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> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Ca

> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still struggle be able to afford such “entry level” things as a house or even a new car. People are willing to save and/or hustle for 5-10 years to get material rewards, but beyond that it feels pointless. Why be miserable grinding for two decades just so you can get one hand on the ladder? Instead people look for ways to have a life they find interesting or satisfying now.

vasco 5y ago
There's also a bit of over romanticism regarding being depressed and everything being shit which I think throws boomers a curve ball. They see the existential dread response to lack of prospects and think people are like this because they don't have avocado toasts, when the only way out is to breadth first search for Google. If you don't want that, I don't know what your prospects are nowadays coming out of university. I don't envy the kids that had covid high-school or university either, that must've been a terrible experience.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  The average house sold in 1946 cost $5.25K. The median salary at the time was $3K. The average house sold today costs $374K. The median salary is $51K. You can argue that those houses that were sold back then were smaller, but they were also made of vastly better materials than modern home construction, and it's not like people even have the opportunity of buying those smaller homes unless they want to live in a slum.
  - kitten_mittens_ 5y ago
    I agree with the sentiment, but what was the median house price v. the average?
    - noasaservice 5y ago
      A median is one such average. By wanting to know the mean or the range shows that you're trying to cherrypick the result you want. > The average house sold in 1946 cost 1.75X. The median salary was X. > The average house sold in 2022 cost 7.33Y. The median salary is Y. Its clear from all the communications, unionizations, Great Resignation, and more that wages are completely broken. And that above shows what it looks like. We're one of the lucky ones. We're finalizing our recent house purchase. First time homebuyer. $375k , which was at the top of our budget. I make $150k, which is still a 2.5 factor differential... Which is .75 ABOVE what it would have been in the post-war boom 1946. Im in my 40's, and its taken me 20+ years to actually get enough of a footing to even look at a proper house. I feel immensely sad for all younger. Can't afford a $600/mo mortgage so they're stuck with $1000 rents. Loans are for people to borrow money when they don't need money.
      - xur17 5y ago
        > A median is one such average. By wanting to know the mean or the range shows that you're trying to cherrypick the result you want. I think GP is just trying to make sure we're comparing apples to apples. To me it almost comes across as you cherry picking data (average house price vs median salary).
        MisterBastahrd 5y ago
        It's just the data that's available. The median house price so far this year is over $390K, by the way. The earlier value was for last year.
        kitten_mittens_ 4y ago
        Q1 of 2022 is just shy of $430K according to the St. Louis Fed.
        kitten_mittens_ 4y ago
        That's where I was going, yeah. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=OBTh https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=OBTh only has data for median house prices from 1963, and household income from the mid '80s. The spread growing isn't heartening.
  - poutine 5y ago
    While housing has indeed gotten more expensive you can't compare absolute prices. First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946. Consumer demands are far higher too. Also to compare affordability the metric for most people would be the median percentage case of mortgage payments vs the persons take home pay. When measured this way it's been hovering around 30% for the past 40 years in the UK. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-house-prices-unlikely-crash-craig-beesley-/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-house-prices-unlikely-cra...
    - king-geedorah 5y ago
      The data is inherently skewed. You only have a mortgage if you can afford the down payment in the first place and so of course it’ll follow the age old rule of 1/3 of your income. This doesn’t capture how housing supply hasn’t followed population growth/ all the people stuck paying rent in perpetuity.
    - CraigJPerry 5y ago
      >> First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946 Is that true? Something like 40% of the UK housing stock was built pre-WW2. Sure they’ll no longer have a coal bunker and they most likely have had insulation upgrades etc. but a pre-WW2 house in 1946 is still a pre-WW2 house today. The modern build will have less living space, predominately through smaller room sizes but should be cheaper to heat. >> Also to compare affordability the metric for most people would be the median percentage case of mortgage payments vs the persons take home pay That lops off all the people who can’t afford a mortgage so i dont think that logic works.
      - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
        Yes its true, see details in this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31156040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31156040
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      > First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946. Are you? You're getting a place to live and property you own.
  - YATA1 5y ago
    >but they were also made of vastly better materials than modern home construction No way this is even close to being true. Newer houses with all the advancements in materials and construction science are much better than the post-war garbage that was spewed out. I made a small fortune in my early 20s fixing and renovating those post-war houses. They're almost universally junk in comparison.
seibelj 5y ago
- rkk3 5y ago
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closeparen 5y ago
Asheville is an increasingly trendy and prestigious resort town for very rich people from all over. It is not a place I would expect anyone to buy their first home.
- deathanatos 5y ago
  > ______ is an increasingly trendy and prestigious ____ town for very rich people […] It is not a place I would expect anyone to buy their first home. I've heard this about pretty much every place, at this point. ("Move somewhere cheaper!" … and get "geographic multiplier"'d into a lower salary, and you're right back where you started.)
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    I am currently remote, but considering tactically moving to NYC because the increase in pay is better than the increase in rent / col. It serves no benefit to the company (even harms it) but that's HR for you.
  - paisawalla 5y ago
    Historical median inflation-adjusted incomes have increased around 14-16% in Asheville since 2005 [0]. So there is something to the idea that this person's father probably went and found a home in a then-unknown location, rather than starting out with the expectation that he'd be able to live in a trendy, high-cost locale as an entry level laborer. 0: https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/north-carolina/asheville/ https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/north-carolina/ashevill...
  - closeparen 5y ago
    Urban and productive places should just build a ton more housing. It is frankly insane that people feel entitled to pastoral scenes 20 minutes from SF. But I’m not sure that applies to these mountain getaway towns that only exist in the first place because they are not the city.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  It's very difficult for me to believe they're making $7.25 in Asheville like the article says. If you're making that, it's a matter of choice.
jolux 5y ago
I’m a gen Zer (albeit on the older side) and I don’t feel this way about work. Probably depends what field you’re in, I quite like being a programmer.
- ixtli 5y ago
