12 ms·

A lot of anecdotes and conjecture here, so it’s worth analyzing the median trends across generations: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-23/med

• swiley 6y ago
  The median is only useful in certain kinds of distributions and many people argue that income distribution isn't one of those.
  • bhupy 6y ago
    Do you have a citation for that? The median is generally the most reliable metric to use specifically for income, since it isn’t impacted by outliers.
    • swiley 6y ago
      The median is often used for income, that doesn't make it "reliable."
      • bhupy 6y ago
        It’s “reliable” insofar as it tells us how the “average” person is doing, and by definition the lower bound for the top half of the population.
        • TeMPOraL 6y ago
          Not reliable at all if you have a bimodal or multimodal distribution.
          • bhupy 6y ago
            That’s not true. As long as you’re taking into account the median purchasing power, it doesn’t matter what the shape of the distribution is. Real median income has increased regardless of the choice of inflation index.
      • C1sc0cat 6y ago
        How so its a much much better measure than the arithmetic mean ?
    • ghaff 6y ago
      I generally agree with you. I suppose the argument--depending upon what the overall distribution looks like exactly--is that you can have a sizable minority clustered somewhere below what would have been considered a reasonable middle-class lifestyle while the median still looks reasonable. Also CPI doesn't really account for housing prices in many of the metros where the best jobs are or higher education prices.
      • bhupy 6y ago
        By definition, the “cluster” below the median is exactly half, regardless of the shape of the distribution. > Also CPI doesn’t really account for housing prices Per my source, the median income is the highest it’s been since 1981, and the total compensation the highest it’s been since WW2 regardless of the inflation index you use. Also, the median number of years to recoup the cost of a bachelors degree, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the 1980’s, from about 22 years to about 10 years -> https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-value-of-a-college-degree.html https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-va...
        • nicoburns 6y ago
          > By definition, the “cluster” below the median is exactly half, regardless of the shape of the distribution. Right, but that doesn't measure how for away from the median the upper and lower clusters are. > Also, the median number of years to recoup the cost of a bachelors degree, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the 1980’s, from about 22 years to about 10 years That would be consistent with a hypothesis that real wages have increased for higher earners and decreased for lower earners, right?
          • bhupy 6y ago
            > Right, but that doesn’t measure how far away from the median the upper and lower clusters are. Well, it doesn’t particularly matter how far from the upper the median clusters are if their absolute standard of living has improved — and we measure that by accounting for inflation. Regardless of which inflation metric you use (some include housing prices, some don’t), median income has risen. As for the lower cluster, the most reliable metric to use there is the poverty rate...which has also substantially fallen -> https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1308790816937095169?s=20 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1308790816937095169?s=... You can also look at the historic income trends divided up by quintile -> https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p... (Table H1, All Races, it's an Excel spreadsheet). Inflation adjusted income for the bottom two quintiles have also increased substantially. > That would be consistent with a hypothesis that real wages have increased for higher earners and decreased for lower earners, right? No, it would be consistent with a hypothesis that real wages have increased faster for higher earners than for lower earners, but demonstrates no evidence that it has decreased for lower earners. The empirical results show that real wages increased across all income levels, and between 2014-2019, it actually increased faster for lower earners -> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/low-wage-workers-are-getting-bigger-raises-than-bosses/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/low-wage-workers-are-getting-bi...
    • nicoburns 6y ago
      You really want to be comparing distribution curves rather than looking at any single average.
      • bhupy 6y ago
        Well, we're looking at the median here, which tells us what the lot of the "average American is". If you want to compare distribution curves, you can look at the income growth separated by quintile. That can be found here -> https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p... Click on "Income Limits for each Fifth and Top 5 percent", All Races. It's an Excel spreadsheet. The real income of the bottom 2 quintiles have also dramatically increased.
    • yndoendo 6y ago
      Say you calculate the median income for all spectators at a football game at $40,000. Suddenly Bill Gates walks in and the median skyrockets creating a false reality of what all others actually make. Median can often over-simply and create erroneous information.
