141–150 of 359 posts
From previous: " In nations in the West, an important limiting factor is the ability to get one’s own apartment. That is, the ratio of average male wage to average rent. In the USA, the happiest year for this ratio was 1958, when people were spending 22% of their income on rent, on average. Not by coincidence, this was the peak year of the Baby Boom. In some sense, it was the best year in history to be a young white…
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
In pretty much every analysis involving housing costs, I try to mention that percentage of income spent on housing is not a great metric. A better metric is absolute income minus housing costs. All else being equal, I would gladly earn $1 million per year and spend 75% of it on rent, because that remaining 25% would be a heck of a lot of money. I doubt this metric would significantly change the conclusions of this ar…
> I would gladly earn $1 million per year and spend 75% of it on rent No, you wouldn’t. As income goes higher, long-distance transportation becomes (a) more comfortable and (b) smaller as a fraction of income. De-camping to Washington State and commuting to San Francisco doesn’t make sense at $200,000; it does at $1 or 2 million.
Of course, if your employer is flexible, it can cost far less.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I follow. Assuming the $1 million is post tax, it equates to $250,000 post tax and nearly entirely disposable income. Compared to, say, someone making $200,00 post tax and spending only 25% of that on rent it is strictly better. The point that the above commenter is making is that if the percentage of income spent on rent is higher, but the purchasing power adjusted income is higher it can cancel out. I'…
I think he's saying that as absolute incomes get higher, commuting cost as a percentage of income drops, because commuting cost is largely fixed regardless of income. And so it makes more sense to live in a low-COL region and commute to a high-COL region. For the average person, flying to work every day is unrealistic. If you are making $1M/year, it suddenly becomes very realistic. Same day roundtrips between SFO and…
From previous: " In nations in the West, an important limiting factor is the ability to get one’s own apartment. That is, the ratio of average male wage to average rent. In the USA, the happiest year for this ratio was 1958, when people were spending 22% of their income on rent, on average. Not by coincidence, this was the peak year of the Baby Boom. In some sense, it was the best year in history to be a young white…
>> which is why 1958 remains the peak year for teenage pregnancy in the USA. There are plenty more factors impacting teenage pregnancy than the cost of rent. I also hesitate to talk about teenage pregnancy rates in any sort of positive light. There is a very fine line between a 18yo married to her "high school sweetheart" who has a great job, and an unwed 17yo highschool senior who, in 1958 society, had a very rough…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would gladly earn $1 million per year and spend 75% of it on rent No, you wouldn’t. As income goes higher, long-distance transportation becomes (a) more comfortable and (b) smaller as a fraction of income. De-camping to Washington State and commuting to San Francisco doesn’t make sense at $200,000; it does at $1 or 2 million.
It's actually not that expensive to commute by air to SF. There are 261 working days in a year, and say $200 air fair per day, that's $55,200 in air fair. It'll cost more than that with to/from the airport, so say a hundred grand. This becomes doable at far less than $1m. I've made many day trips to SF from Seattle, and the plane was usually full of such day trippers. Of course, if your employer is flexible, it can c…
I think this is a wonderful way to tackle climate change. Higher housing if leads to lower birth rates then it might be good for planet. I wonder if there is analysis been done as to what birth rates we need to achieve to ensure the planet is fit to live for our kids.
Have a great day.
There's correlation here, but likely not causation. The real underlying cause in the drop in birth rates is an increase in working hours, an increase in commuting times, an increase in college tuition and health care costs, and also an increase in divorce rates. These days, even getting married is an expensive financial arrangement. Having kids is just another layer on that. Housing prices have increased because of c…
How do you square that with somewhere like Denmark with it's equally abysmal yet they have way less working hours and a large social safety net?