221–230 of 346 posts
When I was a boy my elders told me that we had to win the Cold War or we would end up with the government owning everything.
Well the federal reserve isn't part of the government, so hurray for us I guess.
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Well the federal reserve isn't part of the government, so hurray for us I guess.
Wikipedia says that it's under the jurisdiction of the Federal government of the United States. So maybe depends on how you define 'government'? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve
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The problem is that at the same time, the good jobs are being concentrated in a small number of cities. Even if someone is willing to move to a cheaper place, they find that relative to the employment available, it isn't much better. In the end, they realize that no matter what they choose, they need to struggle incredibly hard just to get a similar quality of life to what a baby boomer was able to achieve with a hig…
More difficult than the baby boomer generation most certainly, but not impossible. You could take the arbitrage further by increasing upfront and post move earnings and decreasing future expenses: - Save up "no thanks" money at the high cost of living place. Not "f * y " money, but a significant sum. - Ideally, find a remote job at the hight cost of living place. - Relocate to a low cost of living place with decent s…
In western europe: Real estate is more expensive than the US, public health care is a bad joke at the expense of the taxpayers and whenever you need something more than "I have a stomach ache", you go private. The main difference with the US is that our government doesn't intervene in the health care market (too much) which means our private health care is quite affordable.
Taxes are generally on par with the USA in most countries. Fuel costs more but few over-expensive cities (eg London, Paris) have barely decent public transport (not that cheap though).
Some countries have it better than the US but the jobs pay significantly less. I would say the UK is a good compromise in terms of costs of living, low taxes, high salary and weather. Even though tax-wise things may change for the worse, given the cost of covid's lockdown.
Another approach would be to look into some poor islands or places with special tax regimen and being able to command a high salary remotely because of your experience. I'm not sure how much more this strategy is going to work in the future, though: if everyone is remote, wages should go down / be linked to where you live.
Overall, I'd say a few countries are better than the USA, but most of Europe has several disadvantages.
I have some friends who found happiness in South Asia, but that's a completely different mentality.
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> Out of curiosity, why wouldn’t we want the government managing mortgages for the whole country? > Real estate seems like a pretty important part of the economy... You just answered your own question. Governments do not have a history of distributing scarce resources effectively. You need various market forces. > the government artificially making housing more accessible for potential first time buyers creates a vir…
> Governments do not have a history of distributing scarce resources effectively. To be fair, "various market forces" also don't have the best track record of distributing resources, especially scarce ones. Somehow those always end up being "distributed" into the same few hands...
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You don’t treat a couple hundred thousand dollars as an investment? Sounds privileged.
If the price of the house rises faster than inflation, it is a good investment. However, rising faster than inflation also means that they become proportionally less affordable over time. You cannot have both affordable housing and high returns from housing
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What would the effects of changing the student loan system be? I assume you mean to increase the creditor's risk to levels comparable to other types of debt. Personally, I'd expect that to result in higher interest rates for student debt, and more stringent eligibility requirements. IOW, a higher barrier to entry to education. Maybe that would be good, it depends on how the price of education would react, and in whet…
If you want to make student loans more accessible, the trick is not to stimulate student loans be legalizing the loan-sharking of students. This way you are just encouraging students to take a bad deal. You are making the system more accessible by offering really bad options. If the reasoning is "It is a good idea to have high education", then stimulate that directly. At the very least, have government-backed or gove…
A lot of student loans in the US are also backed by the government. So obviously this isn’t the solution.
Making money easier to get simply increases the “supply” (or rather, increases the buying power of the students) which basically allows colleges to keep increasing their prices with no increase in quality. If instead loans were given by private creditors, believe me, the quality (in terms of job prospects and earning potential) of the specific college and specific course that a student will study would quickly become very important. No more “social media marketing” or “feminist history” courses costing 50k per year.
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Housing (and construction) prices have been ballooning out of control everywhere for the last several years. Both major cities (DC, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, LA, Denver, San Diego) and secondary cities (Boise ID, Grand Rapids MI, many more) are all totally unaffordable. I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching different areas over the last year. Looking at sold homes from just 2-3 years ago, many seem like…
What data are you looking at? Median home price for Chicago (where I live incidentally) is 229,000, for Dallas is 225,000, for Houston is 197,000 according to this source [0] and those are the 3rd, 4th, and 5th largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States and Dallas and Houston have both grown a whopping 19% in the past decade [1]. Trick is, they all still have plenty of land to build new homes on to k…
The cost of construction has risen such that I can't find a new construction house in my area for under $400,000 with the median on Zillow being $495,000. And this is for an area in the midwest that those reports you link report "median home price" of well under $200,000. If you can't build cheap houses, then soon there won't be cheap houses.
A lot of cities on that first list are reporting 10%+ YoY changes. That's significant. Those used to be numbers you'd see in Seattle Washington, not fucking Allentown Pennsylvania...
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Housing (and construction) prices have been ballooning out of control everywhere for the last several years. Both major cities (DC, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, LA, Denver, San Diego) and secondary cities (Boise ID, Grand Rapids MI, many more) are all totally unaffordable. I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching different areas over the last year. Looking at sold homes from just 2-3 years ago, many seem like…
What data are you looking at? Median home price for Chicago (where I live incidentally) is 229,000, for Dallas is 225,000, for Houston is 197,000 according to this source [0] and those are the 3rd, 4th, and 5th largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States and Dallas and Houston have both grown a whopping 19% in the past decade [1]. Trick is, they all still have plenty of land to build new homes on to k…
Chicago isn't nearly as great a deal as it's made out to be.
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> Out of curiosity, why wouldn’t we want the government managing mortgages for the whole country? > Real estate seems like a pretty important part of the economy... You just answered your own question. Governments do not have a history of distributing scarce resources effectively. You need various market forces. > the government artificially making housing more accessible for potential first time buyers creates a vir…
> Governments do not have a history of distributing scarce resources effectively. To be fair, "various market forces" also don't have the best track record of distributing resources, especially scarce ones. Somehow those always end up being "distributed" into the same few hands...
During communism, people with the only currency left - power - manage to get all the best things (which can be food, if everyone is starving, or luxury item, if people are not starving yet). In a free market luxury items eventually become common goods.
That's why most common people have a phone, a vacuum cleaner, a microwave, a tv.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Housing (and construction) prices have been ballooning out of control everywhere for the last several years. Both major cities (DC, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, LA, Denver, San Diego) and secondary cities (Boise ID, Grand Rapids MI, many more) are all totally unaffordable. I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching different areas over the last year. Looking at sold homes from just 2-3 years ago, many seem like…
If you're considering Chicago unaffordable, I'm really curious what you think is affordable! When I moved here, I was blown away that house prices where I live, about 30 minutes from downtown, are on average $150k, or less than 3x median yearly income here. This isn't actually drastically different from a semi-rural Missouri town I lived in for a bit.