      • zxcmx 6y ago
        Maybe you're thinking of the mean? BG shouldn't shift the median much in the situation you described unless the income distribution is really weird.
      • stripline 6y ago
        You are confusing median and mean.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • fifticon 6y ago
      That sounds like it's also an effective tool to hide the money ending up in the billionairs' pockets. Much like bhupy's carpetbombing this entire discussion with walls of text makes it nearly impossible to see if anybody else is trying to say something.
      • bhupy 6y ago
        I know! That bhupy person just won't stop addressing replies to their own comment(s) with relevant links to metrics and sources. The audacity, am I right?
  • pnathan 6y ago
    this is correct. conventional statistical functions rely on a whole host of assumptions about the shape and type of data. Typically that its a bell-curve distribution & ratio style data. The more you move away from that parametric style of data, the more conventional statistical functions simply have no meaning. To use an example. I worked at a shop where we had a freemium model. About, let's say, 50% of our customers paid $0.00. About 2% paid over, say, 10K. Between those two points we had a reasonably clean exponential curve, clustering at key product price points. (I've goosed the numbers for confidentiality purposes, but this is close enough for discussion). In this scenario, what was the average ROI per account? Well, truth is, that's not a useful answer, as it was roughly $0.01. I wound up building a small set of non-parametric data tools to assess the customer base. It was a fun journey, but a critical lesson is: the kind of data you have and its shape determine the statistical functions that have meaning, and, they didn't teach that kind of data analysis in your basic calc-based stats class in college. :)
• habosa 6y ago
  In Deaths of Despair [0] the authors explain how the economy in the US basically bifurcated. Nearly all gains go to those with post-secondary education. The large population of Americans without a college degree is not experiencing the boom that the rest of us have experienced since the bottom of the 2008 recession. This doesn't change the facts you shared. The median is clearly rising. But it can also help explain the reality we all see on the ground, where those who are near the bottom of the income distribution are more frustrated than ever and see the system as rigged against them. 0: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190785/deaths-of-despair-and-the-future-of-capitalism https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190785/de...
  • bhupy 6y ago
    I think it’s exactly correct that a post-secondary education is a reliable guarantee for an upper-middle-class way of life (depending on the degree, of course). That being said, it isn’t clear that those that go without a post-secondary education are necessarily less able to afford one today than they were in 1991. 1. The net tuition (not the sticker price, which only the rich really pay) is moderately higher, adjusted for inflation -> https://twitter.com/CPopeHC/status/1301975027147997189 https://twitter.com/CPopeHC/status/1301975027147997189 2. And while private tuition has always been expensive, the majority of Americans attend public universities (myself included) -> https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll... 3. And while there has been a modest increase in the inflation-adjusted price, the ROI of college degrees has increased more than the price. The net result is that the median number of years to recoup the cost of a bachelors degree, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the 1980’s, from about 22 years to about 10 years -> https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-value-of-a-college-degree.html https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-va...
    • intended 6y ago
      If I remember my r/badeconomics crash course, the issue is that jobs are being replaced, and being replaced with jobs like burger flipping instead of manufacturing which would allow you to skill up.
• carlob 6y ago
  The median might have done well, but we know for a fact that inequality has risen dramatically in the past 40 years, mostly as an effect of big tax cuts to the wealthy. I'd be interested in seeing an analysis dividing the population in bottom 50, top 10 and middle 40, post-tax. This is the most similar thing I could quickly find http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/ideologie/pdf/G11.7.pdf http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/ideologie/pdf/G11.7.pdf and it seems to show that low-income salaries have largely stagnated for the last 50 years. I don't think it's debatable that places like the Greater Boston area have seen increases in rent that have gone faster than inflation. Combine the two phenomena and you'll see how many people are priced out of large attractive cities.
