You are right that people will probably be complaining about the same things in every generation, but I have a feeling that if you asked them to rank things in terms of how problematic they are, housing costs would be much higher ranked today than in the 80s and 90s.

Just a guess, I haven't looked at that kind of data.


SimpleStacker

econ

"Housing prices are not high by any historical standard" - evoskuil

Scoresby

> But I'd also argue that rich in material terms does not necessarily lead to life satisfaction. 

This is a great point, and well said. 

> then housing is probably too expensive.

I need a go look back at newspapers from the 80s or 90s and see how people were talking about housing prices. 

My (un-evidenced) suspicion is that they were saying it was expensive. In the same way that old people like to deplore the morality of the youth, the youth like to bemoan the expense of modern life. 

You are probably close set to the truth of the matter than Voskuil, but I enjoyed his take because it is not something I hear very often at all, and I do think it has some well-reasoned argument behind it. 