5 ms·

The comment was about house owning, though. Owning a house is becoming more and more a thing for the upper classes, it wasn't always like this.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> Owning a house is becoming more and more a thing for the upper classes Something like 60% of US people own a home. 30% even own their home completely outright, with no mortgage. Obviously 30%, let alone 60%, of the population cannot be considered 'upper class', and 'middle class' is probably even a stretch. The home ownership rate seems broadly stable since the 60s to me, with gentle ups and downs with the economy, so as well as saying home ownership is an upper-class or middle-class thing not being true it's also not the case that 'it wasn't always like this'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...
- CrazyStat 6y ago
  > Obviously 30%, let alone 60%, of the population cannot be considered 'upper class', or even 'middle class'. Huh? Why can't 30% (or 60%, for that matter) of the population be middle class? Wikipedia [1]: > The American middle class is a social class in the United States.[1][2] While the concept is typically ambiguous in popular opinion and common language use,[3] contemporary social scientists have put forward several ostensibly congruent theories on the American middle class. Depending on the class model used, the middle class constitutes anywhere from 25% to 66% of households. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    One in three of people do not have middle class professions. Only about 35% of people go to college at all! But anyway even if you don't agree with that, the original claim was that they were 'upper class'! Which is obviously ludicrous. You do not need to be an elite to own a house - drive down almost any suburban street in American you'll see people who own houses.
    - bumby 6y ago
      >the original claim was that they were 'upper class'! Which is obviously ludicrous This goes back to the above post regarding the ambiguity around defining class. The traditional definition that I’m aware of uses quintiles, so “upper middle class” is defined as being within the top 20% (minus the top 1%-5% reserved for upper class). With this definition, the upper middle class will always be 15-19% of the population, on a sliding scale of income. This threshold comes out to about $87k/yr. at the individual level currently, I think. But then people redefine that meaning. There was an article recently on HN saying the middle class is shrinking because more people are moving into upper middle class. They defined it based on absolute (as opposed to relative) income. But if you dig deeper into the research methodologies they normalized income so that a person making $58k/yr is equivalent to $100k if they are single. Magically, the threshold for upper middle class on an individual basis is reduced by 33%. (To be fair, they had reasons for this like the way poverty is defined by the government to factor in the number of people in a household). I have a couple problems with this. 1) research indicates people are single, longer without kids because they feel less financially secure. It’s hard to square being single as a reason to be vaulted into upper middle class in that context 2) out of curiosity I took the average expenses for a mortgage, utilities, taxes etc. and tried to balance that against the $58k definition of upper middle class. In that case, if you have the average student loan debt you can’t afford the “average” American lifestyle even on an upper middle class income. The point of all this being, we need to be careful about how we define economic class. “If you torture numbers enough, they’ll confess to anything. “
- jtbayly 6y ago
  > 30% own their home completely outright... Which tells me that they likely bought their house over 30 years ago. Which tells me that they have been largely unaffected by the complaint you are responding to.
- joh6nn 6y ago
  4th paragraph of that Wikipedia article: "The name "homeownership rate" can be misleading. As defined by the US Census Bureau, it is the percentage of homes that are occupied by the owner. It is not the percentage of adults that own their own home. This latter percentage will be significantly lower than the homeownership rate because many households that are owner-occupied contain adult relatives (often young adults, descendants of the owner) who do not own their own home, and because single building multi-bedroom rental units can contain more than one adult, all of whom do not own a home."
- rychco 6y ago
  As someone in their mid 20’s with a tech job, it blows my mind that 60% of people own a home. I can’t imagine having enough money to own a home in a major city.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > I can’t imagine having enough money to own a home in a major city. Who do you think owns the homes all around you, and in all the suburban streets around the city? Normal people like you. There aren't hundreds of elites living on every US street, clearly. They're just normal people who saved up over a few years or got a little helper money from their parents.
    - bashinator 6y ago
      Don't forget, "or were lucky enough to have the opportunity to buy at a low point in the market."
    - EdwinLarkin 6y ago
      I think you just don realize the scope of numbers you need to play with especially if you dont start with a reasonable amount in the first place. Real estate is worse than crypto when it comes to speculation.I realized this myself when my property doubled in value in less than 2 years.
  - McScroogy 6y ago
    It doesn't say 60% own a home in a major city.
  - rory 6y ago
    The home ownership rate is a lot higher outside major cities. It's only 30-40% in most major US cities. Regardless, at current (historically quite low) interest rates, a typical software engineer's salary will qualify you for a very large mortgage. You'd be surprised. At 30, I saw many of my friends go from thinking they'll never afford a home to each buying one over just a few years.
- falcolas 6y ago
  My parents own a home. They bought it in the 70's for a fraction of what the land is worth now (inflation adjusted). My dad was a blue collar worker for Ma Bell, my mom a part time teacher.
- JohnWhigham 6y ago
  Now break that 60% down by demographic. Also, the rate has been going down over the past 2 decades, and I'd wager it will continue to go down.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > the rate has been going down over the past 2 decades No it hasn’t. In fact it’s up since 1990! And about where it was as far back as 1970. It seems relatively stable to me?
McScroogy 6y ago
The basic need for a house is something different than owning a house, though. If owning a place to live is too expensive, it follows by logic that renting is cheaper than buying. Otherwise for the price of the rent, people could get a loan to buy. So it really doesn't seem obvious that this is an issue of rich vs poor.

chrisseaton 6y ago

> Owning a house is becoming more and more a thing for the upper classes Something like 60% of US people own a home. 30% even own their home completely outright, with no mortgage. Obviously 30%, let alone 60%, of the population cannot be considered 'upper class', and 'middle class' is probably even a stretch. The home ownership rate seems broadly stable since the 60s to me, with gentle ups and downs with the economy, so as well as saying home ownership is an upper-class or middle-class thing not being true it's also not the case that 'it wasn't always like this'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...

