Repeating the same things doesn't make them true. Do tell me what data I should peruse on welfare spending or living standards.
Housing, again is easy to disprove for the relevant timeframe - price to income ratios were not much higher than in the past before covid (after trump 1 and way after Reagan or Clinton). The size of the houses was steadily increasing too, indicating increased demand for bigger houses due to increased incomes and living standards. But the vibes among recent college grads wanting a house in SF specifically is certainly pretty gloomy.
The US are kind of an outlier because price recessed between the financial crisis and Covid, but it has then caught up with the broader western trend. And keep in mind that the “price to average income” ratio doesn't tell you anything about the situation of the lowest incomes, which have declined relatively to the mean.
> The size of the houses was steadily increasing too
Like with mobile phones or cars, a house twice as good and twice as expensive is still twice as expensive.
> indicating increased demand for bigger houses due to increased incomes and living standards
Unsubstantiated claim, and also wrongly assuming homogeneous growth of the house size (if 10% of your housing supply double in size, while the other stay still, the average size increase by more than 10% but this tells you nothing about the housing stock as a whole).
> But the vibes among recent college grads wanting a house in SF specifically is certainly pretty gloomy.
Not just SF, and not just recent college grads, that's the thing. Even social classes that used to be preserved from the housing cost increase are now affected as well.
Ratio was very similar in 1965 and 1995, for example and not much higher than previously after the housing bubble. So, not much to do with deregulation and welfare state in the 80ies or whatever.
Median house is not affected by average issues you indicate, and it increases steadily over time including when price to income is falling or staying low.
Also, since housing costs for most people are substantially affected by interest rates, the pre covid period would look even better.
Where is the data for the poorest, and what does the poorest mean, 1%, 10%, 0.1%?
Of course, housing prices, especially local, are mostly due to underbuilding, and underbuilding is to a large extent caused by zoning, and environmental/etc review. Nothing to do with "current system", unless by current system you mean too much government and too much democratic input over other people's property :)
It's funny how you always escape data by cherry picking other data instead of addressing the data you loudly reclaimed.
> and not much higher than previously after the housing bubble
Except that you cannot discount the “bubbles” when they represent a significant fraction of the recent period. And as mentioned before, the relative housing cost decline during the 2010s is a US peculiarity that didn't happen elsewhere in the West.
> Median house is not affected by average issues you indicate, and it increases steadily over time including when price to income is falling or staying low.
That's a nice counterpoint to your original argument, thank you.
> Of course, housing prices, especially local, are mostly due to underbuilding, and underbuilding is to a large extent caused by zoning, and environmental/etc review
That's a comfortable myth. I wonder why housing cost hasn't fallen to zero in Detroit as the “law of supply and demand” say it should have.
> and too much democratic input
“Market gud, democracy bad and I am very smart”, I see …
(Also, if you scroll up a little, you'll see that my argument wasn't just about housing but more globally about basic necessities like housing and healthcare becoming less accessible, negating the apparent “standard of living” improvement. And while the US has been an exception in the 2010 with respect to housing costs, it unfortunately also has been an exception in terms of healthcare cost).
I was only talking about the US. I am not familiar with European problems, my outside view is if Europe were more like the US perhaps it wouldn't be poor compared to the US, but I don't know for sure.
In the US, you gave me a short term data and I just gave you a longer term view than gives a fuller picture, as you've tried to discount my taxes data before (even though that data included relevant tax reform years).
Moreover I gave you BLS consumption data. Spending on housing went from 29 to 32% from 1960 to 2000, with no obvious changes in trend. While the median house is 1.5-2x big and quality and safety regulations became more strict. Oh and household sizes decreased iirc. Housing may be becoming less accessible since covid, sure. Any 1980ies welfare state etc changes don't have much to do with that.
Then, Detroit in fact has a massive number of abandoned houses, so yes prices did effectively go to zero. Presumably if they could be sold to anyone they would be, but they are not worth owning https://detroitmi.gov/news/deputy-mayor-detroit-land-bank-au...
Thanks for providing me with this great argument for supply and demand, I will use it in future ;)
"Market gud, democracy bad and I am very smart”, I see"
Vibes, vibes. There's tons of data on this, from micro data to between city comparison. There's even more data on costs, delays and cancellations for larger projects due to reviews and lawsuits. There's a reason California is currently trying to preempt local zoning to encourage more housing, and municipalities are trying to find loopholes around it. That is not data but you can just go on nextdoor and find a bunch of people outraged that developers upzoning their neighbor lot dared to remove 2 trees without a public hearing. If I was choosing between this and Robert Moses with no compromise possible, the latter is definitely a lesser evil than democratic input, and I say it as someone who doesn't usually like the government.