  I’m a millennial and I feel the same way, but I think a lot of this is due to a privileged position we have in the labor force. It’s the whitest of white color jobs. We’re still exploited as any trade, but it’s easier to be an architect or a lawyer than it is to be a construction worker. Especially over time and with contradictions sharpening as they are.
  - finnh 5y ago
    High-skill tradespeople often make more than architects. Not at the star level, of course, but architecture is generally a poorly-paying field for the amount of schooling and intellect it requires.
    - paulpauper 5y ago
      unless we start seeing trillion-dollar building contracts, this will not change. Tech jobs pay so much because the stakes are so high when we're talking trillion dollar companies, first-mover advantage, and network effects. Architecture is the opposite of tech in this regard.
    - ixtli 5y ago
      True yeah. I was just thinking of other sorts of “high qualification” high paid trades which require lots of investment to create.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Software development is very much an exception. It’s one of the precious few fields with compensation that’s somewhat tracked with inflation and has a somewhat reasonable barrier to entry. As a millennial in my 30s I was fortunate to be able to break in and start earning a nice paycheck without a college degree, but even that possibility is deteriorating now due to a sudden flood of entry level applicants. Companies are now seeking mid-level-to-senior candidates almost exclusively because they don’t want to bother with training and mentoring a newbie, they want someone who can hit the ground running. There are still some possibilities for one to get one’s foot in the door with barely paid or unpaid college internships but from my perspective the gates are slowly closing.
bufferoverflow 5y ago
The problem with this narrative is that the job of the father isn't specified. He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. These jobs pay well above the minimum wage. The world has changed - simple labor that requires a few days of training doesn't pay much. Most jobs, with few exceptions, that require a decade of training, do pay well. That's why there's such a huge gap between Amazon packers and electricians, and an even bigger gap with surgeons. If you want to do well in the modern economy, you have to choose your specialization wisely. Most simple labor will be automated very soon anyway.
- deleted 5y ago
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- rco8786 5y ago
  It seems like you’re just confirming the narrative
- skulk 5y ago
  > He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. False. A plumber making $80k (US median seems to be around $60k) isn't going to be able to save up for a down payment if they're paying a typical mid-sized city's rent (~$1.2k a month). Not to mention housing costs going up during this period of saving up.
  - midislack 5y ago
    Are you joking? In this example rent is only a small fraction of income.
    - skulk 5y ago
      As another commenter pointed out, a 3.5% down FHA loan would make it feasible to buy a house with those numbers. But in any case, $80k is up there in terms of typical trades salaries, at least if cursory Googling can be trusted. Your median tradesman makes far less.
nineplay 5y ago
Gen Z's parents are my age or younger and IME there were few people who graduated with a high school diploma and bought a house. I bought my first house at 39 though obviously the housing bubble had a lot to do with that. I never felt particularly worried about my lack of home ownership. Pre-kids it allows for a lot of flexibility, one can easily move around as desires and job opportunities change. I'm not sure why anyone would want a house in their 20s honestly. It seems like younger generations view of their parents times are getting rosier and rosier.
- dghughes 5y ago
  >It seems like younger generations view of their parents times are getting rosier and rosier. I think so. Next will be Gen Alpha (apparently) who will complain about how easy Gen Z had it or maybe they'll blame Millenials. I'm Gen X and in a small town I was never able to afford a home. And now rent is nuts people are being kicked out for "reno-victions". My parents born in '43 and '44 managed to buy a house but with help a program similar to Habitat for Humanity only a local organization. And then the early 80s inflation hit but they had a locked in mortgage but many people lost their homes. It's always the same thing history repeats. But now people have so much more opportunities with the Internet they can choose almost any job. Even for me working from home was futuristic fantasy if it was even that. I think the trend to dehumanize and blame previous generations for the current generations' problems is a dangerous trend.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >dehumanize and blame previous generations for the current generations' problems is a dangerous trend. It's been going on since as long as I've been alive. I'm mid-late GenX and I remember the news constantly telling me my generation is lazy. I remember them doing the same thing with GenY, and now GenZ, neither of which was true outside the norms of every generation. Modern news is a blight on society.
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jseliger 5y ago
It is interesting to me that relatively few people respond to this situation—housing constraints leading to high prices (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388)—by https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388)—by working to remove the regulatory constraints that prevent people from being able to buy or rent housing units.
- leeroyjenkins11 5y ago
  I think things would be better if interest rates were higher as well. Inflated home prices are from high demand, but also because so many people can get loans for 350k. People would be less willing to deal with that price tag if they had to deal with 5-7% interest. You'd start having smaller homes being built and lower competition in the market. It would also incentivise people to save for down payments instead of the pay as you go model we have now.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Those regulatory constraints are there because people want them to be there.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> > “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” This anecdote is presented as the norm, but it’s actually far from it. “Minimum wage” is the tip off that the journalist went out searching for the most extreme anecdote they could find. For all the talk about minimum wage jobs, only around 1% of jobs actually pay federal minimum wage. That number is falling rapidly as it becomes trivial for anyone to walk into a $15/hr job with benefits almost anywhere except the smallest towns. Of course it’s not possible for someone earning minimum wage to save up money and buy a house in their 20s. Minimum wage jobs are literally the lowest paying jobs a person could possibly find. Anchoring expectations that no job should exist unless it pays enough to buy a house in your 20s in any city you want is blatantly unrealistic.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  > For all the talk about minimum wage jobs, only around 1% of jobs actually pay federal minimum wage. I see this stat a lot and it leaves me wondering how many people are within, say, 50 cents or 5%[0] of minimum wage. The percent of workers earning minimum wage doesn't seem that useful (and I guess neither would the figures returned for my request). In any case I'd find hours required to live alone within ~30 minutes of work a more compelling statistic. It adjusts for CoL and represents a reasonable lifestyle to shoot for. 0: not suggesting these are equivalent figures
  - claudiulodro 5y ago
    Also note that state/city minimum wage is often higher than federal minimum wage, so using only federal minimum wage stats is not a full picture. e.g. Washington's minimum wage is ~$14.50/hr, so nobody in that whole state is making federal minimum wage, but I doubt anybody is living well on "double the federal minimum wage" in most of the state.
  - notacoward 5y ago
