[quantummagic]

Ignoring how easy it is for statistics to be misleading, let alone outright lies, the official statistics are rather mute on the topic of economic distribution. It doesn't matter how well an economy is doing, if the majority of wealth is accruing to a small minority.

[UncleMeat]

But we see this effect in other cases too. People report that crime is up but when asked about crime in their area they report very different things. And crime is down, even for kinds of crime that are universally reported.

[quantummagic]

How sure are you about those statistics? When police stop responding to calls, when nobody expects stolen property to ever be recovered, when people are afraid they'll be deported if they call the police... crime stops being reported.

Statistics are not worthless, but they can be worse than worthless if you are careless, or in the hands of the unscrupulous.

[pants2]

Also two things can be true at the same time:

1. The neighborhood is so bad you'll be murdered for certain if you walk alone at night.

2. Murder rates are at record lows.

This just means hardly anyone's walking alone at night - but "crime rates are down".

[quantummagic]

Good point. It's just frustrating how many people spout the "statistics", and are happy to avoid such nuance in order to take solace in a comfortable narrative.

[UncleMeat]

Car thefts are reported to insurance companies. Murders tend to be reported.

We also have the National Crime Survey, which simply asks people if they have been the victim of various crimes in the last year. No interaction with police whatsoever. This also tracks a huge drop in crime despite people insisting that "crime is up", especially when asked about the country broadly rather than their local region.

[quantummagic]

What's your argument? That we're always privy to the truth, and that statistics are never in error, and are never crafted by people in service of an agenda? Okay, I guess, that's great for you. No reason to question anything, or think critically for yourself.

[johnnyanmac]

We can't really separate crime into "micro crime" and "macro crime". The highest incarcerated state is Louisiana with ~1000 in 100,000 imprisonment. So, 1%. Still feasible enough to never notice or be impacted by any crime as you go through your day to day.

Economics is entirely different.

[ajross]

> the official statistics are rather mute on the topic of economic distribution

They actually aren't. Median income is measured as a median for a reason. Poverty line statistics are taken at the low end. Local CPI and price data is taken and reported. And all of those numbers are, indeed, getting better and not worse.

I repeat this everywhere this subject comes up, but the real reason things look like they're getting worse is unsavory. More than two generations back, people were on balance poorer but they were black, so they didn't matter. Or they were immigrant, or single mothers, or institutionalized, or otherwise invisible to the white-picket-fence set who were all buying their family homes on one income.

Well, all those other demographics have done super well in the last half century, reaching parity with white men at the low end of the spectrum.

And those white men are the pissed off groypers detailed in the article. Not "Americans" in the abstract.

I mean, it's true they can't afford homes easily! Neither could minorities in the sixties, but we don't talk about that part.

[johnnyanmac]

There's some truth here, but it seems to be missin occum's razor. Homes got more expensive, income did not increase as fast.

You can say two things are happening at once. The line for minorities is moving up and the housing market is moving up faster (much faster). White people, moving up not as fast as either of the two. I still blame housing the most here, though.

[ajross]

> Homes got more expensive, income did not increase as fast.

That's true, but not nearly so much so as people tend to believe. Median home price expressed as a fraction of household income is up about 38% since 1985: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1NXLF

That's significant, and worth talking about. But it's not justification for the ridiculous hyperbole people like to throw around on this. Note that median real income (where "real" means "inflation adjusted") is up by almost the same fraction over the same time period: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N Which is to say, impact on disposable income from housing costs is negligible, especially since so much other stuff is cheaper now.

So basically no: "I still blame housing the most here" is just wrong per the numbers.

[bigbadfeline]

> I mean, it's true they can't afford homes easily! Neither could minorities in the sixties, but we don't talk about that part.

So you favor a race to the bottom, but you want a single race to go to the bottom faster than the others in order to become more like minorities in the sixties.

That kind of morbid attitudes is why Pareto developed his notion of optimality and efficiency.

[ajross]

To be clear: I don't "favor" anything. I was making a point about the demographic that is upset, and a connection as to why. Social policy is hard, but things don't get better by perpetuating inequality. Surely you agree with that part?

Groypers (to continue to wave the label as a broad brush) aren't actually poorer than their compatriots. They're not even poorer than their ancestors, really. They're mad because everyone else is doing so much better than their ancestors.

Again, when you see someone cite a statistic that "You used to be able to afford a home with one working class income", you're being fed a line. That wasn't ever possible (until the last two or three decades) unless that income was being paid to a white man.