Which incidentally also dispelled my previous belief that it was doctor salaries, that is while closer to reality than blaming the insurance (that is a small fraction of the difference between the US and other countries, provider costs being the main issue and insurance being a sin eater), is still mostly wrong. Frankly at this point I'm half supportive of Medicare for all. It won't improve much but at least people will have stfu about evil corporations in this area.
Americans are just very rich. Hence as percentage spent on necessities decreases, percentage spent on other things must increase. Bigger houses too, a little bit; however labor intensive industries with infinite extra spending potential like healthcare, education are "the best positioned" to suck up the increased disposable incomes
> I was only talking about the US. I am not familiar with European problems,
You're not familiar with US realities either, but nonetheless my original comment was about the whole West (which has faced the same neoliberal switch, in roughly the same time frame, with roughly the same social consequences even though the details differ a bit).
> Then, Detroit in fact has a massive number of abandoned houses, so yes prices did effectively go to zero. Presumably if they could be sold to anyone they would be, but they are not worth owning https://detroitmi.gov/news/deputy-mayor-detroit-land-bank-au...
> Thanks for providing me with this great argument for supply and demand, I will use it in future ;)
This is a fascinating way of misconstruing the reality to fit in your ideological views.
People did not stop paying rents in Detroit during the period, the effective cost of housing never reached zero, in fact people were still spending 30% of their income in housing[1] despite the houses themselves being practically worthless. That's a great example of market failure, because the market price kept hovering way above the actual market value of the goods (which is what they ended up abandoned in the first place, they were never on sale for $100 each or even $10k, they were just kept empty until they got destroyed due to lack of maintenance).
Yet you still find a way to twist that evidence into a confirmation of your beliefs.
This is genuinely fascinating. The only comparable thing I've seen is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGgxAK9Z5A (though in fairness the guy seems to have quite a bit more self-awareness than you do).
You can literally open the page I sent you and they are selling vacant lots to neighbors for 100 dollars. They have also done thousands of demolitions of the houses that nobody would have at any price. The reason they were not sold is not because of market failure, it is because there was no viable buyer. With property taxes and maintenance obligationss their market price was negative. The government had to issue bonds to tear them down. That means, procedural constraints aside, you could go and have the house for nothing. The market price of a marginal house in Detroit is/was recently below 0. Supply and demand. Of course, just like when your house price goes up you don't get charged extra money, when your house price goes down nobody undoes your mortgage, so people keep paying. But for a new buyer, your only cost after a nominal fee would be properly taxes and maintenance/utilities, those are hard to blame on neoliberal turn.
I think it is you who is suffering from ideological blindness, especially since you keep changing and confusing your timelines and definitions.
I sent you BLS data on housing as percentage of income for the entire 20th century. And census data on median house size. Spending on housing went up from 29 to 32 percent from 1960 to 2000, more than offset by other essentials in the same paper and for much more house. When was that mythical impact of the neoliberal turn? Last time we were talking about taxing the rich or whatever, I sent you the flat-ish 1% tax burden data since 1979, you didn't like it as it didn't have earlier data. Was the negative impact from the neoliberal turn before 1979, or after 2000? Is it in the room with us right now? ;)
EDIT as for US or not; I accidentally erased part of the comment when editing. Would you agree that US is more neoliberal than Europe when you talk about neoliberal turn? If so the impacts of neoliberal turn should be larger, and it should be sufficient to discuss the US. In other cases, since I dunno much about Europe other than high level, I cannot comment on their unique neoliberal negatives. Perhaps those are bad and they should do what US did instead.
> You can literally open the page I sent you and they are selling vacant lots to neighbors for 100 dollars.
The they does the heavy lifting here: it's the city council that does sell that for this price. And it had to intervene because the private market never reached its own equilibrium.
> They have also done thousands of demolitions of the houses that nobody would have at any price. The reason they were not sold is not because of market failure, it is because there was no viable buyer. With property taxes and maintenance obligationss their market price was negative.
The market value was negative, but the market price never was.
> The market price of a marginal house in Detroit is/was recently below 0. Supply and demand.
Yet people of Detroit kept spending 30% of their income in housing, and you don't see the paradox.
> I sent you BLS data on housing as percentage of income for the entire 20th century. And census data on median house size. Spending on housing went up from 29 to 32 percent from 1960 to 2000
Which is still a 10% increase, and again we're talking about a topic for which the US compares favorably to the rest of the West. If you take housing + healthcare as I mentioned at the beginning (and I could have mentioned education as well) then the US is indeed in the same situation as the greater Western world.
> more than offset by other essentials in the same paper and for much more house
A house twice as big and twice as expensive is still twice as expensive. (And it's also twice as remote from work areas…)
> Last time we were talking about taxing the rich or whatever, I sent you the flat-ish 1% tax burden data since 1979, you didn't like it as it didn't have earlier data.
You sent me data from 1986 onwards so yeah it falls a bit short on context, and even there your data contradicts your point as I noticed (and you just avoided the question to move on another subject).
