9 ms·

Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

80 points by whack 5y ago

pope_meat 5y ago
Why don't they all just find new jobs?
Grakel 5y ago
Anyone who didn't get a 20% raise this year lost money. As the fed pumped cash, the stock market gains kept the rich from feeling the inflation that is being handed to everybody else with a bow on it. For months everyone has naysayed the idea that money printing would have a negative effect, now just Google "inflation" news articles.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Anyone who didn't get a 20% raise this year lost money. but inflation (as measured by CPI) isn't anywhere close to 20%?
  - Grakel 5y ago
    20% of dollars in circulation were printed in 2020 and the inflation is filtering down. Also inflation statistics are intentionally blurred. Look at housing prices or other individual metrics.
    - Retric 5y ago
      M2 money supply doesn’t correspond very closely with inflation. https://www.longtermtrends.net/m2-money-supply-vs-inflation/ https://www.longtermtrends.net/m2-money-supply-vs-inflation/
      - lend000 5y ago
        Your link doesn't support your conclusion. Growth in M2 clearly precedes increases in inflation by 1-3 years.
        imtringued 5y ago
        Look at the second chart: "M2 Money Supply vs. CPI and GDP" 220x increase in the money supply vs 18x increase in CPI
        lend000 5y ago
        Did you expect them to be the same, in order for there to be a causal effect?
        Retric 5y ago
        I expect them to have some actual correlation over time for a causal effect look at say 1960 to 1970 and the graphs have nothing in common. Hell some peaks look years early others late but most don’t have anything to do with each other.
        lend000 5y ago
        Bretton Woods ended in 1973. Any time before then, the money supply was strongly impacted by the government's gold reserves. The only real anomaly in that chart is 2011, which is concealed by the fact that CPI is a terrible inflation metric when wealth inequality is changing (see the increase in equities and real estate during that period). For reference: CPI is based on a survey to see what median Americans are buying, the prices of those things, and how much of them they are buying. Naturally, people change their spending habits when prices rise to buy cheaper items, and this cancels out the how much of them they buy to end up with an effective metric of "how much are median Americans spending" (hint: basically all of their money). So CPI measures the median American's income, which is why there can never be any changes in "real wages" [0]. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
    - finexplained 5y ago
      Inflation isn't directly (that is one-to-one) tied to the amount of money printed. That's a simplistic view of a complicated phenomena. What matters is demand aggregated among many individuals. You can print any sum of money and if the person you give it to decides not to spend it, it doesn't affect demand and thus doesn't cause inflation. Meanwhile you can stop printing money, and if demand increases inflation can still occur.
      - RhysU 5y ago
        But what if we handed the printed dollars to a large number of individuals to spend immediately to cover their income shortfalls in unprecedented government largess?
        notJim 5y ago
        If it's covering an income shortfall, it doesn't seem like that would cause inflation. If I normally spend $2k a month, but then lose my job and get $2k from the government, that's not going to cause inflation. From what I understand, much of the stimulus money was saved. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT
        willcipriano 5y ago
        > If I normally spend $2k a month, but then lose my job and get $2k from the government, that's not going to cause inflation. That $2k a month that you used to earn is still out there somewhere unaccounted for.
        nly 5y ago
        Except the money you would have been paid previously still exists somewhere and will go somewhere else.
        gizmo385 5y ago
        Then those people largely spend it on essentials, don't lose their housing, and don't starve to death.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    Who needs facts when they have feelings?
    - Grakel 5y ago
      What I feel is prices on everything in every store and online going up, while packaging shrinks. Who's doing your shopping? There's a big difference between facts and government published statistics.
      - anti-makrakis 5y ago
        I was just noticing the price of beans appears to have gone down. Perhaps you’re buying the wrong thing at the grocery.
      - gruez 5y ago
        >Who's doing your shopping? There's a big difference between facts and government published statistics. CPI adjusts for package sizes.
      - nate_meurer 5y ago
        There's a bit of dissonance between this: > What I feel... versus: > facts...
    - DudeInBasement 5y ago
      I identify as inflation
  - hamburgerwah 5y ago
    Housing prices across the board have jumped 40% on average -- in the past year. In the insane prop 13 fueled market that is california bay area increases are closer to 65% in the past year.
    - Retric 5y ago
      No they haven’t. “According to Zillow, the typical value of U.S. homes is $269,039 as of January 2021, a 9.1% increase from January 2020. Between 1999 and 2021, the median price has more than doubled from $111,000 to $269,039.”
      - Grakel 5y ago
        What about only including data from places people want to live? You can buy a house in South Dakota for 25,000, but that not useful information when looking at national housing inflation.
        Retric 5y ago
        Median cuts things in half, it’s effectively the middle of housing desirability. You might want to live in NYC or SF, but most of the US doesn’t.
        gruez 5y ago
        >What about only including data from places people want to live Shouldn't the median sale account for this? If there's a buyer presumably somebody wants to live there, and if there are 1000 sales in CA but 10 in SD that would be accounted for as well.
        msrenee 5y ago
