Big yuck. Hey, I was not personally around for WWI but my mother and dad certainly were . . . big time . . . and of course during the entirety of the depression as well. Neither was fat; both were poor. The 46% number would not surprise me in their case, or across the board for that matter.
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No, he only started keeping the family books at age 10 
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I saw an exhibit at the American history museum on colonial life and the monthly numbers for food and clothing were way more than now. Even higher than the WW1 stuff quoted above. So much so that having a small garden was a necessity. I’ll see if I can find it. I sort of recall a bed was cheap because it was made locally, but the bedsheets cost 6x the bed because they were imported!
It is sort of interesting how it’s changed over the years due to prdictivity advances. Now housing is expensive but we can more or less eat whatever we want and wear cheap fast-fashion.
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Yes, the $100 cell phone and $200 cable bills are essential… I tend to find that those who complain most about not having enough to get by, are those desperately trying to hold onto luxuries they cannot afford.
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Theres probably a lot of factors involved in the transport cost.
Urbanization is up from around 73% in the 70’s to 80% or so today.
But I think we all know mass transit is mostly a flop in the USA.
Mass transit use has actually gone down in the US since the 60’s - 70’s. At least looking at people commuting to work, which I think is probably bulk of travel :
12% in 60’s census
8.9% in 1970 census
5.0% in ACS today
Americans drive more and more over the decades. I also think our cars are better and better as well. I’m thinking these are the main reasons what we spend hasn’t gone down much.
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At the end of the day it probably comes down to cost vs efficiency. I bet a much higher percentage of commuters use mass transit in New York than in LA. For all the pitfalls of the NY subway regularly mentioned on late night TV, the “cost” is still lower than taking a car for many. In LA it’s a different story, because if you don’t live right next to a station, you’ll have to use multiple modes of transportation and it may be more aggravating than highway traffic. Plus parking in LA is less of a problem than in NY. Even in the SF / Bay Area many of my friends rode BART to work (pre-pandemic). Also Uber/Lyft and all the scooter apps made it much easier to ditch the car.
Higher gas prices may push more people to use public transportation.
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That is a huge shock. Despite cooler looking and better cars, I can’t imagine people in cities like NY, Boston, and DC even being able to afford the parking, insurance, and taxes on vehicles. I found rush hour driving miserable and preferred mass transit because it was faster and didn’t cost a lot of attention, even if it meant a little inconvenience.
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Only for people that don’t try and save money. My cell phone bill for two people is $50 and that includes two high end phones (galaxy and pixel). My fiber optic 200 mbps internet service is also $50/month. Hulu is $2/mo. Netflix 4k $20/mo. Paramount+ included with cell phone service. Disney+ $8/mo. MLB.TV also included with cell service. Thats $130/month for cell phones, cell service, internet, and programming. That’s about as much as I used to pay for cable and (slower) internet 6 years ago.
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I think he means overall in the US. A lot of small and medium sized cities had bus and streetcar systems many years ago and tore them out in favor of cars. Transit is definitely still thriving in major cities.
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yeah I was saying nationally in the US mass transit use is down. % of the whole population in the USA.
NYC, Chicago, DC, Boston may all have consistently high mass transit use over the decades. Dunno for sure but can’t say they don’t.
But the USA as a whole, the % of people using mass transit is down.
Big reason: More people have moved into the South and West over the decades and those areas do not have large established mass transit.
In 1960 a full 4% of the US population lived in NYC and today its down to like 2.5%. NYC has grown but the US as a whole has grown faster. But this shift alone could cause the US mass transit % use to drop while NYC stays the same.
I live in Portland which you’d think would be all into mass transit due to the politics but no, only 6.7% of the population uses mass transit (as of 2019). WE’ve got a city spanning light rail train and buses and a streetcar downtown but thats still not really good enough to be effective for most people. OTOH we have apparently 5-6% of the population that commutes by bicycle.
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The X factor seems to be population density and traffic. Most cities in the US haven’t, and maybe will never, reach the tipping point where transit is faster than driving. That’s what it will take for people who can afford to have a car to use transit instead.
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While this may be true today, in the early 60’s (and presumably in the 50’s), mass transit was heavily used in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Birmingham, Houston and, in the late 60’s, Dallas. Although I don’t have data to back it up, I believe those mass transit systems were almost breakeven.
That makes sense, and possibly explains my comment above. Although I think population density was probably higher then, there weren’t really any suburbs. OTOH, traffic was a breeze.
Is that like 2 on an old family-of-10 plan? T-mo?
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Not sure who he uses but Visible Wireless is owned by Verizon and uses their towers and is $25/monthly per line unlimited including unlimited hotspot.
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TL;DR It’s old and it’s T-mo, but not family based. It’s one line of Sprint Unlimited Kickstart + one line of Unlimited On Us. It took work and good timing to get it that low with just two lines. I know you didn’t ask for this, but here’s the long version.