> Is it in the room with us right now? ;)
You are part of the negative impact of the neoliberal turn actually, with markets becoming a religion symmetrical to Marxism and the in-between being called “collectivism” and put in the “far-left” basket.
> . Would you agree that US is more neoliberal than Europe when you talk about neoliberal turn?
Is the sea bluer than the sky? It doesn't make sense to say one country is “more neoliberal”, the policies adopted vary a lot between countries depending on internal political balance. For instance the UK still has the NHS despite the turn but has dismantled its standing army to reduce government spendings, when the US is still spending relatively close to cold war level in its military spendings.
> In other cases, since I dunno much about Europe other than high level
That's why you should read more!
>>I cannot comment on their unique neoliberal negatives. Perhaps those are bad and they should do what US did instead.
No country can do the same exact policies as its neighbors for multiple reasons (internal politics, culture, economic structures) and no country in Europe could have had the Silicon Valley for instance. But I don't think any European country envy the US right now (they have silicon valley envy, but that's it).
Exactly! Council took the houses/lots, in some cases cleaned them up, and after that the price is $100. What do you think it was before? The same local government, that assessed some intact houses with mortgages still being paid at $5k, might give you a hint...
Detroit in particular had a large number of non-mortgage, tax delinquencies - why didn't owners choose to sell at market "value" and instead walked away? Either they were all dastardly neoliberals trying to lose money but spite Detroit, or perhaps the market value was negative so there was no viable buyer? I guess it's technically somewhat of a "market failure" that it's cheaper to walk away than to pay someone to take the house off your hands (negative price). The reason is non-market though, it's more like, there are no debtors prisons anymore so nobody can force you to pay local taxes.
Regardless you made a specific statement - if supply/demand worked, price of the houses in Detroit would have gone to zero. And, sure enough, it has in fact gone to near zero, and factually below zero given house has additional (non-market) negative cash flows.
The rest:
"Which is still a 10% increase" "A house twice as big and twice as expensive is still twice as expensive." Hmm?
What about the house that is 10% more expensive over time but x1.5-2 bigger?
Also why is it that /median/ houses are x1.5-2 bigger (while the household size is decreasing, too), is it dastardly developers intentionally trying to screw affordability, or is it because a /median/ household wants and can afford a bigger house cause the median household is more rich?
For healthcare I already sent a link above. The closest correlate of healthcare spending across countries and over time is disposable income. You can spend millions of dollars to keep grandma alive for an extra 6 months, which is, apparently, what rich people do (e.g. https://mdinteractive.com/mips_cost_measures/2025-mips-cost-...). Could we spend it better? Probably. I think free market with insurance that works like actual insurance (like existing cancer insurance) would be better, but let's do medicare for all, sure, it's not going to be much worse than current system. But spend it we will, until we become poor.
For taxes, I sent you a data since 1979 after that. The data shows Reagan's reforms and later reforms had basically no effect on 1% tax burden relative to other groups.
As for European issues specifically, the only reason would be to find out what policies the US should avoid, since Europe is relatively poor, but I've never thought neoliberalism is their problem. More welfare state, more taxes on workers (https://taxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/OECDLab...), more regulation (in most countries), harder to build housing (in some countries like UK?). Too little neoliberalism. I don't expect to find any neoliberal policies "worse" than the US ones, so it's not worth my time, but do give a hint, maybe I will.
In the US though, the only problems with neoliberalism are either hyperlocal and affect a very small percentage of the population, or that it didn't go far enough. If neoliberal turn didn't end before, for example, reforming unsustainable welfare state to be smaller; or undoing environmental regulation; US would have been in much better shape right now, with less need for interest groups to fight over a smaller pie.
> Regardless you made a specific statement - if supply/demand worked, price of the houses in Detroit would have gone to zero. And, sure enough, it has in fact gone to near zero
It hasn't. It remained steady at 30% consumer spending.
“Why would consumers spend 30% of their income in something that is available for free on the market?” is the paradox you been avoiding all along.
The answer is simple, these “free houses” never actually went on the market because humans aren't rational and they think a house's value is at least roughly equal to the price they paid for it, which means they will refuse to sell for less, no matter if they lose money in the process. Ask any real estate agent.
Supply and demand almost never work for assets unless there's a significant liquidity pressure.
I'm not going to respond to anything else because you will again take that as an opportunity to escape the paradox. (And because it is much more entertaining than attempting to explain why allowing corporations to poison the neighborhood isn't a good idea)
Housing, again is easy to disprove for the relevant timeframe - price to income ratios were not much higher than in the past before covid (after trump 1 and way after Reagan or Clinton). The size of the houses was steadily increasing too, indicating increased demand for bigger houses due to increased incomes and living standards. But the vibes among recent college grads wanting a house in SF specifically is certainly pretty gloomy.