  • collyw 6y ago
    Thomas Sowell makes an interesting point that very few people stay in the same categories of rich or poor in their lifetimes. Young people make up the majority of the poor, but after working and gaining experience the vast majority move out of that category. I am pretty sure I am an example of that. Graduated in the dot com bust in 2001 and was unemployed for a year and a half. Apparently my partner and I are now in the top 10% of household earnings for our country. (Household earnings being another very misleading statistic - as people become paid better they move out of shared houses, making things look worse when they are actually getting better).
    • watwut 6y ago
      I dont think that describes accurately the economy. Socioeconomic mobility is declining too, people who were born to rich families become rich and those where were born in poor families become poor. It is not all young people who will earn a lot of money later.
    • bhupy 6y ago
      It’s actually been quantified -> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0116370 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Based on the empirical tax analysis, 12% of the population found themselves in the top 1% of the income distribution for at least one year. 39% of Americans spent a year in the top 5% of the income distribution, 56% found themselves in the top 10%, and a whopping 73% spent a year in the top 20% of the income distribution.
• neilwilson 6y ago
  There's a gig economy and there's a talent economy. If you're in the talent economy where employers come looking for you all is good with the world. If you're in the gig economy where you are fighting a dozen other people for the same split shift gig on minimum wage then the world is terrible. What we need is to turn the gig economy into a talent economy. Jobs should wait, not people.
  • gonzo41 6y ago
    Really what you want is for gig / delivery style jobs to be unionized, or for it to not be legal or easy for sole operators to work with a bicycle and a backpack. I think we want limits the ability of companies like uber to employ people as contractors. If you force them to have a staff and to manage their staff, then their workers talent is important. But at that price point, I'll probably make the trip to get my own pizza / take out. The gig economy isn't really gig's it more about the externalization of laziness. And companies breaking the social contract IMHO. They are creating such serious problems long term for the work forces that lose effective labor to these crap jobs. I'm Australia, I live a far distance from and India restaurant I like. I'll still do the drive to pickup my food. If I use some gig delivery app then I'm pretty sure I'm asking for someone to do work for me that's probably unpaid in some extent. I know almost to 100% that they don't have superannuation and anything near the benefits that I had when I worked in crappy jobs when I was younger. This also irks me from a employment participation standpoint. In the tech world, people bemoad "the best minds of my generation working out how to make people click adds" etc. But no ones talking about what happens to a few generations of people that are forced into pay cheque to pay cheque living and the down stream social welfare and or retirement cost of these shit jobs. We're letting a lot of companies make money off the future well being of their workforce who happen to also be our citizens. Long post. Sorry if it's ranty.
    • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >Really what you want is for gig / delivery style jobs to be unionized, or for it to not be legal or easy for sole operators to work with a bicycle and a backpack So basically do what some states have done for plumbers, electricians or other trades with a licensing body and professional cartel? Bars to entry and a strong incentive to keep the status quo once you're in will certainly jack up prices and pay and businesses who have to follow the law will have to get their gig services from the cartel members but everyone else will just consume less of the services. Considering that these gig economy services are mostly consumer facing I think you'd just see demand fall off a cliff if prices were raised by regulation. The survivors would have high wages but unless some other employment option is available labor force participation will suffer. I think if it was as easy as cranking the regulation knob to 11 someone would have already done it.
• wilde 6y ago
  Does this count people who are unemployed? Or is it only the median of people who are employed? https://www.businessinsider.com/how-coronavirus-recession-is-affecting-millennials-gen-z-2020-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-coronavirus-recession-is...
  • bhupy 6y ago
    These numbers account for those that are unemployed, but also these numbers are all pre-COVID.
• Tarsul 6y ago
  I don't know. If we're going down the route of what counts as "inflation-adjusted": Does housing, studying, medicare count there or only [or overwhelmingly] consumer goods? If it's the latter - which I would expect - than the stats are cherry-picked and the money ain't worth as much as it used to be.
  • bhupy 6y ago
    There are a number of different indexes we use to adjust for inflation, and different people agree on which index is the best. That being said, per the linked source, the inflation-adjusted income has increased no matter which index you use to calculate the inflation.
