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Comment by Gimpei | Hacker News Reader

I’m not a fan of big idea books, in particular when they’re by journalists, who are basically dilettantes. I’ll challenge the very premise on two counts. One, it’s debatable that the US was never all that mobile (see the latest American Economic Review) and two, median household income is way up since 2001: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N.

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I have a CIO who stated, our churn is no worse than anyone elses, on average. The problem with that statement was that our churn was department specific, so if you looked at the average, it looked great. But if you zoomed in, the highly skilled IT workers were fleeing, and we were left with huge holes that caused real problems.

In the graph you link to, I would love to see that with the top 10%, perhaps even 20% removed. I really wonder how a few hundred people like Elon or Bezos skew the median, plus the thousands of CIOs making 400X what I make.

No one can skew the median. They can skew the mean.

And the parent link is median. You could remove every billionaire and the number wouldn’t change.

Now divide that trend by cost of housing rather than consumer price index. The market is saying "get in the box, pay the rent we are illegally fixing, and don't even think you'll be building equity or gaining security over the course of your life". If you don't have any anxiety about an aging society or living in a declining empire: you should.

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