Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Real Class War

americanaffairsjournal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 634 posts

Re: The Real Class War

#401

Post by dcolkitt »

danans wrote: post #360
dcolkitt wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using that same source shows that after tax incomes increased from $56k to $67k over the exact same period. So housing expenditures actually grew at a slightly slower rate than income (17% vs. 19%). That proves the opposite: housing is actually become more affordable. Moreover, according to the source shelter only made up about half the increase in expenditures in the category. Expenditures on shelter grew even slowe…

> So housing expenditures actually grew at a slightly slower rate than income The point was that new home construction cost (the stat you used) isn't of significant magnitude to be relevant to overall housing price trends. I wasn't addressing price to income ratio. But regarding that, averages can hide growing divergences between incomes and home prices. Instead consider the median home price to income ratios over ti…

Thanks for linking that, very interesting. But I think if you dig into the report cited you'll find that it's not as simple as looking at the ratio of home prices to incomes. The report you linked cites:

> In fact, the monthly payment for the median single-family home purchased in 2017, assuming a 30-year loan with a 3.5 percent downpayment at the average interest rate, totaled $1,620 in real terms—slightly below the $1,650 averaged in the 30 years from 1987 to 2016, but more than $900 below the real median in 1981 when interest rates were at an all-time high.

Moreover that doesn't even take into account the rising square footage or quality of the modern housing stock compared to thirty years ago.[1]

In terms of the relative comparison between high and low cost metros, the relevant division isn't large and growing metros. The report finds that two thirds of the 100 largest metros have price to income ratios below 4.0. Add in those outside the major metros, and the sizable majority of the American population lives in low cost housing markets.

Figure 19 of the report also shows that high-cost states like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Hawaii have strong net outflows of young people. Whereas predominately low-cost states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and Tennessee have strong net inflows.

Since 2010, high cost major metros New York, LA, and Boston have grown significantly slower than the US population. San Diego and San Francisco have barely outgrown the US as a whole. Miami, Seattle, and Denver are the only high-cost major metros to grow faster than the rest of the country.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532357/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic...

Re: The Real Class War

#402

Post by anongraddebt »

_bxg1 wrote: post #397
anongraddebt wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of what you say is true, but also applies to the likes of MSNBC and (even) CNN. Raving, frothing at the mouth, 'journalism'. I grew up in a commumity much like the family life you described. Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc etc 24/7. There were some non-ideological types who - while staunchly conservative - actually thought through their beliefs. They were the exception. I left and attended an elite school, where..…

I didn't mean to imply that the left is any less emotional and irrational with its beliefs. I find it equally exhausting. What's special about the right-wing case, at this present moment, is the profoundly self-defeating nature of it. It isn't just dogmatic, it's actively self-destructive.

I feel that. And I understand that sentiment.

The only thing I'd say is that we treat should treat the claim about it's self-destructiveness as possible, and remove the certainty (some conservatives think progressive economic policies are self-destructive).

I would also add that there is a moral element here. Some conservatives take economic policy to be not only an empirical matter but a moral one. Some will interpret poor economic conditions as, say, their lot in life before thinking it right to tax someone more. Is it right to claim that someone who morally detests non-minimal taxation is being self-destructive?

Re: The Real Class War

#403

Post by triceratops »

maxerickson wrote: post #353
triceratops wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you have to have a PhD to teach at most universities in the US? Not to mention someone with a masters in engineering from MIT could very well be an adjunct faculty themselves.

It turns out that both of the Koch brothers that people are talking about when they say that have masters degrees from MIT.

I don't understand what this has to do with the original question.

Re: The Real Class War

#404

Post by _bxg1 »

anongraddebt wrote: post #402
_bxg1 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to imply that the left is any less emotional and irrational with its beliefs. I find it equally exhausting. What's special about the right-wing case, at this present moment, is the profoundly self-defeating nature of it. It isn't just dogmatic, it's actively self-destructive.

I feel that. And I understand that sentiment. The only thing I'd say is that we treat should treat the claim about it's self-destructiveness as possible, and remove the certainty (some conservatives think progressive economic policies are self-destructive). I would also add that there is a moral element here. Some conservatives take economic policy to be not only an empirical matter but a moral one. Some will interpr…

Yep, and I suspect that particular moral conviction may be the root of the whole thing.

The overly-complex moral system that conservatives have is one of the main reasons I left conservatism behind. A plethora of things that should be practical matters just become all gummed-up and given significance they shouldn't be given. And in addition to the cases like this one where it's self-destructive, there are many many more cases where it inspires undue judgement towards others.

That's why, for me, morality is being good to others. That's where it starts and ends. Everything else is just deciding how best to accomplish that in context. If a moral assertion can't be traced back to the good it does for real people, it isn't valid in my book.

So to take this case: "Each person is responsible for his or herself and it's immoral to depend on the government for support or for the government to tax citizens to that end."

