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Comment by nielsbot | Hacker News Reader

So is your argument that there's no "affordability crisis" in the US?

Oh, it's pretty tough to be in your 20s in the US compared to other times. But we are comparing with other countries, and most have the very same pressures as the US, but with lower salaries.

I look at my home country, Spain, where salaries are far lower than in the US for most jobs, and housing costs are ballooning. People might not have huge student loans and very high healthcare bills, but taxes climb really fast when you go past minimum wage. You have people demonstrating because, in their 30s, they still cannot live independently. Pensioners helping their kids, because they get checks a bit over 2000 a month, which are much better than what the recent college graduates are making. If you compare median salary to median rent, or median condo price, the US is still more affordable.

For all the stresses we have in the US, there are few countries that aren't facing very similar situation.

Well my question was not about US vs other places. It was more about is there or is there not an affordability crisis.

How do you measure whether there's a crisis without resorting to feelings?

I think you can study statistics and surveys about this. For example, is the number of people reporting that essentials (rent, food, gas) are unaffordable? Are mortgage defaults rising? Is credit card debt rising? And for all of these, which people are affected?

The "affordability crisis" is mostly that recent college grads can't afford the lifestyle they are accustomed to in the location they desire with a job they want to work at.

As has been stated repeatedly in this topic, the median US household has more disposable income than the median in any other country. That doesn't sound like there is a national crisis to me.

Then why did the median household just decide an election largely based on economic anxiety?

Is it because all the fear mongering about $5 eggs (They are $3 at my grocery, btw) was overblown?

I guess its relative to what the voters experienced or assumed they experienced before the 4 years vs what they were experiencing in the current election cycle. So if you are used to $3 eggs then a $5 egg would be potentially anxiety inducing. It wouldnt matter if the actual cost of eggs is $1 as the fair price in other countries.

I went through this in Switzerland until I discovered that imported eggs from France were a lot cheaper than domestic eggs.

> Then why did the median household just decide an election largely based on economic anxiety?

Because the median voter is largely uninformed and irrational.

> Is it because all the fear mongering about $5 eggs (They are $3 at my grocery, btw) was overblown?

It is overblown in that most Americans can comfortably afford essentials and more compared to their peers and most of history. That doesn't mean they aren't any less annoyed about the current economy, which is what drives votes.

> Because the median voter is largely uninformed and irrational.

Is this only true when they make decisions you don't agree with or also when they elect politicians you like?

The median human is largely uninformed and irrational, so it's universally true regardless of a specific election outcome.

Because many of the folks here are probably high-earning engineers w/o grounding to the everyday experience. I grew up poor and have many friends who barely scrape by. My friends' anecdotal experience is no different than the anecdotal experience posted by GP about "BMWs" -- BMWs arent that common in real america.

> BMWs arent that common in real america.

can you clarify where "real america" is? are places like Spartanburg, SC or Tuscaloosa, AL "real america" because you can commonly find BMWs and Mercedes in these areas.

BMWs aren't that common anywhere in the US - if they were, they'd stop being a status symbol.

That said, they're also not uncommon - a quick look at registration data suggests ~8% of cars "on the road" are BMWs, though of course just because a car legally could be on the road doesn't mean it's being driven with any regularity (I had a co-worker years back whose pastime was buying old BMWs and fixing them up; apparently they could be had relatively inexpensively at the time, as servicing was pricey).

Which is why all this pedantry misses the point: there's nothing terribly special about BMW; total cost of ownership is probably higher than domestic brands, but you could just as well pad out your ordinary expenses with a Ford or GM payment; a new Suburban or nicer pickup can soak up just as much excess cash as that X3.

Then again, Real Americans drive increasingly old used cars.

They explicitly don’t import or make entry level BMW and Mercedes in the American market to keep it a status symbol, but you’ll see lots of 1 and 2 series BMWs in Europe and even Asia. In the USA, 3 series is entry level.

I see tons of X1s, A classes, and GLAs in the Bay Area. I think the main reason certain models don’t get imported is because of size preferences. The Yaris (aka the Mazda 2) is no longer sold here but the Mazda 3 still sells.

Relatedly, MB didn’t import the EQC into the US. Yet the GLC is the best-selling Mercedes in America. I just learned that they cancelled the EQC due to disappointing sales and will be introducing an electric GLC to the US.

It's not about location, but socioeconomic class. Most people live in bubbles. How many people do you know who earn less than $51k per year? Because it turns out that's the majority of Americans. [1]

Similarly, how many households do you know with combined income of less than $62k? Because that is also the majority.

