verteu

Out of curiosity, is it possible he lied on his resume about being a FAANG SWE?

It's common for PE to buy many "mom n pop" practices with the goal of reducing competition (eg https://kgnu.org/investigation-finds-that-private-equity-was... )

Reducing the friction of starting new business is good. But I don't think it's sufficient to protect consumers. (If it was sufficient, we wouldn't need antitrust law at all, right?) For example, the rolled-up firms might have economies of scale that allow it to undercut new competitors.

Good question -- I believe the source is here: https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/european-unions-remarkable-...

Reading between the lines, I do not think it distinguishes between full-time and part-time employment: "In Europe, employees tend to work fewer hours than in the US, partly because there are more paid holidays, the typical working week of a full-time employee is shorter and there is a larger share of part-time workers than in the US."

If you don't want to have a thoughtful discussion based on data, HN is not for you.

It's impossible to have a serious discussion on (rent/income) trends if your only source is an ancedote about a single (unnamed) apartment's price. (And you include no data on wages at all.)

> in silicon valley rent definitely raised 2-3 times in last 15 years, but blue color workers didn't receive equal raise in wages.

Source? In the last 15 years, SF median rent went up 78% and SF minimum wage went up 93% [1] [2], so it seems quite likely blue color wages outpaced inflation.

I notice a worrying trend where people invent negative economic stats instead of looking at the real numbers [3].

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUURA422SEHA

[2] https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/Historical%20...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibecession

Why do you think rent to income increased 2x in L25y? The numbers I've seen are a small fraction of that.

It does seem that US COLA-wages are growing more slowly than Europe (though better than Canada), while our stock market outperforms. So one could make a claim that more profits should go to labor, rather than capital.

Some numbers (all the usual "mean-vs-median" caveats apply, though IME it rarely changes much):

France mean wages (2001-2022): 41706/26275 = 1.59 (2.2%/yr)

France CPI (2001-2022): 108.74/80.39 = 1.35 (1.4%/yr)

GB mean weekly wages (2001-2022): 599/321 = 1.87 (3.0%/yr!)

GB CPI: 114.6/73.5 (2001-2022): = 1.56 (2.14%/yr)

Canada mean wages (2001-2022): 14,176.4/10,405.1 = 1.36 (1.5%/yr)

Canada CPI (2001-2022): 146.3/96.8 = 1.51 (2.0%/yr)

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/time...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/416204/average-annual-wa...

But inflation-adjusted median & 10th percentile wages have grown L20yrs, (per my other comment in the thread), right?

Appreciate the reply. For the curious, here's a source for the emergency expenses number (32% can't afford a $500 expense with their savings per Table 12): https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2023-economic-we...

"When workers get pay increases, they think it's their own work; when they see inflation, they think that's bad policy" - Dean Baker

I think both wages & prices around the time of covid, and it's easy to manufacture dissent over this (due to the above quote).

My guess: Negativity makes great clickbait & political propaganda.

I agree the numbers look great -- Added stats in a sibling comment above.

Is this economic pessimism supported by data?

Online, I see lots of complaints about rent burden, but it barely increased from 25%->27% from 2001-2024 [a].

Median wages are growing faster than inflation, too. The easiest numbers to pull up are Wolfram Alpha's [1]:

CPI (2001-2022): +68% (+2.5%/yr)

Median wage (2001-2022): $27060 -> $46310 (2.6%/yr)

Mean wage (2001-2022): $34020 -> $61900 (2.9%/yr)

Bottom 10% wage (2001-2022): $14070 -> $27340 (3.2%/yr)

I think there was a temporary spike in rent burden [2] [3] which quickly reversed [4].

It generated lots of headlines, but nobody paid attention to the decline.

[a] https://cre.moodysanalytics.com//app/uploads/2024/02/image-1... , from [4]

[1] eg: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=median+US+wage+2022

[2] https://www.moodysanalytics.com/about-us/press-releases/2023...

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DP04ACS006037

[4] https://cre.moodysanalytics.com/insights/market-insights/q4-...

EDIT: A commenter below led me to the following stat: 32% of American adults can't afford a $500 expense with their savings (Table 12): https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2023-economic-we...

It barely seems possible (much less likely) for everyone (in aggregate) to downsize. Probably someone is buying or moving into their old (newly-vacant) property?

Are VW's shareholders actually doing well?

It seems Volkswagen stock is down -16.23% last-5-years, and trading at a price-to-book ratio of 0.39.

I'm not an accountant, but with such a low P/B ratio, is there a chance the company gets bought out and liquidated for its assets, costing everyone's jobs?

For comparison: Ford trades at price-to-book ratio of 1.13 and is up 16.62% last-5-years (still not much better than the risk-free rate). And long-term TSLA shareholders, of course, have made incredible profits.

https://ycharts.com/companies/VLKAF/price_to_book_value

https://ycharts.com/companies/F/price_to_book_value

Right, that's covered by "owner's equivalent rent." This is LOWER than what homeowners actually pay. (Think about it -- Do landlords make negative `profit = home_payment_expenses - rent`?)

Any why would GGP mention food, cars, and energy? They are directly included in the CPI. I think it's more likely that GGP is under the false impression that these items are excluded from the CPI -- It's a conspiracy theory originating from economists' practice of using "CPI Excluding Food, Shelter, Energy, and Used Cars and Trucks" as a lower-variance estimate of the future inflation rate.

