[Workaccount2]

The core actual problem is that there are good places to live, and finite land in those places.

The next step up "problem" is that the income curve has flattened greatly in the last 75 years. So there are many more high earners mixed in that they are carrying "regular home" prices up with them.

In 1967 lower/middle/upper class ratio was 36%/54%/10%

In 2019 lower/middle/upper class ratio was 25%/41%/34%

The middle class is shrinking because people are getting richer, not poorer. That's the part you never hear people say. Probably because they don't even know it and just assume everyone is broke.

I can only imagine now, after the pandemic money shower (not stimulus checks), that this effect is even greater. Hell upper class might actually be at parity with middle class now.

[1]https://i.postimg.cc/NjKLYpjF/ulc2on31apqc1.jpg

[LastTrain]

No. It is thinking of and treating homes like an investment, and the lack of laws to discourage that. Housing prices have little to supply -vs- demand for actual housing, it is demand for housing as an investment instrument that drives prices. Do you think in 2008 suddenly fewer people needed places to live?

[CraigJPerry]

> … lower/middle/upper class ratio was …

That chart says it’s for households, not individuals so for the time scale shown (70s onwards) all you’re seeing is that 1 earner households became 2 earner households.

The stuff about upper class growing does not follow from that. Poor analysis.

[inetknght]

> The core actual problem is that there are good places to live

Nah. Climate change is real, and humans can absolutely affect it.

Not enough good places to live? Make new ones. It takes decades or centuries but it can be done.

[Workaccount2]

You can't just make new places attractive, they usually are proximal to valuable resources or land features. A dramatic example of this are the arab states that are trying to brute force make the desert an attractive place to be. Nothing in those cities is economically organic, it's all oil money trying to LARP functional cities built in logical locations.

[inetknght]

> A dramatic example of this are the arab states that are trying to brute force make the desert an attractive place to be

They're doing it wrong. I'll point to places adjacent to the sahara building a "green wall" which is turning parts of the sahara back to a savannah and replenishes the water table.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbBdIG--b58

Andrew Millison's youtube channel has several videos on the subject, and related subjects in other parts of the world too.

https://www.youtube.com/@amillison

[Workaccount2]

I think you are confusing nature with economic vitality. There needs to be economic value inherent in a location for a city to thrive. Having grass and water doesn't mean much at all in this regard. You need things like natural harbors, navigable river ways or mine-able resources.

Pretty much all the good spots for cities have already been claimed, hundreds of years or even millennia ago. These are the spots people live in, and the spots people want to live in (as evidenced by ever increasing cost to live there).

[inetknght]

> Having grass and water doesn't mean much at all in this regard. You need things like natural harbors, navigable river ways or mine-able resources.

Harbors? No. Trains and airplanes exist.

River ways? Los Angeles and California have demonstrated, with the LA river, that rivers can be constructed. Also, trains and airplanes exist. Wanna complain about no water? Well that's where land revitalization comes in.

Mine-able resources? Perhaps. There are lots (!) of resources in deserts that aren't mined. I also argue that food is basically a mine-able resource. I also argue that many resources can be imported instead. I also argue that plenty of people can work remotely without ever working a field or a mine.

[ty6853]

In my state the people are there because there is water. You can't make new places attractive, because all the people will be dead. It's basically a 100% correlation between location of towns and whether you can economically drill or divert water there.

[bumby]

How are those class strata thresholds defined? I usually see it defined as quintiles, so by definition the distribution remains constant but the money to get there changes. I think upper/lower class are usually defined as the top/bottom 20%.

[kevin_thibedeau]

It's REITs that distort the market most. They can gobble up homes with insane price insensitivity and wait for their rental payoff in 30 years all while trading them around as derivatives.

[riehwvfbk]

How to lie with statistics, exhibit A.

In the locales where one has a decent chance of earning more than $100,000 (like the Bay Area) that income is significantly below poverty level, even as a household of one. That is definitely not "upper class" by any definition.

Put differently: this chart shows the average temperature of the patients in a hospital. You can't just show average income across all of the US without considering cost of living and pretend that this result means something.

[pathartl]

It also says nothing about overall wealth distribution in equity.