Comment by johnrob
Invest in making food/shelter cheaper?
Invest in making food/shelter cheaper?
Large houses make familial interdependence extremely difficult? That doesn't make sense. Or did I misunderstood? I don't live in the US.
Cheap depends on how we define the cost. In relative terms, food is more expensive than ever:
Food is not Baumol, productivity increases is how we went from 80% of the population working in primary food production to 1%. These increases have not stopped.
Food and shelter are cheaper than at almost any time in human history. Additionally, people have more variety of healthy foods all year long.
No matter how cheap food and shelter are, there will always be people who can not acquire them. Halting all human progress until the last human is fed and sheltered is a recipe for stagnation. Other cultures handle this with strong family bonds - those few who can not acquire food or shelter for whatever reason are generally provided for by their families.