    It's not just the wage that matters but the consistency of the wage, and the benefits that go with it (or more often don't at that level), and the expenses that go with it. Consider two examples. * Person A is making minimum wage, but with good benefits, consistent hours, and a reasonable cost to live within walking distance of the job. * Person B is making minimum wage plus a buck per hour, but is technically not a full-time employee so no benefits at all. Shifts are often changed with little notice, sometimes to hours that are not very transit-friendly, and living within walking distance is utterly off the table for anyone short of a rich techie. Who's really better off? It's easy for full-time internet commentators to look at simplistic stats and draw simplistic (self serving) conclusions, but your metric is much better and closer to the ones used by people who actually study issues such as poverty.
eulers_secret 5y ago
This is part of why I left my job. I had the realization that my dream (homeownership/2 kids) was untenable with my income (~$135K TC) in my area. I could certainly get the credit for it, but my life would be one long hardship living under wage slavery, being house-poor, having little free time, paying exorbitantly to watch others raise my kids, and not having the opportunities I currently have... I kinda gave up on that dream, being priced out. So I quit, either to make a TC which can afford that life (>$200K/yr) or to live the rest of my days in a hedonistic manner. Current plan is to grind leetcode/sys design and apply to high-TC companies over and over until I can afford the life I want, or die trying.
- mgh2 5y ago
  Where do you live that is unaffordable?
  - eulers_secret 5y ago
    I still live there, a suburb of Portland OR. I locked in a cheap apartment years ago that's now rent controlled, which makes my situation possible. I currently pay about half what new renters pay. Without it, I'd be stuck in wage-slavery anyways and couldn't take the time to self-improve like this. Moving is an option (my partner has restrictions: No states with anti-abortion laws, which removes many inexpensive places), if I go remote. Seems like every other dev has the same idea and that's helping drive prices up everywhere - along with other factors, of course.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Friends of mine who make a combined way less than you bought new construction across the river in Vancouver, WA. Even staying just in the State of Oregon finds places under $200k (perhaps not the most desirable of building types, but certainly above a mobile home). But that may really put you in the "sticks" - south middle of Oregon is some of the most unpopulated land in the USA. Rent-control may end up trapping you in another way; fear to move because of your current deal. Had a friend stay in a three-bedroom apartment long after he should have moved up to a house for just this reason.
tomohawk 5y ago
Unmotivated people were always in this same boat, and always will be. Counter narrative: Nigerians come to the US and have excellent upward mobility. The ones I know are willing to work hard, defer gratification, and sacrifice for their children.
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  You are literally comparing the cream of the crop vs average people.
88913527 5y ago
> Why be miserable grinding for two decades just so you can get one hand on the ladder? Simply put, because the alternative is worse. What is your BANTA? Living in destitution? You don't have to go extreme into the "enjoy life now" end either; it's a balance.
crdrost 5y ago
I just want to point out that this attitude is actually strictly rational. Suppose you have a credit card that is not yet at its limit, and you are not accumulating late fees... you can buy a $200 TV in exchange for paying $5/mo in perpetuity, at a 30% APR. Interest rates connect the indefinite future back to the past and in fact they set an equivalent time horizon. So you can phrase the exact problem as asking what cancelling an unused $5/mo Netflix account is really worth to you, and the answer is again $200. The indefinite future of payments is just 1/r, a conversion factor of 40 months in this case. If you are getting into late fees those can triple interest or so, you might have a time horizon only a year off. Or if you are into payday loans and 400%/year interest, the indefinite future is literally only 3 months away, you cannot rationally “think past tomorrow.” At 30%/year your rational time horizon is a little over 3 years. If you then have debt paid back and a retirement account in an S&P index fund and we call that 10% year on year, your indefinite future is 10 years away. “People are willing to save and/or hustle for 5-10 years” indeed, 5-10 years is financial eternity for most people!
frontman1988 5y ago
American boomers grew up in lot of privilege after winning world war 2. Now is a different time where the world is more competitive. A lot of jobs in manufacturing have gone to China, in the services sector to India. Dancing off on Tiktok and working at Starbucks won't give you a comfortable life like your parents had. So better start grinding those leetcode questions like the rest of the world does. American hegemony is all but over.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  some people on Tiktok making good money with product placement, same for YouTube. Starbucks however is dead-end.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I wonder how many people spend significant amount of their early working life doing low-wage jobs whilst trying to "make it big" as an influencer. And I wonder what percentage of Starbucks managers started out as Starbucks wage-slaves.
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      The YouTuber / professional gamer scene is hyper competitive these days. I know someone who has spent the last 5 years trying to make it on YouTube and has not really made any progress. I believe store managers do tend to come from on the floor staff but there is likely no path from store manager to Starbucks corporate. Programming is almost uniquely privileged where you end up interacting with higher up corporate positions frequently and you will pretty easily be able to learn their jobs and jump over if you want. While retail workers don’t see at all what goes on in an office separate to them. They just get instructions dictated down.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        YouTube personality/gamer star is this generation’s Hollywood. People used to move to LA and work jobs whilst trying to get a break into the industry — and of course very very few ever succeeded.
moonchrome 5y ago
If my kid had this mindset I would consider myself a failure as a parent. I grew up edge of starvation poor, my wife is also from low income family. Both of us are multiples of median income now and can provide a stable home for our son in mid 30s. It took 10 years of doing stupid shit and wasting time because I didn't have support or direction in life. Realistically, if I had better role models for success, I could have reached my current level of income 5 years earlier, and be much better off in life now. If my kid expected to have everything sorted out at 20 I would think hard about how I failed to give him enough reality checks.
- jason0597 5y ago
  "I suffered so my kids have to learn to suffer too" is not a good line of thinking if we want to improve the world and the economy for the next generation
  - refurb 4y ago
    Removing every obstacle from your child’s life will cripple them for life.
    - hemreldop 4y ago
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    Giving your children unrealistic view of how the world works is a recipe for suffering.
paulpauper 5y ago
I think today, there is much more variance compared to 50-70 years ago. Those who have high intelligence and 'drive' have much more opportunity for advancement and to become wealthy ,compared to smart people of 70 years ago. But, opportunities for people who are not so smart may be more limited. Nowadays, you got plenty of smart people making money with high-paying white collar professional jobs, right out of college, whereas 50-70 years ago, such jobs didn't really exist and pay was lower relative to inflation and even after accounting for student loan debt. There was no equivalent of $400k tech job in the 70s. There were plenty of manufacturing jobs, but the pay even then was not that lucrative. Same for being a doctor, a lawyer, or a consultant. Those jobs payed more, relatively speaking, but not like we see today.
