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New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

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Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#71

Post by jessegeens »

YZF wrote: post #62
marcus_holmes wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America might have been booming, but wages were dropping in real terms throughout that period. And the heroes are the people who buck the system and made a fortune quickly. Not the people who toil away consistently at a job and incrementally build a modest living over decades. So of course everyone wants to be a hero. Add in Crypto, and Day Trading, and more recently the prediction markets. All of whom specifically t…

Median real wages: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Yes, which proves the point, no? In Q1 of 1979 the real median wages were 335. In Q3 of 2014 they were 336. Which means that from 1979 to 2014 workers did not see any increase in their salary. In that same period, GDP per capita (and thus the economic output of the country and thus the economic output of its workers) almost doubled. The country became richer, workers became more efficient, but they did not get any part of the gains.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#72

Post by lotsofpulp »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #57
lotsofpulp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not buy this. There is plenty of money in “traditional” work, and immigrants from all over the world find it and do it. If uneducated people, who may speak English as a second language at best, can move around the US and find their footing, then surely almost all who grew up here with access to the language and public schools can. And the people in this article are born in the 1960s and 1970s, in the decades tha…

America might have been booming, but wages were dropping in real terms throughout that period. And the heroes are the people who buck the system and made a fortune quickly. Not the people who toil away consistently at a job and incrementally build a modest living over decades. So of course everyone wants to be a hero. Add in Crypto, and Day Trading, and more recently the prediction markets. All of whom specifically t…

>And the heroes are the people who buck the system and made a fortune quickly. Not the people who toil away consistently at a job and incrementally build a modest living over decades. So of course everyone wants to be a hero.

I don't see what this has to do with anything. For all of human history, it has been easier to steal than to earn.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

>And there's a certain truth to this in a society that prizes home ownership, but keeps housing at a price level that means the average wage will never manage to save enough to afford the deposit.

Maybe in Australia, but it was attainable in the US with home ownership in the 60%+ range.

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#73

Post by bombcar »

Thegn wrote: post #54
brookst wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traits like ethics? Yes, that was my point.

‘Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage,’ he said. - Terry Pratchett The poor have ethics just like the rest of us. They just can’t afford to keep it.

Pratchett goes into it more when talking about the “proud” poor - which is a real subset of the population.

You can see an example in the rural poor who refuse to take “government cheese”.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#74

Post by selimthegrim »

gottorf wrote: post #60
brookst wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a really good article if you read it. The people who got rich were not the poor people.

We must be talking at odds here. I'm neither claiming that being ethical is a sufficient condition to getting rich, nor that the ethics of the poor people described in the article played a significant part in their being and remaining poor. The article seems replete with unethical behavior at every level of wealth. > the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy My p…

Come live here for a month or two and see if you're so sanguine in your judgments next time.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#75

Post by VoodooJuJu »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #39
brookst wrote: post #31

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative…

I do not buy this. There is plenty of money in “traditional” work, and immigrants from all over the world find it and do it. If uneducated people, who may speak English as a second language at best, can move around the US and find their footing, then surely almost all who grew up here with access to the language and public schools can. And the people in this article are born in the 1960s and 1970s, in the decades tha…

[dead]

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#76

Post by cucumber3732842 »

brookst wrote: post #35
selimthegrim wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly how many investors do you think are investing in New Orleans East? I drive around and I see signs on telephone poles for people promoting renting cars so you can rent it to other people for income like Uber or something.

Probably none? I certainly didn’t mean to imply there is significant investment.

I follow local politics in my own city of similar means.

The juice isn't worth the squeeze for bigco corporate developers (though they're not above doing something if perfect circumstances pop up) and the long tail of mom and pop investors, slumlord and "maybe you can rent my cousin's vacant storefront for your shop" type investment activity that would normally make those investments and over time uplift a community have been kicked out of the game by the regulation that municipalities have been forced by the states (who themselves are often forced by the feds) to adopt as a pre-requisite to qualifying for federal grant funding for the projects they need that funding to afford because without it they can't do so in a manner compliant with applicable law.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#77

Post by mjklin »

hydrogen7800 wrote: post #11

Interesting read. This may be unfair to Louisiana based on this case, but I've heard the USA described as a federation of a bunch of states and some 3rd world countries.

“One of the best descriptions of this political culture came from A.J. Liebling, who called Louisiana "the westernmost of the Arab states" and observed that its politics "is of an intensity and complexity that are matched, in my experience, only in the Republic of Lebanon. Louisiana is part of the Hellenistic—Mediterranean littoral—sensual, seductive, speculative, devious."

- The Book of America, Hagstrom and Peirce

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#78

Post by steve-atx-7600 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #39
brookst wrote: post #31

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a book about the American shift from “a hard day’s work for fair pay” to what I’m calling the lottery economy. Fewer and fewer people can make a decent living with traditional work. Hence, my theory goes, the rise of actual lotteries along with influencers, injury lawyers, and schemes like New Orleans. Something is seriously wrong when family members hope an elderly relative…

I do not buy this. There is plenty of money in “traditional” work, and immigrants from all over the world find it and do it. If uneducated people, who may speak English as a second language at best, can move around the US and find their footing, then surely almost all who grew up here with access to the language and public schools can. And the people in this article are born in the 1960s and 1970s, in the decades tha…

Part of what you’re alluding to, I think, is the important influence of culture. It is difficult to talk about without being accused of racism. I think it’s fair to say that not all cultures are equally effective as far as upward mobility. How to change culture would be a helpful thing to understand.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#79

Post by steve-atx-7600 »

Jgrubb wrote: post #50

My best friend is an insurance attorney in New Orleans, and has been telling me this saga for years now. It's wild to see this coming out.

It is definitely well known in the insurance industry. Companies are hesitant to expand into the state of LA because of the high risk of litigation. Doing business there effectively requires being able to model the risk of litigation in addition to hurricane/wind/storm loss. Both are tough problems to solve to have to be a top insurer - as in being able to price according to risk better than competitors that use “broad strokes” in the direction of higher premiums regardless of risk.

Re: New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy

#80

Post by steve-atx-7600 »

adi_kurian wrote: post #38

Harrowing. That said, excellent journalism. I loved the artwork.

Yes. The Atlantic USED to have long form through provoking articles like this that I missed. This is the second article I’ve read from them recently that makes me glad I recently subscribed to the New Yorker.
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