Morgan Housel

I read this book recently on Levittown.

which is back in the 1950s, the Leavitt brothers, home builders, build a bunch of gigantic home communities, kind of urban sprawl, kind of suburban sprawl, I should say, that created kind of the backbone of what we knew then and view now as like middle-class America, white picket fence, average people, plumbers, teachers, firemen, policemen, who could buy a house when they were 25 and raise their kids in this.

And I think it is often used with the example of like, we don't have that today.

Our grandparents have it.

We don't have it today.

There is some truth to that.

But the truth is if you look at what the Levittown house was, it would be considered low-income poverty housing today.

It was 700 square feet.

Your four kids shared one bedroom.

It had one bathroom for the six of you.

Forget garage.

Forget porch.

Forget air conditioning.

Forget any of that.

It was as bare-bones, basic, tiny, no frills as it could get.

They're also part of the reason that the Leavitt brothers were able to build so many houses so cheaply is that they were thrown together like cardboard boxes.

And so that amazing middle-class prosperity house that you have, the roof was leaking, it was poorly insulated.

By today's standards, it would be not what people would think and not what they would want.

And so it's easy today to be like, used to have it better.

Used to have it better than us.