rofl at car prices or everything prices.

[[DHT]Osiris]

That idea might carry more weight if builders weren't building like gangbusters and prices still stay high relative to wages. Building housing that people at the median wage can't afford is a real issue. Raise the median wage and things can start improving.

It doesn't help that the places that are getting built in my city are least are all expensive as shit, like $2k/mo apartments or $500k+ homes.

 

[brianmanahan]

I was looking at a house that sold for 550K in 2020. Now selling for 950k.

lol.

yah, i picked a bad time to be renting an apartment when COVID hit

by the time i was able to drive again and started looking for a house, everything had skyrocketed. still, i should've gotten a skyrocket priced house at %2 mortgage versus an EVEN HIGHER priced house at 8% mortgage.

a coworker bought a house for 250$k 4 years ago and is trying to sell it for 500$k now. he did start it higher than that but has dropped it by %10 so far.

that's the market though. if he wants to move then he's gotta have the money to put into something else.

the people who didn't have houses to begin with are the real losers. and the people who owned multiple houses are the real winners.

i've always known i am a loser, but now i'm an even bigger loser.

 

[Brainonska511]

It doesn't help that the places that are getting built in my city are least are all expensive as shit, like $2k/mo apartments or $500k+ homes.

New things are always more expensive than used things. But also, the rules that people have to navigate to build anything leads to only building the highly profitable stuff that pencils out.

 

[Zeze]

yah, i picked a bad time to be renting an apartment when COVID hit

by the time i was able to drive again and started looking for a house, everything had skyrocketed. still, i should've gotten a skyrocket priced house at %2 mortgage versus an EVEN HIGHER priced house at 8% mortgage.

a coworker bought a house for 250$k 4 years ago and is trying to sell it for 500$k now. he did start it higher than that but has dropped it by %10 so far.

that's the market though. if he wants to move then he's gotta have the money to put into something else.

the people who didn't have houses to begin with are the real losers. and the people who owned multiple houses are the real winners.

i've always known i am a loser, but now i'm an even bigger loser.

You are not a loser.

A friend of mine also got priced out of his top choice towns right before his eyes.

Another friend of mine has multiples of properties from his parents. He does work hard, but he's sitting very very comfortable right now.

 

[dullard]

I'd like to see a more detailed breakdown as opposed to just an average/typical. How much have executive or higher-level positions increased, and how much has that driven up that "average' raise amount? I have a feeling that the biggest raises have come at the top, and the bottom has gotten little to nothing.



Again, I don't believe a 40% raise in less than a decade is how the "average" job pay increases. Claiming that any and all jobs should expect this is unrealistic IMHO. And saying to find another job if you didn't get it is also unrealistic for many people.

There isn't some magical vacant job generator that everyone can choose as an option if they feel they aren't paid enough in their current positions. And labor workers tend to hit caps in wages, where executives do not.

I did mention as an aside that "Obviously, any specific job will differ" from the average. The expected raises do depend on the specific job. You can see thousands of different breakdowns here:

Wages - Economic Data Series | FRED | St. Louis Fed

15,147 economic data series with tag: Wages. FRED: Download, graph, and track economic data.

fred.stlouisfed.org

The US average is here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003

• Jan 2015: $25.75/hr
• Jan 2023: $33.02/hr
• A 33.4% gain assuming you got the average raise and no promotions. That is pretty darn close to my simple example of a 34% increase.

Here is people with full time jobs, but less than a high school degree and over 25 years old (that is, fairly close to the bottom for full time employees): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252916700Q

• Q2 2015: $499/week
• Q2 2023: $713/week
• A 42.9% increase. How does this compare to what you feel? Or are you thinking of part time employees?

This might be the most relevant to Anandtech (engineering men over 16 years old): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254633400A

• 2014: $1975/week
• 2022: $2777/week (2023 data isn't on the chart yet)
• A 40.6% increase.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

The vacancy rates don't lie, and the amount being built is a drop in the bucket of what's needed. NYC needs hundreds of thousands of more units, and only a fraction is being built. Same for the Boston metro area, and many other metros.