> You are welcome.

Skip the snark, it's against HN guidelines.

CPI includes housing, food, cars, & energy.

You're welcome to check an alternate metric (eg Truflation), but they're all quite similar to CPI.

My other comment in this thread compares the growth of CPI and wages (wages grew faster).

But the median wage is up 40% in the last 15 years... If your pay has been constant, you're getting salary decreases in real terms.

> "Unfortunately, what has happened is that wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living, by and large, for the last 50 years or so"

Not sure about 50 years, but from 2001-2020 (period where data is most easily available for me) things seem fine?

CPI: 175.1->257.971 (2.1%/yr)

Median wage: $27060 -> $46310 (2.9%/yr)

Mean wage: $34020 -> $61900 (3.2%/yr)

Bottom 10% wage: $18140 -> $27340 (2.2%/yr)

Rent burden (median_wage / median_rent): 25% -> 28% (and it's now back down to 27%)

[1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls [2] eg https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=median+US+wage+2022

EDIT: Seems the best metric is "avg rent burden", the ratio of median_rent/median_income.

It increased from 25%->27% from 2001-2024 [a].

Far from a catastrophe, though there is an upward trend since 1999 [b].

There are spikes upwards and downwards, and I'd guess the upward spikes make much better clickbait.

[a] https://cre.moodysanalytics.com//app/uploads/2024/02/image-1... , from [4]

[b] https://www.moodys.com/web/en/us/about/insights/data-stories...

--

Yeah, I couldn't find localize median wages, so I thought minimum wage would be a decent lower-bound.

Nationally, the easiest numbers to find are Wolfram Alpha's [1]:

Median wage (2001-2020): $27060 -> $46310 (2.9%/yr)

Mean wage (2001-2020): $34020 -> $61900 (3.2%/yr)

Bottom 10% wage (2001-2020): -> $18140 -> $27340 (2.2%/yr)

Mean->Median gap isn't too large, but the bottom 10% is pretty bad.

I think there was a temporary spike in rent burden [2] [3] which quickly reversed [4].

[1] eg: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=median+US+wage+2022

[2] https://www.moodysanalytics.com/about-us/press-releases/2023...

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DP04ACS006037

[4] https://cre.moodysanalytics.com/insights/market-insights/q4-...

Every union officer is elected by the workers, so yes, they have an incentive to please them. Historically, unions have been responsible for a massive amount of health & safety improvements in the workplace.

Since 1990, NYC rent has grown at 3.4%/yr, wages have grown at 3.4%/yr, and minimum wage has grown at 4.7%/yr.

Doesn't seem too terrible to me?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUURA101SEHA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ENUC356240010SA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/STTMINWGNY

Some concrete numbers for the curious:

I'd estimate that a single individual with zero skills in NYC could get:

1) A receptionist job for $46k/yr (includes health insurance) [1]

2) A shared $2k/mo 2BR Jersey City apartment [2]

They'd have a take-home pay of $2960 - $1000/mo (rent) - $1000/mo in other expenses (fairly high estimate IMO).

Annual savings (with a traditional IRA) would be about $13k/yr.

It's not much, but the savings rate is almost 30% of gross income, and retirement calculators say you'll retire at 65 a multimillionaire. Surprisingly, a daily Starbucks or avocado toast (or forgetting the tax-deductible IRA contribution) really does eat into the savings numbers. And forget about having kids until you get a career upgrade.

The major risk is an increase in rent without an increase in wages. Let's investigate:

From 2012-2024, rent in Queens (not sure about JC) rose 45% ('only' 3.14% APY) [3]. Over the same period, national wages grew 47% (3.3% APY) [4]. That's good, since our individual earns 3x more wages than they pay rent. Wage growth was even higher among nonmanagers, so I don't think the growth was captured by the 1%. [5]

Overall, it looks OK to me, though the margins are thin, and you need to share an apartment. Hard to make it work for a family. I'd be curious to see some others run the numbers.

[1] https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=receptionist+-hour+-experience...

[2] https://streeteasy.com/building/3657-kennedy-boulevard-jerse...

[3] StreetEasy Rent Index: https://streeteasy.com/blog/data-dashboard , chose Queens as it was most comparable in price to JC

[4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CEU0500000003

[5] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AHETPI

Any good websites with up-to-date historical USA crime-per-capita graphs?

I'm tired of looking at 2-year-old data, or manually stitching together quarterly UCR crime counts [1] with population estimates.

[1] https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...

> Although Dugan, Shaffer, and other members say their union stewards on site helped press their concerns to management, they say that local and international IBEW officers who visited the facility scoffed at their concerns.

Why did their own union scoff at the safety concerns?

tldr: "The air becomes cleaner in areas where the economy slumps. The researchers estimate that this cleaner air accounts for more than one-third of the mortality reduction."

From the paper: "Recession-induced mortality declines are driven primarily by external effects of reduced aggregate economic activity on mortality, and recession-induced reductions in air pollution appear to be a quantitatively important mechanism" [1]

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4717244

But why are other countries able to build successfully, despite the same chain of accountability?

'Bad Therapy' does sound in line with GP's thoughts, but I'm not sure it's a high quality book.

The author took a real paradox ("More treatment but no less depression: The treatment-prevalence paradox") and chose the explanation least supported by evidence: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027273582...