I mean, sometimes. If your government is a corrupt dictatorship that does nothing for its citizens with those taxes. Or if you actually are in a position to fully support yourself without any outside help. But there are too many exceptions for me to list them here. Raising generalities like this to universal moral assertions just causes them to crumble like a skyscraper made out of bricks and mortar.

Re: The Real Class War

#405

Post by mayniac »

viburnum wrote: post #258
tvanantwerp wrote: post #159

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the work­ing class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and re­q…

Gay people can get married in America, which was completely unthinkable a generation ago. 100% due to activists, many who risked their lives to make it happen.

100% isn't quite right. I think the parent comment applies to gay marriage as well.

Federal recognition of gay marriage eventually occurred in America due to a gay widow who took the government to court over a $300k inheritance tax bill on her wife's estate [1]. Of course the changing cultural attitudes towards LGBT people is overwhelmingly due to grassroots activism, but this shouldn't be overlooked.

For LGBT rights, money has played a factor. If wealthy, upper-class Americans did not also suffer from anti-LGBT laws, I'm not sure we would have made the same progress. There are also financial incentives for LGBT acceptance [2]. A more cynical view might be that acceptance of gay marriage was accelerated due to increasing anti-capitalist sentiments within the LGBT community in the 20th century [3]. The continued oppression of gay people might have led to uprisings far worse than Stonewall. Legislative acceptance of LGBT rights has weakened the link between LGBT activism and anti-capitalist ideologies, to the point that nowadays gay pride parades are turning into a parade of adverts for corporations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Windsor

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_money

[3] https://aeon.co/essays/the-radical-roots-of-gay-liberation-a...

Re: The Real Class War

#406

Post by TuringNYC »

MithrilTuxedo wrote: post #354
tc wrote: post #321

George Orwell covered this basic point in `1984` (published in 1949): > The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of any…

One would assume that with advances in technology such cycles will eventually be broken.

If the advances in technology favor capital over consumers, it actually ends up further diverging the stratification.

Re: The Real Class War

#407

Post by AnthonyMouse »

snowwrestler wrote: post #265
tvanantwerp wrote: post #159

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the work­ing class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and re­q…

Have you never heard of the labor movement? The grassroots activism by working class people that forced the federal government to develop an entire arm of federal law, with its own Cabinet-level agency, to protect them from the professional managerial class? How have you spent your career working in public policy circles and come away with so little understanding of what grassroots activism is, and the impact it has…

> Have you never heard of the labor movement? The grassroots activism by working class people that forced the federal government to develop an entire arm of federal law, with its own Cabinet-level agency, to protect them from the professional managerial class?

The irony, of course, being that government bureaucracies are inherently an instrumentality of the managerial class. It's not as if the Secretary of Labor is a line worker with no college degree.

So the agency becomes subject to regulatory capture the same as any other and private sector unions declined. Meanwhile the public sector unions remained because most government workers are themselves members of the managerial class, so the public sector unions, rather than representing line workers against a corporate bureaucracy that employs them, came to represent the bureaucracy itself against the elected representatives of the people.

Is it so surprising that it doesn't come first to mind as an instance of successful activism?

Re: The Real Class War

#408

Post by SchoolboyBlue »

> The company I now work for started as a parking app. . . . We were growing sustainably as the result of having a superior product based on a great understanding of consumer needs.

> But sustainable growth isn’t what VCs (or the execs that they install in the firms they have stakes in) are looking for. So we pivoted.

> Without going into too much detail, we are now exclusively focused on getting acquired by a big tech firm. Meetings with low-level product managers at a few of the world’s largest com­panies dictate every decision about which projects we pursue. We’re no longer building a company. We’re not even building a product. We’re building a feature that we hope will end up getting included in an app owned by a mega-corporation.

> When I talk to my friends and peers at other tech startups, they tell me that it’s pretty much the same story at their compa­nies. Everyone is building to the specifications set by Google or Amazon or Apple. This “competitive” industry, supposedly a shining example of the power of the free market, is really just a massive risk-free R&D department for the faang companies.40

ooph.

Re: The Real Class War

#409

Post by vanusa »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #159

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the work­ing class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and re­q…

I've never seen actual grassroots activism accomplish much, if anything.... It's always insiders who make a career out of policy that ultimately shape it.

Did the Vietnam War end because the Washington insiders (who were, if you'll recall, the ones who started it) had a change of heart, got together one day and decided to stop it? Or because the country threatened to become ungovernable if they didn't?

Really, the blithe dismissal of the impact of public protest expressed in your statment is astounding.

Re: The Real Class War

#410

Post by TrackerFF »

tristor wrote: post #184

This article is interesting, partly due to the blatant political biases which are present but unrevealed, and partly due to the attempt to address those biases in closing segments. This line in particular was telling "the state—the only way to address the most important issues of the present". The author of this piece is a left-wing statist, and they interpret all of the data they reference through this lens. That do…

Julius Krein

Harvard alumni

Investment Banker (Bank of America)

Private Equity (Blackstone)

If that is not 0.1% background, then I don't know what is.

Post reply on HN