You're not going to find these people in BMWs or big houses, well not without life destroying debt at least. People being completely aloof of these data (or headlines like this one) are how you get November 5th.

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States

>> can you clarify where "real america" is? are places like Spartanburg, SC or Tuscaloosa, AL "real america" because you can commonly find BMWs and Mercedes in these areas.

Sure, and for all of us driving around and near Atherton or any other wealth enclave even in a normal city, all these cars will seem common. And especially common to engineers with multi-million dollar RSU portfolios who hang around the homes of other engineers with multi-million dollar RSU portfolios. It might even make us think everything is OK.

Half the country earns below the median wage. (yes, its a joke but true)

Tons of people live on fixed incomes like social security. One big medical co-pay destroys your entire budget for the year. My mom got a $2000 balance bill under her medicare provider for cataract removal. If I wasnt her backstop, this would have wiped out a year of savings.

Not everyone is a SWE, in fact most people have normal jobs with normal incomes. Yes, incomes are going up, but only median incomes. Not everyone's income is going up.

Seeing BMWs should not be a handwave that everyone is doing well. We really should have empathy for the troubles a fraction of our neighbors are going thru. In a country with a large enough population, fractions are a huge number of people.

People know they are anxious, afraid, and confused.

It’s easy to point fingers at something (anything, really) and have it stick when the actual cause - including bad health habits, unmet social needs, a constant barrage of BS on the media, and no meaningful plan or hope to actually resolve any of this - seems unapproachable/unresolvable.

>Then why did the median household just decide an election largely based on economic anxiety?

anxiety because their standard of living went down from before the high inflation from the economic so-called stimulus, and election because they trust Trump to grow the economy by removing obstacles to growth. The US economy is more dynamic than the European economy because of less regulation and bureaucracy. As one example, companies are more willing to hire workers for a speculative new project if they don't have to pay extensive wages to lay people off if the project fails. American workers are used to it and are willing to take good jobs when they are offered, and it just makes the economy go faster, "ahead of its rivals".

The same electorate who caused one of the most common searches on election day to be "Did Biden drop out?"?

That informed electorate?

>Then why did the median household just decide an election largely based on economic anxiety?

Mosty because of marketing and social medias.

When you are targeted 24h/d by ads on what shit you should buy or subscribe to and you feel you couldn't afford 10% of it while your social medias feed seems to show a lot of people enjoying them, you feel like cost of living is way too high.

It’s actually relatively simple.

Because when inflation got under control, prices didn’t go down. They just stopped going up so fast.

We’re at the tail end of the most significant period of inflation in the US since the 1970’s. While incomes are growing slowly and unemployment is low, the pain of inflation is still being felt.

Until real incomes grow significantly, people are going to feel worse off than before the period of inflation.

The idea that I get talking to people from other developed countries is that they don't have near the difference in quality of life that America does. College grads have desired locations because life in, for example, the deep South is pretty grim.

It's only grim in comparison. I remember the story of a remote mexican tribe, that lived poorly, but happily as they didn't know they are poor. Once they got connected to civilization, they saw that others have such a nice things like sneaker shoes, and their lives changed, everyone agreed it made them unhappy.

I've traveled the world a lot, including the US South. They are VERY rich out there, but think they are poor, that's it.

one important distinction in the US is that we have a requirement to get insurance for nearly everything (car, house, etc.) and these are some of the fastest ballooning costs; and homeowner insurance in the US is actually not separately included in CPI. https://archive.ph/cvorJ

The US is a large, diverse population across a large land area. Major variation is to be expected.

But there is also that famous stat that income in Mississippi is on par with Britain or France.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/03/07/still-tr...

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/its-great-to-live-in-t...

I agree with deepsun that the comparison factor is huge here:

https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/the-aim-of-maximising-...

My sampling bias is of college grads living dirt poor, had been, have been, will be. Recent friend was praying her car would not break down because she could hardly afford gas, let alone to do any kind of repairs. Sampling bias is a bitch. Do you have numbers otherwise that it is really just lifestyle outpacing income for college grads? Perhaps the outcomes of college grads are skewed, devil is in the details. The experience of college grads is pretty certainly washed away when looking at medians of much larger populations.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers survey puts the average new grad salary at $68,000/year (https://www.naceweb.org/docs/default-source/default-document...)

That’s ~$7000 more than the median earnings of the overall population (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm).

There will be college grads struggling and non grads thriving, but on average a person just out of college is doing at least as well as the general population income wise and can expect their incomes to rise with time.

> ...average new grad salary...

> That’s ~$7000 more than the median earnings...

You shouldn't be comparing an average to a median. You should be using either the average earnings, or the median new grad salary.

