The problem with this narrative is that the job of the father isn't specified. He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market. These jobs pay well above the minimum wage.
The world has changed - simple labor that requires a few days of training doesn't pay much. Most jobs, with few exceptions, that require a decade of training, do pay well. That's why there's such a huge gap between Amazon packers and electricians, and an even bigger gap with surgeons.
If you want to do well in the modern economy, you have to choose your specialization wisely. Most simple labor will be automated very soon anyway.
> He could've been a plumber/electrician/welder who would do really well in the current market.
False.
A plumber making $80k (US median seems to be around $60k) isn't going to be able to save up for a down payment if they're paying a typical mid-sized city's rent (~$1.2k a month). Not to mention housing costs going up during this period of saving up.
Not to mention that plumber probably doesn't have health coverage. The people who love to talk about what a fine profession that would be (for other people's kids, of course, never their own kids) are the same people who fight tooth and nail against any kind of health care policy that might make a non-white collar career more viable.
Plumbers and pipefitters have a union that has plenty of power in current market. No health insurance and they won't work. Plumbing pays more than 80k in major cities. Plumbing contractors have to carry workers comp insurance.
Having grown up in a rural area, I assure you that any unions or health coverage is a strictly urban phenomenon. And $80k isn't all that great of a top-end, for people living in major cities with their cost of living.
I did some quick lookups from BLS and other salary sources for my (mid sized southern US MSA) sometime back and yeah the median and mean wages for a lot of skilled labor and trade positions are pretty damn close to what a lot of clerical type office jobs were paying. I.E. not great, probably livable. I’ll see if I can go back through and find my comment.
In my area United Association Plumbers get $42.77/hour and have great benefits including healthcare/pension. I agree though we need truly universal healthcare like medicare for all. The system we have now is hopelessly broken.
Doesn't seem like the rest of the world's universal healthcare did any better than ours?
You have farfetched dreams that government run anything would somehow be not shit. You'd hardly get any coverage and I doubt the deductible would be anywhere sufficient.
You don't get completely fucked if you lose your job and then get sick/injured? Is that not better? I pay literally $0 to go to the doctors or emergency room.
If you lose your job then you qualify for Medicaid and get free doctors visits and emergency care. The people who get fucked the worst by our system are the working poor. The people who make just over the limit for Medicaid and have crappy employer sponsored plans.
In the US you pay more IN TAX per person than other countries pay for their entirely otherwise free healthcare. Yet you have insurance, and have to pay premiums ON TOP of that!
Everyone knows that "free" healthcare means that it's still being paid for via taxes, so points like this aren't exactly insightful. The OP's point was that their care cost them nothing to utilize or receive, not that there aren't costs in the system at all. Nobody actually believes that doctors are working for free, that assumption would be a strawman.
If you don't pay the bill, it doesn't cost you anything either.
I'm not sure everyone knows there's a no free healthcare, we may move in different cicles.
Having lived with socialized healthcare and still paying private insurance in order to access expedient, competent, comfortable care is especially frustrating.
> If you don't pay the bill, it doesn't cost you anything either.
In the US, you won't get the chance to have a bill, because you will be denied care if you're unable to pay for the care or are uninsured. The one exception to this is that emergency rooms are obligated to stabilize patients in crisis, but that type of care is limited. For example, they'll patch you up if you get stabbed and then send you a bill for it, but nobody is getting treatment for non-acute emergencies, like chronic conditions, or the insulin they need to survive diabetes, or life-saving chemo or radiation therapy for cancer.
Your creditors might feel differently about bills not costing you anything when they take you to court to collect on your debt. Those bills might cost you your savings, income and/or assets.
I have family members on Medicaid and help them with their care. Medicaid covers 100% of everything, from doctors visits to specialists, ER care, surgery, dental, vision, medications, etc at no cost to the beneficiary. By law, Medicaid has to pay for everything, so patients don't get pushed around by providers or insurers about billing or additional costs. The headache surrounding billing and paying for care just doesn't exist. Policyholders can confidently see doctors and buy prescriptions they need without worrying about being sent mystery bills several months down the line, or being unable to fill medication, including brand name medication.
On the private insurer side, if you're prescribed an on-patent medication that has no generics, every insurer I've had has fought me every step of the way for coverage, and some plans just don't cover brand name medication at all. Even when you work with your doctor and insurer to get coverage for specific medications, insurers will decide 4 months later that they don't want to cover it anymore and you have to jump through those hoops all over again.
My "favorite" experience was having to cycle through several medications that I had been prescribed in the past that weren't effective in order to make my insurer happy so that they'd cover the medication that does work. Apparently the private insurer knows how to treat patients better than doctors do. Then I moved and had to switch insurers, and the insurer wanted me to go through the process of taking drugs that don't work all over again. I gave up and just pay for the actually-efficacious prescription out of pocket, and none of those costs go towards my deductible. I now pay $18 per pill for something that costs $34 total for a 30-day supply, which is about a dollar per pill, in other first world countries.
If it was possible, I'd drop my own coverage instantly for Medicaid. Doing so would make my life immeasurably better.