    • Tarsul 6y ago
      well, yes. My point was more or less that I haven't seen an adequate inflation index whenever I read about this topic (which is quite often). So just saying "no matter which index you use" isn't worth much if every usual index is going for the wrong measurements. Nonetheless, there are articles which focus on the real inflation and it doesn't look good: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/great-affordability-crisis-breaking-america/606046/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/great-affo... Choice Quote: "The price tags for tuition and fees at colleges and universities have risen twice as fast as wages, if not more, in recent years. Rental costs are outpacing wage gains by a percentage point or more a year. Health-care costs have grown twice as fast as workers’ wages. And child-care costs have exploded."
      • bhupy 6y ago
        That's all correct, but ~60% of the weight in PCE and CPI-U are given to housing, healthcare, and education costs: https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1308799186301747200 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1308799186301747200 https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt Even if housing costs have gone up more than overall inflation, other things have fallen, and OVERALL inflation rate is the best rough measure of "cost of living". Keep in mind that this still means that we ought to solve the rising house price problem (by liberalizing zoning restrictions) and reducing healthcare prices (either by having the State subsidize all of it or better price transparency). Doing so just improves the inflation-adjusted wage even more than it's already improved.
• eggsnbacon1 6y ago
  > Real median per capita income is the highest its ever been regardless of which inflation index you use Median is very misleading because of rise in income inequality. More than 50% of gains in median income last 20 years have gone to the top 25% https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-... And working less hours is also skewed by the rise of millions of gig jobs that don't have set hours. The top 25% of the population is doing great by any measure. But when you discard the top 25%, the rest doesn't look so good. Income inequality in US is higher than almost every other industrialized nation. As high as it was in the 30's when massive social unrest gave rise to unions and worker protections. When you factor in student loan debt and minimum wage being degraded by inflation and gig jobs, the bottom 50% are poorer than ever. As of this year, student loans have eclipsed credit card and auto loans as the second largest form of consumer debt behind mortgages
  • leetcrew 6y ago
    > Median is very misleading because of rise in income inequality. More than 50% of gains in median income last 20 years have gone to the top 25% how can this possibly make sense? by definition, the earnings of the top quartile cannot affect the median.
    • eggsnbacon1 6y ago
      I'm an idiot, was confused with mean
  • bhupy 6y ago
    Median is immune to outliers, so it's generally what you want to look at even in spite of inequality. That being said, you can even look at the per-quintile levels -> https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p... See table H-1, All Races (it's an Excel spreadsheet). Across all quintiles, including the bottom 2, inflation-adjusted income has increased. > When you factor in student loan debt The median number of years to recoup the cost of a bachelors degree, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the 1980’s, from about 22 years to about 10 years -> https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-value-of-a-college-degree.html https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-va...
• ahi 6y ago
  Lies, damn lies, and statistics. The first 3 links are for household income. They are comparing 2 income GenX/Millenial households with 1 income Boomer households. Here is generational wealth: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/03/precariousness-modern-young-adulthood-one-chart/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/03/precariou...
