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Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

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Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#41

Post by api »

ajmurmann wrote: post #18
antonvs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? Wages are too low and rents are too high. The common factor: the capital class screwing over the working class.

Look at real, median household income. It's been going up and up. The things that have gone up in relative cost are housing (because we heavily regulate building it) and premium services like healthcare and education because of Baumol.

Link for the curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

Baumol plus zoning and NIMBY driven real estate hyperinflation basically explain the modern economic malaise among especially the young.

I’ve also heard this called “in-deflation.” Inflation in everything you need, deflation in everything you make.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#42

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #20

Landlords are the least productive class in society, and it's not even close in terms of ranking.

Maybe. I think when times are good it seem like that (right now) but when times are tough they can be stuck owning things that lose money. There is some risk in ownership.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#43

Post by mantas »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #21
mc32 wrote: post #4

[flagged]

> immigration depressed wages of Americans Immigration creates more jobs than it takes away and generates net wage growth. Immigrants don't just work. They also consume and they also start their own businesses. This has all been measured to death. There's no reason to ignore the research on this. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-immigration-means-fo... https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/immigrant…

There's a massive difference between high-skill and low-skill immigration. Generalising both together is like measuring the average body temperature in a hospital.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#44

Post by estearum »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #20

Landlords are the least productive class in society, and it's not even close in terms of ranking.

It's worth being precise about this because it's a really important point. Most people who we call "landlords" are simultaneously a landlord and a property manager. Property management is an important and productive job. But the vast majority of such people's financial outcome is actually from being a landlord, that is doing literally nothing except holding a piece of paper granting them monopoly on a plot of land. That plot of land's value (separated from the buildings on top of it) is generated, by definition, by the community surrounding the plot.

So when you say landlords are the least productive class in society, it is that they are totally unproductive by their nature. There is literally nothing to be produced! The land is there regardless! Then the fact that they collect a tax on consumption of a good they did not create makes them a negative-productivity component.

If you remove landlords (but keep property managers, developers, etc, which are all different jobs sometimes played by the same people), it would be a strict improvement to everything about our economy.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#45

Post by Arodex »

Again seeing some blaming poor immigrants for this in the very first answers.

Meanwhile, where do the money for OpenAI and the SpaceX IPO comes from? Who got hold of so much money? How did they got hold of it?

And here's the killer question: would they, and the rules and system supporting them, change in any way if there were less immigrants?

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#46

Post by cpburns2009 »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #20

Landlords are the least productive class in society, and it's not even close in terms of ranking.

I guess it's time to abolish apartment buildings then. And how dare someone want to rent a house/condo/apartment when they only expect to live in a city for a couple years.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#47

Post by stymaar »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #23
bonsai_spool wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know even on 2008 Krugman, who is known for making predictions that end up being wrong, was saying immigration depressed wages of Americans. Do you have evidence of this claim?

The common criticism is his prediction about the internet: https://web.archive.org/web/19980610100009/http://www.redher... > By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.

I wasn't aware that he put a "2005" deadline in his prediction. Taking this into account, he probably wasn't wrong actually, at least in terms of net impact: in 2005 most of the moderate positive economic impact of the internet would have been offset by the significant negative economic impact of the dot com bubble and subsequent crash.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#48

Post by cyanydeez »

Arodex wrote: post #45

Again seeing some blaming poor immigrants for this in the very first answers. Meanwhile, where do the money for OpenAI and the SpaceX IPO comes from? Who got hold of so much money? How did they got hold of it? And here's the killer question: would they, and the rules and system supporting them, change in any way if there were less immigrants?

it can't be those 8 guys with >50% of the wealth! no sir, it must be all those poor people taking up the poor people's space they were alotted in 1995.

Re: Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore

#50

Post by estearum »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #42
whoknowsidont wrote: post #20

Landlords are the least productive class in society, and it's not even close in terms of ranking.

Maybe. I think when times are good it seem like that (right now) but when times are tough they can be stuck owning things that lose money. There is some risk in ownership.

You lose close to zero money owning land even in down markets. That's why there are vacant lots that cost millions of dollars in every major city. Near-zero carrying cost.

There's risk in owning housing and so we should make sure people get rewarded for that instead of rewarded for owning land.

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