Recently I happened upon an HGTV show called Tiny House Hunters. Thankfully, it wasn't about midgets looking for new homes (which is probably a TLC series in development, mind you) but rather, people looking for exceptionally small houses. A couple of college kids wanted their own space in a package small enough to park in one of their dad's yards; a nurse who worked contracts wanted a “house” small enough to tow behind her when she went to another city for a few months. She looked at a hut- err, “house” that was 8X8', but decided that though eminently portable, the glorified porta-potty was too tiny and opted for one of about 200 square feet, with a tiny kitchenette, loft bed that her little dog could access through narrow steps up and a working bathroom. The homes were indeed marvels of design, utilizing every inch of space for storage and furniture that could do double-duty- beds that flip out of the wall, chairs that are also refrigerators and so on.
I've seen stories on some of the tiny apartments in crowded Tokyo and Chinese cities, but had no idea this was a “thing” over here. I figured people who were on a tight budget looked for a moldy basement apartment or the nearest trailer park, not a custom home builder specializing in houses the size of a typical SUV. But, it should come as no surprise because really, it's exactly what is happening throughout our culture. Things are getting big or getting tiny. The middle is being squeezed out of existence.
While there's apparently a market for very small houses, it's long seemed to me that most new houses keep getting bigger and bigger, like their price tags resulting in communities of giant homes people seldom get to sit in and enjoy because they're too busy working two jobs trying to pay for them. The American Enterprise Institute concurs; the average house size has grown from 1650 square feet in 1975 to 2679 last year, even though average household size has shrunk in that time period. As they put it, “today's generations are buying [houses] larger by 1000-square feet compared to the average new house their parents might have purchased.”
Obviously, it's not just the houses which are being pushed outwards to the limits. Try finding a nice, mid-sized car these days. SUVs keep getting more and more popular and bigger and bulkier - take a look at how ordinary a Hummer looks these days alongside new GMs and Toyotas- and gaining more market share. A full-size Dodge Ram pickup these days is 7-inches longer and a full thousand pounds heavier than a 2000 model; the ever-popular Honda Civic is ever more civil since the new ones seem big enough to serve as a micro-bus. Yet for all the huge vehicles banging their doors into each other in parking lots, the other end of the spectrum is thriving too. Tiny Fiats and Minis buzz about the highways in unprecedented numbers like minnows swimming through a pod of whales.
Watching TV? Probably on a screen movie theaters of the 50s would have been envious of. All the better to be seen in the gigantic family rooms of the new homes. If not though, likely on a phone held inches away from your face. Gone are the 24” sets that populated the dens of our youth.
The trend carries over to where we buy our TVs and everything else. If the retail Pacman that is Walmart hasn't yet eaten all of its competition, it sure seems on the march. Bye bye, Circuit City, Eckerds, FAO Schwarz, Linens'n'things, Borders, Canadian cousins Woolco, Sam the Record Man and so on; have the obits ready for Radio Shack, Sears and JC Penney. These days, if you're not buying it at Walmart, Home Depot or whichever supermarket chain your city still has, you're likely buying it online off etsy or e-bay. And small business doesn't get much smaller than Pete's Painted Rocks or the southern West Virginia Model Locomotive Outlet. There's just no place, it would seem for semi-generalized stores or locations that fall between them.
All of this is interesting enough but not terribly consequential. Unfortunately, other aspects of society are following the same trends with deeper ramifications. Politics for instance. There was a time when left and right could talk to each other, when Democrats would vote with Republican bills if they made sense and vice versa, a time when the middle-ground Liberal party were nicknamed the “Natural Governing Party” in Canada because they won elections so consistently. Those days are as gone as a Blockbuster Video store. Today it's all about staking your territory on the margins and yelling louder than the guys on the other side. It's a climate where Donald Trump can be taken seriously as a candidate and where in Canada the party often described as “socialist” - the NDP- have eclipsed the middle-ground Liberals as the opposition to the increasingly far-right Conservative party. The idea of concensus-building is as relevant to today's politicians as horse-drawn carriages to ride home in.
Perhaps the extreme positions are taking hold because we, as a society are becoming more polarized as well. It's no mere cliche that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. The middle class is slowly being eliminated, as unions disappear, well-paid factories close and outsource their work to Asia and the social safety net people used to be able to rely on - social security, unemployment and so on- keeps getting pulled tauter and springing more holes.
The Atlantic reports that the after-tax income of the elite top one percent of the nation - the Trumps and Kardashians- has risen by 281% from 1979 to 2007. The middle class - the fifth of the land in the mid-income bracket- has only increased by 25% in the same time, while the bottom end have grown their income by only 16%.
Little wonder that dollar stores are the one retail sector growing by leaps and bounds, or that those who can't buy a five-bed, four bath monster house are aspiring to a home they can pull behind their used Fiat.