> Doesn't seem like the rest of the world's universal healthcare did any better than ours?
On every metric, other countries' healthcare systems outperform the healthcare system in the US, resulting in higher quality care and patient outcomes, all for much less than the US spends[1].
> If it was possible, I'd drop my own coverage instantly for Medicaid. Doing so would make my life immeasurably better.
I also care for a family member on Medicaid and, while it’s very far from perfect, I agree that in many every-day scenarios it’s remarkably superior to my employer-provided coverage.
Most of the downsides I’ve experienced are issues with getting specialist appointments in a timely fashion and providers creating unexpected reimbursement loopholes - which are thankfully rare, but remarkably abusive when they have occurred.
Eg: Medicaid will get you booked with an allergy clinic four months out and during the appointment they tell you “Oh by the way, Medicaid only covers ~5 basic allergen tests; if you want the standard regional allergen test that’s $150 up front and if you want the full spectrum test that’ll be $300.”
Meanwhile, half a year prior, I went to the same clinic, got my appointment booked for 2-3 weeks out, and wasn’t even asked about the test type - they hit me with the full spectrum and I just had to toss a minor copay on the way out the door.
I guess the overall moral of the story is that our healthcare system is broken and jammed up with perverse incentives at every rung of the ladder.
I lost my job due to illness and I am currently on Medi-Cal. There is no deductible. Pretty much everything non-cosmetic is covered 100% including dental. My previous health insurance from a Fortune 100 company was much worse with all sorts of byzantine rules. I think you have been seriously misinformed.
I don't agree. I made under $80k in household income when I bought my first home in 2014. This was in (well, just outside) Seattle, which was and remains one of the more expensive markets in the country. I saved up for a down payment; it took years. It wasn't my dream home, but it allowed me to build equity and continue saving for the one that was. I am not ready to say "kids these days want everything handed to them," but I will say that if you can't commit to a decade-long, multi-step process, then it may seem impossible, when it's just rather hard.
This. My house has more than doubled since 2014. There's a huge gap between those who can afford a $300k house and those who can afford an $800K house.
Doubled if you're lucky. I checked the price history on the condo I bought last year. It has doubled in price since the pandemic started and more like tripled since 2014. Of course I'm living in a booming area but my salary sure hasn't increased that quickly.
The traditional rule for a mortgage was 20% down and the house itself was no more than 2.5 times salary.
Where I live, Boise, housing prices have shot up dramatically, over twice. Median house prices in Boise is $536k. So you would really need to make $214K/year to afford the mortgage under the old rules. And nobody makes that kind of money here.
The old rules don't apply because the old interest rates were so very much higher.
The prices are based on the ability to repay based on the income - with lower interest rates the same income and service a much larger loan, hence the increased prices.
The world has changed, from very high rates to current very low rates, and seems like it might be changing back to middle rates.
I think that's what the mortgage lenders of today want you to believe since they have cheap cash available through the fed. As long as house prices continue to skyrocket, they could still make money on the foreclosure.
It's flat out impossible to buy a house or even condo on that kind of salary in southern Ontario without significant outside financial assistance. I bought my condo in Oct 2021. Six months later it has appreciated in value by $200,000 judging by what other units in this building are going for. You simply can't save money fast enough. Housing prices in general have more than doubled around here.
You got lucky and bought when it was cheap. Don't act like anyone can do what you did.
Growing, but still rural city in the Midwest I visited a few weeks back has decent homes for sale in the 50-80k range. This is not an outlier.
Roughly 2/3 of Americans own homes.
If you live in an area where homes are priced like luxury investments, then yes, you'll have a hard time buying when you also cannot afford other luxuries. If you live in an area where they are not, it isn't unattainable at all, especially if you combine income with a marriage partner.
The places I've seen with houses in the $50k to $80k range are in Rust Belt-esque areas whose time has long passed, or in places where a "career" means working at Walmart or cooking methamphetamine. Their economic prospects aren't that great, and their long term economic prospects are even worse.
Rural areas also tend not to be great places for LGBT people, either.
Rural areas also tend not to be great places for LGBT people, either.
That may be true in some areas. I can only speak anecdotally. I brought a couple members of the LGBT community with me to a very rural area that is about as cowboy-midwest as it gets. Everyone has been very civil and even the "Good ol boys" have been very respectful with them to my pleasant surprise. There are plenty of openly LGBT working in the local stores.
All of that said I have advised them against hanging out in the local bars after listening to the scanner a bit. There are a few regular angry drunks. Perhaps I am too overly cautious.
> Everyone has been very civil and even the "Good ol boys" have been very respectful with them to my pleasant surprise. There are plenty of openly LGBT working in the local stores.
Speaking from experience, they're going to be on good behavior around you and others. It's what happens when they think no one will notice or no one will hold them to account when real discrimination occurs.