And because the cores of cities are restricted and infill is just a trickle, we just get immense sprawl (like Dallas and Houston) and high prices (like San Francisco).

NYC has a ton of residential and commercial real estate sitting vacant for years because people won't pay through the nose for it. Louis Rossman bitches about it constantly on his youtube channel where he gets on his bike and shows off places vacant for 5-10 years in primo NYC locations.

 

[Brainonska511]

NYC has a ton of residential and commercial real estate sitting vacant for years because people won't pay through the nose for it. Louis Rossman bitches about it constantly on his youtube channel where he gets on his bike and shows off places vacant for 5-10 years in primo NYC locations.

The amount of vacancies is a tiny drop compared to the need. There aren't half a million vacant units.

 

[Fritzo]

To give you an idea how insanely high used cars prices are, I bought both my wife's car and my car in 2019, and they're both worth $6000 more than we paid with 60K more miles on them.

That's just stupid.

 

[Kaido]

Unfortunately, my mind lives in math (I have what could be called social dyslexia). So, it is hard for me to know where your stumbling blocks could be. My default is just to throw more math into the thread which might make it worse. I'll try with a diagram instead. Please let me know if this helps or makes it worse.

I'll make a few assumptions.

• I'll assume a starting salary of $50,000. The amount doesn't matter since it will cancel out at the end. But $50,000 seems like a starting place that isn't unreasonable for a typical American.
• I'll assume a constant raise of 3.73% each year. I just got this from a quick Google search of typical US annual raises. https://paydestiny.com/average-raise-after-1-year-of-work/ Obviously, any specific job will differ.

With those assumptions, the image below is what happens after 8 years: $50,000 -> $67,020. A person who got the US average raise over 8 years will have a 34% increase in salary. That is close but not quite the 40% that @Zeze bemoaned. But, it isn't hard to imagine with his promotion, that he would have gotten at least a 5% raise in addition to the other raises. If his promotion led to an additional 5% raise, then he'd end up with $67,020 * 1.05 = $70,371. That is a 40.7% increase in 8 years.

View attachment 86305

If Zeze didn't increase his salary by 40% in that time frame, then he either got lower than average raises or a promotion with almost no salary change. Both would be serious red flags to me to look for a better job.

It's 50/50 for me. I have Inattentive ADHD, so my working memory is very small. I do fine on the Internet, essays, etc. where I have time to work things out, but the math dyslexia portion basically does things like transposes numbers, fogs numbers out in my head (I have a hard time remembering the workflow past about 2 operations...I can't even calculate a tip in my head lol), I get the order of operations out of order, and I hit a mental wall that kind of feelings like being super tired where I can't think past the logic of even simple problems, like basic algebra formulas to find "X".

I didn't learn this until a few years ago...one of the big reasons I dropped out of programming was that I couldn't easily do the advanced math required for things like programming, game logic, database queries, etc. It was like walking over a landmine haha! Word problems were especially killer for me because I'd lose sight of the objective because my brain would just refuse to continue to think about the flow of data required to understand & complete the operation required.

It's dumb, I don't like it lol. Working on re-learning math as an adult...it's SUPER slow going! Literally induces a headache!

 

[Kaido]

Sure, base model to contemporary base model of another line up, it may have been better, but what has been added to the base model since? Many are now including basic collision avoidance, or Android Auto/Apple Carplay, better safety equipment - all things that push up that base model price.

Their quality went waaaaay up in the last 10 years...they're using high-strength steel now. They have a minimum 4-star crash-test safety rating, which is pretty good for a compact-ish "budget" car:

https://www.suntrupkiasouth.com/manufacturer-information/2023-kia-soul-safety-ratings/

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Relevant:

 

[Brainonska511]

Relevant:
View attachment 86344

Yeah, that guy is an idiot and doesn't know how to shop.

