8 ms·

The middle class can afford to live in cities, just not in a 3500 sqft house with a 2 car garage and a boat, and with the best school district and certainly not

• contracantor 10y ago
  If you're going to make a statement like that I'm going to need an example of what you consider middle class, what you consider affordable and what a reasonable square footage is for a family of 4.
  • ryanSrich 10y ago
    Middle class in a small to mid size city is $200k in annual household income. A family of three should have no problem in 1200sqft. Two kids is excessive, but if you do have two kids you'd be fine in 1500sqft.
    • pradn 10y ago
      Two kids is excessive? By what measure? Human populations need a birth rate of 2.1 to even stay at the same level.
      • mac01021 10y ago
        At the moment, though, we are probably better off shrinking our numbers.
        • rayiner 10y ago
          Not in the US. We're facing a huge impending labor shortage. (And immigration just externalizes the problem of accommodating raising children from US policy to India or China policy.)
          • philipkglass 10y ago
            We're facing a huge impending labor shortage. The trend in US wages/employment for youths doesn't seem to signal that. The trend in wages/employment for youths in nations with even lower fertility rates (Spain, Italy, Portugal...) doesn't seem to signal that. Even Japan, where absolute population decline is already underway, has good-but-not-amazing trends in wages and unemployment for youths. Where's the race to bid up the prices for young workers, and buy all their labor that's for sale, if an aging work force really is leading to crisis-level worker shortages? If the market expects a huge impending shortage of (e.g.) coking coal, you don't see the same lackluster demand for the output that's currently available. Maybe you meant that the shortage isn't coming in the next couple of months or years, but in a generation or so, so the market reaction isn't there yet. The view that I subscribe to, which seems common here on HN, is that technological change is going to significantly reduce the market demand for human labor in a generation or so. I expect that automation will generally deflate the market price of human labor faster than an aging work force can inflate it. Social Security solvency currently depends on lots of middle class workers earning wages, because its funding is structured that way. But that's a policy choice that is more easily reversed than fertility rates or technical progress in automation. If the problem is more about paying for retirees than lacking warm bodies to do work, higher fertility just makes government funding problems more severe: you end up with more people who need non-market support mechanisms if the market demand for additional human labor isn't there.
          • closeparen 10y ago
            Doesn't that mean, huge impending rise in real wages? Because if so, sign me up!
            • tptacek 10y ago
              Does it? Your real wage is your wage adjusted for purchasing power. A labor shortage drives up the cost of production and of services, which increases prices for everything, and also makes it uneconomical for people to hire others for services (like taking care of elderly parents), then the math teachers and so on in that fashion until everyone is eaten.
    • gipp 10y ago
      $200k is the 94th percentile of income.
      • ryanSrich 10y ago
        I'd imagine that's less so when you look at popular cities. The parent post wanted an opinion on middle class. My opinion is that middle class incomes in cities is around $200k (or should be if you want to be somewhat comfortable). I see houses all around me in Portland going for $800k, $900k, and $1mm plus. That's certainly much more than what a middle class income could afford. So considering those prices are fairly standard, the middle class income has to be at $200k. Whether that's reality or not the math just doesn't work any other way.
        • gipp 10y ago
          The argument was that middle class could afford a decent place in cities with lowered standards -- but you define middle class as "people who can afford a decent place in cities?" Surely you see the circularity here.
        • dmoy 10y ago
          > So considering those prices are fairly standard, the middle class income has to be at $200k I think there is a reason why everyone is railing/downvoting on Ryan here, and it's because of a difference in definition. There's two ways to define "middle class". One is by what you can afford: house, car, but not stuff like a private boat, etc. The other way is just by taking some middle percentage of the income brackets (middle 60% or whatever). Historically[1], Ryan is actually right here. For the baby boomers, both groups are right because they overlap. Much of the societal issues were seeing and will continue to see for the near future are because those groups are once again starting to not overlap (in certain areas, as highlighted by the original article). [1] Right by historically, I mean that centuries ago the lower class was like 90% of the population or something... Middle Class was mostly not a thing.