I've met plenty of people who claim to be LGBT supporters in public, but have no problem harassing LGBT people, discriminating against them and calling them slurs when they think no one else is looking. Same thing goes for people in power, like bosses and owners, or police and judges. Discrimination doesn't always look like American History X or the Westboro Baptist Church, the vast majority of it is low key and insidious.
but have no problem harassing LGBT people, discriminating against them and calling them slurs when they think no one else is looking.
That's the very reason I suggested staying away from the bars. When people are drunk their inhibitions are gone and judgement is very poor. The LGBT hate crime that I know of happened about 23 years ago outside a bar.
Maybe individual people are nice to their face, but they'll still vote for the guys who implement "don't say gay" bills and the like, with is pretty anti-lgbtq
> People who pick just what’s attractive at the moment are pretty short-sighted and I have no sympathy for them.
What's attractive and what's viable are often two separate things. NYC is not viable for someone making $40k a year, but neither is moving to the Rust Belt where their "options" are working part-time in department stores or literal crime.
Something tells me that this is a situation that can't be won in some people's minds. If someone makes the rational decision to not move somewhere that is not economically viable, in an area that's projected to become even more unviable with time, that's not good enough for some. If someone lives in a shitty area and moves elsewhere for better career prospects, but still can't make ends meet, well, according to posts like this, they should just have moved somewhere shitty instead.
If we applied the same to degrees, I doubt you'd feel the same about all of the "short-sighted" people who chose to study trades or liberal arts at a state school and now have poor economic prospects, instead of choosing what's attractive at the moment like STEM.
The most obvious solution is remote work. The main economic reason people even live in large cities is jobs. If the jobs can be done anywhere, that would certainly revitalize a lot of the US to points we haven't seen in decades. I'd much rather live in a quiet rural area than in a city with high traffic, high crime and high costs.
Remote work would also have a cascading effect. Say 20 people move to a rural area, well they need food, and their vehicles fixed, and their house maintained, etc. They need to fund their hobbies and generally would bring more money to those areas. Big cities with a lot of power don't want that to happen because they will lose their tax base. I suspect some city governments are incentivizing businesses to bring employees back to the office because of this.
I don't really think remote work will end up in any meaningful rural revitalization. The main urban->other migration I've seen from remote work in my peer group (USA) has been from urban large urban area->smaller urban area or urban area->suburban area. If that holds, we'll have more large cities and bigger suburbs, but I don't know that it helps rural areas at all. I think many people want to be around other people, and if you remove them from other people most of the day (with remote work), they'll want to see people even more after work. Urban/suburban areas are better for this
Many people would consider a suggestion to live in the Midwest as about the same as a suggestion that they spend the rest of their life living in a decrepit sewer system.
Fine by me; there's plenty of natural beauty and life style that would be utterly ruined by a massive influx of tech bro outsiders.
In the last year or two a locally-famous lighthouse went up for sale and was bought for cash by some guy from silicon valley. Instead of being turned into an attraction, or a house, or hell even an Airbnb spot, it remains untouched much to the chagrin of the locals. I guess the new owner can't be bothered to come out here and just liked the idea of bragging that he owned it.
I am confused: you are simultaneously complaining about the tech bros ruining the natural beauty and style but are then unhappy that this particular tech bro didn't do a bunch of development on this lighthouse?
I’m sure they had some plans for it, but a little thing called COVID detailed most plans. Who knows, maybe the owner isn’t even with us anymore and their heirs are still figuring things out.
Every time the Midwest comes up on this site, you get these laughably stupid takes that it's some bombed-out shithole with no jobs other than crime, and where people kill minorities on sight. At least once every couple weeks, there will be a decently sized comment thread about how it's economically desolate and morally evil, and that no sane person would ever move here.
My only response to that is please don't ever stop believing that. Stay away. Don't come crush the housing market with your $200k+ FAANG salary so you can tut-tut the people that live here about how racist, sexist, classist, etc. they are despite having never actually talked to one of them in your life. For those that got dealt a bad hand in life, there is at least a chance for them in the Midwest. If keeping that chance alive means that somebody living in a coastal city thinks my community is human garbage, so be it.
Maybe if they visited, they'd find their assumptions to be unwarranted racism.
It isn't as diverse as some other parts of the country, but there's groups of people from all over the world. Within a 2 hour drive from me, you'll find enclaves from Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Mexico and others.
I went into an experience living in Wisconsin with exactly this viewpoint and was sorely disappointed at the shear amount of selfish, entitled, prejudiced behavior that exists only in these lands of strip malls and spoiled nature. I’m saying this so the next person reading your post isn’t swayed. And to those people: many of these towns are dead. They died long ago with the small farms and factories. The Houses are priced to sell.
I have been sorely disappointed by the shear amount of selfish, entitled, prejudiced behavior I observed in Bay Area, so what? The exact nature of prejudice may be a bit different, but it's still very much around here. OK, the difference in the Bay Area you pay 20x for it, I guess.
If not wanting to live in an enclave as a nominally second-class citizen is racist, then I don't know what to say. Let's not deny reality here, that's really what you end up being if you try to interact with the main racial group in a rural area, or at least the vast majority of them. It doesn't matter what race this happens to be, it's how people work.
