federal prosecutor may follow.
Flopping Aces introduces hit thread very ominously:
“If you think January 6 was spontaneous chaos, buckle up.
Because in June 2020…seven months before the riot, Washington insiders held a secret war game called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) that literally rehearsed a “January 6 breakdown.”
Not metaphorically. Not vaguely. Literally.”
TJ, as I noted in another comment I’ve long suspected that might be the case.
Also remember how Hillary’s team tried to intimidate enough Electors in 2016 to either give her a win or throw the election into the House.
Well the paintings aren’t actually representational of what humans really look like in detail (take a gander at her fingers).
I was struck by all the straight lines and angles, especially with the first woman depicted and the last. In the headdress as well.
Reminds me of the designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. I didn’t realize that he designed so many styles, many of them rather conventional looking automobiles as well as cameras and watches, but the distinctive angular ones I remember are cars like the Lotus Esprit, the BMW M1, and the DeLorean.
https://designwanted.com/giorgetto-giugiaro-10-most-impressive-designs/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgetto_Giugiaro
The Blaze retracted their story about the female alleged J6 pipe bomber who was fingered based on gait analysis:
“An attorney for the Capitol Police officer has since denied the allegations on her behalf, and CBS News reported that the FBI ruled out her involvement, citing three unidentified sources who said there was a video of her playing with her puppies at the time the device was planted.”
Well, that settles it!
https://www.theblaze.com/news/trump-doj-announces-arrest-of-j6-pipe-bomb-suspect
Susan Crabtree from Real Clear Politics said that Dan Bongino is leaving the FBI, and that the announcement of Brian Cole Jr.’s arrest was rushed to give Bongino a win as he exits.
Christopher B—
Yes. But now to prosecute those responsible? That’s our finish line. Time is running out (5 years limit), unless charged as Conspiracy (then 10 years).
It looks like this week will be a showdown in the Indiana Senate over the redistricting plan passed by the Indiana House of Representatives. The rino senators who oppose the bill are playing the victim card claiming that proponents are swatting them but their reasons for opposing the bill are weak. Unfortunately, several of the opponents are retiring, and others are not up for reelection until 2028 so it does not look good for the bill. Indiana governor Mike Braun needs to clean house, or Senate, like Texas governor Greg Abbott did with the rinos in the Texas legislature who opposed school choice.
Ask Henry VIII, he should know.
Affordability is the new buzz word. I don’t think it means the same thing to conservatives as it does to the left.
We think in terms of bringing wages up and bringing prices down through market mechanisms of supply/demand.
The left means increasing the availability of government payments/increased subsidies of basic living expenses.
About $1.5 trillion of the federal budget goes to safety net/welfare payments/credits/subsidies.
Medicaid- $630 billion
SNAP, SSI, EITC, Unemployment, etc.- $480 billion
ACA Subsidies, etc.- $240 billion
Housing, Education and other welfare- $270 billion
Tax Expenditures (EITC, CTC, etc.)- $400 billion
To get an idea of how that money is distributed, I posed this scenario to Grok:
“Let’s look at the US safety net/welfare supporting low wage individuals. Here’s a scenario. two adult one child family making $45,000 agi. Live in king county, washington. no company health insurance. how much would be the value of all the programs this family would be eligible for.”
Here’s the numbers (from Grok):
(If you don’t like Grok put the question to any of the AI programs.)
I used the $45,000 figure, as I’ve read this is where the maximum (or close to it) benefits are still available. Some programs phase out as income continues to increase, creating a perverse incentive.
Here’s some of the info on the programs:
SNAP (Basic Food)– Gross income limit $4,442/month ($53,304/year) for family of 3; net after deductions <130% FPL ($36,780/year). $45K AGI qualifies with shelter/earned income deductions (~$9,000 off).
Medicaid/CHIP (Apple Health)– Partial—Adults ineligible for full Medicaid (138% FPL = $36,780/year; $45K exceeds). Child eligible for CHIP up to 317% FPL (~$84,000). Adults qualify for subsidized Marketplace plans.
Child: Free Apple Health (medical/dental/vision, $4,000–$6,000 value). Adults: ~$800–$1,000/month subsidy for Silver plan ($9,600–$12,000/year).
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)– Max for family of 3: $6,960. Phase-out starts $29,640 joint; full at $63,398. $45K qualifies for ~$6,000–$6,500.
$6,500
Refundable federal credit; claimed on 2025 taxes (filed 2026). WA state EITC: Additional 25% (~$1,625), but requires federal claim first.
Child Tax Credit (CTC) —$2,200/child (full at $45K; phase-out $400K joint). Refundable up to $1,700.
Section 8 Housing Voucher– Income <80% AMI ($99,900 for 3 in King County). Preference for <50% AMI ($49,950). $45K qualifies for waitlist.
