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Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Sat April 09, 2016 9:08 pm

From today's Wall Street Journal. I can relate; after hearing all my life "buy a house" I bought in '07 and am still underwater.

Housing Bust Lingers for Gen X

The group of Americans known as Generation X has suffered more than any other age cohort from the housing bust, according to an analysis of federal data, suggesting homeownership rates for that group could remain depressed for years to come. The data show an enormous swing in the fortunes of people born between 1965 and 1984, the group defined by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies as Generation X. Compared with previous generations, Generation X went from the most successful in terms of homeownership rates in 2004 to the least successful by 2015, according to the data, which date to the early 1980s.

The culprit: a historic bull market for housing, fueled in part by easy-to-get mortgages, that encouraged record levels of home buying until the financial system cracked and the housing market collapsed. Earlier generations such as baby boomers, who entered the market before the frenzy of the early 2000s, have fared better.

Generation X “came into the market at precisely the wrong time,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president at Ten-X.com, an online real-estate brokerage. “We’ve effectively wiped out a group of homeowners who historically would have been on their second or third properties by now.”

In 2004, people then-aged 25 to 34, the core of Generation X, had a homeownership rate of 49.5%, the highest for that age group since the U.S. Census Bureau started regularly collecting such data in the early 1980s.

Last year, by contrast, the homeownership rate for 35-to-44-year-olds was at a more than three-decade low of 58.5%, down from an average of 65.8% for that age group. The upshot: Generation X experienced a much smaller increase in homeownership rates than previous generations as they hit middle age.

Much of the discussion of the future of the housing market centers on millennials, the group born between 1985 and 2004, according to the Harvard Center. Their tendency to live at home with parents and delay getting married has raised concerns about long-term homeownership trends. But Generation X’s travails promise to disrupt traditional real-estate patterns as well. The housing market can be viewed as a progression through time: younger people start out renting, save enough to buy houses, build equity and then trade up to more desirable homes. Now that trajectory has been interrupted, with fewer middle-aged buyers trading up, which would open up the inventory of smaller homes for younger buyers.

The challenge is compounded because the population of Generation X, roughly 83 million, is smaller than the roughly 87 million millennials. By 2025, millennials are expected to grow to 93 million, mainly due to immigration, while the size of Generation X will remain steady.

There are now three million more renters in their 30s and 40s today than 10 years ago, even though the number of households in that age bracket declined, according to data from the Harvard Joint Center.

“We need them to be buying houses and pushing the market,” said Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California. “But they’re not. They’re not moving. The whole system is gridlocked.”

Xavier Texidor, 33 years old, and his wife have bought and lost two homes outside Jacksonville, Fla., since he was in his early 20s.

The first was a condominium they bought in 2003, a property that left them underwater in 2008 after the value plummeted. After turning the condo over to the bank, they bought again in 2012, but the needed repairs on the home drove them deeper into debt, and eventually into bankruptcy in 2014.

“Growing up, I heard a lot of people say how renting was a waste of money. I don’t see it that way anymore,” he said. “I’m looking forward to buying a house again, but I plan on definitely taking my time.”

Many people who lost homes to foreclosures or short sales face long waits before lenders will consider them again—up to seven years for foreclosures and up to three years for a short sale. A study last year by the National Association of Realtors estimated that about a third of the 9 million buyers who went through distressed sales or foreclosures between 2006 and 2014 will never return to homeownership.

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Mon April 11, 2016 9:47 am

Don't worry, we've got a fix:

Team Obama to Banks: Issue Home Loans to Riskier Borrowers

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Tue April 12, 2016 5:13 am

b_i_revisited wrote:Don't worry, we've got a fix:

Team Obama to Banks: Issue Home Loans to Riskier Borrowers


Surely no coincidence that John Oliver had a bit about errors in credit reports. When do we read "disparate impact" in regards to credit?

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Sun April 23, 2017 1:16 pm

Choose where you live very carefully, not all trend lines are good.

Image

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Mon June 26, 2017 7:56 pm

I guess this is as good a place to put this as any other.

https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/file ... 0Paper.pdf

This paper evaluates the wage, employment, and hours effects of the first and second phase-in of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 and to $13 per hour in 2016. Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Thu June 29, 2017 9:27 pm

bart wrote:I guess this is as good a place to put this as any other.

https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/file ... 0Paper.pdf

This paper evaluates the wage, employment, and hours effects of the first and second phase-in of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 and to $13 per hour in 2016. Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies

Almost as interesting as the UW study is the drama surrounding the companion UC-Berkeley study that drew the opposite conclusion.

https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/seat ... ized-data/

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Thu June 29, 2017 9:29 pm

Also, I'm confident that the Party of Science will quickly update its priors and begin supporting efforts to eliminate minimum wage legislation.

