5 ms·

This is an interesting phenomanon. The median purchase power is increasing but people feel poor. Things with limited supply are becoming more unaffordable beca

This is an interesting phenomanon. The median purchase power is increasing but people feel poor. Things with limited supply are becoming more unaffordable because the rich are much richer than they were before. So if housing is limited and is seen as an investment vehicle, it becomes unaffordable. The same goes for health care. There is a limit supply of medical care. Some people can afford much more than others which compounds the issue. Americans (and most of the collective West) can afford all things that are not in limited supply - food, clothing, gadgets, transportation, etc. This is amazing in the context of history. The weirdest thing is that both health care and housing do not need to be limited supply. It's completely artifical. We make bad governing decisions that force it to be so. Our problems are not economic but social/organizational ones. Relatedly, I was quite surprised when recently I realized that the median (adjusted for PPP) disposable income in America was the highest in the OECD (except Luxembourg): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income This means that the average american really really is financially better off than anywhere else in the world. I'd say that their quality of life isn't - they die much earlier than the rest of OECD, for example. But they are definitely the richest. And not just the richest american but the average american.

oporo 2y ago
It takes $600k now to have the buying power of $200k in the 80s The economy is 100% intentionally managed to protect the prior generations story mode way of thinking
no_wizard 2y ago
Frankly, if wage gains kept pace with productivity gains it’d be a very different and vastly better economic story for the average American. The reality is the recent blip of wage gains didn't make up ground on the last 40 years of stagnation, and it shows signs of slowing in any case, and Americans are feeling that
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Ironically wage gains have outpaced inflation in the last 4 years, but that's such a minor effect compared to the lost ground over the previous 40 years that it's not noticeable.
  - stormfather 2y ago
    It depends on how you measure inflation. The most important expenses for a young person trying to start a family are health-care, housing, food, child care and college tuition. Inflation in these categories is wild. I don't care at all if a big screen TV has gotten cheaper.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      Given that big screen TV's are a negligible portion of the inflation basket and housing is by far the biggest component of the basket, I think the current basket is a fairly decent reflection.
  - Jeff_Brown 2y ago
    Yes, but for the electorate to blame the current party for the last 40 years is irrational.
surbas 2y ago
The definition of “disposable income” used in this chart is gross income minus taxes. I don’t think this corresponds with what most people think that means. i.e. gross income - (taxes + housing costs + food + health/childcare). I certainly didn’t.
- kelnos 2y ago
  That's the correct definition of "disposable income". The latter value is called "discretionary income", and a lot of people incorrectly say disposable when they really mean discretionary.
  - jmpetroske 2y ago
    It’s always cases like this that make question if the dictionary is wrong, or if everyone speaking the language is wrong.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Yeah it’s hard to calculate a comparable figure on this when savings in one country is basically just temporarily holding money for the medical industry and getting to collect gains on it in the meantime, and in another, it’s actual savings.
Workaccount2 2y ago
There is a fundemental problem that cannot really be solved with housing: People want a single family homes with a nice property in nice area. They want a short commute and all the convenience of modern life. There is in fact a hard limit on how many single family homes you can have in a an area. You can build them somewhere else, but then you get long commutes or short commutes to low paying work. HN, let me remind you, most people do not work in tech banging on a keyboard all day with mild collaboration. Most people still need to commute to their jobs at least once a week. The majority still need to go in everyday.
- light_hue_1 2y ago
  People are willing to live in condos just fine. But everything is unaffordable now. Every new condo building has crazy HOA fees with prices that are totally out of reach. We're not building out or building up. So yeah. It's bad.
  - simoncion 2y ago
    > Every new condo building has crazy HOA fees with prices that are totally out of reach. At least here in San Francisco, even old condos have HOA fees that are within shouting distance of "market rate" rents... on top of the absolutely absurd purchase price. It's madness.
- zeroonetwothree 2y ago
  Families tend to want single family homes. But singles/couples are happy buying townhomes or condos, which we could build a lot more of on the existing land. And we should encourage older couples to downsize (eg CA makes this undesirable because of prop 13)
  - angmarsbane 2y ago
    More families would be open to townhomes and condos if they had 3-4 bedrooms.
    - 2y ago
kelnos 2y ago
> I was quite surprised when recently I realized that the median (adjusted for PPP) disposable income in America was the highest in the OECD That doesn't really tell you all that much useful. Disposable income just deducts taxes from your gross income. What really matters is the cost of those other things we're talking about: food, housing, healthcare, childcare, etc. When you subtract those out as well, you get discretionary income, and I bet the US is not leading at all there.
- zeroonetwothree 2y ago
  It’s not really a straightforward comparison because those categories are discretionary to an extent. For example people in the US seem to eat out at restaurants far more than in other countries. That would certainly increase food spending but clearly it’s a choice people make to improve their life and doesn’t represent a defect in the economy.
frmersdog 2y ago
Much like, say, IQ, wealth shouldn't be compared across populations without massive amounts of contextual normalization. Individual wealth measures don't account for institutional safety nets, nor social/cultural affordances, nor geography, nor weather, nor history, nor- Suffice it to say that trying to directly compare individual wealth across disparate populations is so disingenuous as to be tantamount to spreading falsehoods. People feel poor because they are poor; Americans simply cannot afford many of the things that other developed economies provide for their residents. We can make lots of small changes to help with this^ (i.e., we don't need a massive overhaul or revolution), but the people calling the shots have to actually admit that people are not doing well, and that the costs people face today are burdensome. They won't, because they're afraid of not being reelected (and then they lose anyway). ^Solve food deserts by opening bodega-like shops in both urban AND suburban neighborhoods. ^Replace surface parking with structures housing amenities that people can walk to. ^Increase mass public transit access by building rail and bus/bike lanes.
- Jeff_Brown 2y ago
  Whether one thinks things are bad or good is subjective and should not be relevant, although it does appear to matter electorally. A rational voting public would vote on a forward looking basis -- which candidate would deliver the biggest expected improvement.
  - frmersdog 2y ago
    A rational voting public will not vote for someone who normalizes genocide. This is reasonable, because that which is normalized becomes probable for all. Looking at the numbers, it doesn't seem so much that America chose Trump as they refused to choose Harris; her popular vote total is in the middle of Obama's, and Trump's is roughly the same as last time. I recognize and agree that Trump is worse. As much as Harris wanted to make that what the election was about, as with Biden in 2020, that's simply not what it was. The election was about if Harris could do better than Biden, as an executive. She couldn't show that she would, so the people who came out for Biden did not come out for her.
zeroonetwothree 2y ago
Life expectancy in the US is below average but it’s certainly not “much lower than the rest of the OECD” https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d90b402d-en.pdf https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d90b402d-en.pdf