        South Dakota would be nice. We were up there for a couple days this spring and it was tempting. Nice people, little bit of scenery, cost of living is reasonable. Definitely beats moving to someplace that's crowded and hectic or at high risk for flooding or wildfires.
    - nradov 5y ago
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    I have tons of anecdata suggesting worse… I just filled up a propane tank, 3lbs of fuel was almost $10 whereas a year ago it was $5-$6 The price of a California burrito most places here is almost $10, they were closer to $7/$8 before pandemic started spiking beef prices It’s getting harder and harder to keep the bill at Costco under $100 Uber/Lyft rides that used to be $10 cost $15-$20 during non-surge hours And so on…
    - notJim 5y ago
      A lot of this stuff is transitory, and there are signs it's starting to come down. However with the rise of delta, I think we're in for a rocky ride ahead. Edit: in the spirit of worker solidarity though, if you can convince your boss to give you a 20% raise by showing them the M2 money supply, I fully support you in that. https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore/2021/08/12/cpi-data-offers-encouragement-to-transitory-inflation-camp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore/2021/08/12/cpi-data-...
    - gruez 5y ago
      > I have tons of anecdata suggesting worse… And that's flawed due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic [thing] increases in price: "omg inflation!" [thing stays the same]: "meh" result? "omg inflation!"
      - tomc1985 5y ago
        But… that is inflation. Prices are going up. Such is the anecdata? Is this effect global? Who knows, it’s anecdata
        gruez 5y ago
        >But… that is inflation did I say it wasn't? The BLS freely admits that inflation is higher than usual at 5.4% YOY. What's being disputed is whether it's 5.4% as the BLS claims or 20% as GGP claims. >Is this effect global? Who knows, it’s anecdata The problem is that listing a bunch of things that's gone up by 20% doesn't mean the overall CPI went up 20%. CPI is a weighted measure, so the things you listed only contribute 1% to it, then it can go up 2000% and the CPI wouldn't be anywhere close to the claimed 20%.
- finexplained 5y ago
  > Anyone who didn't get a 20% raise this year lost money Inflation numbers that just came out measure year-over-year inflation at 5.4%. And last July we had artificially depressed demand during the pandemic.
  - Grakel 5y ago
    Inflation statistics are lies. Look at individual metrics in housing and food.
    - frankbreetz 5y ago
      Read: cherry pick whichever values are highest to keep the inflation narrative going.
      - notJim 5y ago
        The data disagrees with my hypothesis, therefore the data must be wrong.
    - NationalPark 5y ago
      All food CPI is up 2.1% this year, housing of course is much more but that's what the article is about so where's the lie?
      - Grakel 5y ago
        Prices up 2.1%, I would like to see the average package size change. Shrinkflation is happening to everything on the shelves.
        gruez 5y ago
        package size is factored into inflation.
        Overton-Window 5y ago
- hypothesis 5y ago
  It appears that it was like that for a while… S&P 500 had 4 out of 5 last years with at least 15% annual returns (2018 had negative returns).
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    You clearly don't know what inflation is.
- mindslight 5y ago
  The problem is that worries about inflation are only ever trotted out when relief for individuals is being considered. Money printing to juice the markets happens without concern or debate. The bailout that caused all the current asset inflation happened reflexively after a single day drop in the stock market at the start of Covid. Executives had looted companies by loading them up with debt that relied on optimistic cashflow, gave themselves bonuses for that "optimization", and then got bailed out when the cashflow slowed. These companies should have been restructured in bankruptcy, with the executives going to jail for violation of fiduciary duty. Instead, they were rewarded. The direct price inflation we're seeing lately is actually a good thing in that it will force the Fed to use the brakes. When they only give money to the financial industry, it takes a while for price inflation to occur. But by giving the new money directly to consumers instead, price inflation occurs much quicker and thus precludes asset inflation.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    This reminds me of the overseas cash reserves that corporations hold. They basically wait for a tax holiday. Now that inflation is there, that strategy has an obvious problem. You're right about consumer stimulus. The worst thing about inflation is that it is unpredictable. Pumping the markets with trillions without meaningfully impacting inflation just causes more unpredictability. Just do "QE for the people", hit your inflation goal and then never talk about low inflation again.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > Executives had looted companies by loading them up with debt that relied on optimistic cashflow, gave themselves bonuses for that "optimization", and then got bailed out when the cashflow slowed. These companies should have been restructured in bankruptcy, with the executives going to jail for violation of fiduciary duty. By "optimistic cashflow", do you mean the assumption that the government wouldn't suddenly ban most companies from doing anything that would earn them any money for months on end? Because until they did, that seemed like a totally reasonable assumption.
    - mindslight 5y ago
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I was repeatedly downvoted for pointing this out on HN. In fact, ridiculed with "Good ol' trickle up economics" snark.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    It's because the "secret inflation" theory is incredibly prevalent in tech-y circles (something around bitcoin maybe) without any real evidence to back it up - except "something something asset inflation"
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      Inflation is a complex metric. I don't there is a meaningful way to summarize it.
