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No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

robkhenderson.com

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Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#121
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen Z are the richest generation in all of American history on a median per-capita real income basis, compared to older generations when they were the same age. And it's not even close. Millenials are the second richest in American history. The only problem is housing. Any discussion not focused 100% on housing is not grounded in reality.

>Gen Z are the richest generation in all of American history on a per-capita real income basis, compared to older generations when they were the same age. source: https://www.economist.com/img/b/608/739/90/media-assets/imag...

> per-capita

Anyone looking at this chart can see the asterisk in it - adjusted by household size

This is not a per capita income chart. It even says it is not in the chart.

More of Generation Z lives at home in their 20s than baby boomers, so the income of their household is higher.

They can't afford a house or even rent, and live with their parents, meaning a richer household, and are said to be richer.

This was discussed (elsewhere) three months ago when this Economist article came out.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#122
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Institutional housing ownership in the US is not a material contributor to housing price inflation [1]. With that said , we are approaching a housing shortage of +4.5M [2] units, and in concert with YieldStar's Backpage revenue maximization engine [3] (which is laundering landlord price fixing), renters are being squeezed (because where are you going to go if you can't afford to buy? you will pay, or you will be home…

A 4.5M unit shortage wouldn't be present if the past several administrations hadn't allowed huge amounts of immigration in the past decade. Reality isn't constrained to "you have to build as fast as possible since your population is going to increase very quickly and there's nothing you can do about that". If every person who came to the US in the past ten years went home, there would be a colossal increase in housin…

Who do you think is building the houses that are being built? Without immigration we'd still have massive housing shortages because internal migration is much larger than external migration -- people moving from the hinterland to cities with jobs. But housing would be a lot more expensive because we would no longer have cheap labour to build & renovate our houses.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#123
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 4.5M unit shortage wouldn't be present if the past several administrations hadn't allowed huge amounts of immigration in the past decade. Reality isn't constrained to "you have to build as fast as possible since your population is going to increase very quickly and there's nothing you can do about that". If every person who came to the US in the past ten years went home, there would be a colossal increase in housin…

> Reality isn't constrained to "you have to build as fast as possible since your population is going to increase very quickly and there's nothing you can do about that". If all of the job growth is happening in select metro areas around the country, the existing domestic population is going to move into those areas, regardless of the level of immigration

This is true, but "Americans aren't able to move to major metropolitan areas because it's too expensive" is an easier problem to solve than "every year there are 800k-1.4M new people to house, and they tend to also want to go to the major metropolitan areas".

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#124
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

workforce in usa seems pretty good. Have you seen the homeprices they are able to afford ?

But that's the thing. Most people can't afford a home here; we're renters. The exception is upper class people riding stock market hype bubbles.

[deleted]

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#125

We didn't want young men to do anything. We wanted ever-increasing returns for shareholders, and that meant moving factories (where these young men's grandfathers were working 60 years ago) overseas while doing nothing on the whole to retrain the workforce. We got the shareholder returns. Too bad that can't buy a functional society for people born after 1980.

Gen Z are the richest generation in all of American history on a median per-capita real income basis, compared to older generations when they were the same age. And it's not even close. Millenials are the second richest in American history. The only problem is housing. Any discussion not focused 100% on housing is not grounded in reality.

> Gen Z are the richest generation in all of American history on a median per-capita real income basis, compared to older generations when they were the same age.

Per capita? Not at all. What source says that?

More of Generation Z lives with their parents than previous generations, often because they can't afford housing, or even rent, high college debt etc. They live with their parents, and thus in households with higher income, so only in that sense are they "rich" - the household income is higher than if they could afford their own house.

Per capita real income higher? No. What source claims that?

Every time someone says this, if there is a source, this always come back to them living with parents and household income being higher. Not per capita.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s ironic[1] about these comments is they set up these ignorant-sheep narrative about how the villagers are bickering among themselves. Which begets more finger-pointing among the villagers instead of looking at the real source of their problems. [1] Not ironic if you don’t think you’re one of the villagers.

And what in your opinion is the real source?

I didn’t dispute the source. I questioned the assumption that “people” (whatever that means?) are oblivious to it.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#128
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 4.5M unit shortage wouldn't be present if the past several administrations hadn't allowed huge amounts of immigration in the past decade. Reality isn't constrained to "you have to build as fast as possible since your population is going to increase very quickly and there's nothing you can do about that". If every person who came to the US in the past ten years went home, there would be a colossal increase in housin…

Who do you think is building the houses that are being built? Without immigration we'd still have massive housing shortages because internal migration is much larger than external migration -- people moving from the hinterland to cities with jobs. But housing would be a lot more expensive because we would no longer have cheap labour to build & renovate our houses.

This is the constant refrain of pro-illegal/poor/migrant immigration. My answer is: "in the first world, businesses should operate by offering competitive wages, and the lifestyle costs of first worlders should be balanced against those wages". I am uninterested in living in a materially wealthy society that can only operate on the back of a recently-arrived serf class, and it's bizarre to me that so many people defend this system as desirable and morally righteous.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#129
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gen Z are the richest generation in all of American history on a median per-capita real income basis, compared to older generations when they were the same age. And it's not even close. Millenials are the second richest in American history. The only problem is housing. Any discussion not focused 100% on housing is not grounded in reality.

Richest? How? Maybe by total wealth. I think wealth should be measured by how many hours at the median wage do you need to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living. Unfortunately, our standards have gone up and there are things that are now necessities that weren't before.

You introduced the word wealth to the discussion and then proceeded to complain about its definition. What's the point of this?

Just use the definitions of words that are in the dictionary and widely agreed upon, so that conversations with other people can be meaningful. If you want to talk about how cost of living is high, or how it's not high but people think it's high because (insert your reason), just use the words we all use and let's talk about that.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Institutional housing ownership in the US is not a material contributor to housing price inflation [1]. With that said , we are approaching a housing shortage of +4.5M [2] units, and in concert with YieldStar's Backpage revenue maximization engine [3] (which is laundering landlord price fixing), renters are being squeezed (because where are you going to go if you can't afford to buy? you will pay, or you will be home…

Institutional ownership is immaterial? Erm, from the same source, 10% of some metros is a lot, and that’s just moving the meter to 100+ homes. If you did 10+ or 3+ it would be even more. “This share rises to 3.8 percent of single-family homes for institutional investors owning over 100 homes, and up to 10 percent in certain metro areas such as Atlanta.” Then if you also consider foreign ownership of home, it would ri…

34% of Americans rent their homes, and having a good stock of rental units is good for America because it makes it a lot easier to move. Institutional owners provide the vast majority of rental units.

Getting rid of institutional ownership would increase rental prices substantially, and that's bad for the poor and for the mobile.

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