I know an Englishman who lives in an Indonesian village (not an enclave). He is constantly reminded that while his presence is cherished, he isn't, and never will be "one of them." He still loves it, though, so there's that.
Most of the tightly closed enclaves are by choice (refugee communities tend to stick together harder than others, from what I can tell). Obviously, not everyone lives in an enclave.
What on earth makes you think they are second class citizens? They vote, attend school board meetings, own homes and live just like anyone else.
As an immigrant, individualist and severe introvert, I'd probably never be "one of them" anywhere anyway, why bother? I suspect that stuff is overrated anyway.
Yup. We've discussed it a fair amount, as we also frequently talk about the news. One friend in particular has lived in a half dozen states, mostly in large cities but also smaller communities, and now lives here because it is where he wants to be. He was stabbed in a metro area by a skinhead. This illusion that big coastal cities of super expensive housing as a mecca of love and diversity that exists nowhere else is just that.
And yet, it's only these coastal "livable" towns that I've ever seen somebody defacate on the sidewalk. In the midwest, at least people are potty trained.
In those places the wages are also considerably lower. The 2/3 are not the people buying, it's the people inheriting existing property: First-Time buyers only make up 33% of home owners.
Considering how long the average family stays in a home without moving, the first time buyer number sounds about right, sans the inheritance bit. I don't know of anyone who kept a home passed on by their parents except for cottages and cabins in the woods. Those typically aren't meant for year round residence anyway.
What if you want to live in an area with employment opportunities? I grew up in a small town in British Columbia. You can't even get a bachelor condo for $50-$80k there. There is nothing available for that price. There's also no industry at all outside of mining. You have to go where the jobs are and for a lot of people that means larger centres.
As another commenter pointed out, a 3.5% down FHA loan would make it feasible to buy a house with those numbers. But in any case, $80k is up there in terms of typical trades salaries, at least if cursory Googling can be trusted. Your median tradesman makes far less.
Where I live (Mpls), tradespeople make six figure salaries and are well above the median HHI for the area.
I lead a team that includes Zoomers and they are making six-figure salaries and are way ahead of where I was (accounting for inflation) when I was at their age.
This is more generational comparison garbage like the claims that Millennials were the downfall of our civilization. Just ignore it and move on.
The trick here is that you compare overall earning over the US (including rural Arkansas and such) with "mid-city" rent - i.e. only select places. According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-ren... at least half the states have median rent below $1000. And yes, you can't live in San Francisco on Arkansas salary, but if you ever tried to hire a plumber in Bay Area, especially for a job beyond "my faucet is leaking", you know very well it costs a real lot.
1) 80k/3 is 26.7k, 1.2k*12 = 14.4k. So, yeah, you can save for a downpayment by merely putting away your "comfortable housing spend" income, even before you move to a 1br apartment (1.2k median rent is for all units, even then I can only find 2019 numbers <1.1k), or save from the other parts of income.
2) Median house (not a Bay Area house) in 2019 was like 320k. Crazy house valuations are only from the last 1.5-2 years and wouldn't have affected generational norms (and we all know why the suddenly exploded). Even then, the median house is 410k, so all you needed/need you need to save is 65-80k in the /worst/ case.
3) Most people buying houses are/should be dual income, given the size of the median house. And given that you're competing against double income people (don't like it? you'd have to roll back the drive for emancipation/equality :)). If you double the income above you can save for a downpayment in like 3 years. I know families where neither partner probably makes 80k buying houses in boring cities e.g. in Texas - and not a starter house either... How? Dual income + non-coastal prices. And yeah, there are tons of jobs in the area.
I honestly don't understand. When I bought a home I was literally making the US median income and bought an average priced house. My rent at the time was about a thousand a month. I had normal student loans and regular bills too. It wasn't easy but it didn't feel like a miracle either. Not saying someone making minimum can do this by any means, but there's a huge demand for labor in decent paying areas right now. I genuinely feel like I'm missing a big piece of this puzzle.
The cost of a house has spiked to over 7x median income in the US, in a very short time. That's put buying a house out of reach for many people. Hopefully the bubble will burst -- but who knows? It could drag on for a very long time.
Historically, the cost of a house has hovered around 4.5 to 5.5x annual median income. It's currently at the highest level it's ever been, at least according to this graph:
House price to income ratio doesn't tell the whole story because that doesn't include cost of mortgage. A more informative value to compare would be monthly payment to income ratio.
For example, when I bought my first home the price was around 4.5x my income. But the interest rate on that first mortgage was 8.25%
People post what they feel like, not what they’ve actually tried.
Even if you ignore first time homeowner benefits and such, the usual thing necessary is not living in the middle of California.
Often if you actually dig into it you find abject refusals to consider locations outside of a particular one, or the famous “spend less on candles. no” type of thing.
At 80k your post-tax takehome is $5000/mo even filing single in a high tax state. Take out $400 for health insurance, $800 for car+insurance, $1200 for rent, and you've still got $2500 for food, miscellaneous spending, Roth IRA, etc. Even if all those costs come to $2000 - unlikely, since the Roth contribution limit is $6k / year - you're still left with $500/month in savings. And that's assuming your partner doesn't bring in _any_ income, which is exceedingly unlikely.
