I used to like HumanProgress.org -- a lot. I've written for them (some 25 times, I note), the first few times were among my most proudest as an author.
Then Covid happened, everyone lost them minds, the HP team went waaaay down the "vaccines are amazing" loop, and the last few years of "oh, actually everything is beautiful, look how wages have improved!" have been really disgusting to watch. (In the spring of 2023 I wrote two articles to "ridicule" this that were very sneaky... basically making that point by extensively laying out the opposite trends -- e.g., "Dear Americans, Define 'Worse Off'". Haven't been able to write anything there for 1.5 years or so.
Here's Mark Perry's famous graph, Chart of the Century, shared by the HP team and later "updated" with time prices.
The graph itself, which Perry just released, is a mainstay of wth went wrong. Even at face value, had you earned average wages for the last 20-odd years, cell phones, clothes, toys and all-round "stuff" have gotten cheaper... but anything you'd really care about have roughly stayed the same (food and housing) or gotten way worse (healthcare, nursery, college).
Perry's big schpiel is, of course, that the "more affordable" things are private and market-supplied, whereas the "more expensive" are largely government-provided/regulated/subsidised. The HP team's update:
value indicating how many units you could buy today for the time it took to earn money to buy one unit in 2000.value indicating how many units you could buy today for the time it took to earn money to buy one unit in 2000.
Everything-ish got more abundant.
Then again, not sure there's a massive difference in taxation between now and 25 years ago, but perhaps that is. And to the extent that differs across the income distribution and across assets (real estate vs stocks vs income) everyone's number here is going to be different, not some average "hourly wages" number.
Without delving into a CPI-is-manipulated convo, have things gotten more or less expensive? Your salaries and savings get you more or less, better or worse stuff than 25-odd years ago? I find it increasingly difficult to tell.
In terms of primary necessities, I feel that were getting worse quality for a higher price across the board. Maybe there is more abundance overall but of quality stuffs? I'm skeptical.
what would be your best/preferred indicator, other than just hunch/feel?
The amount of days it takes for fresh veggies to expire versus the price maybe. But hard to measure because I didn't measure this 25 years ago.
I sort of expect that overall this will just illustrate a decline in privilege though, as its likely that simply more people got access to greens and the loss of quality is a function of adaptation in the production methods to feed more mouths.
Also notice that the ones at the bottom are the ones with the strictest occupational licensing (regardless of de jure or de facto)
It's very hard to tell because, amongst other things, a person's consumption bundle shifts towards the more expensive things as they age and their earnings increase.
I'm sympathetic to the idea, though, that an average wage buys more shit now than it used to.