I always liked that poem... Eliot is freaking brilliant. "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table..." I do vastly prefer "The Four Quartets" tho, particularly Burnt Norton.
My best friend in high school liked Prufrock so much, he memorized the entire poem (1100 words) for the fun of it.
You are incorrect, because you failed to take into account the fact the the size of houses now are much larger than the size of houses then. Some data, partly from census.gov, and some other trending sites:
Recent statistics from the National Association of Home Builders show that the average American home grew from 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,434 square feet in 2005... and increase in size of about 2.5... The average house price in 1950 was $8,450.00, while average wages per year was $3,210.00 (house cost = about 2.6 time more than salary).
In 2004, the average house price was $221,000 and median salary (didn't find the average, but the median in 1950 was in the mid 7k range, making this comparison skew even more in favor of the argument I'm advancing) was $48,934... (house cost = about 4.5 times more than salary).
If we adjust that by price per square foot, the price per square foot of a house in 1950 was about $8.60. The price per square foot in 2004 was about $90.80.
The change from 1950 to 2004 in salary is a factor of 15.2 times larger in 2004. The change in cost per square foot for a house was a factor only 10.56 times larger.
My conclusion? We are getting more house for our money now than we were in 1950. They only cost so much more because they are 2.6 times larger houses! Or, conversely, our houses are currently undervalued. Or they are 'just right' because the land the house is built on, on average, is a smaller lot.
Found one: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/06/16/1047201
From 1998 -- Predates the linking of submissions with user accounts, so that explains it.
If all else fails, lower your standards.
