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I sometimes wonder if that event horizon is encroaching higher and higher up the economic ladder over time. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with uni

by skohan 6y ago

I sometimes wonder if that event horizon is encroaching higher and higher up the economic ladder over time. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with university degrees and good careers - have no problem living a good life in the US. But with the rapid inflation of the cost of healthcare, higher education and housing, I wonder how that lifestyle can possibly become accessible to people who weren't essentially born into it. I think increased stratification in terms of lifestyle and opportunity is not good long term for social cohesion or political stability.

ReptileMan 6y ago
It is called cost disease. Staying above is getting harder and harder.
bradleyjg 6y ago
Politicians all of a sudden care a lot when problems start to hit the second quintile.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
That event horizon is shifting: "K-shaped recovery" -- you're either moving on up or moving on down.
hardwaregeek 6y ago
Definitely. At least in my generation it feels like the boat is sinking and everybody's scrambling to be above deck. The majority of my high school class is going into tech or tech-adjacent industries for that reason.
nerdponx 6y ago
This is very much the trend I saw over the 2000s-2010s. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with university degrees and good careers - have no problem living a good life in the US. But with the rapid inflation of the cost of healthcare, higher education and housing, I wonder how that lifestyle can possibly become accessible to people who weren't essentially born into it. I know many people who were born into a middle-class or upper-middle-class lifestyle, pursued career paths that didn't involve the tech industry (because they were specifically encouraged to "do whatever you want"), and are now living below their parents' standards of living and will probably always be poorer than their parents. They aren't bum artists either; they work in offices 8-6, and have 5+ years of experience and sophisticated professional skills. But they are being paid 2011 wages in a 2021 housing market, and it all strikes me as tremendously unfair. Median house prices in the USA are now above their pre-crash peak, and have been increasing much much faster than the CPI[0]. Something fucky is going on, and I doubt it's all because of the "free" market. [0]: chart https://files.catbox.moe/kvppyj.png https://files.catbox.moe/kvppyj.png and data https://files.catbox.moe/tqj9vb.csv https://files.catbox.moe/tqj9vb.csv
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  > Something fucky is going on, and I doubt it's all because of the "free" market. At first the suburban house as bottomless bank account was a result of “natural” forces like the baby boom and white flight. But people came to assume it, and then demand it. Politicians have obliged since homeowners are an extremely large and powerful demographic. Prior to 2008 we at least pretended to have a private mortgage industry. Now we don’t even bother with a fig leaf.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    After the 2008 crash, it became politically impossible to let house prices drop, so the government will basically do anything to prop them up. Too many elderly voters who depend on their home equity to fund their lifestyles. I think we'll look back at 2020 as the moment the same political pressure happened to stock market prices.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    21st century is: we're turning everything into a market, far fewer easy but well-paid jobs, if older people had to actually face the brunt of it they would lose their homes. People who can't handle technology don't have a chance nowadays.
    - skohan 6y ago
      I feel like this concept of turning everything into a market has much more downside than we would like to believe. It's often sold as democratization: i.e. "anyone can just go on youtube and be a content creator now - you don't need a production company as a middleman!" But the thing about markets is they are great for the winners, and terrible for the losers. And one of the effects of technology is that it allows scaling such that fewer providers can serve the needs of many more consumers. The confluence of these factors is that you can have markets where a handful of winners can essentially serve the entire world. I don't know where that is supposed to leave the rest of the population.

by skohan 6y ago

ReptileMan 6y ago

It is called cost disease. Staying above is getting harder and harder.

bradleyjg 6y ago

Politicians all of a sudden care a lot when problems start to hit the second quintile.

blaser-waffle 6y ago

That event horizon is shifting: "K-shaped recovery" -- you're either moving on up or moving on down.

hardwaregeek 6y ago

Definitely. At least in my generation it feels like the boat is sinking and everybody's scrambling to be above deck. The majority of my high school class is going into tech or tech-adjacent industries for that reason.

nerdponx 6y ago

This is very much the trend I saw over the 2000s-2010s. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with university degrees and good careers - have no problem living a good life in the US. But with the rapid inflation of the cost of healthcare, higher education and housing, I wonder how that lifestyle can possibly become accessible to people who weren't essentially born into it. I know many people who were born into a middle-class or upper-middle-class lifestyle, pursued career paths that didn't involve the tech industry (because they were specifically encouraged to "do whatever you want"), and are now living below their parents' standards of living and will probably always be poorer than their parents. They aren't bum artists either; they work in offices 8-6, and have 5+ years of experience and sophisticated professional skills. But they are being paid 2011 wages in a 2021 housing market, and it all strikes me as tremendously unfair. Median house prices in the USA are now above their pre-crash peak, and have been increasing much much faster than the CPI[0]. Something fucky is going on, and I doubt it's all because of the "free" market. [0]: chart https://files.catbox.moe/kvppyj.png https://files.catbox.moe/kvppyj.png and data https://files.catbox.moe/tqj9vb.csv https://files.catbox.moe/tqj9vb.csv

bradleyjg 6y ago
> Something fucky is going on, and I doubt it's all because of the "free" market. At first the suburban house as bottomless bank account was a result of “natural” forces like the baby boom and white flight. But people came to assume it, and then demand it. Politicians have obliged since homeowners are an extremely large and powerful demographic. Prior to 2008 we at least pretended to have a private mortgage industry. Now we don’t even bother with a fig leaf.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ryandrake 6y ago
  After the 2008 crash, it became politically impossible to let house prices drop, so the government will basically do anything to prop them up. Too many elderly voters who depend on their home equity to fund their lifestyles. I think we'll look back at 2020 as the moment the same political pressure happened to stock market prices.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  21st century is: we're turning everything into a market, far fewer easy but well-paid jobs, if older people had to actually face the brunt of it they would lose their homes. People who can't handle technology don't have a chance nowadays.
  - skohan 6y ago
    I feel like this concept of turning everything into a market has much more downside than we would like to believe. It's often sold as democratization: i.e. "anyone can just go on youtube and be a content creator now - you don't need a production company as a middleman!" But the thing about markets is they are great for the winners, and terrible for the losers. And one of the effects of technology is that it allows scaling such that fewer providers can serve the needs of many more consumers. The confluence of these factors is that you can have markets where a handful of winners can essentially serve the entire world. I don't know where that is supposed to leave the rest of the population.