A few things wrong with that pic: Beef square which is more expensive than typical ground beef, 2 large boxes of cereal (with positioning trying to hide one), prepackaged chips, Kind bars, precut fruit, the berries can be expensive if they aren't on sale, etc...

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Yeah, that guy is an idiot and doesn't know how to shop.

A few things wrong with that pic: Beef square which is more expensive than typical ground beef, 2 large boxes of cereal (with positioning trying to hide one), prepackaged chips, Kind bars, precut fruit, the berries can be expensive if they aren't on sale, etc...

I think you'll agree though, it still shouldn't be that expensive. Yeah you can bargain basement yourself into a $30 shop of steroid beef and half rotten fruit, but the wealthiest country in the world probably shouldn't have to do that.

 

[Brainonska511]

I think you'll agree though, it still shouldn't be that expensive. Yeah you can bargain basement yourself into a $30 shop of steroid beef and half rotten fruit, but the wealthiest country in the world probably shouldn't have to do that.

No, I think that guy is still an idiot. You don't have to buy bottom of the barrel stuff to not spend $100 and get the amount of food pictured. This dude has a serious shopping skills deficiency and is posting just for clout. The key to most grocery stores is: buy when it is on sale - spend literally 5-10 minutes to glance through the circular and clip the online coupons; and stock up when things are cheap.

 

[pmv]

Same capitalism we were in when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle. Same kind of bank fraud in real estate, same kind of disregard for workers, same kind of horrible conditions in meat packing plants, same robber barons cornering markets, etc. What we have right now is correctly functioning capitalism where the working class is efficiently mined by a small ruling class.

My sense is that It had its golden era - from maybe 1950 to 1972. And perhaps there was a period before WW1 when it was going well.

But since then it's been a return to normal (mal)functioning.

I keep seeing people say this (or "late-stage"), but it's been said for 100+ years. When does the end come? Things have gotten materially better for everyone over time, despite the wealthy running away with their gains. There are certainly everyday problems pinching people, like housing costs, but that isn't inherently a capitalism issue.

Yeah, the term 'late period capitalism' seems to get used a lot, but it's long seemed a very optimistic term to me - or pessimistic, depending on what one thinks might supplant it

 

[Brainonska511]

My sense is that It had its golden era - from maybe 1950 to 1972. And perhaps there was a period before WW1 when it was going well.

Golden era if you were white and male.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

No, I think that guy is still an idiot. You don't have to buy bottom of the barrel stuff to not spend $100 and get the amount of food pictured. This dude has a serious shopping skills deficiency and is posting just for clout. The key to most grocery stores is: buy when it is on sale - spend literally 5-10 minutes to glance through the circular and clip the online coupons; and stock up when things are cheap.

Cool, so you can buy what you don't need, when you don't need it. First world nation, whutup!

 

[Brainonska511]

Cool, so you can buy what you don't need, when you don't need it. First world nation, whutup!

Pantries, cabinets, and freezers are a thing people have. If you know you're going to eat something in the next 6 months as part of your regular diet or meal making (ie, cereal, snack foods, frozen goods, meat [since it can be frozen]), why not stock up when it is cheap? If you want to pay more because you only buy groceries in the moment you absolutely need them, be my guest.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Pantries, cabinets, and freezers are a thing people have. If you know you're going to eat something in the next 6 months as part of your regular diet or meal making (ie, cereal, snack foods, frozen goods, meat [since it can be frozen]), why not stock up when it is cheap? If you want to pay more because you only buy groceries in the moment you absolutely need them, be my guest.

You can for a lot of stuff, I'd argue freezing meat fucks with the texture but as long as we're pretending the beef doesn't come from our backyard I guess we can freeze that too.

That aside, there's only so much stocking up you can do. That person's buy didn't look outlandish, it's a bunch of fruit, veg, a protein, some cereal, questionable snack products. That's pretty fucking calm for most Americans that fill their basket with frozen dinners and shit.