$18,000–$24,000 (subsidy covers 70–100% of rent)
Voucher pays ~$1,500–$2,000/month toward 2-bed apt (avg. rent $2,500). Waitlist 6–18 months; value based on fair market rent.
WIC (Women, Infants, Children)— Up to 185% FPL (~$55,000 for 3). $45K qualifies for child <5.
$600–$1,200 Vouchers for nutritious foods (~$50–$100/month/child); nutrition education. Covers child if under 5.
LIHEAP (Energy Assistance)– Up to 150% FPL (~$46,800 for 3). $45K qualifies.
So when the left says housing is unaffordable, they mean there isn’t nearly enough Section 8 housing. Wait lists are a year or two.
When they say food isn’t affordable, the mean they want SNAP program expanded.
When they say healthcare is unaffordable, they want Medicare for All.
I would say we’ve already set a pretty good precedent for government largess– we just need to increase the programs/raise the maximum wage threshold. The left wants these payments to cover people up to $120,000 in high living cost areas.
President Trump is scrambling to grow the economy to make life more affordable– how much easier would it be to just increase these programs.
Until Congress takes the deficits/increased debt as the crisis it is, the clamor for more spending will increase.
Since the goal of Socialism is to make everyone equally poor, the country may have to go bust and even then if Venezuela is the example, we’ll just shift who the favored groups receiving government benefits are.
Henry VIII was a neck man. He didn’t care about ….. ?
I have a new post up about the “Affordability” issue.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/75597.html
I think the midterms, and possibly the 2028 election, will depend largely on how Trump handles this issue.
Linked Brian E’s above comment at the CB post.
The video shows the Catherine Parr portrait, and you can see the difference in the apparent shape above and below her neckline. Above her neckline she’s round, but below the neckline she appears flat. I’d imagine that if the painter depicted her shape below her neckline accurately with light and shadow, the dark color of her clothing and the 400 years of aging are making it very hard to see.
In this portrait you can see her fully clothed shaped better because of the highlights, and that she’s probably wearing a corset.
But there are styles in portraiture and portraits aren’t always intended to be literal. Very famous example here. Fifteenth-century Italian merchants’ heads did not swell up when they moved to Flanders. People wanted to be depicted fashionably, with notable exceptions.
See this essay from @alextheclick
https://x.com/alexthechick/status/1998095571911934446
I can see why she found the Steve Moore ‘affordability’ issue that she was responding to to be irritating.
IrishOtter49, you are so right about the 1920s, except that young women weren’t wearing any corsets! Watching some 1930s movies, I noticed that the actresses aren’t wearing bras OR corsets most of the time.
Some programs phase out as income continues to increase, creating a perverse incentive. — BrianE
An excellent post by Brian. So I am nitpicking here, but the “perversity” depends on how the phase outs occur. The worst is a situation where a family’s net take home income goes down, if the salaried income goes up a tiny bit above some arbitrary threshold. But as long as net take home aways goes up with increasing salary, it is not so bad.
Personally, I have a problem with a situation where the net gov. benefits add up to a reasonably comfortable living, with no work at all. Excluding severe disabilities etc.
Way back when, pols on the right were in favor of the EITC program. Now, I think many in the illegal immigrant population have figured out how to scam that system. I imagine the Dems have put some fine print into that program to facilitate the rip off.
Real incomes are not declining. Suggest ‘affordability’ is an issue because the evolution of relative prices has been such that the prices of the more noticeable components of your consumption bundle have risen in relation to the less noticeable components. (Either that or it’s another propaganda campaign generated by various operators around the Democratic Party). Not sure what a salutary policy response to the phenomenon might be other than correcting defects in the tax code and regulatory regimes which generate deadweight loss and render the costs of certain goods and services higher than they would be otherwise. There are three problem sectors: housing, schooling, and medical care. There are all manner of vested interests preventing any amelioration.
Would be agreeable to limit sector-specific subsidies to medical care, long-term care, schooling, legal services, and shipping-and-transportation – with extensive subsidies in the first three and subsidies on the margin for the latter two. Otherwise, systemic common provision would be manifest in various sorts of cash transfers. Cash transfers have to be structured to contain perverse incentives, of course.
I read Brian E’s comment, David Foster’s post, and the AstralCodexTen post that Foster cited. (I also read the Stephen Moore post in Hot Air, the less said about it the better, and alexthechick’s comment on it is spot on.)
I think it’s pretty simple to harmonize the varying views of affordability, at least if we’re interested in reality and not in narrative.
Stuff is cheaper, no doubt about it, especially electronics. Usually what isn’t cheaper is stuff that has had legal constraints on what can be offered, with the low-quality and cheaper end of the market abolished, like with cars or what happened with light bulbs when incandescents were “banned”. This is a hardship for poorer people and pointing out that what they can’t buy now is higher quality than what they once could have bought is almost literally “qu’ils mangent de la brioche”.