  • bhupy 6y ago
    Yes, household income is typically used because you only pay rent once per household, not twice. You typically only have one set of expensive appliances, furniture, etc per household, not 2. Also, household size has historically fallen -> https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1307408040686235650 https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1307408040686235650 You can also just ignore dual-income households and look at the data for single-income households, it's essentially the same (if not better) -> https://twitter.com/ernietedeschi/status/1308775197311467520 https://twitter.com/ernietedeschi/status/1308775197311467520
• jahaja 6y ago
  Some quotes are really timeless and applicable to many contexts, in this case the first part (pulling out the knife a bit) could be about the progressive center-right and the latter part (denying that it exists all together) is more of the status-quo apologists like the above post. Heavily cherry-picked statistics (like "household" here) even though on the ground facts is so obviously different (house prices, student debt, health care costs, child care costs etc). "If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, that's not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. They haven't pulled the knife out; they won't even admit that it's there." -Malcolm X
  • bhupy 6y ago
    We typically use "household" numbers because you only pay rent once per household, not twice. You typically have only one set of expensive appliances per household, not 2 (or N), etc etc. That being said, this is a common (worthy) criticism, and there are 2 data points one can respond with: 1. Household size has actually fallen -> https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1307408040686235650 https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1307408040686235650 2. You can compute the "individualized" growth by accounting for dual incomes, and the outcome is still largely the same -> https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1307408040686235650 https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1307408040686235650 3. You can also just ignore dual-income households and observe what the reality looks like for single-income households alone, again similar outcome -> https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1307408040686235650 https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1307408040686235650
    • jahaja 6y ago
      Your war of attrition style of argumentation isn't that impressive. The amount of time I would need to spend to counter your links is like 10x of the time you spend producing it - which is pretty obvious given how prolific you've been in this thread.
      • bhupy 6y ago
        You're right, dispassionately citing relevant metrics and sources to make a set of points is far less impressive than complaining about being out-argued. We should all aspire to whatever we call that style of argumentation!
• adamsea 6y ago
  Why am I not convinced?
  • refurb 6y ago
    Because the data doesn’t fit your world view, so you’re fine just ignoring the data?
    • anemoiac 6y ago
      The comment you responded to above poses a valid question - what should we do if empirical data seems to contradict our own lived experience? "The data" is not homogeneous or infallible, nor can it fully describe all phenomena it's applied to. At best, data can provide us with a rough approximation of the landscape it attempts to describe. In this particular case, I think that landscape is smaller than the territory established by the OP's linked blog post (which seems to transcend the easily-measurable world of simple economic indicators). Would you consider it prudent to dismiss one's lived experience offhand, at the mere site of a few quickly-pasted links to tweets containing simple, decontextualized data points? What, then, if another commenter subsequently provides contradictory data? Scrolling through a typical HN thread would turn into a nauseating ride on some sort of intellectual see-saw. If the commenter you responded to is "not convinced" by some tweeted factoids claiming that Americans are working less and making more than ever, does that imply that they're ideologically motivated? I don't think so, no more than I think your reply to them implies that your own motivation is ideological. Without additional context, those "facts" don't significantly imperil any specific worldview.
      • bhupy 6y ago
        Lived experience, while important, should be treated like anecdotes. While anecdotes are valuable, the plural of anecdote != data. Should we help people whose lived experience is worse than ours? Absolutely. Does the mere existence of people whose lived experience contradicts that of the aggregate majority suggest that we ought to upend our systems? No, and that's the point. In general, when we see (overwhelming) empirical outcomes that don't confirm our priors, we ought to shift our priors. We do this in the context of climate change, there's no reason we shouldn't also do this in the context of the economy and labor markets.
• burlesona 6y ago
  Nobody cares because they can’t afford a house to live in, and family health insurance costs as much as rent. By definition the median income cannot win a bidding war for housing when there’s only enough supply available for the top 5%.
  • rmah 6y ago
    As of 2019, around 65% of americans own their own homes. That's down somewhat from the peak of 69% in 2004. So, far more than the "top 5%".
    • I-M-S 6y ago
      That 65% includes people who bought housing while it was still possible to do so without being in the top 5% of earners
  • bhupy 6y ago
    That's essentially only true in SF, NYC, Seattle, and maybe DC — and that can largely be attributed to local land use restrictions more than anything else. Here's a list of the salary required to afford the median home -> https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-cities.html https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-c... This thread breaks down the ratio of home-price-to-median-income per MSA -> https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1221828310000271361 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1221828310000271361 There's an entire zone of "Fine, American Cities", all affordable to both Boomers and Millennials. There are dozens of metro areas you can move to, buy a home (if you like), and start saving your income.
