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30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

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Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#91

Post by johnnyanmac »

ajross wrote: post #62
quantummagic wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring how easy it is for statistics to be misleading, let alone outright lies, the official statistics are rather mute on the topic of economic distribution. It doesn't matter how well an economy is doing, if the majority of wealth is accruing to a small minority.

> the official statistics are rather mute on the topic of economic distribution They actually aren't. Median income is measured as a median for a reason. Poverty line statistics are taken at the low end. Local CPI and price data is taken and reported. And all of those numbers are, indeed, getting better and not worse. I repeat this everywhere this subject comes up, but the real reason things look like they're getting…

There's some truth here, but it seems to be missin occum's razor. Homes got more expensive, income did not increase as fast.

You can say two things are happening at once. The line for minorities is moving up and the housing market is moving up faster (much faster). White people, moving up not as fast as either of the two. I still blame housing the most here, though.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#92

Post by johnnyanmac »

chasd00 wrote: post #8

This US is a big place, I don’t think it’s accurate to start an article with “traveling accross America” when you only drove around the DC area, one part of Maryland, NYC, and small part of South FL.

I mean, I don't think anyone will see "9 cities" in the US and think this is a comprehensive survey. That won't even cover a state.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#93

Post by johnnyanmac »

aidenn0 wrote: post #58
chasd00 wrote: post #8

This US is a big place, I don’t think it’s accurate to start an article with “traveling accross America” when you only drove around the DC area, one part of Maryland, NYC, and small part of South FL.

It also seems to focus on those with student loans and degrees they'll never use, when we've never had much more than half of HS graduates enroll in a 4-year college the following year and over 60% of the population over 25 lack any college degree.

That still seems relevant given that the ROI for new grads is stating to approach that of non-degree holders.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#94

Post by johnnyanmac »

reactordev wrote: post #6

Two words: “subscription fees” It’s the silent suck on the wallets that get you. Everyone budgets for food, shelter, but very little attention is paid to the dailies, the subs, the fees, the lattes.

I cancelled every sub except for like, Youtube and Rider over 2025. No more Amazon, no more media services, no more gym membership, no more premium news.

I saved $300/month at best. Rent is 2200 a month. Yes, clearly that stabucks latte is what's doing me in.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#95

Post by johnnyanmac »

reactordev wrote: post #73
mlsu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's not the subscriptions or lattes. Those are markets that have real competition. It's the sectors of the economy that have become consolidated. Food, insurance, banking, healthcare. There is very little competition in those markets and prices are artificially high because huge conglomerates manage to siphon off a larger and larger stake, while preventing small players from offering an alternative either throug…

Health Insurance is the ultimate subscription… All of these things are true.

By that logic I suppose Rent or Mortgage is also a subsciption. But not many people can "just buy a house", so I don't know what action you are suggesting.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#96

Post by johnnyanmac »

qaq wrote: post #36
conception wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.dcfpi.org/all/how-wealthy-households-use-a-buy-b... Yes they can get at that wealth, tax free at that!

Again to do what? at scale there are many physical constraints. You can't take physical resources used to create a 500M yacht and build 100 apartment buildings. Those crazy valuations exist in part because none really tries to convert any significant portion of that paper wealth into physical things.

Whatever the banks approve, I suppose. Buy out a street block, "invest" in a new company, acquire another company, etc.

Put it another way: I'd also have little to worry about if I could borrow 200k from the bank for a project. That'd basically be used to pay rent and get minimal equipment I'd never be approved for it, though.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#97

Post by johnnyanmac »

starik36 wrote: post #31

The Peter Thiel's part about the current situation not working for young people is right on the money. I am of the age where my kids (and those of my friends) are graduating from college. Every single one of them is having trouble finding work within their profession. Every one. I've done reasonably well as a developer, having been an architect at several large enterprises. I consider myself a pretty good developer.…

Yeah. Anyone who still doubts how bad things are: "interview" for a month. Just a month. It will be very apparent but many people who are content in their careers would never otherwise notice.

It's no wonder Gen Z is so cynical. People are talking about how good things are and they can't even get a human to respond to them for their first step in.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#98

Post by johnnyanmac »

ModernMech wrote: post #67
blindriver wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I went to university, my minimum wage summer job could pay for tuition and dorm fees for the entire year. The price is up over 20x since then, and in some colleges it's even higher. It's because of the predatory student loans allowed universities to charge whatever prices they wanted and they knew that students would get the loans to pay for them. It's sickening.

It's much more nuanced than that. First we must stipulate that the price you pay is not the tuition price. I went to a school that was #1 in tuition when I attended and I paid less than state school -- not because of loans but because of grants the school gave me. Look at the history: in the 20th century, there was a general understanding that public education was a good thing. My grandmother born in the 20s only gra…

What about those sky high sticker prices? Are they that high because schools are confident the government will foot the bill?

Thanks to Nancy Mae, yes. They will get their loans unless their students die. And mortality rates aren't a huge worry for what are mostly fledgling 22 year olds trying to make a career for themselves. For the US you may as well add "school loans" onto "death and taxes".

You seem to imply inelestic demand (never mind that this is in fact starting to be more elestic now, so there was in fact a limit), but forget the government allowed this. Giving any other 18YO a loan like this would be suicide without an exact plan.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#99

Post by johnnyanmac »

cyberax wrote: post #49

Well, your resident anti-urbanist is here. Where did the prosperity go? Into the pockets of property owners in large cities. Runaway urbanism made large cities practically the _only_ place where people can get ahead. If you want to achieve something, you have to leave your nice spacious house in Ohio and go and live in a tiny closet in New York City. So we have a paradoxical picture. The number of housing units per c…

>Runaway urbanism made large cities practically the _only_ place where people can get ahead.

In L.A.. Don't worry, you can't get ahead here anymore either. It's all coming unraveled.

>This is also how generational Black poverty in the inner cities keeps perpetuating itself.

Yeah, the infamous White Flight. It's always been an issue, but if we're being frank: it's affecting whites now too so now we're starting to seriously talk about it.

Still, bad for everyone overall.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#100

Post by johnnyanmac »

treis wrote: post #66
stephen_g wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ve demonstrated the idea of “problems don’t exist if I don’t have them personally”. You might start to understand the negativity some people have if you could understand the economic struggles they have.

My point was that people are thriving and the progress she wants is happening.

The people around you are thriving. The progress she wants is happening but not without trillions in opposition to the working class. The fight won't be won silently.
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