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Because Al sold shoes at a time before we thought it was rational to pay someone $400k a year to write shitty Python code. Said average developers then banded

Because Al sold shoes at a time before we thought it was rational to pay someone $400k a year to write shitty Python code. Said average developers then banded together and built an e-commerce website that sold shoes drop shipped direct from the sweatshop and put Al out of business. No ma'am indeed.

dougmwne 3y ago
From the hilarious reddit replies, Al was making close to minimum wage at the time based on numbers from the show and realistic estimates of what 30% of a single minimum wage income could afford in south side Chicago. Seems that we have bigger problems than e-commerce when it comes to modern housing affordability!
- csours 3y ago
  Yes, I think we should really tackle this after I sell my house for a million dollars. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/housing-should-be-affordable-except-when-i-sell-my-house-for-a-million-dollars https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/housing-should-be-afford...
mixmastamyk 3y ago
The problem is not due to high salaries but rather a lack of housing supply.
- brailsafe 3y ago
  The housing problem is heavily impacted by both, and policy surrounding whatever supply would hypothetically otherwise be there.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    If there were too many homes it wouldn’t matter one bit what anyone made, price would go down.
    - brailsafe 3y ago
      You said it isn't due to high salaries, which is a relatively discrete variable, instead it's due to supply, which is an abstract variable related to many other things including the possible rate of supply change compared to who the existing supply is available to, and how much people making the supply are getting paid to make it compared to what it costs to be that person, each of which influences each other. Supply is simultaneously a very useful thing to measure, and a comparatively meaningless discrete part of a system.
      - mixmastamyk 3y ago
        Sounds like you're overthinking it? Fail to build enough housing for five+ decades and watch what happens. The situation is not a subtle one where we need to inspect the tea leaves. Not to mention real wages have stagnated for almost as long with 1%ers taking a larger and larger slice of the pie. Trying to blame the housing crisis on workers getting paid too much is misguided to say the least. Fire every programmer in the world and at most it might make a temporary minor dent in the housing market. Those "overly paid" tradesfolks would pick up the slack in short order.
        brailsafe 3y ago
        > Fail to build enough housing for five+ decades and watch what happens. True, but that's just an abstract measurement of what happened, not that interesting when trying analyze the parts that affect it. Particularly when it comes to different geographical regions. > Not to mention real wages have stagnated for almost as long with 1%ers taking a larger and larger slice of the pie. Trying to blame the housing crisis on workers getting paid too much is misguided to say the least, especially programmers, who are already all fired. Blame, particularly blame aimed at specific income earners, is a different thing than saying it obviously has an affect. Dismissing a part of the system that has an impact is as silly as suggesting it's the only culprit. But I also wasn't necessarily implying it's workers getting paid too much, that's just one of the bits that varies depending on context, but there's more than likely an inflow cash that currently and will continue severely outpacing supply, and whatever supply is created is often so expensive to build for a series of other reasons that it can only be marketed to an endless supply of buyers with an endless supply of money. Especially because of the reason you mention—decades of not building—one has to think of it as the complex system it is, with the bottlenecks and winners and losers it has. The whole thing doesn't work.
- imglorp 3y ago
  Salaries are relatively flat compared to costs of food, healthcare, education, etc, etc and especially housing. The income to COL ratio is what to watch.
api 3y ago
We have very low unemployment and wages are higher. But housing is way more expensive than it was in the 90s. Housing is the big problem. Health care and tuition are the other cost disease centers. People today are better off and richer when it comes to everything except housing, health care, and tuition. I’ve heard these called “the big three.” I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those three things are all areas where we simultaneously restrict supply and subsidize demand.
- pydry 3y ago
  i.e. the three most necessary things. if you weight inflation baskets by how discretionary the spending is i dont think wages are higher. theyre much lower. you cant live in an iphone but you can easily live without one.
  - api 3y ago
    “Inflation in core needs, deflation in everything else, wage stagnation.” This has been called in-deflation or disinflation and has been the dominant paradigm since the turn of the century, at least in the US and much of the developed world. The terminal end state of the disinflationary economy is desperate people living check to check but carrying supercomputers with instant access to all knowledge and all media in their pockets. Wages have risen a bit lately (in real terms even after inflation) but not nearly enough to undo 20 years of the above pattern.
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    Post-secondary education is not even close to being more important than food, transportation, clean water, etc.
  - pitaj 3y ago
    Food, water, and clothing are cheaper than ever. Healthcare and tuition are less fundamental needs. So that really only leaves shelter as the one "most necessary thing" that has increased in cost.
    - deleted 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 3y ago
The shoe stores that put Al out of business --- Al was an employee, not an owner, but whatever --- achieved market dominance long before anybody who wrote Python could expect $400k/yr. It's a funny dunk, but as a schematic description of what actually happened, it's not at all valid.