Status can’t really get cheaper, since it’s relative at every point in time. We can’t all live where Bill Gates lives, we can’t all attend Harvard, we can’t all get invited to the Met Gala and Oscar de la Renta won’t make all our dresses if we do. (I know he’s dead but they’re still making dresses with his name on them.)
Services are more expensive, and for higher education and health care, have become so at rates far exceeding inflation; with health care at least there’s been increasing quality but that cannot be said for higher education.
Housing is a combination of “stuff” and “status”. The price of housing per square foot per person, adjusted for inflation, had hardly changed over forty years. New houses have mostly better stuff, definitely cheaper stuff, are almost always bigger than in the past, but the low-quality and cheaper end has been removed from the market.
My own house, after adjusting for inflation, has literally doubled in market value since I bought it in 2014 and I could not afford to buy it today even though our family income has doubled (in nominal dollars). So a person making in real dollars what I made in 2014 would have no hope of affording the house that I bought without any kind of hardship or special circumstances (conventional 30-year mortgage). This has happened because I live near Seattle and many people have been moving there from California, where they sold a house for $1M and bought one for $500K, or from overseas, and that demand has priced middle-class people out of single-family houses in an ever-expanding ring. Most of the places where most people want to live have been seeing this.
Housing and health care are very big ticket items in any middle-class salary. Over the 40 years from 1984:
Real median household income: $64,420 to $83,730, 30% increase
Real median house price: $236,685 to $426,800, 80% increase (adjusted to 2024 dollars)
The median annual family health insurance contribution is really hard to compare historically, because what insurance has to cover, and what deductibles etc typically are, has changed a lot even from when most of the commenters here were still working. Right now the median annual employee insurance contribution for family coverage is $6100–that’s the cost before anyone in your family has seen a doctor or filled a prescription.
We can eyeball what the equivalent might have been in 1984 if people had the same kind of insurance then as they do now using the medical care CPI, which has gone from 105 to 557 from 1984 to 2024, a 430% increase in nominal costs. Assuming that contribution would be proportional to the cost of medical care, a rough equivalent in 1984 might have been $1150, which is $3480 in 2024 dollars, a 75% increase.
Now of course medical care now is generally more advanced. But younger middle-class people hardly use any. They still have to pay the insurance premium, and the insurance premium is priced not on the health care used by younger middle-class people but the health care used by old and sick people.
That the median income has only gone up by less than half of the median increases in housing and health care doesn’t mean that everybody is poorer to that degree, but it does suggest that a lot of people below the median are having an objectively harder time economically than was the case forty years ago, and year over year since then of course.
But Henry certainly got around….
On the other side of the “affordability” question, with a few big exceptions a 1950s-style life is quite affordable on one income. Most people would find it Spartan, but it’s doable, and it’s actually quite a big improvement on the 1950s.
Your home appliances would cost a lot less; you could have more in her kitchen than Lucy did on “I Love Lucy”. Your car will almost certainly cost more, but you wouldn’t have more than one and it would be a much better and more reliable car. If you eat what people ate in the 1950s, you’ll spend a lot less than they did, and very likely you would eat much better than they did, not having to wait for Christmas for oranges or drinking freeze-dried coffee.
The big exceptions would be the cost of your house to begin with, and what you’ll be spending on health insurance and then health care on top of it, should you need it. Routing around your crappy public school could also be pretty expensive if you don’t homeschool. Most people in the 1950s didn’t plan on college so if you don’t either, you won’t have that financial burden, which would blow the whole thing if you had kids.
You would certainly have to have less house, if you can find it. In my case, I grew up in a family of (then) 5 in a 3 bedroom 1 bathroom house, which in those days sold for about $75,000, which is about $231,000 today. Its current market value is estimated at about $190,000, but of course today it’s 45 years old and back then it was only five years old. Better than a hole in ground with a tarp over one corner, of course, drinking cold tea out of a rolled-up newspaper, go to work down the mill fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week.
David Foster, interesting post and comments on your site; thanks!
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/75597.html
Chris Plante’s radio show today spotlighted an interview with Ilhan Omar, by Martha Raditz (or was it Margaret Brennan? What’s the difference?)
Omar was asked about the Somali frauds, and she said she wrote a letter about it to “the Secretary of Egg”. She repeated the phrase later. She must have meant Secretary of Ag(riculture). Martha (or Margaret) ignored the malapropism.
Some people/cultures can’t pronounce what in American English phonetics is called a “short ‘a’”.
(Ever speak to someone from South Africa? IOW, “South Efrica”?)
In any case the toxic Ilhan Omar has said—and continues to say—far more egregious things.
Yes, I was taught decades ago that the “a” in apple was a “short a”
But when I was studying to be an ESL instructor, that vowel sound was called the “ash” and denoted in the IPA as /æ/
It’s pretty uncommon in the world’s languages.
Damnit, I was just thinking about The Roman Empire. Now I can’t get this out of my mind.