      - nate_meurer 5y ago
        If your argument consists of "it's too complicated for anyone to understand why I'm right", that might explain some of the responses you get.
        systemvoltage 5y ago
        It wasn't and you're mischaracterizing. You haven't seen my comments from last year. Without repeating the arguments, the Economist wrote an article about why measuring inflation is complex and you can't just look at CPI: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/09/05/why-it-is-so-difficult-to-measure-inflation https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/09/05/... Point is that HN was so gung-ho about covid stimulus package, that any comment that pointed out inflation issues that we're going to have in the future were ridiculed. And, now here we are.
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        > now here we are. And we're right back to the secret inflation theory that your parent referenced. The main point of contention regarding the current numbers is that it's too early to know where we are, that is, to know whether the inflation we've seen this year is transient. There was a steady stream of inflation scaremongering throughout the Obama years which never made economic sense, and of course never came to fruition. I heard the same arguments about it then: "inflation is here, it's just complex and the government is hiding it". Of course you could be right this time, but it also shouldn't surprise you that an attempt to support this prediction by rehashing the old secret inflation theory attracts a few eye-rolls.
- aardvarkr 5y ago
  LOL now this is fearmongering at it's best (worst?). You don't have to count the number of articles to measure inflation (surely this is a joke, right?), instead you can go straight to the source to see that prices rose 0.9% in June and 0.5% in July. It's at 5.3% for the year[0]. Come on @Grakel, do better [0]https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-consumer-prices-rose-july-slower-pace-79399606 https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-consumer-prices-rose-...
  - Grakel 5y ago
    Ahh yes, those government published facts, love it.
    - aardvarkr 5y ago
      Ahh yes, those conspiracy-based "alternative facts", love it. Post some evidence or GTFO.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      You're the one losing out on useful statistics.
- notJim 5y ago
  > For months everyone has naysayed the idea that money printing would have a negative effect, now just Google "inflation" news articles. I did, they all say inflation is transitory largely due to supply chain issues, and that it looks like it's starting to come down.
- scruple 5y ago
  Interesting that you say that. I took a 10% raise in March and I was content with it. Last Friday, very unexpectedly, my manager (an SVP) gets me onto an ad-hoc 1:1 to tell me that I was approved for a 15% raise. Hush, hush, don't tell others -- of course, I spoke with some colleagues about it; I've worked very closely with a few of these people for over 7 years, there aren't many work secrets between us, pay included, and many of them, but not all of them, also received significant mid-year bumps this year, as well). I've never had a mid-year adjustment... Never. This explains what occurred in a very neat and tidy package and also confirms my own suspicions.
- bananapub 5y ago
  where is this 20% inflation conspiracy theory coming from? it seems to be particularly common among nerds who don't know anything about finance.
adammunich 5y ago
At some point people are just going to stop paying rent.
wildrhythms 5y ago
The American dream is to become a property owner.
- soared 5y ago
  Not far off from an old European dream - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landed_gentry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landed_gentry
autokad 5y ago
> "The report’s Housing Wage is an estimate of the hourly wage full-time workers must earn to afford a rental home at HUD’s fair market rent without spending more than 30% of their incomes. Fair market rents are estimates of what a person moving today can expect to pay for a modestly priced rental home in a given area. The kind of home that can be rented for the fair market rent is in decent condition, but it is not luxury housing." Basically, unless I am reading the chart wrong (https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/2021/Out-of-Reach_2021.pdf https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/2021/Out-of-Reach_...) the price of a 1 bedroom home is in fact affordable to 50%+ of the population. its kind of like duh, the average house is affordable to the average person, and people below that average (nearly half) would have to spend more than 30% of their income to pay for the average 1br by the very fact they are in the lower tier. they also try to make it sound like 'unaffordable' means they can't ever pay those prices, they could, it would just take more of their take home.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  I don't think it follows that "the average house is affordable to the average person." A 1br apartment is certainly not the average home. And paying more than 30% of your income on housing might sound like it'll reduce your savings and investments if you are earning a high income where other essential expenses might only take another 20% of your income, but for a low income person, it would mean not being able to afford healthcare, food, transportation. If you can't see the problem, then you don't know much about how the other half lives.
- frankbreetz 5y ago
  This is a good point, when you take into account two income households, more then half can afford the average apartment. It would make sense that the lowest 10% of paid workers would live in the cheapest 10% of apartments. I wonder how that picture looks.
NonContro 5y ago
Living conditions for the working class will eventually equalise with that of Mexico. With the scale of immigration into the country, its inevitable. Labour rates will be driven down, and housing prices (in markets with supply restrictions) driven up. This should at least be controlled with legal temporary migration and removal of birth citizenship (which very few Western countries have), instead of a free-for-all with a large criminal element.