- watwut 5y ago
  I recall thatvstats say the opposite - social mobility went down. Smart people with drive had better chances to improve 50-70 years ago.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
There is a lot of confirmation bias in these stories. Half the issue is that people have been indoctrinated to expect home ownership and long for some golden age seen on TV that never existed. Home ownership was never universal in the US. It has been within a few percent of 65% since the 1960s[1]. It was always out of reach for the lowest earners, like those that make minimum wage. Some people whos parents owned houses will inevitably be unable to afford them themselves. Some people whos parents couldn't will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Home_Ownership_rate.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...
- skulk 5y ago
  > people have been indoctrinated to expect home ownership Expecting to own the building and land on which you live and from which you contribute to society is a product of indoctrination? That makes sense if you're completely against land-ownership (which is, on the surface, a reasonable idea), but surely accepting the only current alternative (paying rent) is the product of an even more sinister form of indoctrination?
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Maybe indoctrination isn't the best word for it, but people came to expect something from their lives that has never been true for any generation in this country in the past. I'm for homeownership, but that doesn't mean the expectation is based in reality. People grew up on media that had a distorted picture of life that was never true or a broad swath of the population
- Amezarak 5y ago
  It seems to me like there’s a big difference between “since the 1960s” and “always.” Is there no good data going at least 100 years further back?
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    I found this data going back to the late 1800s. It looks like 25% was the rate at the turn of the 20th century climbing to present levels after ww2 https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-states/ https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-state...
faangiq 5y ago
Remember: this was the plan for decades. You will own nothing. And you will be happy.
yucky 5y ago
>People are willing to save and/or hustle for 5-10 years to get material rewards, but beyond that it feels pointless. Let's test that theory. So assuming that person in their 20's doesn't want to move to the Bay Area/Seattle/Austin/NYC they can find a nice house in a metro area within a 20-30 minute drive of plenty of medium-high paying jobs, for around $200k. So assuming they're smart enough to put 20% down on that house, they need to save around $40k. In your 5-10 year time frame that means they need to save $4-$8k per year. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the generation dropping $1,200 on iPhones and having an average of 50 games in their Steam account can probably save like $5k per year if they really try.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > So assuming that person in their 20's doesn't want to move to the Bay Area/Seattle/Austin/NYC they can find a nice house in a metro area within a 20-30 minute drive of plenty of medium-high paying jobs, for around $200k. Maybe in 2000. I don't think that's true in any major metropolitan area (say over 1 million). Which is also coincidentally where most people live.
  - yucky 5y ago
    You would be wrong. I just pulled up Metro Detroit (4.5 million people) on Zillow and set my filter to $200k or less and there are hundreds of homes available within the metro area. Hmmm...maybe that's cheating let's check again with - Cincy, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St Louis, KC, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Albuquerque etc. Working my way down the list of metro areas exceeding a million and there are tons of homes under $200k in every single one of those.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      You left out the "within 20-30 minutes of a high paying job" limitation. I looked on Zillow as well, it wasn't uncommon for those houses (if they were within 30 minutes) to be in such disrepair they needed to be leveled and rebuilt. It's disingenuous to look only at a sticker price. But yeah, within the hour and a half commute zone of a metro area, you can find affordable housing.
robertlagrant 5y ago
>> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” > I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still struggle be able to afford such “entry level” things as a house or even a new car. This makes sense if the father were also a receptionist in a similar sized company.
smsm42 5y ago
Who told you a new car and owning a house is an "entry level" thing? If you expect somebody to give that to you you're up for a disappointment. A new car is an expensive thing, and a house is even more. You need to work a lot to be able to afford expensive things. Sure, you can make the life satisfying right now - e.g. by buying some drugs. But it will become very unsatisfying pretty soon after that. Because there's no such thing as getting expensive things without working - for most of the people. Sure, tiny minority gets lucky. But the majority works - and gets those expensive things after a long time, because it takes a long time to earn them. And one of the reasons it may be harder to earn them now is that a lot of people have a desire to consume, but no desire to produce - but somebody has to produce what they consume. It's no wonder it becomes harder for the people who produce something to get by - the unearned consumption has to come from somewhere.
imtringued 4y ago
This is one of the most interesting aspects of our modern economy. We have rockets that go to space. We have nuclear weapons. We have automated industrial facilities. We have advanced healthcare. We have the internet and computers. We have basically everything, except the basics. The reason for that is the same and will stay the same, for the entirety of humanity. Land is a finite resource that must be shared with other humans. Money is a public utility that must be shared with other humans. Humans don't like sharing these exclusive types of things. You have these people complaining that India should "fix poverty" instead of doing a miniscule (by international standards) space program. The solution to homelessness requires existing landowners to give up their land. They don't want to give up their land, so instead, homelessness acts as the pressure relief valve/externality. In fact, homelessness is considered a price worth paying. The same is true with money. People like having more money than they actually need. The ability to save against the wishes of other people and thereby indebt them is exactly what they want, the resulting unemployment is considered a price worth paying.
- Clubber 4y ago
  Since around the 1960s, we've had large economic forces greatly increasing the supply of labor affecting wages: 1. Women entering the workforce, essentially doubling the labor pool. 2. Immigration - at least a million a year, every year. 3. Globalization - instead of local workforce, many companies can now outsource labor to cheaper countries without regulation. 4. Manufacturing - due to NAFTA, companies who once manufactured in the US can now get much cheaper labor to Mexico. This is related to #3. 5. Automation - The amount of labor needed to perform a task has been greatly reduced. To sum it up in my mind, US companies have more or less fixed poverty at a global scale while making a profit at the expense of US workers. #3 and #4 are largely a result of removing tariff and trade regulations. #2 is also a result of government policy. Easing any of these things over decades, one at a time would have been preferred, allowing the economy to adjust. Unfortunately they all happened in a roughly 30 year period between the 1970s and the 2000s, and have accelerated since.
  - otoburb 4y ago
    As more of the American workforce voice their opinions and try to win the WFH battle, #3 will re-accelerate.

