Scott Alexander

End quote.

Scott writes, When I try to retrace this, it seems possible, but barely.

I imagine doing this in Sacramento, to be near family.

Suppose I make $80,000 pre-tax, that's $6.6k a month pre-tax, that's $5k per month post-tax.

A cheap three-bedroom house on a nice enough block is $2,200 mortgage.

Assume $3,000 up to property taxes, etc.

A cheap new car is $350 a month.

Food can be arbitrarily low if you're willing to eat rice all the time, but let's say $250 a month.

Covered California offered my family of four healthcare for $600 a month.

So top four expenses take $4,200 a month of the $5,000 a month pre-tax income.

I don't know, seems tough.

I would like to see a more thorough breakdown of an average 2026 versus 1956 man's likely budget.

There are also some areas where it's harder to separate genuine declines from rising expectations.

Most people in the 1950s didn't have health insurance.

Was that because they accepted lower levels of health, or because medical care was cheaper and easy enough to afford out of pocket?

Probably some very complicated combination of both.

and it might be impossible to get certain kinds of 1950s medical care today.

For example, a bed in a cheap, low-quality shared hospital room.

Some of the best discussion around this came from the response to Elizabeth Warren's The Two-Income Trap.

See, for example, Matt Brunig here, link in post.