4 ms·
America in Two Headlines
- thefounder 2y agoI wonder how many stock / crypto investors ended up homeless…
- Animats 2y ago"That government of the richest, by the richest, and for the richest shall not perish from the earth."
- daedrdev 2y agoFrom 2019 to 2023, the lowest iconome Americans have had their real (inflation adjusted) wages increase by 13.2%. The US median income is also the highest in the world when adjusted for cost of living. Perhaps the increase in homelessness is because local NIMBYS efficevly ban new housing projects? Or perhaps this post is trying to get an emotional response on a complex and extremely difficult to solve issue?
- jaggs 2y agoCitation please?
- daedrdev 2y agoSure, I was arguing with someone about the US once so I have these sources saved. Lower income wage gains in the US: https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/ https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/ 13.2% from 2019 to 2023 Median income (one of the charts if you scroll is median income per courtly adjusted for PPP) https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2024/06/society-at-a-glance-2024_08001b73/full-report/component-12.html#indicator-d1e8404-8cd0a55a48 https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2024/06/society-at-a-gl... Luxembourg is higher, but given they are a very strange city-state I feel like we can ignore them.
- jaggs 2y agoThanks very much, very useful. I notice that the first wage link states: "Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget." Which is probably a more pertinent fact to note?
- betaby 2y agoAbsolute $$$ doesn't matter if they can't get housing. One can get from $100 to $200 - 100% increase, yet that changes nothing.
- orionblastar 2y agoWhy are housing prices so high?
- betaby 2y agoMost often media reports over-regulation/regulatory capture type of problems, including but not limited to zoning and NIMBY. I don't see any solution to those in my lifetime. Politicians talks about non-solutions only.
- occz 2y agoFinancialization of homes leading to incentives against construction of new homes at sufficient rates to reduce the supply shortage, among other factors.
- daedrdev 2y agoIts almost like I predicted your comment and brought up median income adjusted for cost of living in my second sentence.
- cyberax 2y ago> Perhaps the increase in homelessness is because local NIMBYS efficevly ban new housing projects? No. Housing projects lead to nothing but misery and more homelessness. The increases are almost 100% drug-driven. Because of drugs, people are not _exiting_ homelessness (the average time of being homeless is growing, according to the 2-year counts). The answers, counterintuitively, to strengthen the NIMBYs and make sure it's impossible to build ANYTHING in cities. Then promote the remote work and suburbs/rural areas via tax incentives. The US has millions of square kilometers of perfectly good land available for housing. There's zero reason to try to cram people into the Human Cube ( https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-human-cube-the-volume-of-humanity https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-human-cube-the-volume-of-... ).
- occz 2y ago>No. Housing projects lead to nothing but misery and more homelessness. Now there's a hot take if I ever saw one.
- kcplate 2y agoWell, it’s an accurate statement, at least how it’s been historically done in the US.
- ofcourseyoudo 2y ago> make sure it's impossible to build ANYTHING in cities this will do wonders to the rental market (and car usage and the climate)
- daedrdev 2y agoClearly people want to move into cities. The increased prices of housing makes that beyond clear, to deny it is to deny basic economics. Thus why shouldn't we build housing where people show with their money that they want to live? Its worked in several US cities when tried, who have even seen housing prices go down while building very reasonable 3-6 story apartment buildings.
- zahlman 2y ago>The US has millions of square kilometers of perfectly good land available for housing. There's zero reason to try to cram people into Population density makes mass transit feasible.
- brendoelfrendo 2y agoAll of these things can be true. Based on this (https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/ https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/) for the same time period of 2019 to 2023, the CPI-adjusted median home price in the US went up by roughly 21%. So, the average American can both see their income increase but also find a home further out of reach. The point of this post and this article is not about how people are doing in inflation adjusted terms, but the startling and sharp increase in wealth inequality we're seeing.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Arainach 2y agoIt's truly been fascinating watching the dialogue over some of the recent issues. As a thought experiment: millions of Americans wished for the death of Osama Bin Laden and cheered about his death. Bin Laden plotted and oversaw plans which, when carried out by others, led to the deaths of thousands. Health insurance CEOs have plotted and oversaw plans (such as updating tooling to increase the rate at which healthcare coverage is denied) which led to the death of tens of thousands (quite possibly orders of magnitude more) and the suffering or bankruptcy of millions, and yet it's not OK for people to be thrilled about their death?