• altcognito 6y ago
  Rent/housing, education and insurance of all varieties and transportions wipe out all these gains in actual income. You get some of it back in the form of food costs and energy costs which are relatvely low. On paper you're absolutely right. On paper even the poorer amongst should be better off than they would have been in 1990.
  • bhupy 6y ago
    These income gains are inflation adjusted, and about half the entire weight of most inflation indexes is just housing, education, and health care costs: https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1308799186301747200 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1308799186301747200 https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt Even if housing costs have gone up more than overall inflation, other things have fallen, and OVERALL inflation rate is the best rough measure of "cost of living". There's some disagreement around whether we should use CPI-U, CPI-W, or PCE — CPI-W underweights housing, for eg — but importantly, the median income has increased since 1981 regardless of the choice of index. The median total compensation has increased since WW2 regardless of the choice of index.
• rossdavidh 6y ago
  I get what you're saying, but I think that the inflation does not adequately represent: 1) housing (usually one's biggest expense) 2) college (nowadays the biggest debt problem) I think the highest stress is among young people who DID get a college degree, and who DO live in the highest-rent cities in the country, and their situation is not captured by the data you cite. BUT, I'm not saying your data isn't relevant. Just that housing and college are pretty big things to leave out, but IIUC they are not part of the standard inflation measure.
  • notacoward 6y ago
    > their situation is not captured by the data you cite Exactly. They're people too. Their circumstances matter. Also, let's not forget that not everyone even in a high-demand area is also high-income. Somebody has to do the "lesser" jobs, and for them housing is even more of a problem. Arbitrarily excluding certain metro areas because "you're a techie and can live anywhere" is just counter to reality, and just seems like a way to skew the numbers.
    • bhupy 6y ago
      I think it's extremely important not to discount the circumstances of individuals. Like you said, they're people too. But the value in this data is in helping us understand what the root causes are, and what the solutions should be. > Arbitrarily excluding certain metro areas because "you're a techie and can live anywhere" is just counter to reality, and just seems like a way to skew the numbers. The goal behind "arbitrarily" analyzing the data per-metro is not to skew the numbers, but to help us understand that the root cause is largely local, rather than a global systemic one. Everyone knows that housing is way more expensive than a median income can afford in San Francisco, but that's a San Francisco problem, not an America problem. It's also one that's generally well understood: they're not building enough housing due to exogenic limits.
      • notacoward 6y ago
        I completely agree that we should understand the root cause, but I completely disagree that excluding certain cities helps us do that. Rather, it obfuscates. If you want to illuminate, you should aggregate by population density, then slice and dice by age, income quintile (not just median), parental income quintile, etc. > that's a San Francisco problem What's your excuse for the hundreds of places that aren't San Francisco but still have ridiculous ratios between income and housing prices? Your own sources identify some. The absolute last thing this site needs is more SF-centric tunnel vision.
• anemoiac 6y ago
  I agree that it's important to compare anecdotes to available data, but we should be careful not to assume that the available data is itself "the forest." In other words, the map is not the territory. While it's certainly possible that the sort of anecdotes commonly found in threads like this (regarding the challenges facing today's youth) are unfounded, I think it's more likely that they reflect qualitative changes not represented by the data (or, alternatively, changes which simply aren't represented by the particular data typically used in conjunction with analysis of these topics). Data showing that the median person earns more working fewer hours today than their parents did at the same age, for example, can't reflect (hypothetical, let's say) circumstances such as: * An increasingly competitive job market: Unemployment figures don't account for increasing education and experience requirements job-seekers face, nor do hours worked reflect time spent on career preparation in an era where high school students study for the SATs, college students are taught that "networking" is an essential skill, and college grads are more likely to have had multiple internships than their parents are to have had one between them. * Increasing career instability: Not only are single-employer careers long gone, but, for many, so are single-career lifetimes. Additionally, the increasingly bimodal distribution of incomes means that, while the median income may have increased, the consequences of falling out of a "good" career track can seem greater than they used to be. [1] For reference, 44% of Americans work in 'low-wage jobs' with a median income of ~ $18,000. [2] * Increases in the cost of living that counteract income gains: Rent, housing prices, (more-important-than-ever) higher education, healthcare & childcare have all increased significantly over recent decades, which likely makes it difficult for many to feel as wealthy as one would suspect. Considering circumstances like these helps me understand how many may feel much worse than real median income might suggest and makes it seem less strange that young people appear to be poorer than their parents were at the same age - living with their parents longer into adulthood, buying fewer homes, getting married later, having fewer children, etc... I would also speculate that, in terms of perception alone, the rise of social media and increasing economic inequality (with specific regard to the research suggesting that individual well-being is more closely linked to low inequality than absolute levels of economic welfare) could negatively impact the average American's perception of their quality of life. 1 - https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-... 2. - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wage-work-is-more-pervasive-than-you-think-and-there-arent-enough-good-jobs-to-go-around/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/11/21/low-wag...
