4 ms·

I think the root of many problems is housing costs I'm somewhere around your age, and I also wonder what the future of software development work looks like. I

I think the root of many problems is housing costs I'm somewhere around your age, and I also wonder what the future of software development work looks like. I don't know that I'd direct my kids towards the field; maybe this is just a temporary bumpy patch and it'll improve, but it is hard to say. One thing I think is that being 40-50 or so means that there is plenty of runway for a second career. Could retrain for something, nursing, cpa, lawyer, trades? Just have to have the savings for making that transition

atomicfiredoll 2y ago
My thoughts are similar, but I think the cost of commercial space is also driving costs up for everyone, so I classify it as "rent." I'd love to see data, but small businesses (at least in certain sectors) seem bare able to survive--opening and closing constantly. But, to get to a root cause, I think we have to keep asking why. Why are rents high? One reason is that cities seem unwilling to rezone. Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else? There are several root causes we can potentially drill further down to, but making headway will likely require hard work and involvement in our communities. You could always try running for something and becoming a politician.
- monknomo 2y ago
  Yes, I think we need to reform zoning and build like crazy. With everything costing a million dollars on the west coast, I don't see why there isn't a crane every block putting up a new building Other than NIMBYs, zoning and code
  - monknomo 2y ago
    I really think we could have a boom
- michaelt 2y ago
  > Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else? The council and the mayor of Exampletown are elected by the residents of Exampletown. The people who've been forced out of Exampletown by the high rents? And those who'd like to live there, but can't afford to? They don't get a vote.
  - atomicfiredoll 2y ago
    My point is: when looking for the "root cause" of these problems, people shouldn't stop asking when they get to the rent being high, that's a symptom. Additionally, if people care about helping younger generations, it's within reach to jump in and help shape the communities they'll be living in. E.g. If an issue is zoning, go to zoning meetings.
farrelle25 2y ago
Totally agree about housing costs. After 10 years of paying high rent in the UK I've returned to Dublin. Currently paying €1,300 per month for a tiny studio. (I'm told I'm lucky) So hard to build up savings. The average price for a home in Dublin is now €600,000 according to our central statistics office. Unbelievable. (The average annual salary in Ireland is €50,000)
hello_moto 2y ago
Housing costs are both created by NIMBY and The Rich gobbling assets both Residential _AND_ Commercials. Here's the thing: if housing cost goes up but wage goes up as well (wage is controlled by the Rich), then things will be fine. But things aren't fine because Wage gets depressed, everywhere.
- epistasis 2y ago
  The problem isn't as much that wages are depressed as "The Rich" is the average person in the older generation that bought housing when an appropriate amount was being built, then lessened the amount of housing so that there's not enough for future generations. Class analysis must account for the strongest political class being real-estate asset holders that don't set wages but do benefit from a shortage of that real-estate asset.
  - hello_moto 2y ago
    The rich that I refer here is Funds, REITs, or small group of Investors. All of them are financed by the Rich. > then lessened the amount of housing so that there's not enough for future generations. NIMBY definitely another issue but that house is still there and got bought by someone (person/entity) richer than the average.
    - epistasis 2y ago
      Large capital is not controlling the housing supply, though. That's entirely done at the local level by the petit bourgeois, which are the NIMBYs. You can read their investment filings which openly state this, even. Or go to any local government meeting.
  - AnonymousPlanet 2y ago
    > "The Rich" is the average person in the older generation that bought housing when an appropriate amount was being built That's one of the fallacies here, thinking that upper middle class is "The Rich". If you think of it as a whole, you will see that the current trajectory means that the overall amount of property that the middle class owns collectively can only go down. Any house that was bought for dime by the older generation but cannot be retained by the following will drop out of the middle class. And it's not going to be spread among the poor but goes up to those who can still afford it: the actual rich. Thus the middle class slowly but surely bleeds out and all landownership will remain with the super rich. The older middle class is just a temporary place for assets. Once they have gone the situation I layed out will become more and more obvious.
jacobr1 2y ago
On the software side - I'm not sure I'd recommend CS as such, but I know plenty of software engineers that have some alternative kind of technical background and enough CS classes or self-taught knowledge that they were able to be successful. Like physics, electrical engineering. Disciplines like Aerospace eng or Biomedical eng have great systems engineering backgrounds and often CS coverage too. I'd make a recommendation to hedge one's bets even if they wanted to go into software to see if they wanted thought an adjacent field with transferable skills would be a good fit and offer multiple opportunity paths.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> I think the root of many problems is housing costs for us, family of 4, it's 1) housing, 2) healthcare (unless you're lucky enough to have a really good employer-sponsored plan that covers dependents or allows them to buy in at employee-negotiated rates, which I don't), 3) education (college for the kids, and the high cost of anything besides public school, I don't mean private schools but even just summer camps etc.) I look to the future and have a lot of anxiety about how my kids are going to make it

