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If we look at the 3-5 basic categories (food clothing Shelter plus the lifestyle inflation ones of transportation and medical care) we see that 1950 wasn't absurdly much poorer than 2024, while houses are signficantly better compared to 1950 a lot of houses are pretty old stock so they aren't as much better as you'd expect.
A Cadillac series 62 was 1.8k in 1950 dollars, which appears to be about 2/3rds of an annual salary.. I can't buy a car that crappy new, so I'll look at the car I can buy, a Nissan Versa for 17k. My salary as a freaking Gym desk worker is 40k/year, so a Nissan versa to me is cheaper than a cadilllac series 62 was for the average family in 1950.
Medical care is weird, but I pay $280 a month for insurance, which covers things I don't need, but it also covers 3 "prepaid" doctors visits a year. It also fully covered me for the $100k hospital bill I got when I broke my leg. Medical care has gotten a lot more expensive and is one of the few places where I feel wealth doesn't go as far.
Food is so cheap it may as well be free. Famous health nut bryan johnson has a diet that costs a little less than $20 a day. This is Health nut food mind you but I eat it because I'm too lazy to think about food anymore. 1950 food prices were worse but only like 2x worse it seems?
Clothing may as well be free. I don't even spend $300 a year on clothes.
Shelter though.... yeah this sucks. I currently live with my parents, but otherwise I'd have to shell out 1.4k a month for the smallest apartment I can live in.
Basically if housing costs could go down (Build more housing goddamnit) then the concept of being poor would go from a minor joke to a total joke
That's apples and oranges though. Judging by the results of a Google search, the former was a rather fantastic looking, comfy luxury sedan, while the latter is just an average, plain modern sedan.
The main reason I chose that car is because I've ridden in one, it was very unpleasant.
The change in car tech from the 60s to the 2020s is great, so the 2023 Nissan Versa mops the floor with the Cadillac series 62.
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Indeed, the modern equivalent of the Series 62, being any upmarket SUV, will run you 50-70 kilodollars now, or a year and a quarter the average salary of 60 kilodollars.
Of course, that's also ignoring that those modern luxury SUVs are arguably more than twice the car the 62 was, in that you're not just sitting on a flat bench, you can put stuff in the back, and if you crash it at 100 mph you'll almost certainly survive. That is reflected in the purchase price.
Isn't the modern equivalent a present-day Cadillac luxury sedan instead?
In terms of being a land-yacht I think only the Escalade really compares; their luxury sedans are 12-18" shorter and 6" narrower (or rather, were, as the longer of the two is no longer produced).
I don't really understand why you'd want an automobile that long but market research is quite clear in that people prefer utterly massive cars. I guess they don't like turning corners particularly quickly, I dunno.
Disregarding the trope concerning penis size, I can think of a couple of things:
Health problems. Due to sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy living in general, many middle-aged people have painful back problems, in which case they'll prefer to use cars that are high-riding, and those are normally big.
Safetyism. Heavier cars are more safe if you get into an accident.
The middle-class suburban soccer mom / NASCAR dad lifestyle entails carrying large amounts of baggage (heh) around on a regular basis (shopping at the mall once a week or every two weeks, taking the kids to practice). Thus, bigger and heavier card are handy.
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What kind of broken leg are we talking about here? A simple fracture of one of the long bones (the central case for 'broken leg', imho), or multiple fractures, including smaller bones, perhaps with a hip joint replacement and some knee surgery thrown in? Because that price for just 'do an x-ray (or even ct), make a cast, perhaps do another x-ray' would be insane.
Or is this just the sticker price, and what your insurance ended up paying was more like $3k?
A Compound fracture of the tibia with preparation treatment followed by surgery, physical therapy and 3 days stay at the hospital (pre surgery day, surgery day, post surgery day)
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