If your typical rent is $1200, that means property values in your area are almost certainly low enough to qualify for FHA loans, which only require 3.5% down due to government subsidies. 3.5% of $450k is $16k - so it only takes about 3 years to save for that down payment.
Home prices are high _because_ FHA loans allow people to have greater purchasing power (among many other reasons like NIMBYism).
I hope this person never has a kid. Enjoy your rent doubling to get enough space and either losing your partner's income or spending $3k a month on day care. Plus whatever crappy insurance you're getting for $400 a month is going to leave with $10k+ in bills for just birthing the kid.
From Kaiser's 2020 survey on healthcare plans, the average worker contribution for HMO/PPO plans for a family was $5000-6000/yr [1]. These are not high deductible plans (those are specifically broken out) so they're going to be pretty good insurance, especially PPO. So $400/mo is only underestimating the true cost by about $100/mo. You can't use ACA marketplace prices to judge what your average worker is paying.
> spending $3k a month on day care
It costs $3200/mo to pay someone $20/h for 40 hours a week, in what world does day care (where one caretaker takes care of multiple children!) cost $3000/mo? The average cost of child care in California, which has _the_ highest cost of labor in the US, is $956/mo [2]. If you use the infant care cost it's $1400/mo, still nowhere near $3000. Maybe in the middle of New York City it costs $3000, but that's not a realistic living scenario for a plumber.
If your spouse makes $3000/mo then the rent increase (call it an extra $800/mo to get to $2k/mo) and childcare cost ($1000/mo) are more than covered by their extra income.
Please just look at the data and take a moment to understand what expenses outside of SF/NYC/LA look like.
> It costs $3200/mo to pay someone $20/h for 40 hours a week, in what world does day care (where one caretaker takes care of multiple children!) cost $3000/mo?
Tell me you have no children without telling me you have no children?
The daycare my child went to is $2500/month. Not quite $3K but I'm not in the most expensive areas. I have no doubt it can go over $3K in SF/Palo Alto/etc.
I saw in your post history you're also paying $2000/mo for health insurance. Maybe you're not making the wisest financial decisions? There's no world in which a rational person pays that much given the data and available plans. Even an ACA platinum plan (the top one) with zero employer or government subsidy is cheaper than that. I just looked and a Platinum plan in CA for a family costs $1400.
gonna guess those averages include state-run programs where parents get vouchers for daycare
i'm not a parent and don't want to be one but know enough parents to know that daycare is bloody fucking expensive, usually thousands/mo, unless the parents have a support system, but even then it's a trade-off.
the silver lining of course is that it's a temporary expense.
> The average annual cost of infant care in California is $16,945—that’s $1,412 per month. Child care for a 4-year-old costs $11,475, or $956 each month.
$1400 for an infant, $950 for a 4 year old. And that's in _the_ highest cost of living state in the country. If you put Michigan it drops to $905/741.
> And this shows roughly $2500 in LA County and $3300 in SF County
Your link comes off as incredibly biased. In literally the second sentence it says "Black and brown people and women of color experienced profound losses of health, community, income, and business at rates far more severe than white households" There's a clear ultra-left political lean to it.
I also literally said that SF/LA/NYC are not representative of costs in the rest of the country. If you're a plumber in SF you make over 6 figures, easily. A plumber makes $80k in a random Midwest city, not in SF/LA. The state of California reported median plumbers in the East Bay made $115k in 2021 [1]. You are fundamentally trying to mislead by using Midwest wages and San Francisco costs. Not to mention that the inflated cost of living is caused by a housing shortage which subsidizing healthcare and childcare doesn't fix.
They aren’t really talking about day care, but a nanny who only takes care of your own children. It’s what’s comparable to having a stay at home parent.
also assumes no loans or credit card debt, both of which are unfortunately likely
also assumes that you are mentally strong enough to live like a pauper to hopefully afford the bare minimum required to scrounge up a downpayment.
doesn't assume building a maintenance fund (2% of home value per year), closing costs (2% of home value, one-time cost), purchasing stuff to fill the home (like furniture/appliances), etc.
To reinforce this, if you follow the links it states
> The term "home-ownership rate" can also be misleading because it includes households that owe on a mortgage.
Depending on your credit score and your down payment, you can wind up functionally renting a home for many years even if you "own" it on paper. It isn't until the final years of a 30 year mortgage that you actually significantly pay down the principal.
As long as interest rates remain low and the credit requirements are lax, most of America can in fact "own" a home. Expect prices to skyrocket, as buyers become more and more decoupled from the cost.
Only ~30% of people receive an inheritance, at an average age of ~50. But folks in their 50s already have a homeownership rate of >60%. I doubt inheritance has much of an impact.
