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I think they’d say that inflation is in assets, not consumer goods, which to me rings a lot more true. It’s also true that for the average person on average wag
by taurath 6y ago
I think they’d say that inflation is in assets, not consumer goods, which to me rings a lot more true. It’s also true that for the average person on average wage housing has become greatly less affordable in the last 50 years but that’s because income hasn’t kept up.
- alexmingoia 6y agoI don’t think the price of home sales is a good measure of housing affordability. Here’s a graph from Zillow which does not show a huge increase in last 30 years: http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/mortgage-and-rent-affordability.png http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/0... According to the American Housing Survey, housing as a percentage of income only increased from 19 to 22% from 1985 to 2005. Overall, wages have exceeded or kept pace with inflation since 1979: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jan/30/kamala-harris/are-paychecks-failing-keep-inflation/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jan/30/kamala-har...
- Retric 6y agoAverages ignore the growing income inequality. From 1979 - 2018 incomes for 90% of the population is up 23.9%. 90-95% up 45.7%, 95-99% up 71.3%. Top 1% is up 157.8%. https://www.epi.org/blog/top-1-0-of-earners-see-wages-up-157-8-since-1979/ https://www.epi.org/blog/top-1-0-of-earners-see-wages-up-157... So chop off the top 10% and numbers are going to look very different. From housing to CPI it’s tricky to adjust for such things to understand how most of the population is doing.
- taurath 6y agoIn that time homeownership has gone down - those BUYING houses spend less of their income on it, but that’s a smaller and smaller piece.