The middle-class "housing-income trap" is destroying your life - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15166447
wat0n wrote:Do you have more information on this?


I recall seeing a slew of articles, especially on linked in. Here's one though:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/your ... -home.html

This is complicated by where your home office is located. If your home office is Austin, but then you worked in Hawaii for a whole year. Who do you pay taxes to? Hawaii? Texas? issues like that. Do company now create home office in every state? etc. etc.
#15166448
Rancid wrote:I recall seeing a slew of articles, especially on linked in. Here's one though:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/your ... -home.html

This is complicated by where your home office is located. If your home office is Austin, but then you worked in Hawaii for a whole year. Who do you pay taxes to? Hawaii? Texas? issues like that. Do company now create home office in every state? etc. etc.


Yeah, but up to what extend to businesses bear the tax costs of this? Isn't this something the worker has to figure out? :?:

@late I'll watch the video later then.
#15166449
wat0n wrote:
Yeah, but up to what extend to businesses bear the tax costs of this? Isn't this something the worker has to figure out? :?:

@late I'll watch the video later then.


Unclear. Depends on the state I'm sure. I know employers have to cover 50% of the payroll tax for example. So no, the tax situation isn't entirely on the worker. There's also the complications of insurance. I'm no expert, but what I do know, is that it's not straight forward to just allow people to work from anywhere in the world.
#15166452
Rancid wrote:Unclear. Depends on the state I'm sure. I know employers have to cover 50% of the payroll tax for example. So no, the tax situation isn't entirely on the worker. There's also the complications of insurance. I'm no expert, but what I do know, is that it's not straight forward to just allow people to work from anywhere in the world.


I see. But does the benefit of having that freedom compensate those costs when it comes to recruiting and similar things?
#15166454
wat0n wrote:I see. But does the benefit of having that freedom compensate those costs when it comes to recruiting and similar things?


Dunno. The cost structure to support remote workers will be different of course. The IT and security protocols are going to cost more, I'd guess.
#15166490
I live on the west coast just north of Seattle, West of Vancouver BC. The weather here is pretty decent all year. We went to university in southern London, Ontario where winter was long, cold and damned snowy. Cars simply didn't last. This seemed to be reflected in the price of housing. Our homes are extremely expsensive. Real estate agents take advantage of the savings we achieve on car payments.

Both of our mothers have sold their homes and many others have sold for considerably more than the asking price. Many people are expanding their homes to provide housing for their kid(s) or taking in boarders to help cover the mortgage.

This is nuts. This is Canada. We've got land and trees galore, especially here in BC.
#15166538
Rancid wrote:Holy shit Canada! :eek: :eek: :eek: It would be great to see city break downs though, as the disparity in prices between cities within the same country can be enormous (NYC, San Francisco, etc.).

Canada's population growth is driven a lot by immigrants. Immigrants mainly move to larger cities, they don't go to small towns. So Toronto, Vancouver etc has seen massive spikes in demand and therefore housing price spikes. Vancouver is in a pocket next to mountains while Montreal is on an island, so there's no room for expansion, which doesn't help things on those cities.

As their governments are very globalist and corrupt, they also have allowed a lot of foreign ownership of housing as investments. ie: Chinese foreign investors will buy condos through Chinese agents living in Canada who they pay to manage the properties too, and they often sit empty.

There's also a lot of domestic speculation. Low interests rates have just made everything worse. What is mind-boggling is that Canada has endless masses of empty land that can be built on, such as around Toronto, but prices still surge.
#15166542
Unthinking Majority wrote:As their governments are very globalist and corrupt, they also have allowed a lot of foreign ownership of housing as investments. ie: Chinese foreign investors will buy condos through Chinese agents living in Canada who they pay to manage the properties too, and they often sit empty.


Ah yea, this is a problem in Miami. Though it's more typically Russian and Latin American buyers.
#15166680
Nearly all wage gains from productivity have been disappearing into housing costs since about 1980.

Since about 1980, govts have been enforcing "fiscal rules" whereby the money supply only expands through the lending decisions of commercial lenders. This, on the assumption that financial markets always allocate capital to the most productive uses - or at least better than govt.

The result, contrary to theory, has been a massive shift away from productive investment to mostly mortgages, mostly existing real estate, and paper assets based on paper assets based on paper assets..

The theory was just plain wrong.
#15166826
SueDeNîmes wrote:Nearly all wage gains from productivity have been disappearing into housing costs since about 1980.

Since about 1980, govts have been enforcing "fiscal rules" whereby the money supply only expands through the lending decisions of commercial lenders. This, on the assumption that financial markets always allocate capital to the most productive uses - or at least better than govt.

The result, contrary to theory, has been a massive shift away from productive investment to mostly mortgages, mostly existing real estate, and paper assets based on paper assets based on paper assets..

The theory was just plain wrong.

Financial markets always allocate capital to the most profitable uses, which are not necessarily the most productive uses. Market fundamentalism seems to be based on lazy thinking, in which demand=need and profitable=productive. Reality is rather different.
#15166839
Middle class housing is more modest than it used to be? Oh brother... :roll:

My parents were a typical middle class family. One income from my dad. We had a 4 bedroom house with 2 bathrooms, with a garage, on a corner lot with a huge lawn(I know because my bro and I had to mow the fucking thing) and a large garden.

The house, now. It looked better when we lived there...
https://www.google.com/maps/place/6707+ ... 13.4328754

People saying that things were more modest in the 70s and 80s haven't been paying attention.

Housing prices have skyrocketed, however, with a house I bought in 1995(for about $90,000) selling for almost $240,000, in 2005. That same house would be over $300,000, now.

Wages haven't increased proportionally to the cost of housing.
#15166937
These days, a family with kids has three choices when wanting to buy a home:

1. Buy out in the suburbs and also buy a car and commute for hours every day.
2. Buy a house in a poor and possibly unsafe neighbourhood.
3. Be rich.

I suggest number 3, even though I have never had the opportunity to try it. It looks like the nicest one.
#15167330
Nearly all wage gains from productivity have been disappearing into housing costs since about 1980.

Since about 1980, govts have been enforcing "fiscal rules" whereby the money supply only expands through the lending decisions of commercial lenders. This, on the assumption that financial markets always allocate capital to the most productive uses - or at least better than govt.

The result, contrary to theory, has been a massive shift away from productive investment to mostly mortgages, mostly existing real estate, and paper assets based on paper assets based on paper assets..

The theory was just plain wrong.


Potemkin wrote:Financial markets always allocate capital to the most profitable uses, which are not necessarily the most productive uses. Market fundamentalism seems to be based on lazy thinking, in which demand=need and profitable=productive. Reality is rather different.


Right. But the man behind the curtain is not lazy. Try deconstructing even a simple DSGE model or working out where money comes from in the UK Exchequer Pyramid.
#15167335
Pants-of-dog wrote:These days, a family with kids has three choices when wanting to buy a home:

1. Buy out in the suburbs and also buy a car and commute for hours every day.
2. Buy a house in a poor and possibly unsafe neighbourhood.
3. Be rich.

I suggest number 3, even though I have never had the opportunity to try it. It looks like the nicest one.

Be rich or try to do better in life economically. Nothing wrong with that.
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