oporo 2y ago

It takes $600k now to have the buying power of $200k in the 80s The economy is 100% intentionally managed to protect the prior generations story mode way of thinking

no_wizard 2y ago

Frankly, if wage gains kept pace with productivity gains it’d be a very different and vastly better economic story for the average American. The reality is the recent blip of wage gains didn't make up ground on the last 40 years of stagnation, and it shows signs of slowing in any case, and Americans are feeling that

bryanlarsen 2y ago
Ironically wage gains have outpaced inflation in the last 4 years, but that's such a minor effect compared to the lost ground over the previous 40 years that it's not noticeable.
- stormfather 2y ago
  It depends on how you measure inflation. The most important expenses for a young person trying to start a family are health-care, housing, food, child care and college tuition. Inflation in these categories is wild. I don't care at all if a big screen TV has gotten cheaper.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Given that big screen TV's are a negligible portion of the inflation basket and housing is by far the biggest component of the basket, I think the current basket is a fairly decent reflection.
- Jeff_Brown 2y ago
  Yes, but for the electorate to blame the current party for the last 40 years is irrational.

surbas 2y ago

The definition of “disposable income” used in this chart is gross income minus taxes. I don’t think this corresponds with what most people think that means. i.e. gross income - (taxes + housing costs + food + health/childcare). I certainly didn’t.

kelnos 2y ago
That's the correct definition of "disposable income". The latter value is called "discretionary income", and a lot of people incorrectly say disposable when they really mean discretionary.
- jmpetroske 2y ago
  It’s always cases like this that make question if the dictionary is wrong, or if everyone speaking the language is wrong.
vundercind 2y ago
Yeah it’s hard to calculate a comparable figure on this when savings in one country is basically just temporarily holding money for the medical industry and getting to collect gains on it in the meantime, and in another, it’s actual savings.