          • laughfactory 10y ago
            In order to live in those cities you do need a household income of $200K+. But that is not middle class. In such cities the statistical middle class would be $50-75K, but as a percentage of the population it would be a small (and increasingly smaller) group... Which is the crux of the problem. Nationwide the middle class is more like $40-50K (household income). If your household (how many earners it is comprised of) is over $100K in annual earnings then you're in the top quartile (25%!) of the entire country in income, and decidedly not "middle class" (though, depending on where you live, you may or may not have enough to afford a home, much less a boat, a beach bungalow, eating out, going to the bars, etc.). Keep in mind that a lot of these cities are okay for singles, but once those singles get married and have kids they rapidly discover they can't afford the big city anymore and have to leave.
    • emcq 10y ago
      I don't know anyone outside of tech or medicine bringing in 200k for the household. It looks like that would put you in the top 5% of income, squarely outside of the norm: http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-income-class-are-you.aspx http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-income...
      • home_boi 10y ago
        I am assuming he means $100k per person in NYC/SF. That's the entry level salary for even marketing/business workers in many companies.
        • alistairSH 10y ago
          Neither of those are small or mid-size cities. Throwing out $200k as a typical middle-class income just demonstrates the bubble the OP lives in. I live in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation (Fairfax) and we don't come anywhere close to a $200k median household income.
      • paulddraper 10y ago
        Two-income households are very common nowdays. So 100k, which is less abnormal. But I agree; 200k is not the bottom bar or average for middle class.
    • martingoodson 10y ago
      For someone living in the UK that sounds like a far off utopia. Government recommendations are about 1000sqft for a family of five. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/technical-housing-standards-nationally-described-space-standard https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/technical-housing...
      • alistairSH 10y ago
        We have a lot more space in the US. A typical 4-bedroom suburban home is somewhere around 1800sq/ft and, anecdotally, that number has been creeping up. Of course, all the space also has massive drawbacks... car-centric culture, sprawl, long commutes, harder to implement public transit, etc.
        • malyk 10y ago
          Not just anecdotally... In 1973 average house size was ~1500 sq ft. In 2010 it's ~2200 sq ft. https://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf https://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf
        • philipkglass 10y ago
          Other drawbacks to house size inflation: more space that needs cleaning/maintaining/heating/cooling, higher costs for buyers who want to own a house in a neighborhood but don't need or want to pay for extra space. In the area I live in -- not even a big city -- you're basically forced to choose house size and house age at the same time. If you want only 1400 SF you're buying an old house with old quirks (asbestos, a history of lead paint, old wiring...) If you want a new house you're buying more square feet and the additional burdens thereof (more space to heat and cool, more space to clean). There's practically no such thing as a new well built small house, or at least none that I could find when I was buying. I ended up in a 1940s house because all the newly built houses were too large for my tastes. And those huge new houses often had huge lawns that needed a riding lawnmower and ridiculous amounts of water (why is everyone landscaping a desert climate like we live in rainy England, argh...) Is there some weird feedback loop going on? "Our sales indicators show that buyers preferred even-larger new houses this year than last! (Because we didn't give buyers any options to buy smaller new ones.)"
    • wavefunction 10y ago
      I downvoted you for the ludicrous statement that middle-class is $200k in household income, especially in a mid-to-small-size city. Wages have not been keeping up with costs or you might have a point.
      • ryanSrich 10y ago
        I think people are misinterpreting my opinion of what middle class should be and the realities of what the middle class has become.
        • albedoa 10y ago
          Okay, but the submission says the middle class can't afford to live in cities anymore. You're saying, "Of course they can! Otherwise they wouldn't be middle class."
        • mercer 10y ago
          Could you elaborate (honest question)? My point of reference is The Netherlands, so I have very little context for that figure, as it would be ludicrously high for middle class over here (in part for very understandable reasons, welfare state and whatnot). I'm mostly curious about your views of the middle class and what they should be.
        • contracantor 10y ago
          I agree with you, unfortunately people can't buy property based on what we believe middle class should be. The reality is property is cities is not affordable for the middle class. How to solve that is another problem.
    • muhfuhkuh 10y ago
      > 200000 household income. You realize the median household income is 50000, right? So, in a small city you have to make 4x the national median to just survive? Wow, I know the West Coastians live in a well-protected self-imagined bubble, but this comment really brings it to light.
