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2nd reply, another perspective, perhaps summarizing. I think you're saying essentially a raising tide lifts all boats, and lifted boats reduces essentially all

2nd reply, another perspective, perhaps summarizing. I think you're saying essentially a raising tide lifts all boats, and lifted boats reduces essentially all problems. To some extent that is true, on average, poor people are better off than poor people 70 years ago. At the same time, the "great american middle class" is a lot smaller & is shrinking. Also, at the same time, social mobility in the US is falling. Wealth is now a greater predictor of success than is ability, education or anything else [1][2]. To that extent, there is now less social mobility in the US than in Europe [2]. Also to consider, comparing 70 years ago to today hides that there was a ton of progress from the 1950s to 1970s, but since then the trajectory has changed [2]. [1] https://www.ctpublic.org/education/2019-05-15/georgetown-study-wealth-not-ability-the-biggest-predictor-of-future-success https://www.ctpublic.org/education/2019-05-15/georgetown-stu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_... "The correlation between parents' income and their children's income in the United States is estimated between .4 and .6" "Several studies have found that inter-generational mobility is lower in the US than in some European countries, in particular the Nordic countries.[4][5] The US ranked 27th in the world in the 2020 Global Social Mobility Index.[6]" "Social mobility in the US has either remained unchanged or decreased since the 1970s."

ETH_start 2y ago
The data provided here: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/data-reveal-that-the-average-working-american-is-better-off-today-than-in-the-1950s-and-wage-stagnation-is-a-myth/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/data-reveal-that-the-average-... Provides significant evidence challenging this idea of a shrinking middle class, in my opinion. The rate of progress has slowed since 1970, and that has correlated with a slowdown in per capita GDP growth, which goes back to my point that the overriding determinant of quality of life improvement is productivity growth. As for housing, it comes solely down to the rate of construction of houses being artificially limited by regulations. There is a woeful shortfall in construction of new housing in North America. In the US at least, there is a 40-year record number of apartment buildings under construction: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2XssdmXkAAX_0d?format=webp&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2XssdmXkAAX_0d?format=webp&name... Even now, adjusted for population, it is still well below the 1970s peak. Restrictions on housing construction have mounted in the US since the 1960s, especially in the large coastal metropolises with the greatest productivity, as this study details: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 This, combined with rapid population growth, has created some of the highest rental rates in the world in San Francisco. This is also relevant to income inequality: rising rent is the primary cause of capital's share of income growing at the expense of labor's, and not any of the other usual suspects (e.g. tax cuts, IP law, technological disruption, regulatory barriers to competition, corporate consolidation, etc) (see Figure 3): https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_rognlie.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r... What the US and its major cities need to do is straightforward, but hard: speed up permitting, upzone and remove rent control that discourages building rentals. This strategy is extremely effective, as best exemplified by Chongqing, China, where construction has kept rent to $75 a month: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/chongqing-china-employment-ford-youth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/chongqing-chin...

ETH_start 2y ago

The data provided here: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/data-reveal-that-the-average-working-american-is-better-off-today-than-in-the-1950s-and-wage-stagnation-is-a-myth/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/data-reveal-that-the-average-... Provides significant evidence challenging this idea of a shrinking middle class, in my opinion. The rate of progress has slowed since 1970, and that has correlated with a slowdown in per capita GDP growth, which goes back to my point that the overriding determinant of quality of life improvement is productivity growth. As for housing, it comes solely down to the rate of construction of houses being artificially limited by regulations. There is a woeful shortfall in construction of new housing in North America. In the US at least, there is a 40-year record number of apartment buildings under construction: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2XssdmXkAAX_0d?format=webp&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2XssdmXkAAX_0d?format=webp&name... Even now, adjusted for population, it is still well below the 1970s peak. Restrictions on housing construction have mounted in the US since the 1960s, especially in the large coastal metropolises with the greatest productivity, as this study details: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 This, combined with rapid population growth, has created some of the highest rental rates in the world in San Francisco. This is also relevant to income inequality: rising rent is the primary cause of capital's share of income growing at the expense of labor's, and not any of the other usual suspects (e.g. tax cuts, IP law, technological disruption, regulatory barriers to competition, corporate consolidation, etc) (see Figure 3): https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_rognlie.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r... What the US and its major cities need to do is straightforward, but hard: speed up permitting, upzone and remove rent control that discourages building rentals. This strategy is extremely effective, as best exemplified by Chongqing, China, where construction has kept rent to $75 a month: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/chongqing-china-employment-ford-youth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/chongqing-chin...