reply on: "Housing prices are not high by any historical standard"

pull down to refresh

304 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 22 Aug \ parent \ on: "Housing prices are not high by any historical standard" - evoskuil econ

He seems to be arguing with the broader idea that the younger generations (in the US at least) are poorer than their predecessors at similar times of life.

Then I suppose the issue is that they're talking past each other. Nic Carter's original post was about housing. Why would you then want to make a point about overall economic situation?

By the way, I would agree that young people today are richer in real terms than young people of the past.

But I'd also argue that rich in material terms does not necessarily lead to life satisfaction. Just because you can afford $80,000 of doordash but can't buy a house... I don't think that would make you happier than having an $80,000 house and no DoorDash. I think young people are probably less satisfied than in the past. This may have to do with overinflated expectations, social media, any number of things. But let's focus just on housing for now.

We could argue about causality vs correlation, and how to truly interpret the data. But in this case: if the people are saying housing is too expensive, and most of the data is saying housing is too expensive, and most economists by the way are also saying housing is too expensive.... then housing is probably too expensive.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 22 Aug

But I'd also argue that rich in material terms does not necessarily lead to life satisfaction.

This is a great point, and well said.

then housing is probably too expensive.

I need a go look back at newspapers from the 80s or 90s and see how people were talking about housing prices.

My (un-evidenced) suspicion is that they were saying it was expensive. In the same way that old people like to deplore the morality of the youth, the youth like to bemoan the expense of modern life.

You are probably close set to the truth of the matter than Voskuil, but I enjoyed his take because it is not something I hear very often at all, and I do think it has some well-reasoned argument behind it.

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 22 Aug

You are right that people will probably be complaining about the same things in every generation, but I have a feeling that if you asked them to rank things in terms of how problematic they are, housing costs would be much higher ranked today than in the 80s and 90s.

Just a guess, I haven't looked at that kind of data.

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen 24 Aug

We could also uncover the following polls:

How many people under 25 wanted to buy a house by 35 in the then year 1900, 1910, 1920, ... , 2025 vs How many bought a house.
Why did some in 1 above fail to buy a house by 1900, 1910 ... 2025.
How many people under 25 wanted to be married by 35 in the then year 1900, 1910, 1920, ... , 2025 vs How many got married.
Why did some in 3 above fail to be married by 1900, 1910 ... 2025.

These brings a subjective experience to these discussions that tracks wants and desires over time. They could also do it differently for men and women. For men, start at 30 and track them up to 40. For ladies, start at 25 (because I think many women will want to be married at 25. While one will find it had to find 25 yo guys thinking of marriage).