Society will be ok if it ends up watching the big game and the latest Netflix offering on postage-stamp sized screens or TVs that are entire walls. It will get by even if the next generation of trucks has the dimensions of a Greyhound bus while new cars are skateboards with doors. But a society without people of decent but not extreme disposable income, without people of ability to listen to voices on both sides of an argument and find common ground seems ultimately doomed.
Our society is composed of humans. People need a healthy, functioning mid-section to reproduce and survive. So too does society.
I've seen stories on some of the tiny apartments in crowded Tokyo and Chinese cities, but had no idea this was a “thing” over here. I figured people who were on a tight budget looked for a moldy basement apartment or the nearest trailer park, not a custom home builder specializing in houses the size of a typical SUV. But, it should come as no surprise because really, it's exactly what is happening throughout our culture. Things are getting big or getting tiny. The middle is being squeezed out of existence.
While there's apparently a market for very small houses, it's long seemed to me that most new houses keep getting bigger and bigger, like their price tags resulting in communities of giant homes people seldom get to sit in and enjoy because they're too busy working two jobs trying to pay for them. The American Enterprise Institute concurs; the average house size has grown from 1650 square feet in 1975 to 2679 last year, even though average household size has shrunk in that time period. As they put it, “today's generations are buying [houses] larger by 1000-square feet compared to the average new house their parents might have purchased.”
Obviously, it's not just the houses which are being pushed outwards to the limits. Try finding a nice, mid-sized car these days. SUVs keep getting more and more popular and bigger and bulkier - take a look at how ordinary a Hummer looks these days alongside new GMs and Toyotas- and gaining more market share. A full-size Dodge Ram pickup these days is 7-inches longer and a full thousand pounds heavier than a 2000 model; the ever-popular Honda Civic is ever more civil since the new ones seem big enough to serve as a micro-bus. Yet for all the huge vehicles banging their doors into each other in parking lots, the other end of the spectrum is thriving too. Tiny Fiats and Minis buzz about the highways in unprecedented numbers like minnows swimming through a pod of whales.
Watching TV? Probably on a screen movie theaters of the 50s would have been envious of. All the better to be seen in the gigantic family rooms of the new homes. If not though, likely on a phone held inches away from your face. Gone are the 24” sets that populated the dens of our youth.
The trend carries over to where we buy our TVs and everything else. If the retail Pacman that is Walmart hasn't yet eaten all of its competition, it sure seems on the march. Bye bye, Circuit City, Eckerds, FAO Schwarz, Linens'n'things, Borders, Canadian cousins Woolco, Sam the Record Man and so on; have the obits ready for Radio Shack, Sears and JC Penney. These days, if you're not buying it at Walmart, Home Depot or whichever supermarket chain your city still has, you're likely buying it online off etsy or e-bay. And small business doesn't get much smaller than Pete's Painted Rocks or the southern West Virginia Model Locomotive Outlet. There's just no place, it would seem for semi-generalized stores or locations that fall between them.
All of this is interesting enough but not terribly consequential. Unfortunately, other aspects of society are following the same trends with deeper ramifications. Politics for instance. There was a time when left and right could talk to each other, when Democrats would vote with Republican bills if they made sense and vice versa, a time when the middle-ground Liberal party were nicknamed the “Natural Governing Party” in Canada because they won elections so consistently. Those days are as gone as a Blockbuster Video store. Today it's all about staking your territory on the margins and yelling louder than the guys on the other side. It's a climate where Donald Trump can be taken seriously as a candidate and where in Canada the party often described as “socialist” - the NDP- have eclipsed the middle-ground Liberals as the opposition to the increasingly far-right Conservative party. The idea of concensus-building is as relevant to today's politicians as horse-drawn carriages to ride home in.
Perhaps the extreme positions are taking hold because we, as a society are becoming more polarized as well. It's no mere cliche that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. The middle class is slowly being eliminated, as unions disappear, well-paid factories close and outsource their work to Asia and the social safety net people used to be able to rely on - social security, unemployment and so on- keeps getting pulled tauter and springing more holes.
The Atlantic reports that the after-tax income of the elite top one percent of the nation - the Trumps and Kardashians- has risen by 281% from 1979 to 2007. The middle class - the fifth of the land in the mid-income bracket- has only increased by 25% in the same time, while the bottom end have grown their income by only 16%.
Little wonder that dollar stores are the one retail sector growing by leaps and bounds, or that those who can't buy a five-bed, four bath monster house are aspiring to a home they can pull behind their used Fiat.
Society will be ok if it ends up watching the big game and the latest Netflix offering on postage-stamp sized screens or TVs that are entire walls. It will get by even if the next generation of trucks has the dimensions of a Greyhound bus while new cars are skateboards with doors. But a society without people of decent but not extreme disposable income, without people of ability to listen to voices on both sides of an argument and find common ground seems ultimately doomed.
Our society is composed of humans. People need a healthy, functioning mid-section to reproduce and survive. So too does society.