For years I had Sprint SERO grandfathered from the early days of the Blackberry/Windows Mobile era (around 2006). Where I lived, at the time, Sprint coverage was about as good as AT&T, better than T-Mobile, and worse than Verizon. But Verizon cost twice as much. Sprint’s SERO started at $30/month and eventually became $40 years later by adding $10/mo for “premium data” when you switched to an Android phone. With taxes and fees, it stayed right below $50/mo and it was always unlimited data. Calling became unlimited at some point. They also added free 3G international data too. I assume that add on was in response to all the other networks improving faster than Sprint and so many people leaving to cheap MVNOs. That was also shortly after the time that the legacy carriers stopped offering several a hundred dollar discount on buying a new phone from them every 2 years. My Galaxy S6 purchase in 2015 got in right before that custom ended. I almost switched to a discount MVNO in 2016 as Sprint now had the worst coverage in my area, but held off hoping for something really good.
Then in 2018, something really good came along. Sprint offered Unlimited Kickstart to new customers. $20/mo unlimited calling/data (with the possibility of network congestion throttling) and a $5 discount for auto-pay. So $15/mo for the best plan on the worst (but usable) network. I had to cancel my Sprint plan and pay to port my number to T-Mobile in order to be a new customer. That was a nerve racking experience getting rid of a 9 year old grandfathered plan that was still a good deal. But there were enough people that posted how they did it, so I was hopeful it would work. Since I did the switch on the last day of eligibility, I ended up having to be on the phone with them for hours to get it working. It was worth it in the end. Since the eligibility for it was over the next day, I didn’t get my wife switched over to it. But a couple months later, they ran the same promo (Unlimited Kickstart) at a different price point - $30/mo with a $5/mo auto-pay discount. Up to this point, I had my wife on different MVNOs as promos popped up and as she needed new phones so it was nice to have her on a plan I knew we wouldn’t switch. $40/mo + tax/fees for 2 unlimited lines was as good as it gets, or so I thought.
Not long after T-Mobile bought Sprint in the summer of 2020, I was worried that they would get rid of our grandfathered plans. But not only did they say they would keep Sprint customers on their old plans, they offered a free unlimited line (w/ throttling) to everyone. So I ported my wife out of her $25/mo plan and then added her to my plan for free. So now we had two unlimited lines on one plan for $15/mo plus fees. That came to $25/mo.
Then this year T-Mobile brought back the new phone discount - even for my wife’s free line. They offered the Pixel 6 and Galaxy S21 FE (and other phones) for $300 spread over 24 months as monthly bill credits when trading in an old phone. At the time, from T-Mobile, the Pixel 6 was $600 and the Galaxy S21 FE was $700 (but you could get it for $600 from Samsung). So I’m paying $12.50/mo for each phone for 24 months = $300 each.
If I weren’t getting this deal myself, I wouldn’t believe it. My wife is frugal, but I don’t think she has any concept about how much we are actually saving above the average family. So I guess my claim that people can save tons on their cell phone bill while posting what I pay was 50% realistic (people can save) and 50% humble-brag (but they aren’t likely to duplicate my bill).
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Yeah in the first half of the 20th century mass transit systems were a lot more used in most bigger cities across the nation. Cities were more central and we hadn’t developed suburbs, urban sprawl or the national highway system.
Portland here had a street car system that was extensively used. Then we tore it all out decades ago and and now weve been rebuilding it.
Still as of 1960 nation wide the use of mass transit was still only 12%.
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Trying to wrap my head around that - I guess one possible reason is that in 1960, the country had a much smaller urban population than today. That’s the only reason I can guess would lead to that small of a number.
By the 60’s we had about 70% of the country living in ‘urban’ / metro areas. Its about 80% today.
Not a huge difference. And keep in mind thats any city so oculd be smaller cities you wouldn’t expect to see light rail or good bus systems like Bozeman MT is I assume ‘urban’.
Also when I’m quoting those % for 'use of mass transi’t thats really % of people who use it for like daily commuting.
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I appreciate your response, and will accept that you are using reliable sources for your percentages. I’m pretty surprised at those numbers, and thought the country was more rural than that until the late 60’s early 70’s. You learn something every day … and with my memory, it may be the same thing every day. 
I am curious as to why you put urban in quotes (singles). This is no inference/accusation/indictment toward/of you, but I’ve recently dealt with a few writers who would use that as a way to imply an untruth and then loudly complain that they never said it.
1960’s Census info re: urban / rural "
I put ‘urban’ in quotes because of the point I later made about ‘urban’ meaning any kind of city. Some people (not necessarily you or anyone here ) would see the word ‘urban’ and then think that means only the BIG cities like >1 million or 100k+ people or something because thats how many people consider ‘urban’. But in the census definition, small towns as little as only 2,500 ppn are considered ‘urban’.
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