Kim_Bruning 5y ago
It used to be understood in the 2nd half of the 20th century that a modern western society needs a strong middle class. That's the proof that the west actually works, and at the time was the only way to fend off the communist hordes. I wonder what happened to that strategy?
- sul_tasto 5y ago
  we’re not in charge anymore
OrvalWintermute 5y ago
A one bedroom where ? The issue of cost relativism is key. In low cost flyover country, mortgages can be cheaper than rent. This is why CAP [1] rates in Middle America are so attractive. 20 an hour would be fine for a one bedroom in many places in lower cost areas. I don't think 20 an hour will cut it in LA, SF, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, DC, or NYC, but you can always double up. [1] https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/valuation/capitalization-cap-rate/ https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/va...
wombatmobile 5y ago
Didn't people start America because the places they came from hundreds of years ago, Britain, Germany, France etc. were so oppressively unequal with respect to wealth and liberty? So, hundreds of years later, what have they created? Something better? Something similar? Something same same but different? https://www.thebalancecareers.com/top-worst-paid-jobs-2061699 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/top-worst-paid-jobs-206169...
- proc0 5y ago
  > Didn't people start America because the places they came from hundreds of years ago, Britain, Germany, France etc. were so oppressively unequal with respect to wealth and liberty? No not really. As far as I understand it was religious freedom which brought the pilgrims, and then the American revolution was about tyrannical government.
  - unmole 5y ago
    The pilgrims and Puritans wanted to practice their own interpretation of Christianity. They did not support any wider concept of religious freedom and had no qualms about persecuting other religious groups like Baptists and Quakers.
    - mbg721 5y ago
      If I recall my history classes right, the sorta-free-market startup culture for English new-world colonies to suit each religion is why there were 13 different ones, right? PA for Quakers, MD for Catholics, etc.
abeppu 5y ago
It's interesting that the map for minimum wage earner housing affordability is what you might expect (really unaffordable near big metro areas), and kind of smooth gradations. But the "average renter" map has a lot more local variability, with extremely unaffordable metrics for some counties that are really out of the way. What's special in Skamania County, WA, or Pike County, PA, or Park County, CO?
- massysett 5y ago
  Park County Colorado is in ski country. Low-paying jobs and rich people bidding up what little housing there is.
  - abeppu 5y ago
    Ah, I was wondering b/c it's adjacent to Lake County which has both higher median renter wages and substantially cheaper rent.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      To add a little to the grandparent, Park County's figures are skewed to the extreme by the Breckenridge/Frisco/Dillon metropolis, which isn't actually in Park County, but rather on its border in neighboring Summit Co. Breckenridge, Frisco, Dillon, Silverthorne, Keystone, and to some extent Copper Mountain are radiating an insatiable demand for affordable housing. Building is slow due to the mountainous terrain and lots of NIMBYs. Park county, in contrast, is still a working man's county. The Placer Valley, which lies over Hoosier Pass to the South of Breckenridge, is full of active mines from top to bottom, and South of that lies the vast mountain meadow called South Park. The valley and park can hold Summit's bedroom communities, and they inevitably will. It's just going to take a while to build them up.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  In Park County, CO, a lot of what's available for rent are vacation homes.
pcbro141 5y ago
And the number of singles is projected to continue to increase. We need to go back to committed relationships again, life is so much easier with 2 incomes.
- lewisinc 5y ago
  Why stop at 2?
  - pcbro141 5y ago
    Multi generational living is also great, and not mutually exclusive of having more stable long term relationships. It's fine to live at home as a couple to save money if your parents are okay with it.
- rubyfan 5y ago
  or we could pay people more so they earn a living wage
  - smeej 5y ago
    This is why using the minimum wage statistics is so misleading. The minimum wage in my state is just the federal $7.25, but even fast food and big box retail hire people at a minimum of $16/hr, if they can even get them to show up for that anymore. Nowhere, and I literally mean nowhere, in my area is hiring anyone for "minimum" wage.
  - pcbro141 5y ago
    How is that mutually exclusive of having more functional stable 2 parent homes? We can do both.
    - rubyfan 5y ago
      functional stable two parent homes does not have to mean two income homes
Rebelgecko 5y ago
Alternative title: approximately half of workers can't afford an apartment that costs more than average. If anyone is more knowledgeable than me wrt economics and supply and demand feel free to correct my intuition here: As long as there's a distinction between "luxury", "average", and "barebones" apartments, it seems unlikely that we'll ever reach a point where everyone (or even, say, 90% of people) can afford a better-than-median apartment. If the number of people who can afford a nicer than average one becomes significantly greater than the supply of above average apartments, some luxury apartments will just increase prices until they hit a more profitable equilibrium.
RickJWagner 5y ago
My oldest child just left the house to live on his own. He found a modest one bedroom apartment in a clean complex for $630 a month. Maybe it's a geographical problem. We live near a mid-sized city (300k people), rents don't seem so bad here. Perhaps it's the bigger cities that have the outrageous rents?

