@AmyZenunim@waitworry Hm...I'm not quite sure about that timing. The median home price was on a pretty linear growth from the 70s the late 90s. Anecdotally, I don't remember cost of housing being a major topic of conversation through much of the 90s. The slope really goes nuts somewhere around 2000.
@psychictides@AmyZenunim@waitworry At least according to official statistics, real wages did fall in the early 80s (I'd guess a mixture of inflation and the anti-union practices) but had recovered by the late 80s. Since their peak in the late 70s, they've been relatively flat. But nominal increasing median home prices isn't a comparison; we'd need *real* median home prices. 1/2
@roadriverrail@AmyZenunim@waitworry so what I mean is that although home prices didn’t spike in the 1980s, real wages became depressed and never recovered, so home prices actually did spike because housing became less affordable as real wages became more worthless
@psychictides@AmyZenunim@waitworry Please understand I agree with your statement in a more abstract sense, yes, housing prices have likely risen relative to real wages. My only disagreement is about timing. I don't believe it was connected strongly to the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially since foreign policy circles saw that as dramatic but not the end of communism; the coup against Gorbachev wouldn't come for another 2 years and could have kicked the can down the road a decade. 2/2