I found a website that says average cost of living in New York (for 1 person) is $3200/month. That's around 40,000 per year. If the electrician is making 80k, that would mean they could save 25k/year after taxes and living expenses. 8 years of work and they would have 200k, enough for a down payment right? And this is assuming they live in new york, one of the most expensive places in the world
Sure, if you save every cent and commit to being single without children for 8 years. But if you go to the dentist, drop your phone on accident, find an S/O, go to the gym, eat out every once in a while, buy some new clothes, pay off student loans, ...
It's just very silly to find a website, grab a number, and then conclude that saving 200k in 8 years is realistic
I doubt this hypothetical person making $80k has a Cadillac health plan. They could definitely be looking at costs like $1500 for a dental crown and $1000 for an MRI before they hit their deductible.
These numbers don't add up. Someone making $80k in NY will be paying at least 15-20% in taxes. This hypothetical person would have a max of like $400 a month for all their non-housing living expenses. That isn't happening in a high COL state like NY.
Anecdote: I am Gen Z. This story holds true for my parents and I.
My dad was a solider in Latin America, my mom, a nurse. Their job required, at most, 2 years of education beyond High School.
I am a data analyst, with a Bachelor's and a Master's. I earn more than they both did together, adjusted for inflation. My friends are in "specialized jobs" as well -- some even being doctors and lawyers. We still have zero hope of affording a house, let alone retirement.
Edit: for anyone wondering, my education was completely free as in my country college is free and I took my Master's in a Nordic country, where education is also free (I worked there to support myself too).
Leaving your support network while already struggling means that things like free childcare from family now needs to be made up for with professional childcare, career prospects can be lower without your professional network, and should you fall on hard times, like being laid off, divorced or getting sick/injured, you can end up in a much deeper hole than you would in place with a support network that can help you get back on your feet.
Okay, then if the solution to unsustainable circumstances isn’t making changes to your own circumstances that are well within your power, what is the solution?
Having unreasonable expectations would be okay, but people are calling it broken because a generation before this had this luxury but pulled the ladder behind them. We are supposed to progress forwards, not backwards.
Housing prices were unreasonably low, people realized it, and now we ran out of housing inventory in the very desirable parts of the country. Still plenty of housing in other areas.
Manhattan used to be very cheap, but it hasn't been that way for at least 30 years. Too many people want to live there now. Basic economic rules of supply and demand dictate the prices.
The only solution is to not play the game. You want a house, buy it where you can afford. There's no magic fairy that will sell you a standalone house in Manhatten on a cashier's salary.
No house in Manhattan on a cashier’s salary has always been the case, that is not something that has regressed. You should check what areas people complain about being unaffordable before dismissing it as “of course NYC and California are expensive”.
You've inspired me, I'm going to make the hard choice and knock over a bank to build a better life. The police can't deal with all the crime these days, so I'd say the cost/benefit analysis is pretty good.
Wow, I had actually never considered "figuring something else". Thanks for this amazing insight. It's almost as useful as telling someone with depression to "just be happy".
Rent in my town is one of the cheapest among bigger cities and I already live very frugally (public transit, only shop for groceries on sale and healthy food, don't go out to parties, don't drink, no addictions, no online subscriptions, only free hobbies + gym). GenXers and Boomers left a shitty world for Gen Z and, for some, life is just not the fairy tale you are used to - sorry mate.
They expect you to go move somewhere cheaper where your career prospects are stocking shelves at Walmart or serving food. Maybe if you're lucky, you could get a job for $36k from the one company in a 200 mile radius that's still hiring in your industry, but is on life support and won't be around in a decade. Also, please ignore the fact that its competitors have all gone out of business or left for better prospects in higher CoL areas, as well.
It's not so much a solution as it is a sneering dismissal of real problems that they don't want to hear about anymore.
Yes of course people deserve that. There is incredible wealth everywhere. Society increased productivity and efficiency so much that workweek should be 3 days.
All the fruits are going to small number of people in the top. You say mostly useless degrees… what about all the mostly useless things - the lamborghinis? the never ending houses? the gimmicks, gadgets, iphones every 6 months…
Why do we supply that and dont supply basic living conditions to everyone?
How are you going to provide everyone ever bigger and bigger single family homes in ever smaller and smaller parcels of land? You must push some people out. That's the nature of big things. They expand and repel.
Why? Because the medium of exchange function stops the moment economic growth stops growing at the rate of productivity. This is because the richest individuals are hoarding employment opportunities and get to save money against the will of the rest of the population. If one guy is doing the work of two, then one person has nothing to do. We grow the economy two fold, so there is enough to do for everyone, even though there are enough products and services for everyone. It's that stupid.
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic of you genuinely believe this..
Either way, telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstrap when a house costs over a million dollars and wages have stagnated for decades is very uncharitable.
I live in Canada, at this rate owning a house is a dream long gone for many people include me.
You realize there are areas with houses well under a million dollars? I live in a very nice area, and even here there are $450K houses. And if you go further away, there are much much cheaper houses.
You realize those areas are nowhere close to the jobs? If you're looking for a job in Toronto, the closest place with an actual house under $450k is likely Windsor, which is around five hours away. Across southern Ontario right now the average price of a house is roughly a million dollars. Five hours is much too far to commute for work on a regular basis and a lot of jobs still require you to be there in person. Some things simply can't be done remotely.