vasco 5y ago

There's also a bit of over romanticism regarding being depressed and everything being shit which I think throws boomers a curve ball. They see the existential dread response to lack of prospects and think people are like this because they don't have avocado toasts, when the only way out is to breadth first search for Google. If you don't want that, I don't know what your prospects are nowadays coming out of university. I don't envy the kids that had covid high-school or university either, that must've been a terrible experience.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
The average house sold in 1946 cost $5.25K. The median salary at the time was $3K. The average house sold today costs $374K. The median salary is $51K. You can argue that those houses that were sold back then were smaller, but they were also made of vastly better materials than modern home construction, and it's not like people even have the opportunity of buying those smaller homes unless they want to live in a slum.
- kitten_mittens_ 5y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, but what was the median house price v. the average?
  - noasaservice 5y ago
    A median is one such average. By wanting to know the mean or the range shows that you're trying to cherrypick the result you want. > The average house sold in 1946 cost 1.75X. The median salary was X. > The average house sold in 2022 cost 7.33Y. The median salary is Y. Its clear from all the communications, unionizations, Great Resignation, and more that wages are completely broken. And that above shows what it looks like. We're one of the lucky ones. We're finalizing our recent house purchase. First time homebuyer. $375k , which was at the top of our budget. I make $150k, which is still a 2.5 factor differential... Which is .75 ABOVE what it would have been in the post-war boom 1946. Im in my 40's, and its taken me 20+ years to actually get enough of a footing to even look at a proper house. I feel immensely sad for all younger. Can't afford a $600/mo mortgage so they're stuck with $1000 rents. Loans are for people to borrow money when they don't need money.
    - xur17 5y ago
      > A median is one such average. By wanting to know the mean or the range shows that you're trying to cherrypick the result you want. I think GP is just trying to make sure we're comparing apples to apples. To me it almost comes across as you cherry picking data (average house price vs median salary).
      - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
        It's just the data that's available. The median house price so far this year is over $390K, by the way. The earlier value was for last year.
        kitten_mittens_ 4y ago
        Q1 of 2022 is just shy of $430K according to the St. Louis Fed.
      - kitten_mittens_ 4y ago
        That's where I was going, yeah. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=OBTh https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=OBTh only has data for median house prices from 1963, and household income from the mid '80s. The spread growing isn't heartening.
- poutine 5y ago
  While housing has indeed gotten more expensive you can't compare absolute prices. First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946. Consumer demands are far higher too. Also to compare affordability the metric for most people would be the median percentage case of mortgage payments vs the persons take home pay. When measured this way it's been hovering around 30% for the past 40 years in the UK. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-house-prices-unlikely-crash-craig-beesley-/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-house-prices-unlikely-cra...
  - king-geedorah 5y ago
    The data is inherently skewed. You only have a mortgage if you can afford the down payment in the first place and so of course it’ll follow the age old rule of 1/3 of your income. This doesn’t capture how housing supply hasn’t followed population growth/ all the people stuck paying rent in perpetuity.
  - CraigJPerry 5y ago
    >> First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946 Is that true? Something like 40% of the UK housing stock was built pre-WW2. Sure they’ll no longer have a coal bunker and they most likely have had insulation upgrades etc. but a pre-WW2 house in 1946 is still a pre-WW2 house today. The modern build will have less living space, predominately through smaller room sizes but should be cheaper to heat. >> Also to compare affordability the metric for most people would be the median percentage case of mortgage payments vs the persons take home pay That lops off all the people who can’t afford a mortgage so i dont think that logic works.
    - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
      Yes its true, see details in this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31156040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31156040
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > First you're getting a vastly different product today than in 1946. Are you? You're getting a place to live and property you own.
- YATA1 5y ago
  >but they were also made of vastly better materials than modern home construction No way this is even close to being true. Newer houses with all the advancements in materials and construction science are much better than the post-war garbage that was spewed out. I made a small fortune in my early 20s fixing and renovating those post-war houses. They're almost universally junk in comparison.

seibelj 5y ago

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closeparen 5y ago

Asheville is an increasingly trendy and prestigious resort town for very rich people from all over. It is not a place I would expect anyone to buy their first home.

deathanatos 5y ago
> ______ is an increasingly trendy and prestigious ____ town for very rich people […] It is not a place I would expect anyone to buy their first home. I've heard this about pretty much every place, at this point. ("Move somewhere cheaper!" … and get "geographic multiplier"'d into a lower salary, and you're right back where you started.)
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  I am currently remote, but considering tactically moving to NYC because the increase in pay is better than the increase in rent / col. It serves no benefit to the company (even harms it) but that's HR for you.
- paisawalla 5y ago
  Historical median inflation-adjusted incomes have increased around 14-16% in Asheville since 2005 [0]. So there is something to the idea that this person's father probably went and found a home in a then-unknown location, rather than starting out with the expectation that he'd be able to live in a trendy, high-cost locale as an entry level laborer. 0: https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/north-carolina/asheville/ https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/north-carolina/ashevill...
- closeparen 5y ago
  Urban and productive places should just build a ton more housing. It is frankly insane that people feel entitled to pastoral scenes 20 minutes from SF. But I’m not sure that applies to these mountain getaway towns that only exist in the first place because they are not the city.
missedthecue 5y ago
It's very difficult for me to believe they're making $7.25 in Asheville like the article says. If you're making that, it's a matter of choice.

jolux 5y ago

I’m a gen Zer (albeit on the older side) and I don’t feel this way about work. Probably depends what field you’re in, I quite like being a programmer.