80 points by whack 5y ago

Why don't they all just find new jobs?

Anyone who didn't get a 20% raise this year lost money. As the fed pumped cash, the stock market gains kept the rich from feeling the inflation that is being handed to everybody else with a bow on it. For months everyone has naysayed the idea that money printing would have a negative effect, now just Google "inflation" news articles.

gruez 5y ago
>Anyone who didn't get a 20% raise this year lost money. but inflation (as measured by CPI) isn't anywhere close to 20%?
- Grakel 5y ago
  20% of dollars in circulation were printed in 2020 and the inflation is filtering down. Also inflation statistics are intentionally blurred. Look at housing prices or other individual metrics.
  - Retric 5y ago
    M2 money supply doesn’t correspond very closely with inflation. https://www.longtermtrends.net/m2-money-supply-vs-inflation/ https://www.longtermtrends.net/m2-money-supply-vs-inflation/
    - lend000 5y ago
      Your link doesn't support your conclusion. Growth in M2 clearly precedes increases in inflation by 1-3 years.
      - imtringued 5y ago
        Look at the second chart: "M2 Money Supply vs. CPI and GDP" 220x increase in the money supply vs 18x increase in CPI
        lend000 5y ago
        Did you expect them to be the same, in order for there to be a causal effect?
        Retric 5y ago
        I expect them to have some actual correlation over time for a causal effect look at say 1960 to 1970 and the graphs have nothing in common. Hell some peaks look years early others late but most don’t have anything to do with each other.
        lend000 5y ago
        Bretton Woods ended in 1973. Any time before then, the money supply was strongly impacted by the government's gold reserves. The only real anomaly in that chart is 2011, which is concealed by the fact that CPI is a terrible inflation metric when wealth inequality is changing (see the increase in equities and real estate during that period). For reference: CPI is based on a survey to see what median Americans are buying, the prices of those things, and how much of them they are buying. Naturally, people change their spending habits when prices rise to buy cheaper items, and this cancels out the how much of them they buy to end up with an effective metric of "how much are median Americans spending" (hint: basically all of their money). So CPI measures the median American's income, which is why there can never be any changes in "real wages" [0]. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
  - finexplained 5y ago
    Inflation isn't directly (that is one-to-one) tied to the amount of money printed. That's a simplistic view of a complicated phenomena. What matters is demand aggregated among many individuals. You can print any sum of money and if the person you give it to decides not to spend it, it doesn't affect demand and thus doesn't cause inflation. Meanwhile you can stop printing money, and if demand increases inflation can still occur.
    - RhysU 5y ago
      But what if we handed the printed dollars to a large number of individuals to spend immediately to cover their income shortfalls in unprecedented government largess?
      - notJim 5y ago
        If it's covering an income shortfall, it doesn't seem like that would cause inflation. If I normally spend $2k a month, but then lose my job and get $2k from the government, that's not going to cause inflation. From what I understand, much of the stimulus money was saved. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT
        willcipriano 5y ago
        > If I normally spend $2k a month, but then lose my job and get $2k from the government, that's not going to cause inflation. That $2k a month that you used to earn is still out there somewhere unaccounted for.
        nly 5y ago
        Except the money you would have been paid previously still exists somewhere and will go somewhere else.
      - gizmo385 5y ago
        Then those people largely spend it on essentials, don't lose their housing, and don't starve to death.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Who needs facts when they have feelings?
  - Grakel 5y ago
    What I feel is prices on everything in every store and online going up, while packaging shrinks. Who's doing your shopping? There's a big difference between facts and government published statistics.
    - anti-makrakis 5y ago
      I was just noticing the price of beans appears to have gone down. Perhaps you’re buying the wrong thing at the grocery.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Who's doing your shopping? There's a big difference between facts and government published statistics. CPI adjusts for package sizes.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      There's a bit of dissonance between this: > What I feel... versus: > facts...
  - DudeInBasement 5y ago
    I identify as inflation
- hamburgerwah 5y ago
  Housing prices across the board have jumped 40% on average -- in the past year. In the insane prop 13 fueled market that is california bay area increases are closer to 65% in the past year.
  - Retric 5y ago
    No they haven’t. “According to Zillow, the typical value of U.S. homes is $269,039 as of January 2021, a 9.1% increase from January 2020. Between 1999 and 2021, the median price has more than doubled from $111,000 to $269,039.”
    - Grakel 5y ago
      What about only including data from places people want to live? You can buy a house in South Dakota for 25,000, but that not useful information when looking at national housing inflation.
      - Retric 5y ago
        Median cuts things in half, it’s effectively the middle of housing desirability. You might want to live in NYC or SF, but most of the US doesn’t.
      - gruez 5y ago
        >What about only including data from places people want to live Shouldn't the median sale account for this? If there's a buyer presumably somebody wants to live there, and if there are 1000 sales in CA but 10 in SD that would be accounted for as well.
      - msrenee 5y ago
        South Dakota would be nice. We were up there for a couple days this spring and it was tempting. Nice people, little bit of scenery, cost of living is reasonable. Definitely beats moving to someplace that's crowded and hectic or at high risk for flooding or wildfires.
  - nradov 5y ago
- tomc1985 5y ago
  I have tons of anecdata suggesting worse… I just filled up a propane tank, 3lbs of fuel was almost $10 whereas a year ago it was $5-$6 The price of a California burrito most places here is almost $10, they were closer to $7/$8 before pandemic started spiking beef prices It’s getting harder and harder to keep the bill at Costco under $100 Uber/Lyft rides that used to be $10 cost $15-$20 during non-surge hours And so on…
  - notJim 5y ago
    A lot of this stuff is transitory, and there are signs it's starting to come down. However with the rise of delta, I think we're in for a rocky ride ahead. Edit: in the spirit of worker solidarity though, if you can convince your boss to give you a 20% raise by showing them the M2 money supply, I fully support you in that. https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore/2021/08/12/cpi-data-offers-encouragement-to-transitory-inflation-camp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore/2021/08/12/cpi-data-...
  - gruez 5y ago
    > I have tons of anecdata suggesting worse… And that's flawed due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic [thing] increases in price: "omg inflation!" [thing stays the same]: "meh" result? "omg inflation!"
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      But… that is inflation. Prices are going up. Such is the anecdata? Is this effect global? Who knows, it’s anecdata
      - gruez 5y ago
