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I was just thinking today that if food prices tripled I would barely notice except that rest of the world would be on fire. I am not the marginal buyer for anyt

by minimax 13y ago

I was just thinking today that if food prices tripled I would barely notice except that rest of the world would be on fire. I am not the marginal buyer for anything you really need to go on living. Food, energy, clothing. My personal income is probably somewhere in the top 15% for the United States. I am a nice enough guy, and I typically vote for progressive candidates too, but if I move into a city with a limited housing supply, I'm going to have bid the prices up so I can have a nice place to live. Sorry about that, everyone else. disclaimer: I have only been to SF like once and I don't really know what is going on there.

deleted 13y ago
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randomdata 13y ago
If you are making somewhere around $75K per year (roughly where the top 15% places you for individual incomes), are you really in the position to be bidding up housing prices in SF (assuming you don't have a wealthy partner to help fund your ventures, won the lottery, or something to that effect)? The rule of thumb for buying a home is three times income, which means you can realistically only afford a $225K home. However, the US national average seems to be closer to five times income, so if we allow you that, you still can realistically only afford a $375K home. I've never tried buying a house in San Francisco, but by all accounts, you're not even close to being in the market, let alone bidding the prices up. I also wonder how you would not notice food prices triple with that kind of income, but perhaps you grow everything you consume and thus would not feel the fluctuations the same? With that said, one thing I notice regularly is that people seem to grossly overestimate how much other people make, so perhaps you actually are closer to the top 1% than you realize?
- tsunamifury 13y ago
  Top 15% in SF,LA,NYC areas would put you around 180-225K combined, making his statements true. 75k in a rural small town x2 with a wife would be more than enough to buy a house, have kids and have 1k in spare change every month. But I think his sentiment was more that he would bid up home prices if had the money, even as a relatively 'normal-income' individual and that most higher paid individuals spend only 5-10% of their income on necessary non-housing items.
  - randomdata 13y ago
    > Top 15% in SF,LA,NYC areas would put you around 180-225K combined, making his statements true. 75k in a rural small town x2 with a wife would be more than enough to buy a house, have kids and have 1k in spare change every month. The parent was specific about a top 15% income on the national scale. However, for interest's sake, if you want to talk about local incomes, $75K puts you in the top 3% in the rural area I come from. I should hope you'd be able to buy a house and still have some money left over being such a high earner, relatively speaking. In my experience, incomes do not migrate well though. If you're making $75K in a rural area, you're probably not going to make $500K, or whatever top 3% is in the cities you mention, just by moving. More realistically, you might move up to $100K or so to account for some rise in cost of living, but not much more. Generally speaking, of course. There are always outliers.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
> if I move into a city with a limited housing supply, I'm going to have bid the prices up so I can have a nice place to live. Sorry about that, everyone else. Why can't you try to get something nice for the "going rate"? And how does money not enable you to make just about any place nice? Use any remaing lack of niceness to fuel your lobbying for affordable housing being built. Not that I want to pick on you, but: Of course it's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological." On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal." But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society. -- Noam Chomsky Just because people are poor, i.e. defenseless, doesn't mean others should be able to have their home automatically. You might as well say "when I ride on a bus that is very full with mostly strong people, I have to pull an old lady from her seat, so I can sit somewhere nice". No, you don't have to. Apart from dying and involuntary muscle reflexes there is nothing anyone has to do.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  For the one who downvoted me without comment: You pick a random web dev forum, and I post there suggesting my business plan of low maintainence (for me), super cheap websites to get a start with freelancing or even disrupt it. People will say I shouldn't undercut market rates. And then I will say what the poster said, "I am a nice guy, and I try to help others on stack overflow, but if I want a nice career, I have to underbid. Sorry to everyone else." You hold the stopwatch and see how long it takes for me to get flamed to hell and back. [the fact that pricing low doesn't really lead to a "nice career" is besides the point btw, you get the idea anyway]
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - ivanplenty 13y ago

by minimax 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

randomdata 13y ago

If you are making somewhere around $75K per year (roughly where the top 15% places you for individual incomes), are you really in the position to be bidding up housing prices in SF (assuming you don't have a wealthy partner to help fund your ventures, won the lottery, or something to that effect)? The rule of thumb for buying a home is three times income, which means you can realistically only afford a $225K home. However, the US national average seems to be closer to five times income, so if we allow you that, you still can realistically only afford a $375K home. I've never tried buying a house in San Francisco, but by all accounts, you're not even close to being in the market, let alone bidding the prices up. I also wonder how you would not notice food prices triple with that kind of income, but perhaps you grow everything you consume and thus would not feel the fluctuations the same? With that said, one thing I notice regularly is that people seem to grossly overestimate how much other people make, so perhaps you actually are closer to the top 1% than you realize?

tsunamifury 13y ago
Top 15% in SF,LA,NYC areas would put you around 180-225K combined, making his statements true. 75k in a rural small town x2 with a wife would be more than enough to buy a house, have kids and have 1k in spare change every month. But I think his sentiment was more that he would bid up home prices if had the money, even as a relatively 'normal-income' individual and that most higher paid individuals spend only 5-10% of their income on necessary non-housing items.
- randomdata 13y ago
  > Top 15% in SF,LA,NYC areas would put you around 180-225K combined, making his statements true. 75k in a rural small town x2 with a wife would be more than enough to buy a house, have kids and have 1k in spare change every month. The parent was specific about a top 15% income on the national scale. However, for interest's sake, if you want to talk about local incomes, $75K puts you in the top 3% in the rural area I come from. I should hope you'd be able to buy a house and still have some money left over being such a high earner, relatively speaking. In my experience, incomes do not migrate well though. If you're making $75K in a rural area, you're probably not going to make $500K, or whatever top 3% is in the cities you mention, just by moving. More realistically, you might move up to $100K or so to account for some rise in cost of living, but not much more. Generally speaking, of course. There are always outliers.

PavlovsCat 13y ago

> if I move into a city with a limited housing supply, I'm going to have bid the prices up so I can have a nice place to live. Sorry about that, everyone else. Why can't you try to get something nice for the "going rate"? And how does money not enable you to make just about any place nice? Use any remaing lack of niceness to fuel your lobbying for affordable housing being built. Not that I want to pick on you, but: Of course it's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological." On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal." But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society. -- Noam Chomsky Just because people are poor, i.e. defenseless, doesn't mean others should be able to have their home automatically. You might as well say "when I ride on a bus that is very full with mostly strong people, I have to pull an old lady from her seat, so I can sit somewhere nice". No, you don't have to. Apart from dying and involuntary muscle reflexes there is nothing anyone has to do.

PavlovsCat 13y ago
For the one who downvoted me without comment: You pick a random web dev forum, and I post there suggesting my business plan of low maintainence (for me), super cheap websites to get a start with freelancing or even disrupt it. People will say I shouldn't undercut market rates. And then I will say what the poster said, "I am a nice guy, and I try to help others on stack overflow, but if I want a nice career, I have to underbid. Sorry to everyone else." You hold the stopwatch and see how long it takes for me to get flamed to hell and back. [the fact that pricing low doesn't really lead to a "nice career" is besides the point btw, you get the idea anyway]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ivanplenty 13y ago