ixtli 5y ago
I’m a millennial and I feel the same way, but I think a lot of this is due to a privileged position we have in the labor force. It’s the whitest of white color jobs. We’re still exploited as any trade, but it’s easier to be an architect or a lawyer than it is to be a construction worker. Especially over time and with contradictions sharpening as they are.
- finnh 5y ago
  High-skill tradespeople often make more than architects. Not at the star level, of course, but architecture is generally a poorly-paying field for the amount of schooling and intellect it requires.
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    unless we start seeing trillion-dollar building contracts, this will not change. Tech jobs pay so much because the stakes are so high when we're talking trillion dollar companies, first-mover advantage, and network effects. Architecture is the opposite of tech in this regard.
  - ixtli 5y ago
    True yeah. I was just thinking of other sorts of “high qualification” high paid trades which require lots of investment to create.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  Software development is very much an exception. It’s one of the precious few fields with compensation that’s somewhat tracked with inflation and has a somewhat reasonable barrier to entry. As a millennial in my 30s I was fortunate to be able to break in and start earning a nice paycheck without a college degree, but even that possibility is deteriorating now due to a sudden flood of entry level applicants. Companies are now seeking mid-level-to-senior candidates almost exclusively because they don’t want to bother with training and mentoring a newbie, they want someone who can hit the ground running. There are still some possibilities for one to get one’s foot in the door with barely paid or unpaid college internships but from my perspective the gates are slowly closing.

bufferoverflow 5y ago

The problem with this narrative is that the job of the father isn't specified. He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. These jobs pay well above the minimum wage. The world has changed - simple labor that requires a few days of training doesn't pay much. Most jobs, with few exceptions, that require a decade of training, do pay well. That's why there's such a huge gap between Amazon packers and electricians, and an even bigger gap with surgeons. If you want to do well in the modern economy, you have to choose your specialization wisely. Most simple labor will be automated very soon anyway.

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rco8786 5y ago
It seems like you’re just confirming the narrative
skulk 5y ago
> He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. False. A plumber making $80k (US median seems to be around $60k) isn't going to be able to save up for a down payment if they're paying a typical mid-sized city's rent (~$1.2k a month). Not to mention housing costs going up during this period of saving up.
- midislack 5y ago
  Are you joking? In this example rent is only a small fraction of income.
  - skulk 5y ago
    As another commenter pointed out, a 3.5% down FHA loan would make it feasible to buy a house with those numbers. But in any case, $80k is up there in terms of typical trades salaries, at least if cursory Googling can be trusted. Your median tradesman makes far less.

nineplay 5y ago

Gen Z's parents are my age or younger and IME there were few people who graduated with a high school diploma and bought a house. I bought my first house at 39 though obviously the housing bubble had a lot to do with that. I never felt particularly worried about my lack of home ownership. Pre-kids it allows for a lot of flexibility, one can easily move around as desires and job opportunities change. I'm not sure why anyone would want a house in their 20s honestly. It seems like younger generations view of their parents times are getting rosier and rosier.

dghughes 5y ago
>It seems like younger generations view of their parents times are getting rosier and rosier. I think so. Next will be Gen Alpha (apparently) who will complain about how easy Gen Z had it or maybe they'll blame Millenials. I'm Gen X and in a small town I was never able to afford a home. And now rent is nuts people are being kicked out for "reno-victions". My parents born in '43 and '44 managed to buy a house but with help a program similar to Habitat for Humanity only a local organization. And then the early 80s inflation hit but they had a locked in mortgage but many people lost their homes. It's always the same thing history repeats. But now people have so much more opportunities with the Internet they can choose almost any job. Even for me working from home was futuristic fantasy if it was even that. I think the trend to dehumanize and blame previous generations for the current generations' problems is a dangerous trend.
- Clubber 5y ago
  >dehumanize and blame previous generations for the current generations' problems is a dangerous trend. It's been going on since as long as I've been alive. I'm mid-late GenX and I remember the news constantly telling me my generation is lazy. I remember them doing the same thing with GenY, and now GenZ, neither of which was true outside the norms of every generation. Modern news is a blight on society.

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jseliger 5y ago

It is interesting to me that relatively few people respond to this situation—housing constraints leading to high prices (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388)—by https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388)—by working to remove the regulatory constraints that prevent people from being able to buy or rent housing units.

leeroyjenkins11 5y ago
I think things would be better if interest rates were higher as well. Inflated home prices are from high demand, but also because so many people can get loans for 350k. People would be less willing to deal with that price tag if they had to deal with 5-7% interest. You'd start having smaller homes being built and lower competition in the market. It would also incentivise people to save for down payments instead of the pay as you go model we have now.
imtringued 4y ago
Those regulatory constraints are there because people want them to be there.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> > “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” This anecdote is presented as the norm, but it’s actually far from it. “Minimum wage” is the tip off that the journalist went out searching for the most extreme anecdote they could find. For all the talk about minimum wage jobs, only around 1% of jobs actually pay federal minimum wage. That number is falling rapidly as it becomes trivial for anyone to walk into a $15/hr job with benefits almost anywhere except the smallest towns. Of course it’s not possible for someone earning minimum wage to save up money and buy a house in their 20s. Minimum wage jobs are literally the lowest paying jobs a person could possibly find. Anchoring expectations that no job should exist unless it pays enough to buy a house in your 20s in any city you want is blatantly unrealistic.

notreallyserio 5y ago
> For all the talk about minimum wage jobs, only around 1% of jobs actually pay federal minimum wage. I see this stat a lot and it leaves me wondering how many people are within, say, 50 cents or 5%[0] of minimum wage. The percent of workers earning minimum wage doesn't seem that useful (and I guess neither would the figures returned for my request). In any case I'd find hours required to live alone within ~30 minutes of work a more compelling statistic. It adjusts for CoL and represents a reasonable lifestyle to shoot for. 0: not suggesting these are equivalent figures
- claudiulodro 5y ago
  Also note that state/city minimum wage is often higher than federal minimum wage, so using only federal minimum wage stats is not a full picture. e.g. Washington's minimum wage is ~$14.50/hr, so nobody in that whole state is making federal minimum wage, but I doubt anybody is living well on "double the federal minimum wage" in most of the state.
- notacoward 5y ago
  It's not just the wage that matters but the consistency of the wage, and the benefits that go with it (or more often don't at that level), and the expenses that go with it. Consider two examples. * Person A is making minimum wage, but with good benefits, consistent hours, and a reasonable cost to live within walking distance of the job. * Person B is making minimum wage plus a buck per hour, but is technically not a full-time employee so no benefits at all. Shifts are often changed with little notice, sometimes to hours that are not very transit-friendly, and living within walking distance is utterly off the table for anyone short of a rich techie. Who's really better off? It's easy for full-time internet commentators to look at simplistic stats and draw simplistic (self serving) conclusions, but your metric is much better and closer to the ones used by people who actually study issues such as poverty.

