5 ms·

Why Middle-Class Americans Can't Afford to Live in Liberal Cities

22 points by SQL2219 10y ago

euyyn 10y ago
While all those hypotheses sound reasonable, I think it's expected that to start looking for those causes, the author first has to argue that the causation doesn't go the other way around. I.e., why is > "liberal markets tend to have higher income inequality and worse affordability" assumed instead of: > Markets with high income inequality and bad affordability tend to be more liberal. ?
- sharemywin 10y ago
  or an even better assumption is correlation doesn't prove causation. Of course, without jumping to conclusions it's hard to produce click bait.
  - euyyn 10y ago
    Well, searching for a possible causation chain is the more interesting part; just showing that two things are correlated is of limited value. Of course you're right that the correct approach is to look independently for the causes of both things.
bko 10y ago
> If you line up the country's 100 richest metros from 1 to 100, household affordability falls as household income rises, even after you consider that middle class families in richer cities have more income One thing to consider is that, although household affordability may be worse, other things may be cheaper and more convenient (relative to remaining income after housing expense). For instance, in NYC, although the housing prices are very high, there is no need for a car. And now with online shopping, anyone in NYC is able to get Walmart prices with delivery, at least for non-perishable items. Granted, some items like food are more expensive, but outside delivery services have brought the cost significantly down over the years. That's not even taking into consideration other benefits such as historic neighborhoods and great restaurants. I think in the end people care about absolute income and not so much on relative proportions of the rent they are paying in housing. And it's certainly possible to live in a high cost city , get paid a higher salary and save a higher absolute amount every year.
- laughfactory 10y ago
  > I think in the end people care about absolute income and not so much on relative proportions of the rent they are paying in housing. And it's certainly possible to live in a high cost city , get paid a higher salary and save a higher absolute amount every year. Uh, not so much. Or, maybe if they're dumb. I do think people have a hard time evaluating the relative value of living one place versus another. That is, it's not that they objectively prefer to make more in a higher cost of living area (where, for most, compensation does not compensate for the high cost of living), it's that they have a difficult time understanding objectively that a high absolute salary number is worthless (and actually detrimental when it comes to taxes) and what really matters is your cost of living adjusted salary. I would argue that your assertion that it "possible to live in a high cost city , get paid a higher salary and save a higher absolute amount every year" is only true for very few. In my opinion, and from my experience, most middle class people get really screwed in big liberal cities. They may make a higher salary in absolute terms but their costs are simply, across the board, higher. I believe I've even seen studies to support this. My wife and I moved to the big city so I could get the experience I needed, and now, three years later, we're leaving because it doesn't make fiscal sense to stay. Taxes and housing are impoverishing us, and if we want to have any sort of viable future (savings, retirement, a house, debt paid off) we've got to leave and move to a lower cost of living area where salaries are still relatively robust. So I know that the relatively higher cost of housing, for example, were a huge part of us leaving. And while it is technically possible to do financially very well in any big city, I would argue that the possibility does not become reality for many.
dragonwriter 10y ago
1. Median income in most places is working class, not middle class. 2. Liberalism is more common where most people are econimically compelled to be renters, not owners. This is surprising, why?
- marssaxman 10y ago
  Perhaps the financial vulnerability that comes from having most of one's wealth tied up in a single not-especially-liquid leveraged asset makes people tend toward conservatism.
  - tropo 10y ago
    Right, but being conservative tends to get you into that situation. You'd want ownership, control, lack of crowds, privacy, gun rights, security, and space. This is unavailable in the big coastal cities, so you are effectively forced out. Just being in the city is stressful.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  The US subsidizes owning. To the best of my ability to tell, home ownership looks like a generator of conservatism to conservatives and a helping hand to ... nonconservatives. So it's bipartisan. Home ownership with big mortgages is recent in America.
timoth3y 10y ago
Perhaps the explanation is much simpler. 1) The way new wealth is generated in America tends to produce income inequality - at least in the short term. 2) Wealthy people have their lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs met and are more likely to focus on things like esteem and self-actualization than are people who need to worry about putting food on the table. So wealthily people will tend to be more liberal. Therefore wealthy cities tend to have both income inequality and skew liberal, but the causes are unrelated.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  "Wealthy" isn't a coherent adjective. People who move up the corporate food chain are not the smart people, it's the people who adapt to the expected mood affiliation of their industry, develop the expected after-hours activities and buy the right clothing. Entrepreneurs, bluntly, get lucky. No, income inequality has much more to do with financialization, and I've so far traced the roots of that back to the Potsdam Conference, at least for the US. And first the US, then the world. It's fairly unscientific, but because I have access to a person with a specialty in population dynamics, my theory about "why inequality" is that previous efforts to curb older, milder forms of inequality usually backfire. Current wealth inequality results from gamifying efforts to "fix" inequality. It "feels" to me like the Pareto distribution just is, and all attempts to improve on it are in vain.
  - sharemywin 10y ago
    current inequality is about globalization and the internet. Most income at the top of the pyramid is a function of the resources you manage/own(assuming things like too big to fail are anomalies) You get to keep a portion of what you make and/or manage. As the organizations get larger the higher the number of layers. The internet has even exacerbated the problem because now "customer/users" can self service and need even few people in the pyramid.

