2 year income changes: Loudoun, DC, Prince William lead, Fairfax falls

[saganista]

Being an economist and all, I'd like to point out that median household income is simply a statistic. It isn't good or bad. It isn't stupid or dispositive of anything in particular either. It simply tells you where the middle is. It doesn't tell you how many above the median are a little above it, or a lot above it, or tons above it. The distribution above the median can be of any shape at all so far as the median knows. And the same of course is true for distributions below the median. An entity in which half the people made $2 million more per year than the other half might have the same median income as an entity where half the people made $2 thousand more per year than the other half. But they would be very different places to live in.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta

I am not going to repeat the debate I had here about Florida.

Not surprising, given its outcome. Otherwise, I think you two make a good couple. You deserve each other. As Socrates and Thrasymachus deserved each other.

[IndiaLimaDelta]

Originally Posted by tysonsengineer

The reason I brought up all those other cities is because ALL of their median incomes are LESS than loudoun county, and yet all of those areas are far more wealthy and economically powerful than loudoun or fairfax.

It seems here that your dispute with median income isn't so much its utility, but with the fact that someone unwittingly used it to show Loudoun County bettering your sacrosanct urban areas in some way.

It is far more accurate to state that Nova is a region where a lot of pretty well off people live based on that statistic. Regardless if you take a subsection of most cities you will find that economically there is much more wealth in many cities in America than in any suburb in america, and yet suburbs get a one up assistance in these kinds of statistics because of the fact that they are homogenous and generally middle class neighborhoods with high middle class living standards.

I thought leftists rather liked economic homogeneity and a large middle class with high living standards a la Scandinavia. Strangely, lefty places seem to be areas with high disparity between the rich and the poor. Hmmm.

Originally Posted by saganista

Not surprising, given its outcome.

Always thrilling to be legends in one's own minds, vanquishing enemies and triumphing over lesser minds.

Otherwise, I think you two make a good couple. You deserve each other. As Socrates and Thrasymachus deserved each other.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. You should know that we "bloody papists" (as you so tolerantly and elegantly called me once) prefer Aristotle.

I thought my erstwhile nemesis here made a rather good Doppelgänger of you.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta

Always thrilling to be legends in one's own minds, vanquishing enemies and triumphing over lesser minds.

In general, I have a rule against scorched-earth policies. But I sometimes make exceptions.

Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta

Tsk, tsk, tsk. You should know that we "bloody papists" (as you so tolerantly and elegantly called me once) prefer Aristotle.

As a Stuy-Guy, I would have thought more recognition of the parallels to Socrates and Thrasymachus might have arisen. My mistake. "Bloody papists" was meanwhile a joke-du-jour that you had apparently missed out on.

Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta

I thought my erstwhile nemesis here made a rather good Doppelgänger of you.

No you didn't.

[newnewsmama]

Originally Posted by saganista

Being an economist and all, I'd like to point out that median household income is simply a statistic. It isn't good or bad. It isn't stupid or dispositive of anything in particular either. It simply tells you where the middle is. It doesn't tell you how many above the median are a little above it, or a lot above it, or tons above it. The distribution above the median can be of any shape at all so far as the median knows. And the same of course is true for distributions below the median. An entity in which half the people made $2 million more per year than the other half might have the same median income as an entity where half the people made $2 thousand more per year than the other half. But they would be very different places to live in.

Statistics show most things in this world follow the shape of a normal distribution. That makes median quite meaningful.

[IndiaLimaDelta]

Originally Posted by saganista

In general, I have a rule against scorched-earth policies. But I sometimes make exceptions.

To engage in a little reductio ad Hitlerum, I believe the Nazis made the same justification for not following the Geneva Convention on the eastern front.

As a Stuy-Guy, I would have thought more recognition of the parallels to Socrates and Thrasymachus might have arisen. My mistake.

Oh I understand just fine. Seems you are projecting, though, where Thrasymachus is concerned. In any case, public schools like Stuyvesant (as selective as it is) do not teach much about the antiquity (hence my call for more "Great Books" curriculum at public schools).

"Bloody papists" was meanwhile a joke-du-jour that you had apparently missed out on.

