[carabiner]

Shhh, don't look at that. Just focus on "U.S. GDP grew at a 4.9% annual pace in the third quarter, better than expected (cnbc.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38025177 and celebrate. Sure, 90% of Americans under 50 will never be able to buy a house. They are one injury away from bankruptcy. But the GDP!

[candiddevmike]

This is a byproduct of the US political polarization. The state of the economy (and every other attribute of the US) has become a football game, and you must agree with your team on the state of it per whatever the talking head coach says, lest you grant the opposing team a "win". This ruins honest discourse about the state of things.

[laidoffamazon]

The state of the economy is objectively good to great. 3.9% unemployment as of today. 5% GDP growth over the quarter.

[bequanna]

Compare food and housing costs vs earnings now and what they were 5 years ago.

In reality, you don’t have to. You know that even if you have been getting a raise at work it is nowhere near what real inflation has been.

This is objective reality. The economy is shitty for most.

[laidoffamazon]

Real disposable personal incomes are up from 5 years ago. The spike in 2020 was because of a flood of government money and all of the low wage workers being ejected from the workforce.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96

The economy being fine to good is literally the only evidence available. Nobody is acting or voting like the economy is actually bad.

We're seeing revealed preferences in action.

[bequanna]

“Real disposable incomes” <- this is based on an inflation measuring methodology that intentionally under measures inflation

[QuarterReptile]

As long as those are your only (or dominating) objectives.

[laidoffamazon]

Those are the objectives of everyone, or at least they were until a Democrat was in office.

Now we're being told low interest rates are the dominating objective of having a good economy, even though they're lower than when my parents bought their first and only house in 1994 and lower than they were during the dot-com bubble.

[yoyohello13]

Yeah we wouldn't want stupid measurements like 'happiness' and 'stress' to get in the way of GDP.

[claytonjy]

Aren't age-adjusted homeownership rates roughly the same for millennials as it was for baby boomers?

I won't argue that it's harder and more expensive, it sure is, but millennials seem to prioritize it enough to do whatever it takes to own a home, so home prices keep going up.

[waythenewsgoes]

Not to flame but this is a very mis-informed opinion. Multiple sources[1][2] show that millennial homeownership rates when adjusted for age are lower across the board.

Some highlights from these sources:

[1] Today the millennial homeownership rate is 43 percent, well below the rates of generation X (67 percent) and the baby boomer and silent generations (77 percent). An important feature of millennial homeownership that often gets muddled in the media conversation is that it is increasing, and with few minor exceptions, it has always been increasing. The oldest millennials turned 18 in 1999, and every year since then there has been a net increase in the number of millennial-owned homes. Since the Great Recession, the millennial homeownership rate has grown faster than any other, particularly in the last five years while the economy has expanded quickly. Today, millennials are the least likely to own a home, but they are the most likely to purchase one.

Millennial homeownership is rising, but it is rising slower than it did for previous generations. The chart below (see link) compares homeownership rates for each generation as they age

[2] If we isolate the effects of delayed household formation proxied by changes in marital composition (i.e., we assume the marriage rate was the same as in 1990), we find the hypothetical real homeownership rate would have been 39.1 percent, 9.8 percentage points higher than current levels. As of 2021, there are 44 million young adults ages 25 to 34, meaning there would be 4.3 million additional homeowners.

[1]: https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/homeownership-by-gene... [2]: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/real-homeownership-gap-betw...

[claytonjy]

I appreciate the pushback and the links!

The third chart in the apartment list link ("Homeownership has been in decline for decades") is exactly the plot I wanted. That chart makes the gap not look so dramatic as either your numbers or the paragraphs surrounding the chart: millennials are within 10% of the boomers at the same age. For the youngest and oldest millenials it's more like 5%.

I'm curious how this has changed since the article's publishing in 2020. Anecdotally, I know a lot of millennials who bought their first home since, but I don't know how widespread that is.

I think some amount of gap is reasonable, especially for the 20s cohort: less likely to have kids, more likely to want to live in a big dense city. Looks like millenials are closing the gap once they hit mid 30s or so, right around when they have their first or second kid and move to the burbs or further. I just can't see being worried or upset about that.

[laidoffamazon]

This is absolutely correct, the economy is doing well for all cohorts not just people over 50.

[laidoffamazon]

90%? What are you talking about? If this were the case home prices would be falling precipitously not rising!