22 points by SQL2219 10y ago

euyyn 10y ago

While all those hypotheses sound reasonable, I think it's expected that to start looking for those causes, the author first has to argue that the causation doesn't go the other way around. I.e., why is > "liberal markets tend to have higher income inequality and worse affordability" assumed instead of: > Markets with high income inequality and bad affordability tend to be more liberal. ?

sharemywin 10y ago
or an even better assumption is correlation doesn't prove causation. Of course, without jumping to conclusions it's hard to produce click bait.
- euyyn 10y ago
  Well, searching for a possible causation chain is the more interesting part; just showing that two things are correlated is of limited value. Of course you're right that the correct approach is to look independently for the causes of both things.

bko 10y ago

> If you line up the country's 100 richest metros from 1 to 100, household affordability falls as household income rises, even after you consider that middle class families in richer cities have more income One thing to consider is that, although household affordability may be worse, other things may be cheaper and more convenient (relative to remaining income after housing expense). For instance, in NYC, although the housing prices are very high, there is no need for a car. And now with online shopping, anyone in NYC is able to get Walmart prices with delivery, at least for non-perishable items. Granted, some items like food are more expensive, but outside delivery services have brought the cost significantly down over the years. That's not even taking into consideration other benefits such as historic neighborhoods and great restaurants. I think in the end people care about absolute income and not so much on relative proportions of the rent they are paying in housing. And it's certainly possible to live in a high cost city , get paid a higher salary and save a higher absolute amount every year.

laughfactory 10y ago
> I think in the end people care about absolute income and not so much on relative proportions of the rent they are paying in housing. And it's certainly possible to live in a high cost city , get paid a higher salary and save a higher absolute amount every year. Uh, not so much. Or, maybe if they're dumb. I do think people have a hard time evaluating the relative value of living one place versus another. That is, it's not that they objectively prefer to make more in a higher cost of living area (where, for most, compensation does not compensate for the high cost of living), it's that they have a difficult time understanding objectively that a high absolute salary number is worthless (and actually detrimental when it comes to taxes) and what really matters is your cost of living adjusted salary. I would argue that your assertion that it "possible to live in a high cost city , get paid a higher salary and save a higher absolute amount every year" is only true for very few. In my opinion, and from my experience, most middle class people get really screwed in big liberal cities. They may make a higher salary in absolute terms but their costs are simply, across the board, higher. I believe I've even seen studies to support this. My wife and I moved to the big city so I could get the experience I needed, and now, three years later, we're leaving because it doesn't make fiscal sense to stay. Taxes and housing are impoverishing us, and if we want to have any sort of viable future (savings, retirement, a house, debt paid off) we've got to leave and move to a lower cost of living area where salaries are still relatively robust. So I know that the relatively higher cost of housing, for example, were a huge part of us leaving. And while it is technically possible to do financially very well in any big city, I would argue that the possibility does not become reality for many.

dragonwriter 10y ago

1. Median income in most places is working class, not middle class. 2. Liberalism is more common where most people are econimically compelled to be renters, not owners. This is surprising, why?

marssaxman 10y ago
Perhaps the financial vulnerability that comes from having most of one's wealth tied up in a single not-especially-liquid leveraged asset makes people tend toward conservatism.
- tropo 10y ago
  Right, but being conservative tends to get you into that situation. You'd want ownership, control, lack of crowds, privacy, gun rights, security, and space. This is unavailable in the big coastal cities, so you are effectively forced out. Just being in the city is stressful.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
The US subsidizes owning. To the best of my ability to tell, home ownership looks like a generator of conservatism to conservatives and a helping hand to ... nonconservatives. So it's bipartisan. Home ownership with big mortgages is recent in America.

timoth3y 10y ago

Perhaps the explanation is much simpler. 1) The way new wealth is generated in America tends to produce income inequality - at least in the short term. 2) Wealthy people have their lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs met and are more likely to focus on things like esteem and self-actualization than are people who need to worry about putting food on the table. So wealthily people will tend to be more liberal. Therefore wealthy cities tend to have both income inequality and skew liberal, but the causes are unrelated.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
"Wealthy" isn't a coherent adjective. People who move up the corporate food chain are not the smart people, it's the people who adapt to the expected mood affiliation of their industry, develop the expected after-hours activities and buy the right clothing. Entrepreneurs, bluntly, get lucky. No, income inequality has much more to do with financialization, and I've so far traced the roots of that back to the Potsdam Conference, at least for the US. And first the US, then the world. It's fairly unscientific, but because I have access to a person with a specialty in population dynamics, my theory about "why inequality" is that previous efforts to curb older, milder forms of inequality usually backfire. Current wealth inequality results from gamifying efforts to "fix" inequality. It "feels" to me like the Pareto distribution just is, and all attempts to improve on it are in vain.
- sharemywin 10y ago
  current inequality is about globalization and the internet. Most income at the top of the pyramid is a function of the resources you manage/own(assuming things like too big to fail are anomalies) You get to keep a portion of what you make and/or manage. As the organizations get larger the higher the number of layers. The internet has even exacerbated the problem because now "customer/users" can self service and need even few people in the pyramid.