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The condition of the economy depends on your location, more than ever. People who acquire the skills and go where the high paying jobs are located are doing great. The continuing influx of people from other states and countries include well qualified people from the southeast who were recruited
by our major employers.
In our 20 years here, we have not seen it as prosperous since the dot com boom in the mid 90s. Back then homes were selling quickly in the $150-200k range, we had trouble finding one for $190k. Now those same homes go for $600-800k with multiple offers over asking price withing 3 days, and over 90% of residents own their home. Despite the median family income of $144k, it's considered solidly middle class, just making the top 25%.
Agreed
I'm on the opposite side of the country. 3.6% unemployment rate in my area, home prices selling above their 2005 bubble prices, population doubled in the past 35 years. It's not 1% or Chinese buying things up either, just middle class people coming for government and tech jobs.
In Lincoln, Maine an ordinary 3 bedroom ranch with a garage built in the 1960s will sell for $85,000.
In Lincoln, NH, the same house will sell for $190,000. Same climate, similar populations, similar education and ethnic backgrounds so what are the differences in these two economies? About 20 years ago I named the border between Maine and New Hampshire "The Maple Curtain". It is like the old Iron Curtain in Europe. East of the Iron Curtain was a society where there was very high taxes and very little economic opportunity.
West of the Iron Curtain was economic opportunity and freedom. New Hampshire's homes cost double what Maine homes cost because New Hampshire is 49th in the nation in tax burden per capita income. They would be #50, but Alaska pays people to live there. New Hampshire has no income tax and no sales tax. They have better roads, schools, prisons, parks and university.
Maine Has a high and growing sales tax, an income tax that taxes retirement incomes and a ridiculously high excise tax on motor vehicles. People have noticed my term. 'Maple Curtain' and it is being mentioned in various publications. I have recommended that Maine legislators charter some busses and go across the Maple Curtain to see how New Hampshire manages to operate with economic freedom. They even have "Live Free or Die" on their license plates. So far, no such tour of Maine legislators has taken place, but they do go across the Maple Curtain to buy cigarettes, booze, home appliances and gasoline. The fact that you can hunt on Sunday also makes New Hampshire a more desirable place to live.
Maine is as big as the other five New England states combined. Yet, half of Maine's population lives within 50 miles of Congress Street in Portland, sometimes referred to as Provincetown North. They are all bunched up down there because progressives need to reassure each other that they are OK, doing what is correct and controlling their neighbors.
Maine is addressing this overall situation. We elected Paul LePage as governor which is causing progressive heads to explode. We have made the first small gestures toward smaller government and lower taxes and have moved from #49 in tax burden back to around #45. For the Portland progressives it is like the apocalypse. They are just going to need to cope. In three more years we could be near the middle in tax burden.
Your logic is rather flawed. In Lincoln, Massachusetts, that same 1960's ranch would sell for a million dollars, be torn down, and replaced with a new home. Massachusetts has a 6.25% sales tax, a 5.15% state income tax, and extremely high business costs. Lincoln, Maine has dirt cheap housing because it's in the middle of nowhere with nothing in the local economy but low wage jobs. Lincoln, Massachusetts is an elite Boston suburb with a top-10 school system. 1%-ers with executive or surgeon/corporate attorney compensation buy there. Lincoln, New Hampshire is a ski resort. Bostonians drive the real estate prices there, not the locals tending bar and plowing driveways. If you closed Canon, Loon, and Waterville, it would have real estate prices comparable to Lincoln, Maine.
Metro-Portland, that place you despise, is the only part of the state with much of an economy. It still doesn't generate a helluva lot of high compensation jobs that would drive up real estate prices. If it's not oceanfront or lakefront where out-of-staters buy vacation homes, real estate in Maine follows the same rules as a flyover state or the decaying rust belt.
No, there are not many 1%ers, it's the "solid middle class" tech jobs at the big employers like Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, Boeing, Tableau, Facebook and Zillow.
You do realize that only 6% of the working population makes the $118,500 to max out their Social Security contribution? If you walk around Microsoft, you won't find many people other than new hires and interns who don't max out their Social Security contribution. Top-6% is not "solid middle class".
And for the record, I maxed out my Social Security in my 5th year of working. I've always worked in office buildings filled with people who get compensated at Microsoft levels. That's 5%-ers. My office buildings have always been in regions where there were a lot of other 5%-ers so it doesn't feel like you're a 5%er since that is the economic condition of everybody you know. Boston. New York. DC. San Francisco. Seattle. They're all like that.
- Job market is robust with low unemployment and strong incomes. Six figure incomes seem to be the norm here in Southern California for those with a degree in STEM. Even entry level college grads in STEM are receiving offers of $80k+. Experienced people $150k+ package (with bonuses taken into account). Someone I know got a $15,000 sign-on bonus which was crazy just a few years ago. Non STEM is a bit lower but still solid.
The problem is there are two classes in California. The haves as shown above, and the have nots. California has for years had the highest percentage of their people living in near poverty of all states with over 40% of the residents poor or near poor. Worse than the poor states in the nation.
