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Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

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Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#371

Post by resalisbury »

The headline is misleading on two accounts (though the content is fine). First, it's not that big cities don't deliver, they do. It's that the marginal improvments in wages do not make up for the cost of living increase. So a better headline would be that zoning is pricing ppl out of big cities. Second, some cities are still amazing at helping kids escape from poverty, even if the parents are no better off after moving there. The article itself cites that research. That's huge. A better headline would be "Some Cities help break intergenerational poverty."

Article is fine, but the conclusions you might draw from the headline are dead wrong.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#372

Post by travisoneill1 »

irrational wrote: post #291
travisoneill1 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it with this attitude that somehow learning new things is only honorable when those things are useless in the job market? Do you really think that anybody is taking up 4 years of their life and 200 thousand of their (probably borrowed) dollars just for the purpose of "expanding their horizons"?

Who is paying 200,000 for college? That's crazy. I have 2 kids attending a private college and each one pays $2000 a semester. They both have academic scholarships - so their tuition is covered - but even if it wasn't, that is less than $20,000 over 4 years. You can get a good education without attending an ivy league university.

I just googled the current tuition at the school I went too and roughly multiplied by 4. The exact number isn't my point just that it's a ridiculous amount.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#373

Post by Tade0 »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #331
wasdfff wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually you will run out of wood to make chairs or people who want chairs, you can’t make infinite value as every product ever made requires commodities going in one end and customers with disposable income on another. The problem is when a company makes x, ceo takes 0.1x in compensation, while everyone else on the payroll combined also takes 0.1x in compensation just because they didn’t show up to work with the s…

(As people use forests, others will notice and start making tree farms.) I don't see how it's inherently wrong for a CEO to take 10% of revenue and employees split 10%. And why do companies have a fixed pile: shouldn't an effective CEO grow top-line revenue? What if employees are splitting twice the revenue compared to a year ago? (If the company isn't growing, replace the CEO for someone who earns their 10%.) Money-…

(As people use forests, others will notice and start making tree farms.)

Stories of countless species hunted to extinction show that this is not what happens.

Let's look at the physics(?) of the economy: where does wealth actually come from? It's either from transforming things into more useful things or increasing efficiency of processes. There are limits to both of those things.

We live on a planet that's in a rough equilibrium in terms of both matter and energy.

So we have a finite maximal amount of value that we can extract from a constant amount of matter - which means that overall wealth is limited - we're just moving it around and at a finite rate at that - somebody is getting a bigger slice of this pie than the others.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#374

Post by scarface74 »

leetcrew wrote: post #364
scarface74 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can a fast food chain restaurant exist in such a market?

according to google maps, there are about ten mcdonald's restaurants in SF, so I would argue yes.

How can they afford the labor?

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#375

Post by war1025 »

malandrew wrote: post #318
hoaw wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most concise modern class definition I have seen goes something like this: Working class: work to survive. Middle class: work to do other things. Upper middle class: work for wealth. Upper class: work optional. People rightfully like to talk about the working poor and the disappearing middle class, but I think we are actually already past that. What we are seeing now is that between education, housing and financi…

It's not even just that it's hard to be upper middle class (build wealth), but that people aren't even being taught to build wealth. Learning to build wealth isn't taught in schools. It's passed down from parents to children and it was far more common to find families where the parents taught these skills when there were lots more mom&pop businesses and homesteads where they built their own wealth and taught the skil…

This is something I think a lot about. If you have a pension plan, you have zero incentive not to spend all your money. You have guaranteed income to maintain your standard of living. Having money for a rainy day becomes someone else's problem, just like you said.