    • navbaker 10y ago
      I'd be interested to hear more about why you think two kids is "excessive".
      • laughfactory 10y ago
        Me too. Sounds like the typically short-sighted drivel heard from those who think a smaller, or declining, population is a good thing. Usually it comes from a "look at how bad the humans are for our beloved Earth" point of view. But such individuals usually aren't particularly studied in demography or human geography. They don't realize the catastrophic effects of a sub 2.1 (US) population growth rate. I.e., the so called "replacement rate." Currently it stands at 1.9. As this trend accelerates it could theoretically result in massive social fall out. One of the obvious possible by-products is not enough workers to support an aging population: either in providing necessary services, or tax revenue to support things like Medicare and Social Security. Usually, from what I've read, what matters is how stable and gradual the trend is. If it's a slow increase or decline then it's potentially okay. If there are rapid changes, or shocks, it is likely to be much worse because it doesn't allow time for society to adjust to the new reality of things. Glibly saying that having fewer kids on average is better is awfully bold, verging on ignorant (as would the opposite argument). It is true that in order to make ends meet in a big city, many families have many fewer kids (one or two, from what I saw in San Diego).
        • toasterlovin 10y ago
          It's fundamental: any culture which doesn't have a place for families with 3+ children is unsustainable. You can hope to make up the shortfall with immigration, but that's just kicking the can down the road. At some point your have to depend on your own harvest, not the surplus of your neighbors.
    • malyk 10y ago
      The article specifies the middle class as making between $50,000 and $125,000 in household income.
• jamespitts 10y ago
  This is a view that will lead to a highly dysfunctional society. First off, you are dismissive of the issue with that bit of exaggeration. It is not as if this group wants all the good things in life that only a tech salary afford. Perhaps a dignified life would be sufficient. You also place NYC, SF, Boston, DC, etc. into a category of city that is naturally not available to the middle class. Is NYC a luxury like a 3500 sq ft house and boat? Housing scarcity and the resulting price inflation is actually a situation that residents of cities accidentally created, something highly unnatural. Working class and middle class people are critical to the economy and wider culture of cities. Teachers. Police officers. Artists. The guy who makes your coffee. The gal not from a wealthy family who wants to start a business. It is not enough that a certain group can just live somewhere in America. Critical workers must live within a reasonable commute to their jobs. There should be plenty of places in each city for them to live in, and there should plenty of infrastructure in place to move them about.
  • muninn_ 10y ago
    Is NYC a luxury? Absolutely. The access to institutions, the culture, the people, the shops, the history... all of that is a luxury. That's why people want to live there versus somewhere like Cleveland I guess. Once those cities are unaffordable for the very people you mention, they will just move to more affordable places where they have a better cost of living, and then they will bring ideas, creativity, and resurgence to these areas and make them better. If you're a critical worker, then surely you can demand a pay raise. If not, move. If somebody can replace you, you're not critical. If somebody can't replace you, they'll have to pay more. I'm not dismissive of the cost of these cities at all, nor the plight of those living there, but you get what you pay for. If you're a teacher in New York and you can't afford rent, move somewhere else instead. What else are you going to do? Rent control? Then you just have people who can never afford to build lasting wealth because they will just rent for life. There isn't a 'solution' to this 'problem' because it's just a basic fact of human organization. I'd love to live in Colorado, maybe Breckinridge, but I can't afford that. So I live somewhere else and visit. Does that suck? Yeah sure, it also sucks I can't buy a Ferrari. Ideally we want mixed-use development neighborhoods with differently priced homes for people with different income levels to live in. But it looks like without the government enforcing it, that isn't going to happen.
• shostack 10y ago
  I'd tweak your statement to be "Those of the middle class who were not lucky enough to have purchased an affordable home yet." There are many who lucked out on timing and now have a nice house at a more previously affordable price. As usual, it is the younger generation that gets left holding the bag.
  • muninn_ 10y ago
    You can buy affordable houses right now. I have one here where I live. There are plenty on the market.
    • shostack 10y ago
      Unfortunately for many, the risk of slow job markets where homes are affordable pushes many away from where they are and towards the cities with more opportunity (and higher prices as a result).
• closeparen 10y ago
  But we already have the standard of living you describe at our income levels; the problem is, urbanization is taking it away.