Wages have not kept up with cost of living for 50 years in the US.
We need to stop pretending flat wages are some modern problem of inflation, and we need to stop pretending inflation is some problem caused by the pandemic.
The numbers themselves dont actually matter. It doesnt matter if highly compensated to you means $88k or $150k annual compensation, $450k or $750k.
If a single earner cant buy a home outright in 5 years in that area, then the compensation isn't high enough compared to when wages were keeping up. There was a housing shortage in the 1970s too, so the supply side isnt a worthwhile deflection.
The oppression contest and olympics from the masses earning way less isn't really useful because that just conveniently perpetuates the reality.
Uh, source on the housing shortage in the 1970s being even remotely close to this level?
Because, yeah, demand outstripping the heck out of supply is the "deflection" I'd pick.
The same tech worker (or whoever a local municipality happens to be pointing fingers at) would pay $1200/mo in one area, or $7500/mo in the other area. A wealthy class of people have always existed that can pay rent or mortgage or own at pretty much any price.
The landlords are the greedy ones - the neighbors and corporations that were already there for the most part. I’m not arguing for anything (in case someone mistakes this for a rent control argument), just have been in enough cities to hear it all.
But they don't. Instead, landlords fight against the construction against additional housing so they can limit supply and increase prices.
I had a 900 sq foot, 2br, 1 bath apartment in the suburbs in 2012 that was $800/month. Each annual lease renewal was a higher price. When I moved out in 2015, the price was $950 at the time. If I had renewed, it would have been $1,100/month. That apartment now is $1,500/month. In less than 10 years, that apartment has doubled in cost.
Rising prices do not indicate a competitive market.
I agree with most of the rest of your comment, but none of that means that the landlords are price setters.
Nor does it show that discussing supply is a "deflection."
Perhaps property sales and rentals should require attestations about who offered what price and we can use that data to consider deterrents or levies on those who moved the price up from the prior owner or tenant. Sure there are some prospective occupants that will say a higher price just to skip the queue, I dont think they are really the majority of people even when well funded transplants descend upon a town. I think the majority just take whatever the landlord offers.
Taking the price offered for a particular property is not the same as ignoring prices. Apartment shoppers search for the combination of quality and price that best satisfies their preferences. I have a hard time imagining an alternative. Would that be going to an apartment search engine and simply picking the first result, regardless of quality and price?
When I go to the grocery store, I don't negotiate with the cashier. That doesn't mean grocery stores aren't competing with each other.
If a landlord chooses to consistently rent below market rates, for whatever foolish reason, then they'll probably wind up selling the building to someone who knows what the market rate is. It might take a while, but it'll happen eventually.
It is possible to have rising prices in a competitive market. For example, the automobile market is competitive and experiences rising prices. When I was shopping for an apartment not long ago, I saw several signs advertising discounts. This is evidence that landlords compete on price. However, lack of advertised discounts would not be evidence of a monopoly.
I'm curious if there are any theories besides wage stagnation that caused that change?
Minimum wage hikes chew through profits and profits are pretty much the #1 legislative priority because that's the primary concern of those doing the campaign financing.
Same reason gun control wont happen no matter how many people get killed - ultimately its because gun manufacturers would lose money.
American politics is the art of trying to shape public opinion just enough to be compatible with the desires of campaign financers.
Additionally, even if profits were a moot point, the 2nd amendment is a culture war wedge issue that runs bone-deep for the average American.
Take away the profit margins and have a few more mass shootings and I imagine the 2nd amendment would melt away as easily as the 4th did.
The 2nd amendment will never go away as long as conservatives use it as a wedge issue. It's far too important as leverage, and they've been incredibly successful in cementing it further into law even very recently. My state just passed Constitutional Carry into law this year.
In the US, States can regulate, even those without strong ties to manufacturers. The fact that many haven’t makes me think the 2A is a bigger issue than profits.
Depends on what you mean by gun control though. Many (myself included) are pro 2nd Amendment so it's not just the gun lobby/NRA who oppose some (not all) regulation.
I guess my point is that gun control (whatever that means) won't happen not only because of gun lobbyists but because many Americans support gun ownership.
It didn't happen in Australia or New Zealand or the UK even though gun enthusiasts exist in all of those countries.
Idk exactly what you mean by organic, but if it means what I think you're trying to say, idk what's more organic than creating the Second Amendment which was created long before there were gun lobbyists.