I guess I don't have anything to add, just struck a nerve because that is exactly how I feel, so I wanted to say something.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#376

Post by bobthechef »

hoaw wrote: post #274
danans wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American term "middle-class" means something far less specific than the original British meaning of "well to do, town dwelling, non-aristocratic business owner". In that definition, a "middle-class" person is never an employee (which would make someone "working-class"). The American use of the term reflects (whether or not it is borne out in reality) the achievement of a comfortable and secure lifestyle (relative…

The most concise modern class definition I have seen goes something like this: Working class: work to survive. Middle class: work to do other things. Upper middle class: work for wealth. Upper class: work optional. People rightfully like to talk about the working poor and the disappearing middle class, but I think we are actually already past that. What we are seeing now is that between education, housing and financi…

The upper middle class is actually growing.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#377

Post by WillPostForFood »

bovermyer wrote: post #272
tzs wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 1780-05-12: > I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

What proportion of Americans now have the ability to study topics of less directly monetary connections as compared to those of Adams' day? I imagine the answer to that question would be interesting and nuanced.

There were only a ~dozen colleges at the time, and women couldn't attend. 90% of colonists were farmers. I don't see where there can be much nuance. American's today have vastly more ability to study a bunch of nonsense.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#378

Post by johnvanatta »

rlabrecque wrote: post #109
Retric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs have become less specialized not more. Being able to effectively communicate over email takes more writing skills than most people assume. The internet adds a lot of flexibility in the kind of things the average office worker will do.

I disagree with that first part. At least in software engineering. Remember when you just had software engineers? Eventually we got things like game programmers and web developers. Now every game has at the very least an audio programmer, gameplay programmers, network programmers, graphics programmers, platform engineers, etc. Web Developers are even more specialized, walk into any web development shop and you can fi…

I think there are different trends happening in different professions. I remember once when the sales team was hiring. They invited in a half dozen people one day and gave 3-4 offers. Whereas in engineering it'd take weeks to find anyone with the matching experience for the roles we had open. This was a startup selling something pretty new, so I doubt the sales peeps had similar experience with a different company. I'm assuming that sales experience was just considered highly transferable.

I'm not sure exactly where the bifurcation lies--it certainly isn't unique to software. Medicine and law are also getting highly specialized. On the other hand, are administrative jobs going the other way? Accounting, HR, compliance? I'm always a bit puzzled when companies recruit CEOs from unrelated industries. Does domain knowledge matter that little for some, even very senior, roles?

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#379

Post by intopieces »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #113
wonderwonder wrote: post #12

The top 1% of American's own more wealth than the bottom 90% and this concentration is only increasing. Soon no cities regardless of size will deliver for low skilled workers as there will simply not be enough of the proverbial pie to go around. As wealth is concentrated and rents and property values rise the vast majority of this country will (does?) live paycheck to paycheck. This is unsustainable and will either n…

I don't disagree, but the wealth disparity is different than the income disparity. On the one hand, a wealth disparity can be directly passed down, and repealing the estate tax will only deepen this trend. On the other hand, reducing income inequality may help with the here-and-now, helping families to BUILD wealth while not also living paycheck to paycheck. So, IMO, we should tackle both income inequality via progre…

> I see many in my lower-middle class city with new luxury BMW or Benz ($30-50k) vehicles, who are living in $120k condo units.

How the hell do you know the financial situation of strangers? What economic data do you have to back up this assertion that lots of people would be better off if they weren't foolishly spending your money? Or are you the local "leading authority on what shouldn't be in poor people's grocery carts"? [0]

[0]https://local.theonion.com/woman-a-leading-authority-on-what...

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#380

Post by branchless »

alkibiades wrote: post #121
wonderwonder wrote: post #12

The top 1% of American's own more wealth than the bottom 90% and this concentration is only increasing. Soon no cities regardless of size will deliver for low skilled workers as there will simply not be enough of the proverbial pie to go around. As wealth is concentrated and rents and property values rise the vast majority of this country will (does?) live paycheck to paycheck. This is unsustainable and will either n…

“not enough money to go around” Where do people get this strange idea that if someone else makes money it somehow precludes others from doing it? Bill Gates got rich with an invention that also generated probably a trillion dollars in economic growth for everyone. Including most people on this sites income.

Wealth creation is good. But a huge chunk of the old wealth, and a big chuck of where the newly wealthy put their loot, is in the wealth appropriation game.

That tilts the table.

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