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The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

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Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#101

Post by geofft »

mathattack wrote: post #22
_mkef wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been the case in California for a long time. Unless we just forgive rent until a vaccine is out, many people will never catch up.

This is very complex. Where does this end? I’m a renter. Do I need to prove I’ve lost my job to not pay? Do I get to skip out on paying for a luxury apartment if I have money in the bank? Does my landlord get to skip her mortgage? Or only the portion paid by my rent? What about the bank who holds the mortgage? Or the retired bond holder who ultimately gets the mortgage payments? Every step along the way requires some…

It is very complex, but what's the alternative? Widespread evictions (in the midst of "stay inside," no less)? A bad answer is so much better than none at all, in the same way that a badly-implemented draft and a poorly-trained army is a vastly superior response to an invasion than nothing.

I think the starting principle I'd take is that this is going to go very poorly for some people, and our only decision is for whom it goes poorly. (After all, if we do nothing, it will clearly go poorly for many people, and as you point out there's no obvious solution where it works well for everyone.) There is a productivity loss that needs to be borne by someone, and it seems to me the obvious approach is to ask who can bear it with the least impact on the long-term good of society / the nation / humanity.

The answer is probably that certain people in the chain you mention, possibly the landlord, probably the bank, and perhaps (but probably not) the retiree, can afford to just not get paid. It's unfair for them, but they will do fine: they won't lose out on revenue that they need to put food on the table or a roof over their heads (the whole point here is to keep roofs over heads). Everyone upstream of them gets to not pay them.

And yes, it's unjust to take money from people (or really, require that people keep providing services without being paid for them) without their consent, but it's also unjust to draft people for a war without their consent. We do it anyway because the alternative - choosing to not fight the war - is unjust too.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#102

Post by compscistd »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #9

I'm 26. Since the pandemic hit, my parents have been trying to convince me to move back in with them. I'm working remotely now, they say, so I don't have to live in the city, so I might as well live with them, right? I have to keep making different excuses. They don't seem to quite get the message that as much as I love them, I just don't want to live with them...

I was in a similar boat. I eventually said sure why not, might actually be great!, sold my house, and moved back in with them. A month later and now I live with my sibling because I hit my breaking point.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#103

Post by Xylakant »

smeeth wrote: post #47
Aeolun wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally at least, all of my friends around my age (32) have by now managed to buy homes at very reasonable rates ( Meanwhile my parents are stuck with their much higher 10% boom years interest rate, even though the absolute amount was much lower initially. Of course this is in Europe, not the states.

Is refinancing not a thing in Europe?

At least in Germany, it's common to have a fixed interest rate for up to 30 years (more common are 10 and 20, 30 is rare). You can refinance, but you have to basically pay a fee that covers the expected loss for the bank, so that may not be worth it. Other countries differ, for example AFAIR it was common in Poland to have housing credits pegged to the swiss franc.

However, I'm fairly certain that the GP is exaggerating. Even 15 years ago, no bank asked for 10%. 5% would have been a lot, something around 3.5 - 4% common. My parents paid between 7 and 10% when they built their house, but that's like at least 40 years now. Today, something around 2% is the going rate.

At least in the booming markets, however, the rise in prices has completely eaten the gain in interest. I could for the same monthly installmend pretty much finance the same size as I could 10 years ago, the interest rate would be lower, but the principal substantially higher.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#104

Post by sandworm101 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #11

Millennials face a very real risk of being a lost generation financially. They have endured 2 major, years long recessions, and now the Covid pandemic coupled with social isolation and massive unemployment that does not appear to have an end date in sight. Housing is more expensive for them than prior generations, wages are stagnant, school is expensive and social conflict is also currently on deck. WW2 was of course…

>> WW2 was of course a much more trying time

Really? Lives were lost, but WWII came and went rather quickly, a handful of years. Millenials are dealing with multi-decade problems, potential solutions to which are discussed in terms of generations, decades rather than years.

For perspective: US WWII deaths: 407k over ~6 years. US COVID Deaths: 196k and counting over ONE year. So, even adjusted for population growth, the US is losing people to covid faster than it did during WWII. (The math is radically different for other countries, but in the US it is an interesting comparison.)

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#105

Post by caymanjim »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #6
swyx wrote: post #2

I am one of those people, though in my case it was not so much for cost saving reasons as it was the easiest means of leaving a coastal city that would clearly be hard hit by Coronavirus. oddly enough I'm morbidly curious about the decline in birth and marriage rates due to this whole episode. hard to hook up in your parent's home.

I'm curious as well but in the opposite. People are spending more time at home together, could there be a birth boom in Q1/Q2 of next year?