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Thu June 29, 2017 10:18 pm

--- wrote:
bart wrote:I guess this is as good a place to put this as any other.

https://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/file ... 0Paper.pdf

This paper evaluates the wage, employment, and hours effects of the first and second phase-in of the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance, which raised the minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 per hour in 2015 and to $13 per hour in 2016. Using a variety of methods to analyze employment in all sectors paying below a specified real hourly rate, we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016. Evidence attributes more modest effects to the first wage increase. We estimate an effect of zero when analyzing employment in the restaurant industry at all wage levels, comparable to many prior studies

Almost as interesting as the UW study is the drama surrounding the companion UC-Berkeley study that drew the opposite conclusion.

https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/seat ... ized-data/


Would be interesting to see what it would be like if Amazon and its support businesses were factored out. That would be a safer dataset for the rest of the country.

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Thu June 29, 2017 11:00 pm

--- wrote:Also, I'm confident that the Party of Science will quickly update its priors and begin supporting efforts to eliminate minimum wage legislation.
Question: would you support an increased EITC or creation of a negative income tax if in exchange the minimum wage was abolished?

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Fri June 30, 2017 5:34 pm

Green Habit wrote:
--- wrote:Also, I'm confident that the Party of Science will quickly update its priors and begin supporting efforts to eliminate minimum wage legislation.
Question: would you support an increased EITC or creation of a negative income tax if in exchange the minimum wage was abolished?

Yes, with the caveat that the EITC basically does nothing for low-wage individuals without children. The cap is about $500 for a single filer with income of about $15,000 (it's $20,000 for a married couple filing jointly).

But as a matter of efficiency, EITCs and negative income taxes are clearly superior to a minimum wage.

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Fri June 30, 2017 11:01 pm

I knew my post would summon thodoks.

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Wed July 19, 2017 1:44 am

https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/17/subway-digital-self-order-kiosk-apple-pay/

That should give them more money to cover that $15 minimum wage.

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Sat July 29, 2017 3:49 pm

Image

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Sat September 23, 2017 10:41 am

Image

Looks about right.

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Sat September 23, 2017 10:55 am

Bi_3 wrote:Image

Image

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Sun September 24, 2017 4:26 am

Bi_3 wrote:Image


but,
prices should rise after a decade (inflation); and land has a finite supply, meanwhile the U.S. population grew by 25 million people over that time (more demand for limited supply thing - normal thing);
tighter credit is a reflection of higher quality borrowing standards (good thing);
unemployment is still very low (good thing);
potassium benzoate (bad thing);
labor force has more access to pills than ever before (good thing, then bad thing);
wages aren't shrinking, they just aren't growing as much on the average as the Fed wants; but not bc the economy is floundering, rather lower-cost millenials keep swapping-in to the labor force while higher-cost boomers retire out, keeping average wages down (good thing for capitalists);
that aging housing supply though....

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Mon October 23, 2017 9:27 pm

Image

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Wed October 25, 2017 12:05 pm

graphs n shit.


a decade ago 400 families owned 90% of America,

Since 1978 wages and salaries have not increased, relative to inflation.


Tech and automation led labor to a tipping point....either labor was to be compensated fairly, or the managers and CEO's were to reap the rewards. Labor had reached a point where fewer workers could produce more....not because of regulation...because of tech.

Any cursory look at wages/salaries points a pretty fucking clear picture that the profits have gone to upper classes.

Completely arbitrary.

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Wed October 25, 2017 3:49 pm

And yet hunger and extreme poverty have been rapidly declining globally over the past three decades.

In the United States the following statements are true about people labeled as living in poverty:

99.6% have a refrigerator
97.7% have a TV
97.7% have a stove and an oven
92% own a microwave
80% have air conditioning
65% have more than 1 TV
"Nearly 2/3" have cable TV
"More than half with children" have a video game system

96% say that their children were never hungry in the last year because they couldn't afford food.

Obviously, I'm not arguing that life is good or easy to be poor, even by American standards. However, simply looking at numbers like the number of people classified as poor or the relative stagnation of real wages since the early 70's masks a lot of improvement that has taken place across all income levels.

The growth of American wealth over the past decades has been shared by everybody, even if the percentage of wealth as measured in dollars or income has grown for people at the top over that same time period.

The price of air travel is down 40% since 1978 and quality is increased. A majority of Americans walk around with computers in their pocket that's well beyond the wildest dreams of a person 40 years ago. We have more choices of what to consume than ever before. The quality of the goods we have access to has dramatically increased and at the same time the prices for many have fallen quite dramatically. If you compare the relative welfare of people in the each quintile 40 years ago to people in that same quintile today, people today are clearly better off.

Re: Does anyone care about the economy?

Wed October 25, 2017 3:57 pm

Bi_3 wrote:Image

Looks about right.

I know I'm going blind but it sure looks like the All, Middle 40%, Bottom 90%, and Bottom 50% all have the same colors on that graph.
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