Is the economy good or bad, and what is the economy, and how much should a person care about it

Fair enough I suppose, I don’t think it’s odd that people with completely different value systems don’t want to coexist in an online forum though. I’m ok mucking it up, in fact I think confrontation with different value systems is good for moving society forward.

If you adjust for this, you get… the graph I posted!

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There is currently a caste line in America between those who bought a home before interest rates went up and those currently renting.

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I scrolled back and I don’t see what you’re talking about. If you were talking about real wages which are adjusted for inflation, that’s not the same thing as having a weighted adjustment which factors expenses that affect lower income people more than they affect upper income people, like food and rent.

Can you show a weighted adjustment that supports your argument? Because I don’t think you can

Oh. To get a graph like that, why you’d need to break out both wages and inflation by income category, then separately apply the inflation adjustment to each group! Something like this, maybe?

https://x.com/besttrousers/status/1781034506620690439?s=46&t=9xanL2tZoKj22erGoTuL4A

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And again, this discussion implicitly focuses on housing in the hottest US markets and ignores everywhere else. My Gen-Z cousin who works 3 jobs just bought a house in KC (which means she’s now the lucky ducky land-holding elite who should be sneered at). It’s not that hard in KC. Just LA/SF/NYC/Chicago/etc – cities with high incomes and nowhere to expand to.

I’m not sure what the argument is here. When you have a limited supply, and people have a lot of money (because the economy is good for a lot of people and unemployment is at all time lows), prices are going to go up.

Is it the eDem’s fault we don’t build a ton more subsidized high rises in major cities? Did Biden create the laws of supply and demand?

It’s kind of obvious the implicit argument here is that capitalism is evil and should be replaced with [thing that’s never worked in the history of civilization], which makes the eDems just as bad as the fascists for supporting capitalism. So we’re arguing policy and economic nuance with a group that believes in 100% wealth redistribution (and then would immediately start whining about he new unfair system).

Lol

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I did not notice “quintile specific inflation rate”.

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Great content! Solid contribution as always.

But you’re right. No one can buy a house in the US, and if they can, they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

Lol Ikes. You are just mashing buttons. You’re not smart enough to understand this, but your last few hearts and this post make you look brainless.

Anyways, facts have really little to do with general perceptions of the economy, which isn’t great mostly due to republicans being nuts. Old leftist standbys of “only for the rich” doesn’t really apply to today for the moment

I know people who have bought houses, I know people who work full time who want to buy a house who can’t afford it. Rent is a big portion of their income which makes it harder to save for a decent down payment as well.

This is different than nobody can buy a house. Just try thinking a little harder vs getting emotional.

What about that one friend you have that proves UBI wouldn’t work?

And if we had a recession or a depression instead of record low unemployment, rents and home prices would drop. Weird how that works.

People at the lower end of the scale are making more money relative to the whole pie than they did 20 years ago. These people are more likely to be renters. Rents go up because renters have more money to bid on a limited supply. Rents aren’t going up in a vacuum.

What is your specific solution to high rents and home prices in a time of high employment and people making more money, especially at the lower end of the scale?

If you think rents are going up now, wait until UBI when everyone has more money to spend. You better build a shit-ton of free/highly-subsidized housing to go along with that UBI. Maybe some nice grey Soviet-style apartment compounds. Hey wait, this sounds familiar. But will paint them in vibrant colors this time, so all good.

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I’m asking for what data and what adjusted inflation you’re basing your opinion on. Seems like a fair question, and it seems like you can’t answer it

That second graph is great. Not in terms of “It agrees with my priors”, but because I think the quintile-adjusted inflation rate actually gets at a fundamental disagreement between the two sides of “the economy has been doing great”/“not for most people” argument - the idea that official inflation measures are not capturing the true impact of inflation for lower-income individuals.

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Yeah, you are too dumb. And really it keeps going. I was wrong and said so and you can’t tell that and bobman already had the data you’re asking me for. Congrats you were right despite being illiterate.

This is a really great question, and the answer is to push for more building and force more localities to allow higher density projects. California is egregiously bad about this.

Unfortunately, entrenched land owners are very much against those things, and have co-opted enough left leaning ideas and folks to grossly limit the density and just new housing that is needed

Buddy you responded to me asking for a citation, and later admitted you were wrong. Like one post is telling me I’m too dumb to understand this and the next post you’re apologizing for misreading a simple graph.

Seems like an interesting approach but you do you.

It still does not address the other points. It’s a small change. It is about the 20%, not the 1%, which have continued to see immense growth. It’s over a very short period dominated by COVID and largely reflects the end of lockdowns and expiring unemployment benefits.