Workaccount2 2y ago

There is a fundemental problem that cannot really be solved with housing: People want a single family homes with a nice property in nice area. They want a short commute and all the convenience of modern life. There is in fact a hard limit on how many single family homes you can have in a an area. You can build them somewhere else, but then you get long commutes or short commutes to low paying work. HN, let me remind you, most people do not work in tech banging on a keyboard all day with mild collaboration. Most people still need to commute to their jobs at least once a week. The majority still need to go in everyday.

light_hue_1 2y ago
People are willing to live in condos just fine. But everything is unaffordable now. Every new condo building has crazy HOA fees with prices that are totally out of reach. We're not building out or building up. So yeah. It's bad.
- simoncion 2y ago
  > Every new condo building has crazy HOA fees with prices that are totally out of reach. At least here in San Francisco, even old condos have HOA fees that are within shouting distance of "market rate" rents... on top of the absolutely absurd purchase price. It's madness.
zeroonetwothree 2y ago
Families tend to want single family homes. But singles/couples are happy buying townhomes or condos, which we could build a lot more of on the existing land. And we should encourage older couples to downsize (eg CA makes this undesirable because of prop 13)
- angmarsbane 2y ago
  More families would be open to townhomes and condos if they had 3-4 bedrooms.
  - 2y ago

kelnos 2y ago

> I was quite surprised when recently I realized that the median (adjusted for PPP) disposable income in America was the highest in the OECD That doesn't really tell you all that much useful. Disposable income just deducts taxes from your gross income. What really matters is the cost of those other things we're talking about: food, housing, healthcare, childcare, etc. When you subtract those out as well, you get discretionary income, and I bet the US is not leading at all there.

zeroonetwothree 2y ago
It’s not really a straightforward comparison because those categories are discretionary to an extent. For example people in the US seem to eat out at restaurants far more than in other countries. That would certainly increase food spending but clearly it’s a choice people make to improve their life and doesn’t represent a defect in the economy.

frmersdog 2y ago

Much like, say, IQ, wealth shouldn't be compared across populations without massive amounts of contextual normalization. Individual wealth measures don't account for institutional safety nets, nor social/cultural affordances, nor geography, nor weather, nor history, nor- Suffice it to say that trying to directly compare individual wealth across disparate populations is so disingenuous as to be tantamount to spreading falsehoods. People feel poor because they are poor; Americans simply cannot afford many of the things that other developed economies provide for their residents. We can make lots of small changes to help with this^ (i.e., we don't need a massive overhaul or revolution), but the people calling the shots have to actually admit that people are not doing well, and that the costs people face today are burdensome. They won't, because they're afraid of not being reelected (and then they lose anyway). ^Solve food deserts by opening bodega-like shops in both urban AND suburban neighborhoods. ^Replace surface parking with structures housing amenities that people can walk to. ^Increase mass public transit access by building rail and bus/bike lanes.

Jeff_Brown 2y ago
Whether one thinks things are bad or good is subjective and should not be relevant, although it does appear to matter electorally. A rational voting public would vote on a forward looking basis -- which candidate would deliver the biggest expected improvement.
- frmersdog 2y ago
  A rational voting public will not vote for someone who normalizes genocide. This is reasonable, because that which is normalized becomes probable for all. Looking at the numbers, it doesn't seem so much that America chose Trump as they refused to choose Harris; her popular vote total is in the middle of Obama's, and Trump's is roughly the same as last time. I recognize and agree that Trump is worse. As much as Harris wanted to make that what the election was about, as with Biden in 2020, that's simply not what it was. The election was about if Harris could do better than Biden, as an executive. She couldn't show that she would, so the people who came out for Biden did not come out for her.

zeroonetwothree 2y ago

Life expectancy in the US is below average but it’s certainly not “much lower than the rest of the OECD” https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d90b402d-en.pdf https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d90b402d-en.pdf