I'm not seeing that luxury investment housing, though. The newly built houses are usually +/- cheap junk at premium prices. At the same prices there's a low supply of 30-40 year old homes, but of a way way better quality. And in any case, new construction + available supply is nowhere near enough to meet the demand. What folks without 500k/year are doing I don't know.
What opportunities? Tell me how an average cashier can land an average 150k/year job in a metro area? Don't forget that the said cashier has mediocre intelligence, so-so appearance, zero charisma and little talking skills. He might swap grocery store for an oil change shop, but that's about it. Our society is mostly stratified now, with a little upward mobility left for high-tech workers.
That person STILL deserves a modicum of dignity and stability. Most people in this category don't really care if they move up any ladder - they just want to exist and not be facing constant economic crisis and near-homelessness.
I'm not sure how one would survive on 60k for even 10 years. This isn't an "investable" amount and it's not enough for food, yet along housing expenses.
Clearly nobody is in that situation. If you have any money at all in 401k, you almost surely have paid significant amount into Social Security, which pays out retirement benefits independently of whatever you might or might not have in 401k account.
Seems like the ol' "poor people aren't really poor because they almost all have refrigerators and not even kings had refrigerators two hundred years ago!" argument.
I call the counterargument "You can't live on pepper". As in even though pepper is way cheaper than it was 500 years ago, you'll starve if that is all you can afford.
With tens of millions of Americans facing food insecurity and tens of millions of Americans facing eviction now, thanks to years of precarity exacerbated by the COVID-19, I think the situation is worse than you're suggesting.
The counter to your strawman is that you are poor if you feel poor.
Since we have proven that a majority of people feel poor (i.e. they need to earn 20% more), and that this is true even of millionaire’s, we need a different definition of poor, because something isn’t right here...
> The average income is just $18,046 (£13,850) a year, and almost a third of the population live below the official US poverty line. The most elementary waste disposal infrastructure is often non-existent.
> Some 73% of residents included in the Baylor survey reported that they had been exposed to raw sewage washing back into their homes as a result of faulty septic tanks or waste pipes becoming overwhelmed in torrential rains.
I’m not sure how cheap that is overall. For example an extra $400 a month is $100k in mortgage loan right now. It all adds up, and is easier to do if you avoid the wasteful spending.
This is an excellent point - I think we are definitely a generation of consumers, and what happens is, kids who aren't taught how debt works get caught up in it.
And once you're caught up in debt that extra 400 doesn't go to a mortgage it goes to that credit card or that high car payment on a 72 month term..
From their perspective, it would be rational to cut a deal with JPMC: they bring workforce back to offices, landlords get their money and give a % of that to a few execs at JPMC. And all the health related problems won't be a JPMC's problem. In some sense, JPMC's execs suggest to burn the workforce now, pocket the extra money, and depart to greener pastures (less contaminated with viruses) shortly before the fallout.
In some sense, the modern institute of science is somewhat like an orthodox church: a few pre-approved lines of thinking with a swift punishment for heretics.
This is the biggest strength of science: this rigidness of thought is what protects it from clever charlatans. But this is also its biggest weakness because this risk-averse behavior, when scientists can't risk saying unapproved things without torpedoing their own reputation, is why science makes only tiny steps. Right now physics has reached a rather big obstacle on its way and the usual risk-averse-one-tiny-step-at-a-time tactics won't work.
Wasn’t it always like that? If someone actually believes in non-orthodox ideas will simply face the backlash, follow the path anyway and later be recognized for the extraordinary accomplishments if these ideas turn out to be worth the salt.
It’s much better to give a hard time to dedicated people than to risk giving an easy time to charlatans.
Since you can’t really judge novel ideas, you can make the process just hard enough that charlatans drop out to some area where they can get fame and money for cheaper.
One of the challenges with unorthodox ideas is that occasionally some of them lead to great new understandings, but it's a very low signal-to-niose ratio. The orthodoxy can perhaps be excused for their reluctance for entertainment.
Professional scientists can't bet their reputation on a novel idea: a 1% chance it'll work out and 99% chance the scientist will be sent to academia's exile. It's better than what would've happened to them in medieval ages, though.
In past, many of the breakthru ideas came from aristocrats: they were rich enough to not give a shit about their reputation in academia.
I'm not a vegan of any sort, but one day I realized that I hadn't eaten meat for really long time and I didn't really want to anymore. That must have something to do with fruits: there's definitely some almost material "energy" in them and eating sandwiches with meat feels like chewing paper sometimes. 10 years ago my diet was almost entirely meat.
