71–80 of 363 posts
I agree with the article. However, people should be able and willing to make the appropriate sacrifices commensurate with their future expectations. If someone is 22 and is making 35k a year, and can keep all of their expenses at 15k per year (it's easy to find places in Dorchester 850 rent all inclusive for a room plus 150 food and 3k year entertainment), save 5k per year for retirement and emergencies and finally s…
I'm a founder bootstrapping a startup, so at the moment both my income and my assets are very well short of middle class. Nonetheless, I can afford to live in London Zone 2 -- a ten-minute walk away from Tower Bridge -- because I'm happy to live communally with a handful of excellent flatmates. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement, and I think it's an arrangement that will only grow in the future. I'm seeing t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> terrible public schools There are affordable parts of Long Island and Connecticut with great public public schools less than an hour from Manhattan by train. We've grown accustomed to overporting our post-war suburban archetype of what a "middle class" family "deserves," i.e. lots of bedrooms, garages and lawn space, while diminishing previously (and still!) common practices like having roommates when young, not ow…
> There are affordable parts of Long Island and Connecticut with great public public schools less than an hour from Manhattan by train. Nonsense. I'm a New Yorker. You literally CAN'T get to DOWNTOWN Manhattan from any part of Connecticut in under an hour. The first metro-north stop in CT (Greenwich, which, BTW, is NOT affordable to live near) is over 40 minutes from Grand Central at the best of times. And then you h…
I live in Midtown. This time of year, I can't get downtown in less than an hour :).
It's reasonable for a productive person to demand any two of: space, a great location and disposable income.
My household of two chooses to enjoy our neck of Manhattan. We make do with like 400 square feet. If we had kids we would need to live in a city we get to enjoy less frequently or commute from the suburbs. Neither is particularly appealing to me, but I've heard kids are nice.
> "gentrification"...leads to a limestone-clad desert made of vertical money and not much else
Gentrification can lead to density in addition to urban deserts. Ironically, activists seem to prefer restricting housing supply. That means the latter.
This article fails to mention that the middle class can't afford to live in the "nicest parts" of cities, but many cities have other areas as well. Take NYC for example. Sure, if you want to live in the Chelsea or West Village neighborhoods in Manhattan, it's going to cost you. But there are tons of available houses in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx that are plenty affordable. The other day I saw a house for sale in…
> But there are tons of available houses in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx that are plenty affordable. The other day I saw a house for sale in a decent part of Queens for $240k - definitely affordable for middle class. Do you have kids? Because this glib reaction signals that you don't, or you'd be aware that the areas you are touting as affordable have terrible public schools. That's why they're relatively cheap. T…
The K-12 school situation doesn't make them not affordable. It makes them less desirable, but cddotdotslash already pointed out that it's the desirable parts of the city that are unaffordable.
This article fails to mention that the middle class can't afford to live in the "nicest parts" of cities, but many cities have other areas as well. Take NYC for example. Sure, if you want to live in the Chelsea or West Village neighborhoods in Manhattan, it's going to cost you. But there are tons of available houses in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx that are plenty affordable. The other day I saw a house for sale in…
> But there are tons of available houses in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx that are plenty affordable. The other day I saw a house for sale in a decent part of Queens for $240k - definitely affordable for middle class. Do you have kids? Because this glib reaction signals that you don't, or you'd be aware that the areas you are touting as affordable have terrible public schools. That's why they're relatively cheap. T…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Middle class in a small to mid size city is $200k in annual household income. A family of three should have no problem in 1200sqft. Two kids is excessive, but if you do have two kids you'd be fine in 1500sqft.
I don't know anyone outside of tech or medicine bringing in 200k for the household. It looks like that would put you in the top 5% of income, squarely outside of the norm: http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-income...
But I agree; 200k is not the bottom bar or average for middle class.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$200k is the 94th percentile of income.
I'd imagine that's less so when you look at popular cities. The parent post wanted an opinion on middle class. My opinion is that middle class incomes in cities is around $200k (or should be if you want to be somewhat comfortable). I see houses all around me in Portland going for $800k, $900k, and $1mm plus. That's certainly much more than what a middle class income could afford. So considering those prices are fairl…
I think there is a reason why everyone is railing/downvoting on Ryan here, and it's because of a difference in definition. There's two ways to define "middle class". One is by what you can afford: house, car, but not stuff like a private boat, etc. The other way is just by taking some middle percentage of the income brackets (middle 60% or whatever).
Historically[1], Ryan is actually right here. For the baby boomers, both groups are right because they overlap.
Much of the societal issues were seeing and will continue to see for the near future are because those groups are once again starting to not overlap (in certain areas, as highlighted by the original article).
[1] Right by historically, I mean that centuries ago the lower class was like 90% of the population or something... Middle Class was mostly not a thing.
I'm a founder bootstrapping a startup, so at the moment both my income and my assets are very well short of middle class. Nonetheless, I can afford to live in London Zone 2 -- a ten-minute walk away from Tower Bridge -- because I'm happy to live communally with a handful of excellent flatmates. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement, and I think it's an arrangement that will only grow in the future. I'm seeing t…
This rise in rents has also made it difficult for generation/s to ever consider buying while living in London. Young people typically move to London and then when they want to settle down, they leave. As you get older the idea of communal living soon loses its appeal.
This article mentions "hot cities" including Austin, which not too long ago was just another small eclectic city with steady growth. Once it grew large enough and provided the ingredients to hold it's own, industry wise, against other "hot cities" it became what it is today. Austin was just a little weird city in Texas when I grew up in Dallas, but now it's up there with the big boys. What this tells me is there are…