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

Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 394 posts

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#71

Post by jpmattia »

harryh wrote: post #21
shorodei wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got data on this? In my anecdotal experience price per square foot has shot up in urban places, which is where the jobs for young people tend to be concentrated.

http://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-are-1000-squ...

It looks like they applied CPI directly to the cost of housing. That is not correct.

CPI has a component of "owner's equivalent rent", which should be removed before cost-correcting the price of housing. Otherwise, you are removing the increase of the item you are searching for an increase of (Housing accounts for 1/3 of the CPI correction.) Their graph is instead showing that the buying power of a dollar is roughly constant when 1/3 of the CPI basket-of-goods is corrected with CPI.

Calculated Risk has a more sane analysis, you will note that the graphs are corrected with "CPI less Shelter": http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2016/11/real-prices-and-pr... He doesn't include price/sqft, but note that there is a 44% increase in real prices between the 90s and now. Square footage has not gone up by that much in 20 years.

As a side note: AEI is a fairly political org, I wouldn't rely on their accuracy for anything involving stats, or math in general.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#72

Post by branchless »

was_boring wrote: post #36

What makes me upset is that the economic realities do not match what is taught in large swaths of America. We are taught (at least in my community, and I am 30 now still living within 20 miles of where I grew up) that a very achievable ideal is a middle class existence with one parent working, and a small house in the suburbs. I am in the top 1% income earners for my generation and do not even come close to this. I t…

Life is not hard for the rentiers extracting labour for your right to exist in said apartment.

Where is all your labour going? Food? No. Transport? No. Energy? No. Rent? Bingo.

Why is this happening? Because we came off the gold standard and there is no limit to the expansion of fiat money, therefore it expands via mortgage lending to mop up all productivity gains. Get the women out to work! Land prices up. Efficiency gains? Land prices up.

We bid for land. The more we have available after basic living costs the more we can pass over to the rentiers.

We need land value tax to suppress rentier activity.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#73

Post by notadoc »

harryh wrote: post #34
notadoc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simply not true, at least on the west coast in any reasonably active real estate market. It was never $1,455/sq ft like it is today in Palo Alto, nor $500/sq ft or even $200 per sq ft. This is a recent phenomena. Furthermore, price per square foot actually tends to increase nowadays on smaller homes, where you'll pay even more per square foot if you're trying to buy anything under 2000sq ft, and it gets really…

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule. Palo Alto, home to one of the biggest wealth booms in human history, is one of them.

This applies to any west coast market.

You'll encounter it yourself if you ever shop for a home out here.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#74

Post by hajile »

dlss wrote: post #38
hajile wrote: post #14

About half earn more, about half earn less. Wouldn't that imply that the average earnings are about the same? If so, I don't know that I'd complain because that indicates stability.

> About half earn more, about half earn less. Wouldn't that imply that the average earnings are about the same? Actually no, though this is a fairly standard misunderstanding of statistics. For an easy counter-example imagine generation one being [0, 100] and generation two being [1, 2]. Average wealth goes down, while every element is higher than 50% of the previous generation.

We know that the distribution of wealth is not that extreme (the 1% are not enough to make the 50% change required given that comparisons are relative to parents). I agree with you in principle, but I don't believe that it's a significant factor in this case.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#75

Post by thraway2016 »

jobu wrote: post #61
rhino369 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cherry on top is that our parents generation, who made more and had access to cheaper house, education, healthcare, etc., still barely saved for retirement. Unless, god forbid, your parents drop dead early, we are going to be stuck supporting them for a long time.

Maybe we should hope for more declines in life-expectancy then: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-li...

Why should we consider life expectancy in the dialysis, nursing-home and hospice era to somehow be a positive measure of societal health?

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#76

Post by hurbledr »

vasaulys wrote: post #45
hollerith wrote: post #22

People who will have children ("eventual parents" for the purpose of this comment) are healthier, smarter and wealthier than people who will never have children. If the question is whether things have gotten harder for the average person, it is misleading to compare a group consisting only of eventual parents with a group composed of both eventual parents and non-parents. A better comparison would be 30-years-olds of…

I agree. I've seen a lot of people who have no intention of "settling down" or "having kids" become surprised when their peers who do exactly that become more "successful" (earn more money, move up in job position, etc.). I think making the decision to have kids instills a bit of discipline to get something stable in life.

IIRC there are also studies that suggest employers are more likely to give you raises, promotions, and increased hours if you have a family.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#78

Post by notadoc »

douche wrote: post #52
notadoc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simply not true, at least on the west coast in any reasonably active real estate market. It was never $1,455/sq ft like it is today in Palo Alto, nor $500/sq ft or even $200 per sq ft. This is a recent phenomena. Furthermore, price per square foot actually tends to increase nowadays on smaller homes, where you'll pay even more per square foot if you're trying to buy anything under 2000sq ft, and it gets really…

Whew, in places near where I grew up, those are the prices for land by the acre

Yea, west coast real estate has become totally surreal.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#79

Post by dang »

kefka wrote: post #70

Well. I guess the "No Politics week" wasn't going to last. This goes to the core of socialized healthcare, Social Security, Universal Basic Income, and the dismantling ofsaid systems that exist. The Baby boomers pulled the ladder up when they climbed up, and left us all in the lurch paying for them. You know, "Get the government outta my life, but dont you dare touch my medicare".

> I guess the "No Politics week" wasn't going to last.

We ended it early for reasons I explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251.

Re: Barely Half of 30-Year-Olds in the U.S. Earn More Than Their Parents Did at 30

#80

Post by dang »

barrkel wrote: post #77

While this is interesting, technically it's political.

It is, but having learned as much as we were going to, we ended the no-politics experiment early: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251.

Back to the normal guidelines now.

Post reply on HN