Affordability has become quite the hot-button issue. Recently, a financial market strategist named Michael Green got tongues wagging with a Substack post about how the “price of participation” in American society requires an income of around $140,000. The New York Times talked to younger Americans about affordability. Paul Krugman has done a series of posts on his Substack about affordability that are pretty extensive on the subject and rather wonky. 

That’s a lot of reading, but let me add something to it that I think is underdiscussed.

I’m 58, and growing up in the 70s and 80s, certain things were affordable that are now gone for a lot of Americans. I lived in a working/lower-class neighborhood, right next to a housing project, in York, PA. My family was working-class with a father who worked as a painter at the naval depot near Harrisburg. I had a nice childhood, and of course, we had to watch our money, but a similar family today has lost a lot of quality of life things that we had then.

These are some examples:

– Pro sports, especially baseball, were a relatively cheap outing. An hour’s drive to Baltimore or a 90-minute drive to Philadelphia was a very affordable family outing. Terrace box seats were 6 bucks if you wanted to splurge, that is 23-24 dollars today. A game with similar seats could range from 100-400 bucks, depending on the team (such adjustable seating prices were not a thing then). This makes a trip either a rare special occasion or not possible.

– If you don’t like sports, for myself and my neighborhood friends, with the exception of the project kids, a vacation to a Maryland, New Jersey, or Delaware beach in the summer was very affordable. Today, such a simple trip is out of people’s league.

– Eating out has become a rare luxury. These can be enjoyable, memorable outings, even at a humble family restaurant. But this has become a challenge to afford. 

– Housing – enough said. I will add that my wife and I bought our small 1,200 square foot house (which was around the same size our family of four lived in during my childhood) in 2005. We have a mortgage that is easily less than half of the average rent. We had to buy where we are, this tiny rural Trumper town in central PA, because we couldn’t afford to live in State College. But if we bought this house now, we would struggle financially with a mortgage double what we have now. And, we are childless, but not by choice. If we had a kid or two, we wouldn’t be able to have a savings account. 

In the American society that we have today, people often dismiss this stuff as “the Invisible Hand of the Free Market” doing its job, setting supply and demand. After all, MLB attendance isn’t exactly suffering. But the Invisible Hand has become a fist to the face of the working and middle-class, taking away simple quality of life pleasures.

My theory is that this is a big part of the affordability question. People who are my age remember times when things really were more affordable. Major concerts did not cost a thousand dollars a ticket (at least). Having a child wasn’t a budget-destroying event like it is now. And younger people hear their older relatives, friends, etc. talk about these times and wonder why it can’t be like that now.

I think that perhaps a reason why this aspect is not discussed very much in the Great American Discourse is that the elite take-havers don’t really think much about this side of the issue because it’s never been their experience as people paid to be elite take-havers. If a CNN contributor or New York Times columnist wants to take the fam to a ballgame, it’s no great shakes. If they think about it at all, it’s either to dismiss it or attempt to make people feel bad for experiencing this lack of disposable income, which they will do because some of our elite punditry have the empathy of a leech.

I really have no great solution for this. Mainly just shining a light on it.

The last word goes to the Drive-By Truckers.