eulers_secret 5y ago

This is part of why I left my job. I had the realization that my dream (homeownership/2 kids) was untenable with my income (~$135K TC) in my area. I could certainly get the credit for it, but my life would be one long hardship living under wage slavery, being house-poor, having little free time, paying exorbitantly to watch others raise my kids, and not having the opportunities I currently have... I kinda gave up on that dream, being priced out. So I quit, either to make a TC which can afford that life (>$200K/yr) or to live the rest of my days in a hedonistic manner. Current plan is to grind leetcode/sys design and apply to high-TC companies over and over until I can afford the life I want, or die trying.

mgh2 5y ago
Where do you live that is unaffordable?
- eulers_secret 5y ago
  I still live there, a suburb of Portland OR. I locked in a cheap apartment years ago that's now rent controlled, which makes my situation possible. I currently pay about half what new renters pay. Without it, I'd be stuck in wage-slavery anyways and couldn't take the time to self-improve like this. Moving is an option (my partner has restrictions: No states with anti-abortion laws, which removes many inexpensive places), if I go remote. Seems like every other dev has the same idea and that's helping drive prices up everywhere - along with other factors, of course.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Friends of mine who make a combined way less than you bought new construction across the river in Vancouver, WA. Even staying just in the State of Oregon finds places under $200k (perhaps not the most desirable of building types, but certainly above a mobile home). But that may really put you in the "sticks" - south middle of Oregon is some of the most unpopulated land in the USA. Rent-control may end up trapping you in another way; fear to move because of your current deal. Had a friend stay in a three-bedroom apartment long after he should have moved up to a house for just this reason.

tomohawk 5y ago

Unmotivated people were always in this same boat, and always will be. Counter narrative: Nigerians come to the US and have excellent upward mobility. The ones I know are willing to work hard, defer gratification, and sacrifice for their children.

strikelaserclaw 4y ago
You are literally comparing the cream of the crop vs average people.

88913527 5y ago

> Why be miserable grinding for two decades just so you can get one hand on the ladder? Simply put, because the alternative is worse. What is your BANTA? Living in destitution? You don't have to go extreme into the "enjoy life now" end either; it's a balance.

crdrost 5y ago

I just want to point out that this attitude is actually strictly rational. Suppose you have a credit card that is not yet at its limit, and you are not accumulating late fees... you can buy a $200 TV in exchange for paying $5/mo in perpetuity, at a 30% APR. Interest rates connect the indefinite future back to the past and in fact they set an equivalent time horizon. So you can phrase the exact problem as asking what cancelling an unused $5/mo Netflix account is really worth to you, and the answer is again $200. The indefinite future of payments is just 1/r, a conversion factor of 40 months in this case. If you are getting into late fees those can triple interest or so, you might have a time horizon only a year off. Or if you are into payday loans and 400%/year interest, the indefinite future is literally only 3 months away, you cannot rationally “think past tomorrow.” At 30%/year your rational time horizon is a little over 3 years. If you then have debt paid back and a retirement account in an S&P index fund and we call that 10% year on year, your indefinite future is 10 years away. “People are willing to save and/or hustle for 5-10 years” indeed, 5-10 years is financial eternity for most people!

frontman1988 5y ago

American boomers grew up in lot of privilege after winning world war 2. Now is a different time where the world is more competitive. A lot of jobs in manufacturing have gone to China, in the services sector to India. Dancing off on Tiktok and working at Starbucks won't give you a comfortable life like your parents had. So better start grinding those leetcode questions like the rest of the world does. American hegemony is all but over.

paulpauper 5y ago
some people on Tiktok making good money with product placement, same for YouTube. Starbucks however is dead-end.
- bombcar 5y ago
  I wonder how many people spend significant amount of their early working life doing low-wage jobs whilst trying to "make it big" as an influencer. And I wonder what percentage of Starbucks managers started out as Starbucks wage-slaves.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    The YouTuber / professional gamer scene is hyper competitive these days. I know someone who has spent the last 5 years trying to make it on YouTube and has not really made any progress. I believe store managers do tend to come from on the floor staff but there is likely no path from store manager to Starbucks corporate. Programming is almost uniquely privileged where you end up interacting with higher up corporate positions frequently and you will pretty easily be able to learn their jobs and jump over if you want. While retail workers don’t see at all what goes on in an office separate to them. They just get instructions dictated down.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      YouTube personality/gamer star is this generation’s Hollywood. People used to move to LA and work jobs whilst trying to get a break into the industry — and of course very very few ever succeeded.

moonchrome 5y ago

If my kid had this mindset I would consider myself a failure as a parent. I grew up edge of starvation poor, my wife is also from low income family. Both of us are multiples of median income now and can provide a stable home for our son in mid 30s. It took 10 years of doing stupid shit and wasting time because I didn't have support or direction in life. Realistically, if I had better role models for success, I could have reached my current level of income 5 years earlier, and be much better off in life now. If my kid expected to have everything sorted out at 20 I would think hard about how I failed to give him enough reality checks.

jason0597 5y ago
"I suffered so my kids have to learn to suffer too" is not a good line of thinking if we want to improve the world and the economy for the next generation
- refurb 4y ago
  Removing every obstacle from your child’s life will cripple them for life.
  - hemreldop 4y ago
- moonchrome 4y ago
  Giving your children unrealistic view of how the world works is a recipe for suffering.

paulpauper 5y ago

I think today, there is much more variance compared to 50-70 years ago. Those who have high intelligence and 'drive' have much more opportunity for advancement and to become wealthy ,compared to smart people of 70 years ago. But, opportunities for people who are not so smart may be more limited. Nowadays, you got plenty of smart people making money with high-paying white collar professional jobs, right out of college, whereas 50-70 years ago, such jobs didn't really exist and pay was lower relative to inflation and even after accounting for student loan debt. There was no equivalent of $400k tech job in the 70s. There were plenty of manufacturing jobs, but the pay even then was not that lucrative. Same for being a doctor, a lawyer, or a consultant. Those jobs payed more, relatively speaking, but not like we see today.

