The over-arching point I believe the parent comment is making is that the kinds of people who didn't get college degrees back then because they weren't needed are getting college degrees now, because they are needed as qualifications for jobs. They weren't incapable of it back then, it just wasn't necessary nor widespread. Now it is. So it's the same kinds of people doing police work then as now, with the same aptitudes, just those people are going to college now because they have to whereas they didn't then. (And in a way, increasing prevalence of higher education is a marker of success for a society.)
Unrelated, a huge point I'd like to see addressed more is how housing costs have outgrown inflation over the course of decades. We used to build enough housing, but NIMBYism and restrictive zoning has taken over recently. Housing is much more expensive in big cities in real terms than it was then, even though fewer people live in them in many cases now (e.g. the population of Manhattan reached its peak in the 1910 census and is down 30% since then). Real wages haven't decreased since the middle-class heydays of the 60s, and a lot of consumers goods have gotten much, much cheaper since then in real terms. The real headwinds in the face of middle-class prosperity are housing costs, healthcare costs, and (to end the digression) university costs, all of which have grown well above inflation.
Just a point on the population of Manhattan, it’s be careful with those numbers and applying them to modern day. People used to cram into death trap tenements 10 to one windowless room in some cases.
Hundreds of thousands would live on a street that now houses a thousand people.
I don’t think that density is coming back or desirable.
You're exaggerating the population density. It definitely wasn't hundreds of thousands per street! Some figures here: https://urbanomnibus.net/2014/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-manhat... And it's worth pointing out that the peak population density in walk-up tenements was still well below what can be accomplished with tall modern day residential apartment buildings.
No one is saying the tenements were desirable, or wishes for them to come back. What we want is the construction of more dense residential housing that can meet or exceed that population density while providing good quality of life. Said construction is entirely possible, doable, and profitable, except that zoning prohibits it in most places.
> Hundreds of thousands would live on a street that now houses a thousand people.
> I don’t think that density is coming back or desirable.
I think there's plenty of examples of dense cities (certainly far denser than most US cities) that aren't full of death-trap tenements and it's borderline intellectually dishonest to equate density with that.
In fact, letting NIMBYs have free rein to obstruct/delay/interdict housing construction is far more likely to cause overcrowded/unsafe living situations (which include homelessness) than the other way around.
Yes, in 1880 people were crammed into tenements. Today we live roughly as densely as we did in 1960 (maybe slightly more densely due to more high rises), but housing is far, far more expensive.
I think you phrase the grandparent's comment much better than he did. That is much more clear. Appreciated.
But on housing, there's a major issue you're not considering. This [1] is a list of US city populations in 1950. This [2] is the list for 1960. So we're looking at the sweet spot of the housing boom and a period where the population also dramatically grew increasing by about 30 million (~20%) in those 10 years. Now you might notice something funny. Nearly every major city shrank in size!
The housing boom did not involve building up (rather literally as is the desire of some people today) in desirable areas so everybody could affordably live there. Instead people sacrificed some comfort and moved outside of cities and started building houses in uninhabited areas outside of the cities. Houses were cheap because people were developing in areas where there was nothing and that nobody wanted before. In turn this movement away from city centers helped keep those prices within the city reasonable, as it had a depressing effect on demand.
The reason prices are so high today is because of simple market dynamics. People are less willing to live in less desirable areas. This is driving the prices in desirable areas into crazy land. There is still immense cheap housing available outside of these areas. Some cities are so hungry for new citizens that they're literally even giving away land on the condition that you put or build a house on it.
I’d also argue it has to do with such availability of previously undesirable areas in coastal regions which are also close enough to large commerce centers. Everyone wants to live on coastline. It’s the reason why amazon can’t just relocate to North Dakota and start a second Silicon Valley there
Unrelated, a huge point I'd like to see addressed more is how housing costs have outgrown inflation over the course of decades. We used to build enough housing, but NIMBYism and restrictive zoning has taken over recently. Housing is much more expensive in big cities in real terms than it was then, even though fewer people live in them in many cases now (e.g. the population of Manhattan reached its peak in the 1910 census and is down 30% since then). Real wages haven't decreased since the middle-class heydays of the 60s, and a lot of consumers goods have gotten much, much cheaper since then in real terms. The real headwinds in the face of middle-class prosperity are housing costs, healthcare costs, and (to end the digression) university costs, all of which have grown well above inflation.