• autokad 6y ago
  I am really flabbergasted how people with low income don't look very hard for good deals, or pay for things that they shouldnt be paying for at that stage of their life. I saw an article saying there is no place in America people can afford to live on (I forget amount). Someone shared it on social media, and I did the calculation and I knew many places that were affordable by those standards, even in a large city. They retorted there isn't a place in America that you can find a place under 800$. I'm like .... did you look very hard? When I was in philadelphia from 2007-2009, I shared a 3 bedroom apartment with 3-4 other people for ~200$. When I wanted my own 'place', from 2009-2013 I rented a micro apartment in down town Philadelphia for 400$/month. I'm sure prices are higher now, but there are affordable places to live, but you have to be willing to give up something: commute time, amenities, size, privacy, etc. With income, other industries have room to complain, but not tech. my 28k TC starting salary isnt even what people are getting signing bonuses these days.
  • anemoiac 6y ago
    While I doubt that you have a reliable source for your assumption that poor people don’t seek out deals or limit unnecessary purchases, I’ll note that being poor literally reduces your capacity to make good decisions - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poverty-brain/study-finds-poverty-reduces-brain-power-idUSBRE97S10W20130829 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poverty-brain/study-finds....
• onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  It's important to note that these charts apply to the nation, not individual cities. The rent has increased 5x since 1990 in Boston - wages are up 2.7x: * Boston Rent: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUURA103SEHA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUURA103SEHA * Boston Wages: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MHIMA25025A052NCEN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MHIMA25025A052NCEN The same is true for almost every major (growing) city beside Houston & Dallas. Combined that with the fact that income taxes are higher at these "higher wages" and that student debt payments are up 4x just since 2007 - who knows how much since the 1990s - and you can start to see why things aren't so rosy for young professionals. * Student debt: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLOAS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLOAS If you look hard enough, you can find any chart to support almost any opinion. The point of the "anecdata" was to get people to look at a certain side of things. Particularly for people living in HCOL cities that aren't "highly skilled".
  • bhupy 6y ago
    Not true in every metro, there's a tool you can play with to show you the wage-to-house-price multiple: https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1221828310000271361 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1221828310000271361 Major metros where the multiplier has largely stayed the same: Columbus 1984: 2.47x 2017: 2.97x Omaha 1984: 2.3x 2017: 2.77x Little Rock 1984: 2.85x 2017: 2.75x Kansas City 1984: 2.64x 2017: 3.01x Pittsburgh 1984: 2.16x 2017: 2.42x Minneapolis 1984: 2.64x 2017: 3.34x Houston 1984: 2.66x 2017: 3.68x Chicago: 1984: 2.45x 2017: 3.49x Also, inflation adjustments take into account the increase in prices of all goods & services, including housing -> https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt. So even if housing costs have gone up more than overall inflation, other things have fallen, and OVERALL inflation rate is the best rough measure of "cost of living". There's disagreement over which indexes are better (based on how they weight different expenses); CPI-U vs CPI-W give different importance to different goods & services. Importantly, the inflation-adjusted incomes have gone up regardless of which index you choose to use.