I know things are tough right now but it will get better. Prices won't stay this high forever. They always come down eventually. Be patient and save your money. You'll find something when the time is right. I gave up on a house years ago and set my sights on a condo. Those are relatively affordable in comparison.
Spoken like someone who doesn't have the first clue what things are like elsewhere. Housing in Canada is horrendously expensive and prices are going up far faster than anyone could possibly save money. The median house price is now something like ten times the median household income. On top of that, rents have gone up just as quickly and people are left with no additional income once their basic expenses are paid for.
You are right. I chose to stay in a middle size city because there are jobs and rent is not too high.
My education is none of your concern, especially because I actually got paid both for my Bachelors and Masters, due to academic performance scholarships. It cost me nothing and still paid better than most jobs.
I’m not in a deadend, I do very well, I just have zero prospects of retiring or owning a house. I’m not complaining though, I got it better than many people. I’m grateful for that, and especially even more grateful for not having to be someone so bitter like you. Have fun dying soon of old age in your rich life, with no friends or family bc none can stand your boomer personality :)
How much do you earn? Sorry if it’s rude, I’m genuinely just curious, I figured you’d make enough as a data analyst in any decent-COL living city to be fine
In the US many data analysis jobs are at tech companies, so they require living in expensive cities and competing with software engineers for homes, but pay only like 1/3-1/2 of what software engineers make.
I am late late GenX, and I have no higher education, own my car out right (late model pretty nice), I will pay off my home in the next 5 years, and I financially support one of my parents. I make less than 6 figures so I would not consider myself to be "rich"
I think the key for me is the fact I choose not to incur educational debt getting a BS and/or MS, I also choose to live in a non-coastal region that does not have crazy housing prices. I also had lots of support from my parents* when I was younger so establish myself financially (like enabling me to be able to save for the down payment on this home)
I worked very hard and now make a pretty decent wage after decades of working lower wage jobs.
* To be clear this is just basic support like a stable roof over my head, the were lower middle class as well, their combined income was less than 6 figures, we had a basic home, food, etc but no luxuries, no vacations, one of the reasons I did not go to college was I did not want debt, and the family had no money for tuition
I agree, but I struggled with the wording to covey that I did not come from a wealthy family with a trust fund or something like that
We are a "normal" midwest 2 parent household, in the 50th percentile of income band for the region.
My over arching point is there has to be some personal accountability. it is easy to be a victim, blame the system, blame rich people, blame everyone but yourself for your own circumstances.
Life is hard and often unfair, and I freely admit I am one serious illness away from bankruptcy, there are things we need to do change the system in many ways
However alot of the talk I see about "solutions" will in reality just make things worse and further push victim culture that i see today.
I don't have all the answer, but "woe is me, life is soo hard and unfair" attitude I see I can assure people is not a solution
When you are one major accident or illness away from losing everything you have saved is kind of makes sense to blame those who have fought so hard to make sure typical people don't have access to effective health care at a reasonable cost.
illness or injury yes, as that would prevent me from working, and earning the money I do today
Medical costs however would not the cause of my problems as even in the worst case I would be protected by bankruptcy laws would would allow me to discharge my medical debt while keeping my primary home, and a significant chunk of my personal possessions.
The problem is that most people don't get to choose. There are few of these high paying jobs, so by definition most people are excluded. Either because they're not "smart" enough to get into elite training programs (e.g. medical school) or because they don't have enough money to spend years in training with zero or negative income.
There are other jobs than doctor. You can become a registered nurse with only a bachelor's ($100k+ salary). Engineering pays well. The trades pay well.
What doesn't pay well is zero-effort required jobs like Starbucks barista or social media influencer (is this even a job?). If anyone can do it with no pain required to pass some sort of schooling then it's not going to pay well. Nursing pays well because people are too lazy to make it through 4 years of schooling.
If you're going to come in and claim life circumstances prevent people from getting a 4 year degree, a public school costs at most $120k including living expenses for 4 years. Even if you get _no_ financial aid - which doesn't happen as FAFSA exists - $120k is an entirely manageable sum to pay off over the course of 20 years. And that calculation assumes you don't work at all during summers or during the school year.
Social media influencer is not a job, its a business, and the people doing well at it are making serious money, more than most software engineers. However it's more of a winner takes all market, akin to e.g. acting.
I'd get absolutely chewed out as a Starbucks barista or working in food service in general. I don't think it's fair to say it's a job that requires zero effort.
The US isn't different for 'regular' poor people. Two years of community college to be a nurse and you're good to go with a job in any city.
Except in the US there are enclaves of destitute poverty, generational poverty, extreme levels of incarceration, job prohibitions for low-level convicts (which can be 1/2 the men in some areas), high crime, schools with low graduation rates, weak access to things like dental care, poor transit options for medical care, pollution, insufficient care for the elderly, lack of mental health care, opioid addiction, children with high rates of lead poisoning, etc. Those people have the deck stacked against them.