- kristopolous 2y agoI and everyone I've talked to thinks it's fine as does independent journalists. However, there's a class divide here that people fail to accept. There's also the mechanics of how class works which explains both of these. Bin Laden being from a billionaire oil family gave him the protection needed to orchestrate the attack. The same kind of protection that Epstein enjoyed. Whenever someone becomes a much bigger news story, this is usually why. Take Jamal Kashoggi for instance - he was the nephew of the billionare adnan kashoggi. If you think his death would have received equivalent international coverage had he not been connected to multiple billions of dollars, I'd have to disagree. This is insanely sticky. Take Ruja Ignatova or Jho Low for instance, criminals that stole billions that you've probably never heard of. The first one, top 10 fugitive, $5 million reward, on the FBI most wanted list. Somehow stealing a billion puts you in the media protection club regardless. The phenomenon is real. Sean Combs is another example. Or how the people imprisoned for running the scams leading to 2008 is a solid Zero.
- gsf_emergency 2y agoThis is evidence that pple connected to law enforcement can hold (hypothetical) exponentials in their heads (but not from their pants). Underlying the difference is the notion that what ObL did was difficult to replicate (or at least straightforward to stymie) but what LM did was the opposite.
- Arainach 2y ago
- WalterBright 2y agoThe article neglects to mention the effect on the statistics from people flooding over the border with nothing.
- betaby 2y agoSome would argue that both headlines correlates with that.
- cyberax 2y agoWant to fight homelessness and reduce the social inequality? Then work against urbanism. We need to make sure that there are opportunities outside of dense city cores. Office towers are nothing but smoke stacks of the tech era. Promote remote work, stronger labor laws (and unions) for industrial workers, etc.
- vvern 2y agoThis feels like a crazy take. The stronger labor laws part I hear, but the anti-urbanism part I don’t. Do you have data or an ideology or something? Seems like you’ve been radicalized to a point of view, but by what?
- betaby 2y agoThere were couple of videos on YouTube outlining how transport driven development makes poor people even more poor. Reasoning is that light rail transport makes housing along it more expensive. It's definitely feels like that in Montreal near REM, although I don't have 'proofs'. Gentrification on steroids kind of reasoning.
- orwin 2y agoIt's more about public transportation make the urban middle class richer, and have marginal to no effect on lower class people or rural middle class. As long as roads are not paid for by tolls and gas taxes but by general taxes (basically mine), public transportation should have no negative effect for poorer people. That's why i don't bitch about car being way, way more subsidized than train/buses in my city, and i find people crying about it out of touch and to be honest quite selfish.
- cyberax 2y ago> It's more about public transportation make the urban middle class richer, and have marginal to no effect on lower class people or rural middle class. It means that if you want your life to become better, you have to move in closer to the large cities. In turn, this means that your living conditions will worsen. > That's why i don't bitch about car being way, way more subsidized than train/buses in my city My state is doing the inverse. We (heavily) subsidize transit, and our car infrastructure is paid for by user fees ( https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructure-spending/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructur... ). The results aren't so great.
- Xen9 2y agoHistorically the people have usually sooner or later stabbed the king or kings, or at least the kings stabbed each other. In five years, I predict, either US goes through something like that or robotics cause this option no longer being possible, since no one wants the risk their own life versus superhuman drone & killerbot militia (probably going to be called something to direction: "safe automated guards") even when fighting against a CEO. The actual cruelty will be visible only once there's nothing you can do. Aren't the government cuts sort of consistent with this? I would also be cutting, since in theory public servants or military who aren't bribed could step in, so you want as few of those who could still do something once they see the "bad" things done to the public. I'm uncertain about this and don't vother digging up though, could be that they are not cutting from everything.
- orionblastar 2y agohttps://www.opb.org/article/2024/04/08/right-2-dream-too-portland-money-fundraising/ https://www.opb.org/article/2024/04/08/right-2-dream-too-por... More donations are needed to the right charities to fight homelessness.