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Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

theguardian.com

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Re: Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

#81

Post by proc0 »

wombatmobile wrote: post #54

Didn't people start America because the places they came from hundreds of years ago, Britain, Germany, France etc. were so oppressively unequal with respect to wealth and liberty? So, hundreds of years later, what have they created? Something better? Something similar? Something same same but different? https://www.thebalancecareers.com/top-worst-paid-jobs-206169...

> Didn't people start America because the places they came from hundreds of years ago, Britain, Germany, France etc. were so oppressively unequal with respect to wealth and liberty?

No not really. As far as I understand it was religious freedom which brought the pilgrims, and then the American revolution was about tyrannical government.

Re: Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

#82

Post by kylebyproxy »

notJim wrote: post #55
tomc1985 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But… that is inflation. Prices are going up. Such is the anecdata? Is this effect global? Who knows, it’s anecdata

> Is this effect global? Who knows, it’s anecdata You say this like no one measures inflation, but in fact we do measure inflation quite carefully, and it's nowhere near 20%.

Ehh, not _that_ carefully. Real inflation is notoriously difficult to track, as you need to take into consideration things like decreases in manufacturing quality, ingredient substitutions, planned obsolescence, etc.

Re: Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

#83

Post by nate_meurer »

Grakel wrote: post #14
anigbrowl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who needs facts when they have feelings?

What I feel is prices on everything in every store and online going up, while packaging shrinks. Who's doing your shopping? There's a big difference between facts and government published statistics.

There's a bit of dissonance between this:

> What I feel...

versus:

> facts...

Re: Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

#84

Post by Rebelgecko »

Alternative title: approximately half of workers can't afford an apartment that costs more than average.

If anyone is more knowledgeable than me wrt economics and supply and demand feel free to correct my intuition here:

As long as there's a distinction between "luxury", "average", and "barebones" apartments, it seems unlikely that we'll ever reach a point where everyone (or even, say, 90% of people) can afford a better-than-median apartment. If the number of people who can afford a nicer than average one becomes significantly greater than the supply of above average apartments, some luxury apartments will just increase prices until they hit a more profitable equilibrium.

Re: Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

#86

Post by lend000 »

Retric wrote: post #80
lend000 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bretton Woods ended in 1973. Any time before then, the money supply was strongly impacted by the government's gold reserves. The only real anomaly in that chart is 2011, which is concealed by the fact that CPI is a terrible inflation metric when wealth inequality is changing (see the increase in equities and real estate during that period). For reference: CPI is based on a survey to see what median Americans are buyi…

How about 1980 to 1986 where inflation tanked 90% and M2 started at 8% peaked at over 12% then fell back to 8%. The charts for those years have nothing in common. I get it, M2 really seems like it should correspond with inflation but at minimum you need to adjust for economic growth. As we produce and consume more we need more money handle those transactions.

Recommend you take a look at this to see more factors involved in inflation, in a more quantitative light: https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/.

The reason CPI is a terrible metric is because measuring inflation is very difficult and somewhat arbitrary (see for example: hedonic adjustments). M2 is a significant, consistent, and logical factor. Even from 1980-1986, rapid changes in M2 consistently correspond to a change in inflation. But there are other factors, like real economic growth, population growth, changes in size of the labor force and velocity of money.

Re: Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

#87

Post by notJim »

kylebyproxy wrote: post #82
notJim wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this effect global? Who knows, it’s anecdata You say this like no one measures inflation, but in fact we do measure inflation quite carefully, and it's nowhere near 20%.

Ehh, not _that_ carefully. Real inflation is notoriously difficult to track, as you need to take into consideration things like decreases in manufacturing quality, ingredient substitutions, planned obsolescence, etc.

Ehh, they try pretty damn carefully. They absolutely do take into consideration things like changing quality and ingredients.

> Pricing information is then sent to our national office, where specialists who have detailed knowledge about the particular goods or services review the data. These specialists check the data for accuracy and consistency, and make any necessary corrections or adjustments. Adjustments can range from an adjustment for a change in the size or quantity of a packaged item, to more complex adjustments based upon statistical analysis of the value of an item's features or quality. Thus, commodity specialists strive to prevent changes in the quality of items from affecting the CPI's measurement of price change.

> Hedonic quality adjustment is one of the techniques the CPI uses to account for changing product quality within some CPI item samples. Hedonic quality adjustment refers to a method of adjusting prices whenever the characteristics of the products included in the CPI change due to innovation or the introduction of completely new products.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm#Question_1...

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-ans...

Re: Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

#88

Post by nate_meurer »

systemvoltage wrote: post #40
whimsicalism wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the "secret inflation" theory is incredibly prevalent in tech-y circles (something around bitcoin maybe) without any real evidence to back it up - except "something something asset inflation"

Inflation is a complex metric. I don't there is a meaningful way to summarize it.

If your argument consists of "it's too complicated for anyone to understand why I'm right", that might explain some of the responses you get.

Re: Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

#89

Post by notJim »

RhysU wrote: post #58
finexplained wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation isn't directly (that is one-to-one) tied to the amount of money printed. That's a simplistic view of a complicated phenomena. What matters is demand aggregated among many individuals. You can print any sum of money and if the person you give it to decides not to spend it, it doesn't affect demand and thus doesn't cause inflation. Meanwhile you can stop printing money, and if demand increases inflation can s…

But what if we handed the printed dollars to a large number of individuals to spend immediately to cover their income shortfalls in unprecedented government largess?

If it's covering an income shortfall, it doesn't seem like that would cause inflation.

If I normally spend $2k a month, but then lose my job and get $2k from the government, that's not going to cause inflation.

From what I understand, much of the stimulus money was saved. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

Re: Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom (cont)

#90

Post by jxramos »

tomc1985 wrote: post #38
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have tons of anecdata suggesting worse… And that's flawed due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic [thing] increases in price: "omg inflation!" [thing stays the same]: "meh" result? "omg inflation!"

But… that is inflation. Prices are going up. Such is the anecdata? Is this effect global? Who knows, it’s anecdata

I've been feeling the price rises too, I second the Costco thing entirely too. I have a ton of receipt data I can analyze. I've been curious to track my personal expenses for things like milk, take out burgers, and other stuff I regularly purchase and have lots of data points on over time. I think the anecdata speaks, very loudly for the individual visibly paying more.
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