 

[pmv]

Golden era if you were white and male.

Not sure if I agree with that point or not.

I mean, from the point of view of the total experience of actual people, yes, it was a golden era for white males almost exclusively. But from the point of view of judging an economic system on its own terms, capitalism itself was doing very well in that era - growth was high and it didn't fall into repeated crises.

 

[pmv]

Pantries, cabinets, and freezers are a thing people have. If you know you're going to eat something in the next 6 months as part of your regular diet or meal making (ie, cereal, snack foods, frozen goods, meat [since it can be frozen]), why not stock up when it is cheap? If you want to pay more because you only buy groceries in the moment you absolutely need them, be my guest.

Freezers cost a lot of money to run.
Tinned food you can stock up on, but everything else tends to go off, unless you spend a lot of money on electricity running a fridge (yet alone a freezer).

 

[Brainonska511]

Freezers cost a lot of money to run.
Tinned food you can stock up on, but everything else tends to go off, unless you spend a lot of money on electricity running a fridge (yet alone a freezer).

You don't need to run a separate freezer and store 6+ months of stuff. I'm talking about buying stuff for maybe the 1-month time span. Most grocery items go in cycles: on sale about every 4-6 weeks.

I mean, from the point of view of the total experience of actual people, yes, it was a golden era for white males almost exclusively. But from the point of view of judging an economic system on its own terms, capitalism itself was doing very well in that era - growth was high and it didn't fall into repeated crises.

Also, from the 50s through the 70s, consumer goods were extremely expensive. Cars, TVs, clothing, etc: those have all plumetted in price when you compare prices then to now. The only thing really keeping everyone down now is housing costs, and that's because we refuse to believe that supply and demand is a thing that also impacts that market.

That aside, there's only so much stocking up you can do. That person's buy didn't look outlandish, it's a bunch of fruit, veg, a protein, some cereal, questionable snack products. That's pretty fucking calm for most Americans that fill their basket with frozen dinners and shit.

Again: not complaining about what he bought. I'm saying he is just bad at shopping, and posting nonsense for clout. If I buy a big tub of strawberries and it's not on sale, that's going to run me $8; more if it's "organic". If I wait till it's on sale, it's $3-$4/lb. If strawberries are not cheap that week, some other fruit and veg will be, so buy those.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Not sure if I agree with that point or not.

I mean, from the point of view of the total experience of actual people, yes, it was a golden era for white males almost exclusively. But from the point of view of judging an economic system on its own terms, capitalism itself was doing very well in that era - growth was high and it didn't fall into repeated crises.

Sure if you ignore the massive environmental issues that we are still paying for, like leaded gas and paint, asbestos, and pollution in general. Our city center was unlivable by the 1980s which caused massive exodus to the suburbs. Would we have seen that success without kicking the externalized costs down the road?

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Sure if you ignore the massive environmental issues that we are still paying for, like leaded gas and paint, asbestos, and pollution in general. Our city center was unlivable by the 1980s which caused massive exodus to the suburbs. Would we have seen that success without kicking the externalized costs down the road?

Don't forget the hole in the ozone from pfas!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Pantries, cabinets, and freezers are a thing people have. If you know you're going to eat something in the next 6 months as part of your regular diet or meal making (ie, cereal, snack foods, frozen goods, meat [since it can be frozen]), why not stock up when it is cheap? If you want to pay more because you only buy groceries in the moment you absolutely need them, be my guest.

Most of the stuff in that pic is stuff that does not really keep or freeze well though. Some of it you could maybe grow yourself and if you have a decent rotation you can harvest as needed.

Also if you only buy stuff on sale you're just going to waste money in gas trying to go to every store that has sales or going more often, instead of just doing a dedicated grocery trip to get everything you need at once.

The fact that it's more expensive than before is still a problem either way. Somebody is profiting, and it's not us or the workers.