We went off the rails when we started confusing Wants with Needs.
Fifty years ago people expected their jobs to cover their NEEDS: decent basic housing, food for their families and decent clothing with a bit to put away for a rainy day. They heated their homes with wood, coal or heater fuel.
Their air conditioning was open windows and maybe a fan.
They raised their own vegetables whenever possible and ate good home cooked meals. Eating out just wasn’t done on a regular basis.
I knew a man in Danville, Va who served in WW2.
He was wounded on Sicily and sent to England to recuperate. He got out of the hospital just in time to be promoted to Sgt and assigned to the second wave on Omaha beach.
He survived the war, came home and got a job with the local Royal Crown Cola distributor.
He married a local gal and built a small two bedroom house with his savings and his own labor. He had $1,500 cash invested in it when he moved in with no mortgage.
Nothing fancy, a basic house considered small by today’s standards.
He and his wife raised three children in that house and helped put two through college on what he made at RC Cola and what his wife made sewing on the side.
He lived in that little house till he passed away in his late eighties.
Nowadays the average person demands a three bedroom two bath house with a den and wall to wall carpet, central air, hardwood floors in the kitchen and dining room, the latest wide screen tv and stereo equipment, cable or satellite tv with premium channels, high speed internet, a kitchen decked out like a photo shoot for a magazine, two new cars in the drive, a camper or boat and every little thing the children say they want.
One result of this is contractors not wanting to build small affordable houses because there is so much money to be made building the mini mansions.
Why build the smaller basic houses when first time house buyers think they should immediately own the type of home they grew up in that took their parents a lifetime to buy?
What we as a nation need is to realise the difference between wants and needs again.
Do I want a new camper and truck to pull it with? Sure!
Do I need either? No. Therefore I will buy neither.
Well said.
“house with a den and wall to wall carpet”
In my area they want 100% hardwood-—no one wants wall-to-wall anymore.
.
Not entirely.
I worked for a guy who wanted to build small, basic starter stand alone homes. Like the kind his parents had. Even during the housing drop he had people who wanted to buy. It would be a little neighborhood, he even had a local grocery who would put in a C store with about a three / four other small businesses. It would be a place for people who were downsizing, people who were starting out and retirees.
He was told that he could not do so as it was against the building code. Too small.
Now he could build condos or apartments that were half that size but not stand alone house where people could have little yards.