dougmwne 3y ago

From the hilarious reddit replies, Al was making close to minimum wage at the time based on numbers from the show and realistic estimates of what 30% of a single minimum wage income could afford in south side Chicago. Seems that we have bigger problems than e-commerce when it comes to modern housing affordability!

csours 3y ago
Yes, I think we should really tackle this after I sell my house for a million dollars. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/housing-should-be-affordable-except-when-i-sell-my-house-for-a-million-dollars https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/housing-should-be-afford...

mixmastamyk 3y ago

The problem is not due to high salaries but rather a lack of housing supply.

brailsafe 3y ago
The housing problem is heavily impacted by both, and policy surrounding whatever supply would hypothetically otherwise be there.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  If there were too many homes it wouldn’t matter one bit what anyone made, price would go down.
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    You said it isn't due to high salaries, which is a relatively discrete variable, instead it's due to supply, which is an abstract variable related to many other things including the possible rate of supply change compared to who the existing supply is available to, and how much people making the supply are getting paid to make it compared to what it costs to be that person, each of which influences each other. Supply is simultaneously a very useful thing to measure, and a comparatively meaningless discrete part of a system.
    - mixmastamyk 3y ago
      Sounds like you're overthinking it? Fail to build enough housing for five+ decades and watch what happens. The situation is not a subtle one where we need to inspect the tea leaves. Not to mention real wages have stagnated for almost as long with 1%ers taking a larger and larger slice of the pie. Trying to blame the housing crisis on workers getting paid too much is misguided to say the least. Fire every programmer in the world and at most it might make a temporary minor dent in the housing market. Those "overly paid" tradesfolks would pick up the slack in short order.
      - brailsafe 3y ago
        > Fail to build enough housing for five+ decades and watch what happens. True, but that's just an abstract measurement of what happened, not that interesting when trying analyze the parts that affect it. Particularly when it comes to different geographical regions. > Not to mention real wages have stagnated for almost as long with 1%ers taking a larger and larger slice of the pie. Trying to blame the housing crisis on workers getting paid too much is misguided to say the least, especially programmers, who are already all fired. Blame, particularly blame aimed at specific income earners, is a different thing than saying it obviously has an affect. Dismissing a part of the system that has an impact is as silly as suggesting it's the only culprit. But I also wasn't necessarily implying it's workers getting paid too much, that's just one of the bits that varies depending on context, but there's more than likely an inflow cash that currently and will continue severely outpacing supply, and whatever supply is created is often so expensive to build for a series of other reasons that it can only be marketed to an endless supply of buyers with an endless supply of money. Especially because of the reason you mention—decades of not building—one has to think of it as the complex system it is, with the bottlenecks and winners and losers it has. The whole thing doesn't work.
imglorp 3y ago
Salaries are relatively flat compared to costs of food, healthcare, education, etc, etc and especially housing. The income to COL ratio is what to watch.

api 3y ago

We have very low unemployment and wages are higher. But housing is way more expensive than it was in the 90s. Housing is the big problem. Health care and tuition are the other cost disease centers. People today are better off and richer when it comes to everything except housing, health care, and tuition. I’ve heard these called “the big three.” I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those three things are all areas where we simultaneously restrict supply and subsidize demand.

pydry 3y ago
i.e. the three most necessary things. if you weight inflation baskets by how discretionary the spending is i dont think wages are higher. theyre much lower. you cant live in an iphone but you can easily live without one.
- api 3y ago
  “Inflation in core needs, deflation in everything else, wage stagnation.” This has been called in-deflation or disinflation and has been the dominant paradigm since the turn of the century, at least in the US and much of the developed world. The terminal end state of the disinflationary economy is desperate people living check to check but carrying supercomputers with instant access to all knowledge and all media in their pockets. Wages have risen a bit lately (in real terms even after inflation) but not nearly enough to undo 20 years of the above pattern.
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  Post-secondary education is not even close to being more important than food, transportation, clean water, etc.
- pitaj 3y ago
  Food, water, and clothing are cheaper than ever. Healthcare and tuition are less fundamental needs. So that really only leaves shelter as the one "most necessary thing" that has increased in cost.
  - deleted 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 3y ago

The shoe stores that put Al out of business --- Al was an employee, not an owner, but whatever --- achieved market dominance long before anybody who wrote Python could expect $400k/yr. It's a funny dunk, but as a schematic description of what actually happened, it's not at all valid.