You can go to college for free or extremely cheap in the US if you are poor as well. A lot of poor people don't know this which is a problem, but the option is still there.
All the more reason to adopt the bohemian philosophy and pursue other pleasures if one finds working these modern jobs unfulfilling, only so much time on this earth.
Why do you assume the poster ever cared about git, naming or racism? Even among Americans, these are minority. Moreover, HN is more of actively hostile tonideas like that. You don't even know whether OP is American. You are doing literally what you complain about why you complain about it.
Moreover, bohemian literally means "a socially unconventional person, especially one who is involved in the arts". I am guessing you probably misread it as "gypsy" or "roma" where such stereotype might exist (tho negative stereotypes about them are much different nowdays afaik, but were be like that in past)
Bohemia is a place and a people within what is now the Czech republic.
"Bohemian" got that meaning because French aristocratic youth saw Roma gypsy immegrants and just called them whatever the closest east European neighbors they thought of.
The fact that you think it is a lifestyle and not a people shows just how much history is lost. Somehow king Wenceslas got turned into a Christmas carol, but that's about it.
Czechs are not referred to as bohemians. Gypsies are not referred to as bohemians.
And I don't just "think" it is lifestyle. I checked multiple dictionaries and they all refer to it as lifestyle. And the way it was used, it was always used as lifestyle. I never even seen it being used for either czechs or gypsies.
That does not prove anyone nowdays refers to Czechs or gypsies as Bohemians. Bohemia is not even made fun of within czech republic, there are no special negative stereotypes or oppression made to it. They call themselves czechs, they don't tend to refer to themselves as bohemians.
It just ... exists. And contains capital.
And the word in English means what I wrote and not whatever you imagine it to mean.
Strange, my father's entire family (emigrated from the region in the late 1800's) still refer to themselves as Czech and Bohemians almost interchangeably. It has fallen out of use, but "bohunk" was an ethnic slur that was semi-common for most of my grandparents lives.
To be clear, I am not saying that the word bohemian is used as a slur. I am merely finding it ironic that people who have qualms about things like "master" in git or "microagressions" have no problem using a word that was used in France to make light of any genetic eastern Europeans. "bohemian" as an artsy, free living, dirt poor hippy utterly erases centuries of history of a real people (not even the people they thought it applied to).
>Most simple labor will be automated very soon anyway.
It's not clear if there's a simple correlation between "training required" and "automation ready". For example, people have been talking about automating radiology for years, although I'm currently finishing up a study on one such system and we certainly aren't there yet. Meanwhile, the relatively "low skill" job of construction is considered very difficult to automate due to the high variability in environments and materials.
This uncertainty means that reluctance to join professions that "may" be automated in the coming years might be interpreted as a result of risk-aversion, and that risk is higher when the job training is longer.
Yes, obviously there are still _some_ jobs with decent pay that do not require extensive higher ed. The point is there are far fewer. Demand for plumbers, etc has not grown to fill in the massive gaps left by deindustrialization.
Guess it depends on where you live. I live in Amsterdam Area and there is a shortage of plumbers in my city. The family owned business always have their agenda full, and they do well (even after taxes). You don't learn such a trait in a day or week. These guys are professionals, learned it via trait school. Its a different league compared to stuff like package or food delivery (though even for package delivery you need a drivers license). They are self employed family business while the food and package deliverers also have their 'own business'; in reality its to pay them less, have no severence package, no insurance, arrange their own tooling and vehicle, etc (ie. all the shit from gig economy). The problem is the government allows it while they could easily say if you don't get twice or triple minimum wage plus a top-down hierarchy you are not self employed. This clearly excludes the real consultant business as they earn more and also don't fall under top-down hierarchy. Another thing these deliverers should be allowed to is deliver for multiple companies. A self employed consultant picks their own clients, not the other way around unless there is things like confidentiality / conflict of interest.
Yes. You've never been able to buy a house or raise "a family of four" on minimum wage. Minimum wage was never intended to provide that level of income.
> It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
> By business I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
Minimum wage, as part of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, was described as a means to prevent "economic slavery". If you aren't capable of raising four children on it then it's not living up to it's original intention
The problem is that life isn’t a nice linear distribution of truth the way data heads think.
Continuing to play the “optimize myself based upon some meta game as see it” is not a viable strategy.
There is no science that says Musk is certainly on the right path to human longevity.
None of the rich are infallibly and unassailably correct; pointing at them as correct is an appeal to authority which is ludicrous when we have plenty of evidence to show politics is corrupted such that elites are “too big to fail.”
I’m not obligated to make choices based upon your view of the problem and your solution is more of the same “boot straps”.
This culture is a joke. Moral relativism it is; if my choices screw any of you, oh well. Free market.
The world has changed - simple labor that requires a few days of training doesn't pay much. Most jobs, with few exceptions, that require a decade of training, do pay well. That's why there's such a huge gap between Amazon packers and electricians, and an even bigger gap with surgeons.
If you want to do well in the modern economy, you have to choose your specialization wisely. Most simple labor will be automated very soon anyway.