STEM workers may be doing great, but how about the rest of the California residents. California is the most economically divided state in the nation, but unfortunately California is not the only state this is happening in.
The economy is great for some people, and is terrible for many others. People like the OP only see one side of the picture, and just do not pay attention to what is happening to large percentages of people. Those people are beneath them, so they don't seem to care that it is getting harder and harder for a lot of people to just survive.
No the economy is not better than ever, except for the elite workers in the country.
Flyover states have some of the lowest unemployment rates today actually. California is not doing good.
The top jobs in most of flyover country (save for Chicago, TX, and a small handful of other places) are nowhere near the top end of those in Boston, CA, NYC, etc.
The problem is there are two classes in California. The haves as shown above, and the have nots. California has for years had the highest percentage of their people living in near poverty of all states with over 40% of the residents poor or near poor. Worse than the poor states in the nation.
STEM workers may be doing great, but how about the rest of the California residents. California is the most economically divided state in the nation, but unfortunately California is not the only state this is happening in.
The economy is great for some people, and is terrible for many others. People like the OP only see one side of the picture, and just do not pay attention to what is happening to large percentages of people. Those people are beneath them, so they don't seem to care that it is getting harder and harder for a lot of people to just survive.
No the economy is not better than ever, except for the elite workers in the country.
I always hear that poor people do better under a Democratic Party government. I guess that hasn't happened in CA.
The top jobs in most of flyover country (save for Chicago, TX, and a small handful of other places) are nowhere near the top end of those in Boston, CA, NYC, etc.
...and most of those higher paying jobs are part of the Medical Cartel. You have to pay a specialist near-NFL City compensation or they're simply going to move to an NFL city. It's the same reason why compensation levels in Canada are high. If they weren't, all the medical specialty people would get in their car, drive 50 miles south, and emigrate to the US where we would be happy to have them.
Sounds like the 1% is buying up Seattle! With middle class incomes barely budging in decades how can housing prices increase like that?
Foreign buyers and ridiculous tech salaries, definitely.
You see the same happening in San Francisco. Tech companies have raised enormous capital, but the other companies might not be able to pay anywhere near the same salaries. Given the current COL in the Bay Area, unless you're raking in the bucks in tech or have an upper level job, you're struggling. Rent is only supposed to be 30% of your income? Ha, you wish!
Foreign buyers and ridiculous tech salaries, definitely.
The Chinese acquired (and still are) lots of US$ in their long trade surplus with the US, and are buying US assets with them. Pretty good deal, eh? They've built industrial capacity and infrastructure and wealth faster than anyone in history, and now they can turn around buy our friggin country, too! We have been swindled by our "leaders"...
Tech is where it's at. Especially in robotics and automation, surveillance and spying and data crunching, finance, etc. There will be a major push in the coming decades to make human workers (mostly) obsolete.
The problem is there are two classes in California. The haves as shown above, and the have nots. California has for years had the highest percentage of their people living in near poverty of all states with over 40% of the residents poor or near poor. Worse than the poor states in the nation.
STEM workers may be doing great, but how about the rest of the California residents. California is the most economically divided state in the nation, but unfortunately California is not the only state this is happening in.
The economy is great for some people, and is terrible for many others. People like the OP only see one side of the picture, and just do not pay attention to what is happening to large percentages of people. Those people are beneath them, so they don't seem to care that it is getting harder and harder for a lot of people to just survive.
No the economy is not better than ever, except for the elite workers in the country.
Just simply go by the inequality gap doesn't give us the full picture. We also need the social mobility index to do that. Unfortunately such an index doesn't exist for CA (it does exist for the country as a whole).
Social mobility index tracks the upward movement of people in poverty. Why is it important? Because for a state like CA that attracts a lot of poor immigrants, it's important to know if the poor are staying poor? Or is a significant number moving up the economic ladder and the gap filling with new immigrant poor? If it's the former, it's bad. If it's the later then it's very good. It puts the inequality gap in a very different perspective. The key is that it's perfectly alright to have a large poor population IF enough people are moving away from poverty.
My unscientific observation being in the SF Bay is that, a LOT of the once poor were lifted by the raising tide. Granted, in such a populous region, that also means many people were left behind, but as a whole, I do see many were lifted out of the poverty due to being at the right place at the right time.
One of my friends moved here roughly 25 years ago with no education. He and wife both held near minimum-wage blue collar jobs. They and their equally poverish siblings pulled money together and bought a cheap fixer upper in a bad neighborhood to live. Years later the neighborhood improved, the house was fixed (mostly by him), and they sold the house and each sibling used their share of the equity to buy a fixer upper home in less desirable neighborhoods. Because this area experienced economic boom, the real estate value keeps raising. My friend sold his house, bought a fixer upper at a little nicer neighborhood. 25 years later, his neighborhood is now pretty good, and his house is worth north of $1.6 million, and it's been paid off. Imagine that, in 25 years a couple went from holding min wage jobs to being a millionaire. They achieved the American dream and there is not many places they could have done it outside of CA. This is often the untold story.
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Last edited by beb0p; 09-02-2015 at 06:50 PM..
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