I agree with you--peoples living conditions should be improving and at a good rate. One thing to consider though, is when people talk about the affordability of anything from X years ago to now, oftentimes those "things" have changed significantly. For example, house sizes have gone up drastically over time, and at the same time house fewer people. In 1950's houses average 292 sq ft / person, where in 2010 it's up to 924 sq ft [1]. Healthcare "cost" have changed as a result of advancements in treatments but also due to a population living longer and longer. We need to take these things into account because it's going to be more difficult to buy a home that's 3x the size, and likely has a lot more expensive electronics and other appliances in it. You can't just wave the hand over what a home is today vs what it was 70 years ago.

I don't believe everyone needs a new iPhone every 12/24 months (or even one at all), or a 2000 sq ft house to themselves, but everyone does need food, shelter, affordable healthcare, and again I'm open to the argument for education.

I bring these points up primarily because there are ample examples of people from the FIRE community (financial independence retire early) who live on a minimal income but save and are able to retire early. In my opinion, they're able to save more simply because they focus on only buying what they really, truly need. And they're able to resist advertisements that attempt to convince them a want is a need. Many of the crazy successful examples from the community are dual income 6 figure earners, but there are examples of teachers retiring early by living frugally. One of the interesting things of capitalism is it's convinced society that many wants are needs. If you can outsmart society, you can profit/benefit.

I agree redistribution is what's needed, but where I disagree is on the how. I'd rather see more opportunity given instead of reward taken. I don't think a lack of government funds is the issue.

> As an aside, I'm quite curious what you mean by "underlying issues".

At a high level the problem that I think we'd agree on is more people need to be able to cover basic needs. Housing, food, healthcare, and arguably education. I'm not an expert in any one of these, but I have worked with hospitals before. There's a massive amount of resistance to change within hospitals. They move and innovate (and as a result improve) extremely slowly. They're very inefficient (25% of hospital costs amount to waste [2]). I'd argue this is one underlying issue under the umbrella of the "healthcare" issues. I don't wish to propose a solution--because I honestly don't claim to have one. There are some arguable reasons for why healthcare moves slowly--extreme risk aversion. But I think that's why we employ politicians with our tax dollars--to propose and implement solutions. A failure to fix these issues is a failure of our politicians, and since we vote them into office, a failure on our part.

Just as another example, I've been told that permits alone to build a home in my area cost ~35k. I've also been told that about 50% of construction costs (or perhaps it was only construction labor costs?) end up going to taxes. I don't have any sources to back this up--just heard from various sources I deemed semi reliable.

[1] https://compasscaliforniablog.com/have-american-homes-change....

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/us-wastes-25-healthcares-spending-1...