91–100 of 394 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is only going to get worse with software eating the world and automation of every possible task that we can. It has already started with companies like Amazon (in their warehouses) using robots extensively.
Up until we finally get our collective heads out of our asses and implement something like Basic Income.
-- edited for spelling --
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Price per square foot for housing has remained remarkably constant over time. People are spending more on houses than they used to because they are buying bigger houses.
30 year olds are buying larger houses because typically those are the only options. It comes down to NIMBY local regulation enacted by the boomers with their FU I got mine attitude. Municipalities enforce size restrictions, ie you can't build too small, in order to ensure there isn't housing poor folk can afford. They enact parcel size restrictions which means a piece of land that could have 20 homes on it can only f…
Compound that with the percentage of income 30 year olds spend on housing, education, health care and child care compared to their parents and we have a recipe for disaster.
Most consumers are tapped out, bad news for a consumer driven economy. There can only be so much more debt accrued.
What makes me upset is that the economic realities do not match what is taught in large swaths of America. We are taught (at least in my community, and I am 30 now still living within 20 miles of where I grew up) that a very achievable ideal is a middle class existence with one parent working, and a small house in the suburbs. I am in the top 1% income earners for my generation and do not even come close to this. I t…
Life is not hard for the rentiers extracting labour for your right to exist in said apartment. Where is all your labour going? Food? No. Transport? No. Energy? No. Rent? Bingo. Why is this happening? Because we came off the gold standard and there is no limit to the expansion of fiat money, therefore it expands via mortgage lending to mop up all productivity gains. Get the women out to work! Land prices up. Efficienc…
It's really frustrating that articles like this never state if they are comparing inflation-adjusted numbers or not.
"In our baseline analysis, we measure income in pre-tax dollars at the household level when parents and children are approximately thirty years old, adjusting for inflation using the CPI-U-RS." It wasn't easy to spot but was mentioned.
What makes me upset is that the economic realities do not match what is taught in large swaths of America. We are taught (at least in my community, and I am 30 now still living within 20 miles of where I grew up) that a very achievable ideal is a middle class existence with one parent working, and a small house in the suburbs. I am in the top 1% income earners for my generation and do not even come close to this. I t…
Interestingly, my father did his best to instill this lesson with his persistently defeatist and pessimistic outlook on everything.
I now (in my 30s) make more than both of my parents combined.
What makes me upset is that the economic realities do not match what is taught in large swaths of America. We are taught (at least in my community, and I am 30 now still living within 20 miles of where I grew up) that a very achievable ideal is a middle class existence with one parent working, and a small house in the suburbs. I am in the top 1% income earners for my generation and do not even come close to this. I t…
Life is not hard for the rentiers extracting labour for your right to exist in said apartment. Where is all your labour going? Food? No. Transport? No. Energy? No. Rent? Bingo. Why is this happening? Because we came off the gold standard and there is no limit to the expansion of fiat money, therefore it expands via mortgage lending to mop up all productivity gains. Get the women out to work! Land prices up. Efficienc…
This is WSJ red meat political controversy stuff. The story devolves into the usual "tax the rich" and anti-welfare state debate as any other political click-bait. I thought HN wasn't doing that for a week... I actually agree with the premise and many of the conclusions, and if it popped up on Drudge or Breitbart or whatever I'd be fine with it, but why here? Why must every popular site devolve into either a virtual…
> I thought HN wasn't doing that for a week We weren't, but since a week turned out to be longer than needed and I was worried about the cost of continuing, we ended the experiment early: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251 . So it's back to the normal guidelines now. (The worry about continuing was because there was evidence that some people thought the change was permanent, and that was not the intention.…
Imagine growing up during the great depression and 'losing' 2-4 years of your young adulthood in the army. You'd expect that'd set you back earnings-wise by the time you hit 30.
It'd be a surprise if the folks turning 30 in 1972 didnt make more than their parents, if you compare depression+world war to the postwar rebound (especially in the USA)
$$$ isn't the only quality of life indicator.
When doing this calculation, you of course adjust for these things. an iPhone would cost billions of dollars in 1970. Is that the figure we should use? Probably not. But it means that these calculations are largely arbitrary since we don't know the true value of an iPhone to a person in 1970.