Gen Z does not dream of labor • Hacker News Board

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#401

Post by LinuxBender » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #241

zdragnar wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing, but still rural city in the Midwest I visited a few weeks back has decent homes for sale in the 50-80k range. This is not an outlier. Roughly 2/3 of Americans own homes. If you live in an area where homes are priced like luxury investments, then yes, you'll have a hard time buying when you also cannot afford other luxuries. If you live in an area where they are not, it isn't unattainable at all, especially i…

The places I've seen with houses in the $50k to $80k range are in Rust Belt-esque areas whose time has long passed, or in places where a "career" means working at Walmart or cooking methamphetamine. Their economic prospects aren't that great, and their long term economic prospects are even worse. Rural areas also tend not to be great places for LGBT people, either.

Rural areas also tend not to be great places for LGBT people, either.

That may be true in some areas. I can only speak anecdotally. I brought a couple members of the LGBT community with me to a very rural area that is about as cowboy-midwest as it gets. Everyone has been very civil and even the "Good ol boys" have been very respectful with them to my pleasant surprise. There are plenty of openly LGBT working in the local stores.

All of that said I have advised them against hanging out in the local bars after listening to the scanner a bit. There are a few regular angry drunks. Perhaps I am too overly cautious.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#402

Post by bufferoverflow » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

stepanhruda wrote: post #354

teakettle42 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not broken just because it fails to deliver a luxury you want, when and where you want it, for the price you want to pay.

Having unreasonable expectations would be okay, but people are calling it broken because a generation before this had this luxury but pulled the ladder behind them. We are supposed to progress forwards, not backwards.

Housing prices were unreasonably low, people realized it, and now we ran out of housing inventory in the very desirable parts of the country. Still plenty of housing in other areas.

Manhattan used to be very cheap, but it hasn't been that way for at least 30 years. Too many people want to live there now. Basic economic rules of supply and demand dictate the prices.

The only solution is to not play the game. You want a house, buy it where you can afford. There's no magic fairy that will sell you a standalone house in Manhatten on a cashier's salary.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#403

Post by imtringued » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

omnimus wrote: post #385

teakettle42 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe people deserve an easy office job, high pay, and the ability to buy a home in the cultural epicenter of their choosing? How, exactly, are we going to supply all of that to the firehose of people graduating with mostly-useless degrees and job skills?

Yes of course people deserve that. There is incredible wealth everywhere. Society increased productivity and efficiency so much that workweek should be 3 days. All the fruits are going to small number of people in the top. You say mostly useless degrees… what about all the mostly useless things - the lamborghinis? the never ending houses? the gimmicks, gadgets, iphones every 6 months… Why do we supply that and dont s…

How are you going to provide everyone ever bigger and bigger single family homes in ever smaller and smaller parcels of land? You must push some people out. That's the nature of big things. They expand and repel.

Why? Because the medium of exchange function stops the moment economic growth stops growing at the rate of productivity. This is because the richest individuals are hoarding employment opportunities and get to save money against the will of the rest of the population. If one guy is doing the work of two, then one person has nothing to do. We grow the economy two fold, so there is enough to do for everyone, even though there are enough products and services for everyone. It's that stupid.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#404

Post by imtringued » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #182

ushakov wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's in the US though in Germany even if you're poor you can go to the University and succeed my friends all studied and they were from normal working-class families everyone gets a chance and all you need is put some effort

I thought that in Germany you were essentially hand-picked by age 10 what educational track you would wind up on.

Literally everyone goes to the gymnasium nowadays.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#405

Post by imtringued » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

eulers_secret wrote: post #90

burlesona wrote: post #14

> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still strugg…

This is part of why I left my job. I had the realization that my dream (homeownership/2 kids) was untenable with my income (~$135K TC) in my area. I could certainly get the credit for it, but my life would be one long hardship living under wage slavery, being house-poor, having little free time, paying exorbitantly to watch others raise my kids, and not having the opportunities I currently have... I kinda gave up on…

That won't solve the problem. Soon you will complain that you can't live in a mansion on your $300k/yr salary.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#406

Post by imtringued » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #72

burlesona wrote: post #14

> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still strugg…

It is interesting to me that relatively few people respond to this situation—housing constraints leading to high prices ( https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388)—by working to remove the regulatory constraints that prevent people from being able to buy or rent housing units.

