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

Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 167 posts

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#151

Post by dragontamer »

beanjuiceII wrote: post #142
dragontamer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More money is not a solution to greed and self-dealing. Less money causes self-dealing behavior though. Because now there's widespread acceptance that the only way a $180k wage is worthwhile for our leadership class is if they take widespread bribes. Drop the wages enough, and even FBI agents are going to have to self-deal to make their positions worthwhile taking. Be glad its only on the leadership class for now.…

I've been dealing with the government salary situation for 15 years. Low GS pay is why we have to take bottom of the barrel for organization employees. Contracts are gigantic and allow people to make great salary at a very low bar (because the bar is set by the low skill GS workers). What if I told you developers writing stuff like jquery, excel, ms access are making between 200-300$/yr. and I wont even get into what…

Yeah, we all work for the tech field here, don't we?

None of our bosses take anything less than what I'm asking for here. If anything, the numbers I've mentioned are lower than people should expect.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#152

Post by s1artibartfast »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #141
nurple wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but selling the landlord's literal rent seeking as a value to anyone but themselves is just blatant antisocial shilling.

You do not know what rent seeking means. Please stop using it in discussions about economics.

To be fair, they did say "literal" rent seeking. You just dont see as much outrage of "literal" rent seeking for cars, hotel rooms, equipment, ect.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#153

Post by JaimeThompson »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #131
JaimeThompson wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Smith would disagree.

Thanks for posting relevant data. I have changed my stance entirely.

I would expect that someone discussing this topic would be familiar with the various things Adam Smith and others have said about collusion to increase prices and related topics.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#154

Post by airstrike »

woodruffw wrote: post #89
airstrike wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's unfair to expect adults to be able to afford a 1 bedroom with no roommates

I don’t disagree, but it’s not really about fair: it’s about what the expected standard of living is in NYC. NYC is historically a city of renters and roommates, and that is reflected in the split view between average “asking” rents ($3500) and actual rents ($~1700)[1]. This isn’t to say the city can’t or shouldn’t be more affordable. But the idea that everybody gets their own 1BR at average US rental prices is not i…

In hindsight I really meant "unreasonable" more than "unfair"

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#155

Post by i_like_waiting »

qntnt wrote: post #145
antiframe wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true, then many units would be empty. In my city prices are high but vacancy is low. So, how are the prices too high? People are paying them. If there were more supply, prices would drop, but laws prevent increasing supply.

> If that were true, then many units would be empty. This is literally true. In SF as of 2023, there's roughly 60,000 vacant units. In New York as of 2021, apartments listed as available and unavailable for rent but also vacant was around 89,000. To contrast, there was around 7,700 unhoused people in SF in 2023.

NY doesn't sound bad at all, there is roughly 10M people, given random estimate of 2 people per apartment, 89k, would be barely 2%

Edit: plus in NY you have all those HoA payments, so you pay really high price for not renting the place out

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#156

Post by sneak »

dragontamer wrote: post #125
nurple wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could just abolish representative government that was created to work around limitations in the predominant communication tech at the time, horseback. The corruption does feel inevitable here as we sit and watch the federal gov rob the country blind while shamelessly enriching their families. No, I wouldn't take a rep's job for even $500k/year, and neither will anyone with the moral mettle to make changes, exac…

> More money is not a solution to greed and self-dealing. Less money causes self-dealing behavior though. Because now there's widespread acceptance that the only way a $180k wage is worthwhile for our leadership class is if they take widespread bribes. Drop the wages enough, and even FBI agents are going to have to self-deal to make their positions worthwhile taking. Be glad its only on the leadership class for now.…

> Less money causes self-dealing behavior though. Because now there's widespread acceptance that the only way a $180k wage is worthwhile for our leadership class is if they take widespread bribes.

I think you have cause and effect mixed up. These positions would come with millions of dollars per year in job perks even if they paid $10M cash per year.

The perks come from the power, not the size of the paycheck. Making it bigger won’t reduce the financial value of the power they wield.

Also, even if it would, $300k is not a lot of money. You’re off by at least one order of magnitude.

For example, the CEO of Mozilla makes around $7M per year.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#157

Post by selimthegrim »

TimedToasts wrote: post #81
kilotaras wrote: post #59

Housing theory of everything[0] strikes again. Situation: Housing demand outstrips housing supply. First order effect: housing prices go up Second order effect: your FBI agents are now experiencing financial instability and worries Third order effect: your FBI agents are now more susceptible to bribes [0] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...

Fourth order effect: hiring more FBI agents to monitor the Third Orders. Fifth order effect: hiring more FBI agents to monitor the Fourth Orders. Sixth order effect: Eventually unemployment will be solved!

This sounds like the Okhrana.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#159

Post by nurple »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #123
nurple wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but selling the landlord's literal rent seeking as a value to anyone but themselves is just blatant antisocial shilling.

Can we please stop talking about "rent seeking" in economics before we learn what it actually means? kthanxbai

I happen to think landlording is a manipulative use of resources that leverages capital to perpetually inflict usury on people that can least afford it with little hope of raising themselves up. I've had half a dozen landlords in the last 10 years, and every single one provided absolutely zero value outside of their fortune to take a home someone else could live in.

In fact, in my most recent home with 12 zones of sprinklers built with zinc piping 30y ago, I had to personally replace half of the valves and a whole manifold so that I wouldn't have to choose between losing my deposit for the yard dying, or paying $1000/month to run the worn out system. I've had issues with every property I've rented, and every single landlord I had any beef with was more than willing to strongarm me using the lopsided law rather than manage their own properties.

Another story. I was a newlywed and went to sign a 6 month lease. 5 months pass and we want to leave, give them notice, and move out at the end of the month. Well, the teenager running the leasing office counted wrong and wrote it for 7, and when we went to turn the key in they told us we owed $1200. Sure, I didn't catch the error either, but they said nothing at notification and were unwilling to split the difference. They sent it to collections and just had the gov take it right from my bank account.

Or how about my rental before my first story, where they sent a sprinkler guy to "fix" the sprinklers, he checked out the issues I raised and said he was going to get parts. He never returned. Later that week I noticed that the lawn was terribly dry, I check the timer and turns out the landlord just asked the guy to surreptitiously unplug the controller so they didn't have to pay for the water.

And that's not even getting into the economic impact of usury on housing, and how every day its taking away the dream of owning a little something of their own from people that arguably put more labor towards keeping our society healthy than probably any of the data shuffling nerds on this site.

But hey, if you think it's great that people can't afford a home I guess you can consider it something different.

You're welcome, bye.

Re: Many FBI agents are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs are to blame

#160

Post by nurple »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #109
nurple wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but selling the landlord's literal rent seeking as a value to anyone but themselves is just blatant antisocial shilling.

Disagree. The economics are pretty simple. If someone has a job but no assets, how do you expect someone to pay builders and materials? If they could, they would be an owner, not a renter. If they were credit worthy, they would be an owner, not a renter. Renting is effectively a short term loan for the value of the house. Try getting a 12 month loan for $1M without collateral, and see what the interest rates are.

Just because something is simple doesn't mean it's not broken. If we didn't allow speculation in the housing market, that person probably _would_ be credit worthy enough for a reasonable priced home.

The problem we're seeing in the housing "market" today isn't that people with no job or assets can afford a home, the problem is that prices have been inflated under speculation so much that we've passed the point where even a median earner can't afford a home.

Post reply on HN