[knolan]

My parents had paid off their mortgage when they were my age. My father was self employed and my mother a housewife. I’m on a reasonably good salary but banks won’t loan us enough to buy an averaged sized family home even though we have a reasonable deposit. My partner would have to be on an equally sized salary but her teaching job pays very little.

Sure we have some nicer gadgets and personal comforts but the cost of accommodation and property has skyrocketed way out of proportion.

[jknoepfler]

I suspect a lot of these comparisons are not apples to apples.

Declining wages are real, but populations are declining in the affordable but undesirable towns where property is cheap that my parents and grandparents bought into.

My mother's parents bought their first home in Minot, North Dakota and saved up for a tiny home in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was an engineer who put himself through school while living in a boxcar in Montana in the depression. She was a housewife. They scraped and saved, and did well for themselves despite hard circumstances (the depression, world war II, etc.)

My parents bought a starter home in Bloomington, MN. He was an attorney, she stayed at home. They moved to a wealthier suburb to find better schools when they could afford to.

Both sets saved aggressively, didn't go out, didn't drink, maintained cars themselves, didn't take elaborate vac actions, and lived in relatively low cost areas.

Me? I live in a booming tech hub. Prices aren't even comparable. I spend on food and wine and travel. I have a fancy phone I don't need and take my car to a mechanic for standard maintenance. I "can't afford a home" because I don't want to repeat the decisions of my elders. I could certainly buy a home in Minot with cash, and could get a mortgage in Bloomington without too much effort, but I don't prefer those options to what I'm doing now.

That's speaking for me only, but I'm pretty skeptical that prudent living doesn't have similar or better payouts than it did fifty years ago.

[justicezyx]

The problem is not that the growth is not there. But the sharing the growth corresponding to people's contribution.

Do the super rich really should enjoy the wealth? Are those really justified? Do their employees has done proportionally smaller amount of contribution to only entitle to that much less wealth in salary?

[charlesdm]

Wealth != salary. Most wealthy people who got wealthy didn't get there by making a large salary, they (at some point) booked capital gains on something.

Nothing is stopping you from venturing out into the world and setting up a business, and making your way into the 1%.

Most work is commodity work. And in a lot of cases, you have a significant amount of people who can solve a problem. This results in a race to the bottom in terms of compensation.

[Can_Not]

> Nothing is stopping you from venturing out into the world and setting up a business, and making your way into the 1%.

Nothing except the 1%-ers who are pulling up every ladder behind them they can.

[justicezyx]

> Nothing is stopping you from venturing out into the world and setting up a business, and making your way into the 1%.

Well, that's the issue we were discussing: Is there a system that can move the society in a rate that is at least as good as what we have now, but at the same time does not result into the 0.1% problem.

[andrewjl]

The problem isn't necessarily capitalism, but market failure in housing. Economic laws dictate that anyone who wants to purchase a house should be able find one that they can afford (assuming good credit history, etc), instead through zoning and other measures regions like the Bay Area and others choose not to build.

[traek]

> Economic laws dictate that anyone who wants to purchase a house should be able find one that they can afford

Which economic laws dictate that?

[andrewjl]

Supply and demand

[traek]

You misunderstand supply and demand. Consumers can be (and are) priced out of the housing market just as they can be priced out of any market.

[Can_Not]

The other user probably did understand supply and demand. Consumers being priced out of the housing market can be a market failure. And in this scenario, it is a market failure. For every homeless person living in the street, there are 6 empty homes in the US, but a couple with 2 jobs and a down payment can't get approved for a home loan? Most definitely there is a market failure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

[andrewjl]

As long as there's land to build on and materials to build with, all creditworthy consumers who wish to buy a house should be able to buy one. (I'm using should in a non-normative sense here.) It may not be spacious, it may not be in the best school district, heck it may be a condo and not a standalone house, but it'll be at a price they can afford.