101–110 of 213 posts
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that 78 hours of minimum wage work could pay the rent in 1980, compared to 109 hours in 2010 [1], along with the other associated cost-of-living increases over the last three decades that have come without comparable increases in wages. I doubt that most people who felt financially secure and could afford a new car wouldn't want to own a new car. Nobody really enjoys drivin…
Minimum wage is a silly thing to look at. In 1980, 10% of men and 22% of women earned min wage. In 2010, this fell to 5% and 7%. http://www.statista.com/statistics/185536/share-of-workers-p... Further, a look at hard data (for both the bottom 20% and the middle 20%) shows that people today are more likely to own a car than in 1981, and have more house per person than in 1989 (no data on square footage exists in 1981)…
Minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation.
Debt financed consumption.
You're trying too hard. This stuff isn't that complicated.
In the age of smart phones, the car has ceased being a vital communication tool for young people. There's no need to drive to the mall to see if Paul is there hanging out. A text will let me know that he's at Joel's party instead. Another text and Steve will swing by in his car. The housing situation is another matter. There's a glut. Credit is tight. Jobs are scarce. And housing prices are going down. Millenials are…
You're right about smart phones, but I'm not so sure about housing. Credit is ridiculously cheap, and housing everywhere is on sale. If you have a job, why wouldn't you buy as much house as you can afford?
My wife and I just bought a house. We could have afforded something big an shiny and new, but the prices being asked for that are simply unconscionable. Houses are not worth that much, and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. We are still in a bubble.
Instead we bought a rather nice small house in town, for less than my yearly base salary (i.e. not counting my wife's income or bonuses). It's not showy, but it's exceedingly comfortable. We'll spend some cash to make a few changes, but our payments are half of what our rent was previously.
We could have easily spent five times as much money, for a house that wouldn't suit our needs any better than the one we bought. How could the underlying asset possibly be worth five times as much? It can't be. Bubble. I'll invest my surplus income in something with sound fundamentals instead, thank you.
In the age of smart phones, the car has ceased being a vital communication tool for young people. There's no need to drive to the mall to see if Paul is there hanging out. A text will let me know that he's at Joel's party instead. Another text and Steve will swing by in his car. The housing situation is another matter. There's a glut. Credit is tight. Jobs are scarce. And housing prices are going down. Millenials are…
You're right about smart phones, but I'm not so sure about housing. Credit is ridiculously cheap, and housing everywhere is on sale. If you have a job, why wouldn't you buy as much house as you can afford?
Because you may not have a job next month? You don't need the space? You have better things to spend the money on? Bigger houses come with bigger energy bills? While I do agree that the biggest factor here is economics (if people can't pay, they won't), I also think that there are other non-insignificant factors. Some of it is getting away from cars and houses as status symbols (a good thing), others are more practical (trying to offload a house while looking for a job is not easy). In this day and age, long-term employment is not a sure thing, so why settle down and grow roots when you'll only have to rip them out again?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm 21, live in New York City, and let my driver's licence lapse over a year ago. I don't plan on owning a house, preferring to drive my surplus wealth into assets I understand better and which don't restrict my mobility, and don't care to own a car. This is not economically motivated - I have comfortable free cash flow and a healthy balance sheet free of personal debt. I pay for a car service and take taxis more tha…
[I] live in New York City ... and don't care to own a car. Your lack of desire for a car has a LOT more to do with living in NYC than your age or social status. You sound just like friends of mine from NYC.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry that stats about what people actually consume disagree with your vague speculation about what stuff should cost. If we "feel barely middle class", it's because our expectations and desires have grown faster than our means. It's not because we have less than some historical cohort.
This is exactly what both the left and the right are propagandizing the middle class to do: lower expectations. In some cases, it means lowering our expectations to below those of our parents. Think about that for a minute. Find me a corporation or an entrepreneur who thinks like this. Imagine a CEO saying this to shareholders and the board: "We didn't make our goals this quarter, and many in our industry also showed…
Go read the article I linked to. We are richer than our parents. We own more and bigger houses and cars than they owned.
To fix your analogy: "Next quarter's numbers will be higher, and shareholders are just going to accept 10% growth rather than 20%. Expecting 20% growth forever is unrealistic."
If you want to argue that growth should have been higher than it actually was, or that somehow the evil vampire squid is holding us back and making us into serfs, go ahead and make that argument. But you still need to square your argument with the fact that we are consume more than ever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[I] live in New York City ... and don't care to own a car. Your lack of desire for a car has a LOT more to do with living in NYC than your age or social status. You sound just like friends of mine from NYC.
Or rather, his living in NYC particularly has a lot to do with his age, social status and preferences. People like him prefer big cities because they don't want to own cars. So it's the other way around.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only real threat from lasting attitude change, is that perhaps millenials will vote for more transit projects and subsidies over more car/road projects and subsidies and thus make it more feasible in more areas to not own cars. We can only hope.
The trend for mass transit is to remove options from travelers, thus making itself less useful to us. As such, it's hardly worth funding. [1] That's not to say that it must be inherently so. Just that, so long as these projects are typical government projects that are expected to go over-budget and over-deadline with no repercussions, they will be used as a tool for political favors and cronyism, at our expense. [1]…
As for the linked arugment: seriously? People are honestly arguing that Denver should allow the problems of rail in America[1] to be exacerbated rather than addressed [2]???
Should we have built highways that went from suburban stables to urban stables because people liked their horses, owned horses and horses can go more places than cars (absent further roads)?
What kind of logical argument is that?
[1] the old "you can take the train downtown, but then you still need a car to get anywhere".
[2] say, by ensuring there are useful destinations at the other end of the rail line.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I should send this comment to my parents and grandparents the next time they berate me about why I'm not planning on owning a home any time soon and would rather rent and/or mooch off them for as long as possible.
Send them the median income / home value ratios too. I think the boomers qualify as the most irresponsible generation in history, especially in the USA. Now half of them have no retirement savings and are getting old, fast. Guess who's going to pay for it.
I'll give him this: at least he's not blaming his customers or the market, unlike some other industries I could name. I just wonder what he will do if when he "understands them" he will have figured out that they don't care about owning a car.