I assumed there would be a baby boom, but so far the evidence doesn't support it. Google turns up plenty of statistics in opposition to the notion.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#106

Post by war1025 »

dghughes wrote: post #72
yardie wrote: post #7

I live downtown in a coastal city. What I’m seeing is a lot of young men living in the streets. This is the other side of this story some young adults don’t have a home to go back to after job loss and eviction. We’re seeing just the tip of the iceberg. I expect a lot more social upheaval in the coming years. Social services are going to get severely strained.

I've seen a documentary about San Francisco it's crazy how middle income people are being pushed farther from the city. One teacher had several bus transfers and then a long walk to get to her job. Even bus stops where "poor" people (less than $100,000/year) are being crowded by private buses like Google forcing city buses to wait which adds to the wait down the line. Nuts!

> "poor" people (less than $100,000/year)

How anyone making $100k can be considered "poor" is beyond me.

No wonder everyone on the West coast thinks being a Millennial sucks.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#107

Post by geofft »

zeveb wrote: post #61
_mkef wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been the case in California for a long time. Unless we just forgive rent until a vaccine is out, many people will never catch up.

> Unless we just forgive rent until a vaccine is out, many people will never catch up. If 'we' forgive rent owed landlords, will 'we' also forgive the mortgages those landlords owe the banks? Will 'we' also forgive the obligations the banks which owe to other banks and their investors? Will 'we' also forgive the obligations those investors owe, for example to pensioners? Will 'we' then step up and pay for those pensi…

The fact that it's impossible to make good decisions doesn't change the fact that a decision has to be made, nonetheless. This isn't a computer game where there's an answer to the puzzle from the designer, where the COVID-19 monster shows up but it has a weak spot on the back of its tail where you can land a critical hit. There is no good solution. Our job is to find the least-bad one.

I think there's a good argument that yes, forgiving all of those rents and paying for the pensioners' pensions is less bad than not doing anything. (We might also want to consider why pensioners are living off of complex financial relationships instead of, like, cash, and whether that risk/reward tradeoff was good for society, but we won't be able to see the results of any changes we make for another generation or two.)

I do think that, yes, "we will just give you money" (and "we will increase taxes on people who won't get evicted if we do") is a fine answer too.

But also, the amount of benefit that any intervention can have drops rapidly by the month. Every time rent payments (or mortgages, or pension-funded bills) are due, there's a new batch of people who can't pay it. A bad answer today, and maybe a workaround for second-order effects later, is a lot better than a better answer in three months.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#108

Post by wonderwonder »

mantas wrote: post #63
bengale wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optomisit in me hopes that when the truth about climate change really dawns then the effort to battle it could cause a similar transfer of wealth to a post war rebuilding. Lets hope we can actually solve the problem though or it wont matter much.

A lot of post-WW2 wealth transfer was from old failing empires to US of A. While climate change wealth transfer would accelerate transfer from US of A to ex-2nd and, especially, 3rd world. Either way, US and rich West people are looking to grim future compared to their parents. The rest of the world... We'll be fine one way or another.

? Climate change will disproportionately affect Africa and Asia.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#109

Post by tremon »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #65
Aeolun wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally at least, all of my friends around my age (32) have by now managed to buy homes at very reasonable rates ( Meanwhile my parents are stuck with their much higher 10% boom years interest rate, even though the absolute amount was much lower initially. Of course this is in Europe, not the states.

We have low mortgage rates right now because the European Bank has set low interest rates for loans; consequentially, we now have very low (nearly non-existent) interest on savings, and because of 'cheap' mortgages, more people want to buy houses which drives up the price. So while mortgages have low interest, houses are expensive. To the point where you need a double income for a reasonable house. My parents started…

To the point where you need a double income for a reasonable house.

Even for a double income, it's insane. In NL, the average price of a home is 315k, while the median full-time income is 36k per year (pre-tax). Even with a double income, that's 4.5 years of household income, comparable to the peak ratio in the US before the housing bubble burst in 2008.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#110

Post by claudeganon »

joaomacp wrote: post #87
xchaotic wrote: post #17

Multi generation homes used to be norm but societies became wealthy enough to move away from that ( and various frictions it creates) looks like we’re literally moving back. Good for the environment, bad for the economy and mental well being.

Is it really bad for mental well being? I know a lot of people nowadays (including me) have the desire to live separately from parents. But mental health has been going down, with increasing rates of reported loneliness and isolation. Society has made us individualistic / "independent". But has it really made our mental health better? Edit: and as others have pointed out, more people living separately is not ecologic…

But in America, at least, a lot of people’s parents are fully gone down the road of selfishness and cruelty.

It would be nice if we had a culture that encouraged multigenerational support, but you can’t pull that out of thin air. It’s something that would’ve needed to be in place prior to the pandemic. I think millennials may come out changed from this, as, at least in my experience, we’re already more supportive of each other and collectively-oriented then our parents generation, but that would be a change felt far off in the future.

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