▪️This incredible leap of logic is only possible if you ignore all context. The median income is only relevant if you have a job! In the Great Depression, unemployment reached nearly 25%, so a good portion of the country had no job to buy a house with. Kind of an important detail.
▪️Because of this, home prices plummeted. One estimate has home prices falling 67% from 1929-32, and hovering there for most of the GD. So if you were lucky enough to have a good job, housing was affordable, but obviously this wasn’t ideal. Housing was “affordable” because…so many couldn’t afford them.
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=41283#:~:text=Abstract,most%20of%20the%20Great%20Depression.
▪️In 1932, 273K people lost their homes. The next year, 1,000 homes were being foreclosed on every day. By 1934, nearly half of all mortgages were delinquent. But hey, median pay to home cost was great!
https://www.atlantafed.org/blogs/real-estate-research/2010/11/15/mortgage-relief-in-the-great-depression
https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-and-education-magazines/housing-1929-1941
▪️Also, homes have changed substantially. In the 1930s, homes averaged around 1,000 sq ft. Today, they avg over 2,200 sq ft and come with many more amenities (air conditioning, refrigerator, washer/dryer, etc.) We live in bigger homes with fewer people, a substantial increase in standard of living.
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/04/05/the-size-of-a-home-the-year-you-were-born-5/
▪️Today, median personal income is ~$42/yr. So that would equate to a $131K house using the meme’s 32% Great Depression standard. But more relevant, median household income is ~$80k/yr, equating to a $250K home. Guaranteed you’d rather find a home at that price today than the avg house in the 1930s.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N
I first critiqued this terrible take by looking at how food has actually improved substantially. Even though I said the same could be done in every category, people said “you’re only doing food.” So let’s do air travel and see why it’s not gotten better, not worse.
▪️Aircraft have greatly improved. Just 15-20 years ago, many domestic routes (~15%) were flown by turboprops like the Brasilia, Dash 8 or Saab. Now, almost everything is in jets, and most aircraft have WiFi. Some even have Starlink, where you probably have faster WiFi than your home. Most major airlines offer dozens or hundreds of movies and shows to watch.
▪️Newer designs like the 787 have lower cabin altitudes and improved humidity, which make a huge difference in passenger comfort on long haul flights. The first/business class international market has gotten very competitive globally, with many carriers offering excellent service and amenities. Pods, suites, showers, etc. Coach still sucks but is dramatically cheaper ...
This is the complete opposite of an empirical fact. The right has now joined the left in being pessimistic about the modern world and completely unappreciative of the amazing abundance we now have. I’ll just focus on food here, but you could do it for almost every category.
▪️Fresh produce used to be available only in season. In the winter it was canned or frozen. People used to send fruit for Christmas gifts, it was that much of a luxury good. Now, you can get giant, sweet berries year around in every grocery store. Corn on the cob in February. Not to mention once rare items like dragon fruit, heirloom tomatoes or baby bok choy.
▪️If you didn’t live on the coast, seafood was either not available, frozen, or extremely expensive. If you lived in the Midwest and traveled to coastal locales you would quite literally be able to eat food you had never seen. Salmon has become much more abundant and accessible. You can get fresh ahi at Walmart today. Sushi and oyster bars exist everywhere ...
▪️This is a proposal that pertains only to graduate level nursing degrees, not undergraduate ones (which were never considered professional degrees). The proposal will have a 30-60 day public comment period next year, where groups can object, before the DoE will decide on it.
▪️This is about how much federal student loans someone can take out for a particular degree. The cap on graduate degrees is $100k ($20,500/yr), while a “professional degree” limit is $200k ($50k/yr).
▪️Under the new rule proposal, professional degrees include:
🔹Pharmacy
🔹Dentistry
🔹Veterinary medicine
🔹Chiropractic
🔹Law
🔹Medicine (including osteopathic medicine & podiatry)
🔹Optometry
🔹Theology
▪️The nursing degrees excluded are ones like master of science in nursing (MSN), doctor of nursing practice (DNP) and PhD in nursing. These degrees would be limited to $100k in federal student loans, like all other graduate degrees.
▪️These changes came from the One Big Beautiful Bill’s...