Perhaps you should sit down with your friend and see if she can budget her expenses better?

Yeah, not the issue. The issue is she has no extra money. This person is both frugal and broke.

> Recent friend was praying her car would not break down because she could hardly afford gas, let alone to do any kind of repairs.

She has a car to worry about though. That’s more than I ever had.

Same, but you're only proving the point that our sampling bias is of people being poor when graduating from college. Were you picturing a nice car that is driven around a lot? She was driving from Western NC to volunteer for manual labor in hurricane relief. Otherwise doesn't drive except for groceries and to go to trail heads (which are close by). Like, this is not a pissing match. The person just had no extra money for anything. Just another broke college student.

Lol, no, I had in mind a $250 Citroën 2CV that was falling apart to the extend that a second similar car was bought to cannibalize parts from. Which is what people around me had at the time.

It’s not a pissing match. Not trying to take away from their experience. I just feels it’s weird that US people always say gas and cars are so expensive when relatively, gas is incredibly cheap in the USA (not sure about cars, but given how many there are, they should be cheaper too).

My bet is that your friend can't really afford a car but is well off enough to try, and instead of taking transit is making a bad budgeting choice. If she ditched the car, fixed her lifestyle so she was using transit or a bicycle or her feet, she would probably be fine. She's just probably signed up for things that are too far apart from each other to do that, and that will be an uncomfortable transition.

> My bet is that your friend can't really afford a car but is well off enough to try

It's an old beat up car with 150k miles that was given to them.

She goes to Western North Carolina University. There are no buses, there are no sidewalks, every road is essentially a divided highway. It's not a lifestyle choice where they are living 50 miles away from where they work. Even then, the car was used to go to Hurricane Helene Relief volunteering, otherwise it's for groceries, and to take them to trail heads to hike.

Even then, I'm speaking to the point that they have NO extra money. The lifestyle of burning $30/month in gas is not the point nor the issue.

> My bet is that your friend can't really afford a car but is well off enough to try

Second reaction - jeez - what a garbage assumption to make. Paraphrasing you: "oh, they must just spend too much to have any money. Bad life choices." Garbage assumption dude, you so missed the mark - you would be ashamed if you knew the person in question here.

Further, they are not the only person I know in that situation - and if it were just due to excess of spending money; I would have not raised it as an example of "my sampling bias".

It's very bad practice to assume and then contradict someone else's lived experience based on that assumption. It's a great way to be wrong, way wrong (and sometimes not even know it). Your bet is bad. I'm sure there are plenty of examples out of the millions of people that we are talking about, where it would be right. In this case, nope - just ignorant and wrong.

The American economy keeps on chugging despite critics, but that doesn't mean the critics don't have a point.

Costs of living (read: gas and eggs) are high, many would argue "unaffordable" even though most will still pay up. This means that: No, there is no "affordability crisis" in the literal sense. But there is an "unhappiness crisis", as in people aren't happy about how much money they have to spend. That crisis, the "unhappiness crisis" fueled Trump's upset landslide victory this election.

The Affordability Camel's back isn't broken, yet, but the camel is declaring quite angrily that the point is very close.

I'm not sure gas and eggs is the problem here. When people say cost of living, most of it is just rent or mortgage. To this end, I'm not sure if either party would be willing to do anything, as it primarily benefits the property-owning (older) class, which is the main part of the electorate.

And the politicians themselves tend to be property owners. Their donors, even more so.

>I'm not sure gas and eggs is the problem here. When people say cost of living, most of it is just rent or mortgage.

Rent/mortgage is just one part of the cost of living[1].

Even if you have a place to stay and sleep, you still need to clothe, bathe, and transport yourself and eat and drink to live. Cost of living is literally what it costs to live.

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cost-of-living.asp

My point was that people would be just fine if it's only the food and gas going up since nominal wages are also increasing, and you have some degree of choice to eat cheaper things. The part that tends to break it is the increases in housing costs.

I think you completely missed my original point to begin with.

People can still afford cost of living, the American economy just chuggling along despite criticism is proof of that. The question is whether people are happy about spending the money they need to spend, the answer to which is a resounding NO as evidenced by the chief motivator behind Trump's victory.

Cost of living is still affordable (there is no "affordability crisis"), but it's too high for anyone to be happy with (there is an "unhappiness crisis").

Also, the people complained loudly and clearly that price of gas and eggs are their chief concerns. Housing is also expensive, but housing is usually a one-time lump and/or a fixed ongoing expense compared to food and gas which are ongoing small and variable expenses that quickly add up.