watwut 5y ago
I recall thatvstats say the opposite - social mobility went down. Smart people with drive had better chances to improve 50-70 years ago.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

There is a lot of confirmation bias in these stories. Half the issue is that people have been indoctrinated to expect home ownership and long for some golden age seen on TV that never existed. Home ownership was never universal in the US. It has been within a few percent of 65% since the 1960s[1]. It was always out of reach for the lowest earners, like those that make minimum wage. Some people whos parents owned houses will inevitably be unable to afford them themselves. Some people whos parents couldn't will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Home_Ownership_rate.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...

skulk 5y ago
> people have been indoctrinated to expect home ownership Expecting to own the building and land on which you live and from which you contribute to society is a product of indoctrination? That makes sense if you're completely against land-ownership (which is, on the surface, a reasonable idea), but surely accepting the only current alternative (paying rent) is the product of an even more sinister form of indoctrination?
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Maybe indoctrination isn't the best word for it, but people came to expect something from their lives that has never been true for any generation in this country in the past. I'm for homeownership, but that doesn't mean the expectation is based in reality. People grew up on media that had a distorted picture of life that was never true or a broad swath of the population
Amezarak 5y ago
It seems to me like there’s a big difference between “since the 1960s” and “always.” Is there no good data going at least 100 years further back?
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  I found this data going back to the late 1800s. It looks like 25% was the rate at the turn of the 20th century climbing to present levels after ww2 https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-states/ https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-state...

faangiq 5y ago

Remember: this was the plan for decades. You will own nothing. And you will be happy.

yucky 5y ago

>People are willing to save and/or hustle for 5-10 years to get material rewards, but beyond that it feels pointless. Let's test that theory. So assuming that person in their 20's doesn't want to move to the Bay Area/Seattle/Austin/NYC they can find a nice house in a metro area within a 20-30 minute drive of plenty of medium-high paying jobs, for around $200k. So assuming they're smart enough to put 20% down on that house, they need to save around $40k. In your 5-10 year time frame that means they need to save $4-$8k per year. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the generation dropping $1,200 on iPhones and having an average of 50 games in their Steam account can probably save like $5k per year if they really try.

HWR_14 5y ago
> So assuming that person in their 20's doesn't want to move to the Bay Area/Seattle/Austin/NYC they can find a nice house in a metro area within a 20-30 minute drive of plenty of medium-high paying jobs, for around $200k. Maybe in 2000. I don't think that's true in any major metropolitan area (say over 1 million). Which is also coincidentally where most people live.
- yucky 5y ago
  You would be wrong. I just pulled up Metro Detroit (4.5 million people) on Zillow and set my filter to $200k or less and there are hundreds of homes available within the metro area. Hmmm...maybe that's cheating let's check again with - Cincy, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St Louis, KC, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Albuquerque etc. Working my way down the list of metro areas exceeding a million and there are tons of homes under $200k in every single one of those.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    You left out the "within 20-30 minutes of a high paying job" limitation. I looked on Zillow as well, it wasn't uncommon for those houses (if they were within 30 minutes) to be in such disrepair they needed to be leveled and rebuilt. It's disingenuous to look only at a sticker price. But yeah, within the hour and a half commute zone of a metro area, you can find affordable housing.

robertlagrant 5y ago

smsm42 5y ago

Who told you a new car and owning a house is an "entry level" thing? If you expect somebody to give that to you you're up for a disappointment. A new car is an expensive thing, and a house is even more. You need to work a lot to be able to afford expensive things. Sure, you can make the life satisfying right now - e.g. by buying some drugs. But it will become very unsatisfying pretty soon after that. Because there's no such thing as getting expensive things without working - for most of the people. Sure, tiny minority gets lucky. But the majority works - and gets those expensive things after a long time, because it takes a long time to earn them. And one of the reasons it may be harder to earn them now is that a lot of people have a desire to consume, but no desire to produce - but somebody has to produce what they consume. It's no wonder it becomes harder for the people who produce something to get by - the unearned consumption has to come from somewhere.

imtringued 4y ago

This is one of the most interesting aspects of our modern economy. We have rockets that go to space. We have nuclear weapons. We have automated industrial facilities. We have advanced healthcare. We have the internet and computers. We have basically everything, except the basics. The reason for that is the same and will stay the same, for the entirety of humanity. Land is a finite resource that must be shared with other humans. Money is a public utility that must be shared with other humans. Humans don't like sharing these exclusive types of things. You have these people complaining that India should "fix poverty" instead of doing a miniscule (by international standards) space program. The solution to homelessness requires existing landowners to give up their land. They don't want to give up their land, so instead, homelessness acts as the pressure relief valve/externality. In fact, homelessness is considered a price worth paying. The same is true with money. People like having more money than they actually need. The ability to save against the wishes of other people and thereby indebt them is exactly what they want, the resulting unemployment is considered a price worth paying.

Clubber 4y ago
Since around the 1960s, we've had large economic forces greatly increasing the supply of labor affecting wages: 1. Women entering the workforce, essentially doubling the labor pool. 2. Immigration - at least a million a year, every year. 3. Globalization - instead of local workforce, many companies can now outsource labor to cheaper countries without regulation. 4. Manufacturing - due to NAFTA, companies who once manufactured in the US can now get much cheaper labor to Mexico. This is related to #3. 5. Automation - The amount of labor needed to perform a task has been greatly reduced. To sum it up in my mind, US companies have more or less fixed poverty at a global scale while making a profit at the expense of US workers. #3 and #4 are largely a result of removing tariff and trade regulations. #2 is also a result of government policy. Easing any of these things over decades, one at a time would have been preferred, allowing the economy to adjust. Unfortunately they all happened in a roughly 30 year period between the 1970s and the 2000s, and have accelerated since.
- otoburb 4y ago
  As more of the American workforce voice their opinions and try to win the WFH battle, #3 will re-accelerate.