atomicfiredoll 2y ago

My thoughts are similar, but I think the cost of commercial space is also driving costs up for everyone, so I classify it as "rent." I'd love to see data, but small businesses (at least in certain sectors) seem bare able to survive--opening and closing constantly. But, to get to a root cause, I think we have to keep asking why. Why are rents high? One reason is that cities seem unwilling to rezone. Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else? There are several root causes we can potentially drill further down to, but making headway will likely require hard work and involvement in our communities. You could always try running for something and becoming a politician.

monknomo 2y ago
Yes, I think we need to reform zoning and build like crazy. With everything costing a million dollars on the west coast, I don't see why there isn't a crane every block putting up a new building Other than NIMBYs, zoning and code
- monknomo 2y ago
  I really think we could have a boom
michaelt 2y ago
> Okay, why is city council/the mayor unwilling to rezone (sometimes vast swaths of single family homes?) Voters? Corruption? Something else? The council and the mayor of Exampletown are elected by the residents of Exampletown. The people who've been forced out of Exampletown by the high rents? And those who'd like to live there, but can't afford to? They don't get a vote.
- atomicfiredoll 2y ago
  My point is: when looking for the "root cause" of these problems, people shouldn't stop asking when they get to the rent being high, that's a symptom. Additionally, if people care about helping younger generations, it's within reach to jump in and help shape the communities they'll be living in. E.g. If an issue is zoning, go to zoning meetings.

farrelle25 2y ago

Totally agree about housing costs. After 10 years of paying high rent in the UK I've returned to Dublin. Currently paying €1,300 per month for a tiny studio. (I'm told I'm lucky) So hard to build up savings. The average price for a home in Dublin is now €600,000 according to our central statistics office. Unbelievable. (The average annual salary in Ireland is €50,000)

hello_moto 2y ago

Housing costs are both created by NIMBY and The Rich gobbling assets both Residential _AND_ Commercials. Here's the thing: if housing cost goes up but wage goes up as well (wage is controlled by the Rich), then things will be fine. But things aren't fine because Wage gets depressed, everywhere.

epistasis 2y ago
The problem isn't as much that wages are depressed as "The Rich" is the average person in the older generation that bought housing when an appropriate amount was being built, then lessened the amount of housing so that there's not enough for future generations. Class analysis must account for the strongest political class being real-estate asset holders that don't set wages but do benefit from a shortage of that real-estate asset.
- hello_moto 2y ago
  The rich that I refer here is Funds, REITs, or small group of Investors. All of them are financed by the Rich. > then lessened the amount of housing so that there's not enough for future generations. NIMBY definitely another issue but that house is still there and got bought by someone (person/entity) richer than the average.
  - epistasis 2y ago
    Large capital is not controlling the housing supply, though. That's entirely done at the local level by the petit bourgeois, which are the NIMBYs. You can read their investment filings which openly state this, even. Or go to any local government meeting.
- AnonymousPlanet 2y ago
  > "The Rich" is the average person in the older generation that bought housing when an appropriate amount was being built That's one of the fallacies here, thinking that upper middle class is "The Rich". If you think of it as a whole, you will see that the current trajectory means that the overall amount of property that the middle class owns collectively can only go down. Any house that was bought for dime by the older generation but cannot be retained by the following will drop out of the middle class. And it's not going to be spread among the poor but goes up to those who can still afford it: the actual rich. Thus the middle class slowly but surely bleeds out and all landownership will remain with the super rich. The older middle class is just a temporary place for assets. Once they have gone the situation I layed out will become more and more obvious.

jacobr1 2y ago

On the software side - I'm not sure I'd recommend CS as such, but I know plenty of software engineers that have some alternative kind of technical background and enough CS classes or self-taught knowledge that they were able to be successful. Like physics, electrical engineering. Disciplines like Aerospace eng or Biomedical eng have great systems engineering backgrounds and often CS coverage too. I'd make a recommendation to hedge one's bets even if they wanted to go into software to see if they wanted thought an adjacent field with transferable skills would be a good fit and offer multiple opportunity paths.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> I think the root of many problems is housing costs for us, family of 4, it's 1) housing, 2) healthcare (unless you're lucky enough to have a really good employer-sponsored plan that covers dependents or allows them to buy in at employee-negotiated rates, which I don't), 3) education (college for the kids, and the high cost of anything besides public school, I don't mean private schools but even just summer camps etc.) I look to the future and have a lot of anxiety about how my kids are going to make it