I think it's a pedantic distinction. Affording something always implied some level of comfort: you wouldn't say you can afford the car if you are paying most of your spare income on it, even if you can pay for it technically. Spending 50% of your income on rent may be feasible for many, but to the extent that people are unhappy with it, it is unaffordable.

> people complained loudly and clearly that price of gas and eggs are their chief concerns

This is probably an artifact of how the media works.

People are concerned about prices but only some people are concerned about housing prices. The people who already own a house like high housing prices. Meanwhile everybody has to eat.

The media tries to maximize viewership so when they run the pricing story they're talking about high food prices (which everybody hates) instead of high housing prices (which only the people paying them hate but the people getting the money like). Which in turn causes people to be more concerned about food prices than housing prices because that's what the media is always talking about, even if the housing prices are what's taking the biggest chunk out of their wallet.

if eggs = food, it's crazy to me that a single cooked chicken breast at Whole Foods is $17 (yes, I get that whole foods is expensive). Ok fine, a cup of flavored black beans at a Korean supermarket in Koreatown Los Angeles is $8. A similar amount of spiced cuttlefish is $8. A package of 12 gyeongdan is $8. All of these would have been under $4, probably under $3 just 2 years ago.

Whole Foods is the definition of ‘crazy expensive’. As for the other prices, I don’t know.

>All of these would have been [less than half the price] just 2 years ago.

Here in Toronto, I can't think of a single food item that has done anything nearly that absurd price-wise. Eggs and dry pasta are currently at or approaching double what they were pre-pandemic (i.e. ~5 years) and that's the biggest increase I can think of over that time period. (Milk is up a bit over 50% when there isn't a sale; sugar perhaps 60%; ketchup perhaps 30%.) A lot of these increases noticeably started in 2021.

On the other hand, there are definitely things I can still get (at least sometimes) at the same prices I remember from years ago. And I've been improving my budgeting habits across this period of time, so my actual spend has been remarkably stable.

What you describe in LA is unfathomable. I'm accustomed to being taken aback by how cheap meat apparently is (was) in the US. Has the situation reversed?

I think you’re misreading the price on those chicken breasts. At the Whole Foods at 3rd and Fairfax, grilled chicken breast is $16.99/lb [1]—which I believe is the price for any food from the hot bar. A typical chicken breast is 1/3lb to 1/2lb before cooking, so you’re really looking at roughly $5.50 per cooked chicken breast.

Uncooked organic chicken breast is $10/lb [2] at the same store. Non-organic is $7/lb [3]. Since Mary’s air-cools their chicken instead of dunking it in frozen water, you’re not paying for an ounce of ice with each pound of chicken.

[1]: https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/whole-foods-market-...

[2]: https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/meat-organic-bonele...

[3]: https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/marys-free-range-bo...

Here in Nevada, a can of beans or fruit is roughly $1.

Costco has full chickens for 5 dollars.

My and my friends kids have a) need us to co-sign leases; b) been scammed of thousands of dollars thru fake rental things; c) can't afford a house any time for decades; d) can barely afford health insurance; e) have to borrow money when their used cars need expensive parts replaced.

Generally agree with your point, but not sure I'd call 312 EV and a 1.6% margin a "landslide".

By modern standards it's huge. Everyone runs data-driven campaigns now, which is to say that they basically ignore all but the swing states, and Trump won all of the swing states.

Which is the same reason that for a Republican a 1.6% popular vote margin is massive. California isn't even close to a swing state so a Republican could flip 2M more votes there over what Trump got in 2016 and still lose the state, even though that by itself would increase their national popular vote margin by more than 2%. Trump got 1.5M more votes in California in 2024 than in 2016 and still lost the state by more than 3M votes. So Republican candidates for President ignore the entire West Coast and the Northeast -- huge population areas -- because losing there by 48 to 52 gains them nothing over losing by 30 to 70.

Democrats do the same thing in Texas and most of the South, but the blue states are bluer than the red states are red, so Republicans come into the median Presidential election with a deficit in the national popular vote and often lose the popular vote even when they win the electoral college, e.g. when Trump won in 2016 he lost the popular vote by more than 2%.

Democrats often fancy the idea of switching from the electoral college to a national popular vote thinking they would win more often, but it would really just change how both parties campaign. Republicans would start campaigning in blue states and vice versa but the safe blue states have more prospective votes for Republicans to flip. And under the existing system, any national popular vote win for a Republican is a landslide.

The better argument that people don't really like Trump that much is that he won so big mainly because the Democrats picked a weak candidate to run against him and they should have had an actual primary and picked someone better.

Eggs and Gas are cheap right now! Why do we let these conservative politicans gaslight us and tell us white is black and freedom is slavery?

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