Million Dollar Question - Buy or Wait? 2022 Edition (Dallas, Fort Worth: car insurance, student loans)

[DFWGuy422]

Originally Posted by Cicnod

No it is because they accept a job for what it is they are making or they do not have the knowledge and/or skill to be able to obtain a higher paying job.

This is not "income inequality." This is what causes income inequality -- skills that are valued differently, people taking different opportunities with the same skills etc -- but freedom of contract and a free market is not the same as "income inequality."

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Leonard123

Of course, anyone who cannot afford a $700K-$1M house is either stupid or lazy.

I'm not broke, and there is a huge problem with income inequality in that there is no middle class. In essence, a middle class income today puts one in a lower class living situation, and I can assure you it's not because they are not working or studying hard enough. It's not all within people's control. This idea that people can earn anything if they just work hard enough is complete nonsense. The vast majority of people are not making the obscene sums of money that the OP and others on this forum are.



That may be true of the newer houses, but I think houses more than 25 years old or so will decline unless they are in a historically affluent area.

We can file though a number of income statistics but according to the OECD PPP mean disposable income per capita (PPP accounts for cost differences).......The US ranks #1.

Not only does The US have a middle class. We have the most successful and wealthy middle class in the world by most metrics.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Cicnod

For me likely true. For other family members not even close. You don’t know anyone who grew up poorer or in the atrocities they grew up in and yet all are highly successful. Education is below and 8th grade level

This country has more people with no self accountability than almost anywhere it seems

Younger Americans may be the softest large group in the history of the world.


It's much easier for people to claim the system is rigged and unjust than to self-critique.

[Wittgenstein's Ghost]

Originally Posted by Cicnod

For me likely true. For other family members not even close. You don’t know anyone who grew up poorer or in the atrocities they grew up in and yet all are highly successful. Education is below and 8th grade level

This country has more people with no self accountability than almost anywhere it seems

I'm not sure how you concluded that I don't know anyone who grew up poor but is highly successful. That's nowhere close to true.

Regardless, luck is intractable because we don't get a say in either our nature or our nurture. If you are hard working, why? There is some feature of your upbringing or genetics that explains why. Had those facts been different, you might not be hard working. If you were less intelligent, there are all sorts of careers that would be out of reach for you.

You argument implies a sort of libertarianism about free will that has been mostly rejected for well over a century.

[f4shionablecha0s]

Originally Posted by EDS_

We can file though a number of income statistics but according to the OECD PPP mean disposable income per capita (PPP accounts for cost differences).......The US ranks #1.

Not only does The US have a middle class. We have the most successful and wealthy middle class in the world by most metrics.

Ehhhhh, our gini coefficient says otherwise.

[Mr. Clutch]

Originally Posted by EDS_

Younger Americans may be the softest large group in the history of the world.


It's much easier for people to claim the system is rigged and unjust than to self-critique.

The system is definitely rigged and unjust. There's no reason kids today should be paying 10x what it cost to go to school in the 70s when wages are only about 3-4x higher than back then, other than greed from academic leaders. Folks who came of age in this country between the 1950s and 1980s had advantages that no one in the world has seen and likely we here in America will never see again. Industrial and technological hegemony during a time the rest of the world was trying to catch up and rebuild after the war being the primary advantage. The world is not like that anymore and those who call this generation soft (despite many of us coming into the workforce during the worst recession since the 30s) need to look in the mirror and recognize that they grew up in an easier time to succeed with less competition than today on all fronts.

With all of that said, its also possible to succeed in this rigged and unjust system as many of us have. Doesn't make the system any better in and of itself though. Greed from those who squandered all of our post WWII advantages have made it that much harder for all of the recent generations.

[TheOverdog]

Since I started this, I'll illustrate what I'm talking about. For the most part, I don't really consider income inequality all that important of an issue, as long as the federal government is not causing it.

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibr...hdc_2020q4.pdf
Mortgage originations by credit score, page 6. It's got a nice little history graph going back to 2003. It only goes to 2020, but 2021 and 2022 are even higher than 2020. Credit scores of 720 or higher get about 85% of mortgage debt, every other score gets about 15%. A 719 is counted as a good score! Check the history - it used to be much more equal, with that score getting about 30% of mortgage originations, and the total amount of mortgage orgininations has been pretty steady for that entire time period.



2nd chart, feeding off the first:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDSP


Even though prices are at all time highs, Mortgage Debt Service Payments as a Percent of Disposable Personal Income is lower than it's been since the chart started (only goes back to 1980). So if my math is correct, the US median home price would have to rise by another $50k-$75k just to be at the historical average without any increase in median household income.



So with credit score as a proxy for income, lower income people have a lottery chance of buying a home, and the people buying them are wealthier than ever. That's not a bubble.

Both of these reference income inequality caused by federal lending rules.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by f4shionablecha0s

Ehhhhh, our gini coefficient says otherwise.

Nonsense.


ETA - Gini is about one thing what I posted is about another. If you don't understand, which I'm pretty sure you don't, just ask.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Mr. Clutch

The system is definitely rigged and unjust. There's no reason kids today should be paying 10x what it cost to go to school in the 70s when wages are only about 3-4x higher than back then, other than greed from academic leaders. Folks who came of age in this country between the 1950s and 1980s had advantages that no one in the world has seen and likely we here in America will never see again. Industrial and technological hegemony during a time the rest of the world was trying to catch up and rebuild after the war being the primary advantage. The world is not like that anymore and those who call this generation soft (despite many of us coming into the workforce during the worst recession since the 30s) need to look in the mirror and recognize that they grew up in an easier time to succeed with less competition than today on all fronts.

With all of that said, its also possible to succeed in this rigged and unjust system as many of us have. Doesn't make the system any better in and of itself though. Greed from those who squandered all of our post WWII advantages have made it that much harder for all of the recent generations.

Your point is not better made by using false numbers.

1. According to The Education Data Initiative in real terms public 4yr college costs a little more than 3x more now than in 1969. Back then borrowing ones way through college tougher to do. FWIIW the delta per private schools is actually a little less.

2. Guys like you complain about how tough it is for millennials and zoomers.......the ones I know well are killing
it.

3. Blaming people older than you is a cop out.

4. The system is not rigged.

[crazyforger]

Originally Posted by Mr. Clutch

The system is definitely rigged and unjust. There's no reason kids today should be paying 10x what it cost to go to school in the 70s when wages are only about 3-4x higher than back then, other than greed from academic leaders. Folks who came of age in this country between the 1950s and 1980s had advantages that no one in the world has seen and likely we here in America will never see again. Industrial and technological hegemony during a time the rest of the world was trying to catch up and rebuild after the war being the primary advantage. The world is not like that anymore and those who call this generation soft (despite many of us coming into the workforce during the worst recession since the 30s) need to look in the mirror and recognize that they grew up in an easier time to succeed with less competition than today on all fronts.

With all of that said, its also possible to succeed in this rigged and unjust system as many of us have. Doesn't make the system any better in and of itself though. Greed from those who squandered all of our post WWII advantages have made it that much harder for all of the recent generations.

There are many colleges that are decent and pretty cheap