        >But… that is inflation did I say it wasn't? The BLS freely admits that inflation is higher than usual at 5.4% YOY. What's being disputed is whether it's 5.4% as the BLS claims or 20% as GGP claims. >Is this effect global? Who knows, it’s anecdata The problem is that listing a bunch of things that's gone up by 20% doesn't mean the overall CPI went up 20%. CPI is a weighted measure, so the things you listed only contribute 1% to it, then it can go up 2000% and the CPI wouldn't be anywhere close to the claimed 20%.
finexplained 5y ago
> Anyone who didn't get a 20% raise this year lost money Inflation numbers that just came out measure year-over-year inflation at 5.4%. And last July we had artificially depressed demand during the pandemic.
- Grakel 5y ago
  Inflation statistics are lies. Look at individual metrics in housing and food.
  - frankbreetz 5y ago
    Read: cherry pick whichever values are highest to keep the inflation narrative going.
    - notJim 5y ago
      The data disagrees with my hypothesis, therefore the data must be wrong.
  - NationalPark 5y ago
    All food CPI is up 2.1% this year, housing of course is much more but that's what the article is about so where's the lie?
    - Grakel 5y ago
      Prices up 2.1%, I would like to see the average package size change. Shrinkflation is happening to everything on the shelves.
      - gruez 5y ago
        package size is factored into inflation.
        Overton-Window 5y ago
hypothesis 5y ago
It appears that it was like that for a while… S&P 500 had 4 out of 5 last years with at least 15% annual returns (2018 had negative returns).
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  You clearly don't know what inflation is.
mindslight 5y ago
The problem is that worries about inflation are only ever trotted out when relief for individuals is being considered. Money printing to juice the markets happens without concern or debate. The bailout that caused all the current asset inflation happened reflexively after a single day drop in the stock market at the start of Covid. Executives had looted companies by loading them up with debt that relied on optimistic cashflow, gave themselves bonuses for that "optimization", and then got bailed out when the cashflow slowed. These companies should have been restructured in bankruptcy, with the executives going to jail for violation of fiduciary duty. Instead, they were rewarded. The direct price inflation we're seeing lately is actually a good thing in that it will force the Fed to use the brakes. When they only give money to the financial industry, it takes a while for price inflation to occur. But by giving the new money directly to consumers instead, price inflation occurs much quicker and thus precludes asset inflation.
- imtringued 5y ago
  This reminds me of the overseas cash reserves that corporations hold. They basically wait for a tax holiday. Now that inflation is there, that strategy has an obvious problem. You're right about consumer stimulus. The worst thing about inflation is that it is unpredictable. Pumping the markets with trillions without meaningfully impacting inflation just causes more unpredictability. Just do "QE for the people", hit your inflation goal and then never talk about low inflation again.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > Executives had looted companies by loading them up with debt that relied on optimistic cashflow, gave themselves bonuses for that "optimization", and then got bailed out when the cashflow slowed. These companies should have been restructured in bankruptcy, with the executives going to jail for violation of fiduciary duty. By "optimistic cashflow", do you mean the assumption that the government wouldn't suddenly ban most companies from doing anything that would earn them any money for months on end? Because until they did, that seemed like a totally reasonable assumption.
  - mindslight 5y ago
systemvoltage 5y ago
I was repeatedly downvoted for pointing this out on HN. In fact, ridiculed with "Good ol' trickle up economics" snark.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  It's because the "secret inflation" theory is incredibly prevalent in tech-y circles (something around bitcoin maybe) without any real evidence to back it up - except "something something asset inflation"
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Inflation is a complex metric. I don't there is a meaningful way to summarize it.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      If your argument consists of "it's too complicated for anyone to understand why I'm right", that might explain some of the responses you get.
      - systemvoltage 5y ago
        It wasn't and you're mischaracterizing. You haven't seen my comments from last year. Without repeating the arguments, the Economist wrote an article about why measuring inflation is complex and you can't just look at CPI: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/09/05/why-it-is-so-difficult-to-measure-inflation https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/09/05/... Point is that HN was so gung-ho about covid stimulus package, that any comment that pointed out inflation issues that we're going to have in the future were ridiculed. And, now here we are.
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        > now here we are. And we're right back to the secret inflation theory that your parent referenced. The main point of contention regarding the current numbers is that it's too early to know where we are, that is, to know whether the inflation we've seen this year is transient. There was a steady stream of inflation scaremongering throughout the Obama years which never made economic sense, and of course never came to fruition. I heard the same arguments about it then: "inflation is here, it's just complex and the government is hiding it". Of course you could be right this time, but it also shouldn't surprise you that an attempt to support this prediction by rehashing the old secret inflation theory attracts a few eye-rolls.
aardvarkr 5y ago
LOL now this is fearmongering at it's best (worst?). You don't have to count the number of articles to measure inflation (surely this is a joke, right?), instead you can go straight to the source to see that prices rose 0.9% in June and 0.5% in July. It's at 5.3% for the year[0]. Come on @Grakel, do better [0]https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-consumer-prices-rose-july-slower-pace-79399606 https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-consumer-prices-rose-...
- Grakel 5y ago
  Ahh yes, those government published facts, love it.
  - aardvarkr 5y ago
    Ahh yes, those conspiracy-based "alternative facts", love it. Post some evidence or GTFO.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    You're the one losing out on useful statistics.
notJim 5y ago
> For months everyone has naysayed the idea that money printing would have a negative effect, now just Google "inflation" news articles. I did, they all say inflation is transitory largely due to supply chain issues, and that it looks like it's starting to come down.
scruple 5y ago
Interesting that you say that. I took a 10% raise in March and I was content with it. Last Friday, very unexpectedly, my manager (an SVP) gets me onto an ad-hoc 1:1 to tell me that I was approved for a 15% raise. Hush, hush, don't tell others -- of course, I spoke with some colleagues about it; I've worked very closely with a few of these people for over 7 years, there aren't many work secrets between us, pay included, and many of them, but not all of them, also received significant mid-year bumps this year, as well). I've never had a mid-year adjustment... Never. This explains what occurred in a very neat and tidy package and also confirms my own suspicions.
bananapub 5y ago
where is this 20% inflation conspiracy theory coming from? it seems to be particularly common among nerds who don't know anything about finance.