Yeah, it's real funny calling other ethnic or religious groups names. It's said that self-deprecating humor is the highest form of humor. Try some.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by newnewsmama

Statistics show most things in this world follow the shape of a normal distribution. That makes median quite meaningful.

Statistics show that the normal distribution is an ideal that most real world data themselves do not conform to. Such commonly measured variables as prices and incomes for instance are among the poorer fits to a normal distribution. Even when working with those data, statisticians will very often assume that their sampling error is normally distributed about a mean, but that's a very different thing from what you are describing.

As noted above, median income data are not meaningless. But neither do they come even close to telling the whole story. They are one measure out of many, and the lot of them ought to be examined and taken into consideration if one is interested in understanding how the world is actually working these days.

[brooklynborndad]

Originally Posted by JEB77

Nothing gives a quant away like using the term "stochastic" (nice to see you back, ILD!).

I mostly agree with this, except that I think that:

- people who are moving towards the "main urban core" are a mix of people who are overtly hostile to car-dependent suburbs (you can tell these types by the frequency with which they refer to Ashburn as a proxy for every suburb, and with which they refer to Applebee's as a proxy for every dining establishment, west of Arlington, Tyler Cowan's odes to Annandale and Sterling dining notwithstanding) and those who simply prefer more walkable areas but actually aren't opposed to people having residential choices;

- the "main urban core" in this region includes more than DC (including, for example, Alexandria and Arlington, in NoVa); and

- the affluent "traditionalists" are not simply heading to the "new suburbs" or "exurbs" but, in many cases, deciding that they can have their cake and eat it, too, by buying old properties and building new homes in some of the more walkable parts of the older suburbs (for example, Bethesda, Arlington, the town of Vienna, Central McLean, and pockets of Falls Church). Having said that, it seems like, at least at a county-wide level, the number of affluent "traditionalists" able to do this is being exceeded by the number of less affluent newcomers buying unrenovated older properties in counties like Montgomery and Fairfax. This makes it almost inevitable that, for some period to come, MoCo and Fairfax are going to continue to slip in terms of local metrics such as median incomes, and eventually will start to slip in terms of student test scores. This will be a hard pill for some to swallow (who would have thought that Montgomery County, which defined affluence in this region in the 1960s and 1970s, would ever have lower median incomes than Prince William County), but I can't see that trend changing soon unless some of the scenarios that Tysonsengineer regularly suggests will come to pass unfold much quicker than most of us might anticipate.

This. Folks are moving to the center, and the folks who live the autocentric low density lifestyle prefer new houses, and counties with vacant land have the advantage for them.

Which is why both MoCo and FFX are turning toward urbanist models of redevelopment How successful they will be depends on many factors, including the total demand for urbanist lifestyles, the success of DC in overcoming school issues, how successful the planners can be at retrofitting places like Tysons, how strong the resistance to change is, where employment locates, etc.

I would suggest that those who move to the core are not divided into irrational suburb haters and "nice choice lovers" For one thing there is a continuum - there are lots of folks aware that there are Korean restaurants in Annandale, who dislike its physical layout and it pedestrian unfriendliness, for example. Also of course the folks moving to the core (and to the less autocentric islands further out, like RTC) want MORE residential choice - they want a sustainable walkable urbanist choice added to the autocentric model of previous decades.

[brooklynborndad]

Originally Posted by Denton56

Can someone tell me why Loudoun needs metro to increase economic activity? It looks like we're doing pretty well without it, while many of the places with it are declining.

well one reason I can think of is that Loudoun is doing so well because it has vacant land (and more than other outer suburbs, vacant land relatively close to major employment centers) The existing housing stock may be doing better than in some other places, but I think whats really driving those income numbers is that so much of LoCo housing is very new, which commands a premium, and draws higher income families. Given the route 15 growth boundary, that vacant land available for buildings new SFHs is going to dwindle at some point. The BOS, the Chamber, etc see that, and want to have an alternate strategy in place.

as for places decling with it, the areas in FFX WITH metro stations are mostly doing well (even Huntington seems to be on the upswing).