Those regulatory constraints are there because people want them to be there.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#407

Post by hackerfromthefu » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

bb88 wrote: post #240

karaterobot wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. I made under $80k in household income when I bought my first home in 2014. This was in (well, just outside) Seattle, which was and remains one of the more expensive markets in the country. I saved up for a down payment; it took years. It wasn't my dream home, but it allowed me to build equity and continue saving for the one that was. I am not ready to say "kids these days want everything handed to them…

The traditional rule for a mortgage was 20% down and the house itself was no more than 2.5 times salary. Where I live, Boise, housing prices have shot up dramatically, over twice. Median house prices in Boise is $536k. So you would really need to make $214K/year to afford the mortgage under the old rules. And nobody makes that kind of money here.

The old rules don't apply because the old interest rates were so very much higher.

The prices are based on the ability to repay based on the income - with lower interest rates the same income and service a much larger loan, hence the increased prices.

The world has changed, from very high rates to current very low rates, and seems like it might be changing back to middle rates.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#408

Post by Clubber » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #400

burlesona wrote: post #14

> “My dad got a job straight out of high school, saved up, and bought a house in his 20s,” said Anne Dakota, a 21-year-old receptionist from Asheville, North Carolina, who earns minimum wage. “I don’t even think that’s possible for me, at least with the current money I make.” I think this is pretty much the whole story. It’s very hard to be motivated to work when you could save your entire adult life and still strugg…

This is one of the most interesting aspects of our modern economy. We have rockets that go to space. We have nuclear weapons. We have automated industrial facilities. We have advanced healthcare. We have the internet and computers. We have basically everything, except the basics. The reason for that is the same and will stay the same, for the entirety of humanity. Land is a finite resource that must be shared with ot…

Since around the 1960s, we've had large economic forces greatly increasing the supply of labor affecting wages:

  1. Women entering the workforce, essentially doubling the labor pool.
  2. Immigration - at least a million a year, every year.
  3. Globalization - instead of local workforce, many companies can now outsource labor to cheaper countries without regulation.
  4. Manufacturing - due to NAFTA, companies who once manufactured in the US can now get much cheaper labor to Mexico. This is related to #3.
  5. Automation - The amount of labor needed to perform a task has been greatly reduced.

To sum it up in my mind, US companies have more or less fixed poverty at a global scale while making a profit at the expense of US workers. #3 and #4 are largely a result of removing tariff and trade regulations. #2 is also a result of government policy. Easing any of these things over decades, one at a time would have been preferred, allowing the economy to adjust. Unfortunately they all happened in a roughly 30 year period between the 1970s and the 2000s, and have accelerated since.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#409

Post by bufferoverflow » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

swat535 wrote: post #361

teakettle42 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheapest among bigger cities You’re not forced to live in a bigger city. You weren’t forced to uselessly over-educate yourself. You aren’t forced to stay where you are, in a dead-end, complaining about how it’s everyone’s fault but your own.

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic of you genuinely believe this.. Either way, telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstrap when a house costs over a million dollars and wages have stagnated for decades is very uncharitable. I live in Canada, at this rate owning a house is a dream long gone for many people include me.

You realize there are areas with houses well under a million dollars? I live in a very nice area, and even here there are $450K houses. And if you go further away, there are much much cheaper houses.

Go on Zillow and do some basic research.

Re: Gen Z does not dream of labor

#410

Post by hackerfromthefu » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

ceeplusplus wrote: post #164

rtlfe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have to choose your specialization wisely The problem is that most people don't get to choose. There are few of these high paying jobs, so by definition most people are excluded. Either because they're not "smart" enough to get into elite training programs (e.g. medical school) or because they don't have enough money to spend years in training with zero or negative income.

There are other jobs than doctor. You can become a registered nurse with only a bachelor's ($100k+ salary). Engineering pays well. The trades pay well. What doesn't pay well is zero-effort required jobs like Starbucks barista or social media influencer (is this even a job?). If anyone can do it with no pain required to pass some sort of schooling then it's not going to pay well. Nursing pays well because people are t…

Social media influencer is not a job, its a business, and the people doing well at it are making serious money, more than most software engineers. However it's more of a winner takes all market, akin to e.g. acting.