adammunich 5y ago

At some point people are just going to stop paying rent.

wildrhythms 5y ago

The American dream is to become a property owner.

soared 5y ago
Not far off from an old European dream - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landed_gentry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landed_gentry

autokad 5y ago

> "The report’s Housing Wage is an estimate of the hourly wage full-time workers must earn to afford a rental home at HUD’s fair market rent without spending more than 30% of their incomes. Fair market rents are estimates of what a person moving today can expect to pay for a modestly priced rental home in a given area. The kind of home that can be rented for the fair market rent is in decent condition, but it is not luxury housing." Basically, unless I am reading the chart wrong (https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/2021/Out-of-Reach_2021.pdf https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/2021/Out-of-Reach_...) the price of a 1 bedroom home is in fact affordable to 50%+ of the population. its kind of like duh, the average house is affordable to the average person, and people below that average (nearly half) would have to spend more than 30% of their income to pay for the average 1br by the very fact they are in the lower tier. they also try to make it sound like 'unaffordable' means they can't ever pay those prices, they could, it would just take more of their take home.

dougmwne 5y ago
I don't think it follows that "the average house is affordable to the average person." A 1br apartment is certainly not the average home. And paying more than 30% of your income on housing might sound like it'll reduce your savings and investments if you are earning a high income where other essential expenses might only take another 20% of your income, but for a low income person, it would mean not being able to afford healthcare, food, transportation. If you can't see the problem, then you don't know much about how the other half lives.
frankbreetz 5y ago
This is a good point, when you take into account two income households, more then half can afford the average apartment. It would make sense that the lowest 10% of paid workers would live in the cheapest 10% of apartments. I wonder how that picture looks.

NonContro 5y ago

Living conditions for the working class will eventually equalise with that of Mexico. With the scale of immigration into the country, its inevitable. Labour rates will be driven down, and housing prices (in markets with supply restrictions) driven up. This should at least be controlled with legal temporary migration and removal of birth citizenship (which very few Western countries have), instead of a free-for-all with a large criminal element.