> It didn't happen in Australia or New Zealand or the UK even though gun enthusiasts exist in all of those countries.
America is a different country isn't it?
I think the whole debate over gun control is not as important as people make it out to be, so I don't have a huge dog in this fight.
That said, 2A was not interpreted (at least by the courts, but also it seems from historical research, in public discourse) the way it has been until the late 90s and early 21st century, particularly in DC v. Heller.
Historically, there was generally broad latitude given to cities to have arms restrictions going back to the 19th century. My guess is that the crack epidemic and associated things in the late 80s and 90s is what shifted attitudes here.
None of those countries enshrine as law the concept of self defense in the form of gun ownership, though. The "right to bear arms" is considered the fundamental way to protect against tyranny in the United States. One of the founding fathers (Jefferson?) even posited that revolution was a responsibility of the people when a government became too overbearing.
Couple that with the Judeo/Christian concept of "value of life" and you have a people (who, though not Christian in practice, inherited these worldviews) that believes life is sacred and will fight for even the ability to defend themselves and others. Do note that the Judeo/Christian worldviews that benefited the West have been attacked and eroded over the last century and a half, and that the sanctity of human life is actually a big question mark for many. But there remain a staunch few that will continue to hold to their ideals.
I'll multiply that by 10 to guesstimate privately held companies, local gun stores, and the rest of the long tail. So let's say we're at $43 billion for the whole gun industry in the US.
Isn't that kind of podunk scale for an industry to have a rock solid hold on US politics? Snapchat alone is valued at $72B. Ford is $80B. Pfizer is $330B. Dollar General is $51B. Heck, Office Depot is worth more than S&W or Ruger.
Even smaller companies that don't make a product with a major govt/ military contract often have contracts as secondary suppliers of 3rd party or military spec'd parts, like scopes, mounts, triggers, etc.
A buyer could shut down a company that holds such a contract, but then it would just go back up for public bid.
Additionally, military standards for ammo are very high, and companies make money selling "factory seconds" (that don't meet military qa/qc, but are otherwise fine) to the public, which is an included perk of these govt contracts. And isn't a negligible fraction of required production.
So even a hypothetical buyer that would meet its contractual obligation to the govt would do so at an additional cost compared a company selling seconds and surplus manufacturing capacity.
In short, the market won't change without major policy change, no matter what major players might be hypothetically bought and shut down.
This isn't true in practice. Sure, company stock is not as great as the almighty US dollar, but can be used to purchase other companies, and its valuation directly affects how much cash the company can raise.
Not when a Constitutional Amendment makes that industry "too big to fail" because its thesis on the necessity of the right to keep and bear arms depends on there being an industry manufacturing arms to begin with (at least at modern scale,) and when the industry overwhelmingly supports one political party, driving animosity with fear-based rhetoric against the other.
You just don't have the same intersection of identity politics, culture and even religion with any other industry in the US that you do with guns, even if the money spent elsewhere is greater.
You mean at the dawn of the industrial revolution, before which, you know, everything was craft built?
The Second Amendment does very much depend on the existence that industry, because if the government were to allow small arms manufacturing to fail, it would be de facto abridging the people's right to keep and bear arms. It's the only industry that has to exist in the US, by fiat.
The amount of guns purchased by "gun nuts" reminds me of the stats on alcohol consumption: something like 80% of alcohol is consumed by alcoholics.
So you can mobilize a very rabid base politically.
Also, the gun manufacturers are tied in with the military and the diplomatic powers that be of the US (aka THE power brokers of the US government and the world).
I think this kind of monolithic homogenous group is fiction. I hear the same thing from other people about tech. Both sentiments lack a nuanced perspective.
relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...
>all donations to all candidates, all lobbying, all think tanks, all advocacy organizations, the Washington Post, Vox, Mic, Mashable, Gawker, and Tumblr, combined, are still worth a little bit less than the almond industry. And Musk could buy them all.)
> As rich as Elon Musk is, he’s only one of five hundred billionaires, and some of the others are even richer.
I would assume if normal,everyday citizens started banding together to buy votes the corporations would up the ante and price us out pretty quickly, but as things stand right now there's no point without competition. Power of the free market baby!