CrazyStat 6y ago
> Obviously 30%, let alone 60%, of the population cannot be considered 'upper class', or even 'middle class'. Huh? Why can't 30% (or 60%, for that matter) of the population be middle class? Wikipedia [1]: > The American middle class is a social class in the United States.[1][2] While the concept is typically ambiguous in popular opinion and common language use,[3] contemporary social scientists have put forward several ostensibly congruent theories on the American middle class. Depending on the class model used, the middle class constitutes anywhere from 25% to 66% of households. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  One in three of people do not have middle class professions. Only about 35% of people go to college at all! But anyway even if you don't agree with that, the original claim was that they were 'upper class'! Which is obviously ludicrous. You do not need to be an elite to own a house - drive down almost any suburban street in American you'll see people who own houses.
  - bumby 6y ago
    >the original claim was that they were 'upper class'! Which is obviously ludicrous This goes back to the above post regarding the ambiguity around defining class. The traditional definition that I’m aware of uses quintiles, so “upper middle class” is defined as being within the top 20% (minus the top 1%-5% reserved for upper class). With this definition, the upper middle class will always be 15-19% of the population, on a sliding scale of income. This threshold comes out to about $87k/yr. at the individual level currently, I think. But then people redefine that meaning. There was an article recently on HN saying the middle class is shrinking because more people are moving into upper middle class. They defined it based on absolute (as opposed to relative) income. But if you dig deeper into the research methodologies they normalized income so that a person making $58k/yr is equivalent to $100k if they are single. Magically, the threshold for upper middle class on an individual basis is reduced by 33%. (To be fair, they had reasons for this like the way poverty is defined by the government to factor in the number of people in a household). I have a couple problems with this. 1) research indicates people are single, longer without kids because they feel less financially secure. It’s hard to square being single as a reason to be vaulted into upper middle class in that context 2) out of curiosity I took the average expenses for a mortgage, utilities, taxes etc. and tried to balance that against the $58k definition of upper middle class. In that case, if you have the average student loan debt you can’t afford the “average” American lifestyle even on an upper middle class income. The point of all this being, we need to be careful about how we define economic class. “If you torture numbers enough, they’ll confess to anything. “
jtbayly 6y ago
> 30% own their home completely outright... Which tells me that they likely bought their house over 30 years ago. Which tells me that they have been largely unaffected by the complaint you are responding to.
joh6nn 6y ago
4th paragraph of that Wikipedia article: "The name "homeownership rate" can be misleading. As defined by the US Census Bureau, it is the percentage of homes that are occupied by the owner. It is not the percentage of adults that own their own home. This latter percentage will be significantly lower than the homeownership rate because many households that are owner-occupied contain adult relatives (often young adults, descendants of the owner) who do not own their own home, and because single building multi-bedroom rental units can contain more than one adult, all of whom do not own a home."
rychco 6y ago
As someone in their mid 20’s with a tech job, it blows my mind that 60% of people own a home. I can’t imagine having enough money to own a home in a major city.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > I can’t imagine having enough money to own a home in a major city. Who do you think owns the homes all around you, and in all the suburban streets around the city? Normal people like you. There aren't hundreds of elites living on every US street, clearly. They're just normal people who saved up over a few years or got a little helper money from their parents.
  - bashinator 6y ago
    Don't forget, "or were lucky enough to have the opportunity to buy at a low point in the market."
  - EdwinLarkin 6y ago
    I think you just don realize the scope of numbers you need to play with especially if you dont start with a reasonable amount in the first place. Real estate is worse than crypto when it comes to speculation.I realized this myself when my property doubled in value in less than 2 years.
- McScroogy 6y ago
  It doesn't say 60% own a home in a major city.
- rory 6y ago
  The home ownership rate is a lot higher outside major cities. It's only 30-40% in most major US cities. Regardless, at current (historically quite low) interest rates, a typical software engineer's salary will qualify you for a very large mortgage. You'd be surprised. At 30, I saw many of my friends go from thinking they'll never afford a home to each buying one over just a few years.
falcolas 6y ago
My parents own a home. They bought it in the 70's for a fraction of what the land is worth now (inflation adjusted). My dad was a blue collar worker for Ma Bell, my mom a part time teacher.
JohnWhigham 6y ago
Now break that 60% down by demographic. Also, the rate has been going down over the past 2 decades, and I'd wager it will continue to go down.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > the rate has been going down over the past 2 decades No it hasn’t. In fact it’s up since 1990! And about where it was as far back as 1970. It seems relatively stable to me?

McScroogy 6y ago

The basic need for a house is something different than owning a house, though. If owning a place to live is too expensive, it follows by logic that renting is cheaper than buying. Otherwise for the price of the rent, people could get a loan to buy. So it really doesn't seem obvious that this is an issue of rich vs poor.