Kim_Bruning 5y ago

It used to be understood in the 2nd half of the 20th century that a modern western society needs a strong middle class. That's the proof that the west actually works, and at the time was the only way to fend off the communist hordes. I wonder what happened to that strategy?

sul_tasto 5y ago
we’re not in charge anymore

OrvalWintermute 5y ago

A one bedroom where ? The issue of cost relativism is key. In low cost flyover country, mortgages can be cheaper than rent. This is why CAP [1] rates in Middle America are so attractive. 20 an hour would be fine for a one bedroom in many places in lower cost areas. I don't think 20 an hour will cut it in LA, SF, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, DC, or NYC, but you can always double up. [1] https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/valuation/capitalization-cap-rate/ https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/va...

wombatmobile 5y ago

Didn't people start America because the places they came from hundreds of years ago, Britain, Germany, France etc. were so oppressively unequal with respect to wealth and liberty? So, hundreds of years later, what have they created? Something better? Something similar? Something same same but different? https://www.thebalancecareers.com/top-worst-paid-jobs-2061699 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/top-worst-paid-jobs-206169...

proc0 5y ago
> Didn't people start America because the places they came from hundreds of years ago, Britain, Germany, France etc. were so oppressively unequal with respect to wealth and liberty? No not really. As far as I understand it was religious freedom which brought the pilgrims, and then the American revolution was about tyrannical government.
- unmole 5y ago
  The pilgrims and Puritans wanted to practice their own interpretation of Christianity. They did not support any wider concept of religious freedom and had no qualms about persecuting other religious groups like Baptists and Quakers.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    If I recall my history classes right, the sorta-free-market startup culture for English new-world colonies to suit each religion is why there were 13 different ones, right? PA for Quakers, MD for Catholics, etc.

abeppu 5y ago

It's interesting that the map for minimum wage earner housing affordability is what you might expect (really unaffordable near big metro areas), and kind of smooth gradations. But the "average renter" map has a lot more local variability, with extremely unaffordable metrics for some counties that are really out of the way. What's special in Skamania County, WA, or Pike County, PA, or Park County, CO?

massysett 5y ago
Park County Colorado is in ski country. Low-paying jobs and rich people bidding up what little housing there is.
- abeppu 5y ago
  Ah, I was wondering b/c it's adjacent to Lake County which has both higher median renter wages and substantially cheaper rent.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    To add a little to the grandparent, Park County's figures are skewed to the extreme by the Breckenridge/Frisco/Dillon metropolis, which isn't actually in Park County, but rather on its border in neighboring Summit Co. Breckenridge, Frisco, Dillon, Silverthorne, Keystone, and to some extent Copper Mountain are radiating an insatiable demand for affordable housing. Building is slow due to the mountainous terrain and lots of NIMBYs. Park county, in contrast, is still a working man's county. The Placer Valley, which lies over Hoosier Pass to the South of Breckenridge, is full of active mines from top to bottom, and South of that lies the vast mountain meadow called South Park. The valley and park can hold Summit's bedroom communities, and they inevitably will. It's just going to take a while to build them up.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
In Park County, CO, a lot of what's available for rent are vacation homes.

pcbro141 5y ago

And the number of singles is projected to continue to increase. We need to go back to committed relationships again, life is so much easier with 2 incomes.

lewisinc 5y ago
Why stop at 2?
- pcbro141 5y ago
  Multi generational living is also great, and not mutually exclusive of having more stable long term relationships. It's fine to live at home as a couple to save money if your parents are okay with it.
rubyfan 5y ago
or we could pay people more so they earn a living wage
- smeej 5y ago
  This is why using the minimum wage statistics is so misleading. The minimum wage in my state is just the federal $7.25, but even fast food and big box retail hire people at a minimum of $16/hr, if they can even get them to show up for that anymore. Nowhere, and I literally mean nowhere, in my area is hiring anyone for "minimum" wage.
- pcbro141 5y ago
  How is that mutually exclusive of having more functional stable 2 parent homes? We can do both.
  - rubyfan 5y ago
    functional stable two parent homes does not have to mean two income homes

Rebelgecko 5y ago

Alternative title: approximately half of workers can't afford an apartment that costs more than average. If anyone is more knowledgeable than me wrt economics and supply and demand feel free to correct my intuition here: As long as there's a distinction between "luxury", "average", and "barebones" apartments, it seems unlikely that we'll ever reach a point where everyone (or even, say, 90% of people) can afford a better-than-median apartment. If the number of people who can afford a nicer than average one becomes significantly greater than the supply of above average apartments, some luxury apartments will just increase prices until they hit a more profitable equilibrium.

RickJWagner 5y ago

My oldest child just left the house to live on his own. He found a modest one bedroom apartment in a clean complex for $630 a month. Maybe it's a geographical problem. We live near a mid-sized city (300k people), rents don't seem so bad here. Perhaps it's the bigger cities that have the outrageous rents?