I also think trying to pin the 'culture war' on gun companies is bizarre. Are you from the US? Your take on this seems like something you would see on MSNBC.
It’s...not.
> If money from Bloomberg or Soros helps you win
Neither Soros nor especially Bloomberg are or especially fund the left; Bloomberg is center-right, Soros is, frankly incoherent; while, yes right-wing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories focus on his funding of organizations to the left of the Republican platform, among the organizations he funds are ones like Cru, the organization known as “Campus Crusade for Christ” before its recent rebrand.
(The Democratic Party is a center-right to center-left coalition party, where dominant power is held by the center-right, neoliberal corporate capitalist faction.)
This is ... derailing. If Americans didn't love guns, they wouldn't go and buy guns. There is close to 400 million unregistered firearm in the USA. I don't think it's only Republican's. The companies who make guns will try to protect their business but at this point they are just secondary.
Also both Canada and Finland are in the top 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
A person with a gun is not necessarily dangerous. An idiot with a gun is. An idiot without is still as dangerous.
just adding some facts here -- 1.2% of gun deaths were accidents https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/aug/21/jason-miya...
It's the same as all code having bugs, regardless of whether the programmer was skilled
We must also keep in mind that the most likely person to be killed with a firearm is the person firing it-- ie suicide. Furthermore we have to question what percentage of the ~37% of gun deaths as murders would be curbed by gun controls, particularly what percent of those murders will happen via an illegal firearm or just some different weapon (are we going to have knife control, poison control, strangle control...)
IMO America has a (largely male) mental health issue more than a murder/firearm issue, I suggest we treat the root not the symptom. How? apropos to the thread one potential solution is we might give people some economic hope via a good working wage. (Perhaps it's not the right solution, but still emphasize the roots not the symptoms)
some sources for food for thought:
[1]: https://bigthink.com/the-present/switzerland-high-gun-owners... Switzerland has lots of guns but few mass shootings
[2]: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/aug/21/jason-miya...
[2]:
The pandemic is just a convenient scapegoat and excuse for decades of congressional over spending and bad policy ultimately responsible for the current inflation.
Since Clinton the national debt doubled under every administration (Trump was on track if he won a 2nd term). Each administration also had trillion $ bailouts/stimulus bills. Biden already has a trillion $ stimulus ($1.9T), and that is blamed/justified on the pandemic. However, we can already predict the next administration will also have its own trillion $+ bailout/stimulus its just a question of what that will be “blamed” on to justify it.
I think part of the promise of increasing the quality of life of everyone after WWII wasn't only out of the goodness of the heart, but also to avoid reaching the level of generalized hate that made it possible in the first place.
That said, what’s eating real wage growth is outsourcing. It’s simple. If I can build a fridge by paying workers in China or Mexico $2/hr vs paying a US worker $22/hr in a manufactury plant, my competition will eventually lose market share and shutter if they don’t also move manufacturing to a cheaper labor market.
Without any import taxes to adjust for labor conditions and costs, thus will put downward pressure on stateside labor markets.
People know this. But they ALSO complain of stagnating wages, while at the same time NOT wanting their US manufactured good to be more expensive than those made over seas!
My school janitors used to be able to send their kids to college and afford a humble house. Retail store clerks (Married with Children). All that is now cheap labor --you can't expect to pay a mortgage and send kids to college/uni. You may be able to afford the cheap apartment and beer --you'll probably end up with some addiction, i nthat situation.
These days that janitor is farmed out to some company that hires either cheap foreign labor or sometimes illegal labor. We see this in chicken processing plants too. And people wonder why the middle class is hollowed out. And why black and white working poor are sick and tired or corporate antics.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/google-temp-wo...
Also, we can't cry "wages have been stagnant since the 70s" and also want to continue ex-patriating jobs and ability to command better pay.
I feel we can do things our grandparents couldnt even dream of (mines remember a time in his French village when horses would collect garbage, horses!) and that our parents suspected only. Hell the fact I can speak English and all it cost was a few taxe raises in education is already money well spent.
Tiring a bit to hear people bemoan a golden era where tv where black and white, religion prevalent, people disconnected, books expensive, knowledge hidden and medicine an embryo of what it is now.
Toil a bit, build more for your children and keep your eyes away from your selfpity.
Eg. Profit, tax, and rent
If this wasn't a predictable outcome when inflation is triggered, it would be imposed by design.