Tweet of the Evening:

[applegrove]

Link to tweet

[keithbvadu2]

1. Just pull yourselves up by your $7.25 bootstraps.

/s

[SWBTATTReg]

2. So in 10 years, house value went up $40 K a year, and the hourly rate was politically left at the...

same rate artificially by republican lawmakers.

So, in a way, the republicans caused this whole labor shortage to happen by driving away minimum wage workers (into more higher wage jobs).

How wrong republican lawmakers were in thinking of freezing the federal hourly rate for so long.

Lower paid wageworkers realized by the boatloads that they are in the wrong fields (that paid low wages), and thus, fled into better paying jobs by the millions. All independently of republican interference, all due to COVID (unfortunately, but that's what it took to overcome the massive distortions of the marketplace that republicans imposed artificially.

So, republican lawmakers, in refusing decent increases in the hourly wage rate over the decades and such (since the 1980s), caused this whole mess. They were the ones that prevented decent salary increases (over decades) and thus, caused the labor shortages being experienced today, in certain job categories.

Thus, in a way, the markets are trying to compensate for the labor shortages caused by failed republican policies in the marketplace since the 1980s!

[calimary]

11. Most interesting analysis!

Really makes ya think.

[IronLionZion]

3. Millennials are just not smart enough to buy houses

wasting money on rent.

Millennials move more often for jobs than previous generations who tend to live in one city for a while.

[monkeyman1]

4. the ol'say'n -" be a congress member , don't work & get rich !" still hold's true !

[wnylib]

5. Or, be a CEO so you can get rich and buy

a Congress member to stay rich.

[monkeyman1]

6. bingo , I concede to you !!! I can't top that one !!!!

[bucolic_frolic]

7. First party they've ever been late for /nt

[kimbutgar]

8. I remember in 1983 my Mother who was real estate broker said that if I could up with $10,000 I

Could put a down payment on a house in SF in a less desirous neighborhood. In 1993 I put down $35,000 on a nice house during a real estate downturn. I saved my money those 10 years and brought my house. There is no friggin way I could come up with even 10% now for my same house. Very few young people I know could afford to buy a house now. And my parents in 1955 brought their house for $12,000 with a down payment of $1500!

It’s sad that young people can’t afford to buy homes now in the the entire SF Bay Area without being a slave to their mortgage!

[DanieRains]

9. I Could Never Work A Job They Would Not Pay Me Enough To Survive

My last jobs I took to motivate me to work whatever business I had harder.

Becoming an entrepreneur business owner was a strange road, but I went down it because I hated not having money. Problem solved with lots of hard work.

Jobs are the road for many, but with no education, and undiscovered talents, working was not for me. I wasn't worth paying much.

Now my possibilities and experience are mind blowing.

I have multiple businesses in my head that would be profitable from day one.

Read The E-Myth and Think And Grow Rich. My suggestion to get started.

[thesquanderer]

10. It's a bad graphic.

It indicates that homes have gone up in price almost by a factor of 4 when in fact it's more like a factor of 2.

And probably nobody making minimum wage was ever able to buy a house like that, in the history of minimum wage. Minimum wage is supposed to be enough to, say, keep you out of poverty, but it was never intended to provide people enough income to buy a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs.

The issue of whether wages are going up in general is related to but really separate from whether minimum wage is going up. It is true that wages in general haven't gone up at the rate that housing has gone up, and it's an issue. But that's barely related to the issue of minimum wage not going up. Yes, rising minimum wage puts some upward pressure on other wages, but not significantly as you get toward incomes of people who could consider buying a house in the first place.

[TheBlackAdder]

12. No Zillow or Realtor.com link, it didn't happen.

[thesquanderer]

16. I'm not sure I understand, but...

...maybe you're asking me to back up my figure on house values in the last ten years?

Here's average home prices...

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

and what the heck, here's median too...

https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/

But the bigger issue is, nobody asks the meme makers to back up their numbers! People believe these memes, without asking where the figures come from, and memes are so often wrong I automatically assume their figures are suspect. And sure enough, a little googling, as what I did here, quickly brings up the relevant numbers.

[TheBlackAdder]

17. Sorry, the image should have provided the house so people could look up its history.

.

My post was meant to reinforce your post.

It wouldn't have been difficult to add the homes listing url at the bottom of the image.

.

[DanieRains]

13. My House In Seattle About Doubled In 10 Years

Give or take. Didn't triple or quadruple.

[DENVERPOPS]

14. Precisely what is/has been the situation here in Denver

The politicians here are joyous. Property values go up, property taxes go up.

Like 30+40 years ago, California had the same exact problem with huge increases and the resulting increase in property taxes

Tons of retired people couldn't afford to stay in their life time home because they couldn't afford the much higher property taxes.

California worked out a solution, so the owners didn't have to sell their homes to pay the taxes....I'm not sure how they resolved the problem, but they did........

[LogicFirst]

15. In 1985 I bought a brand new townhouse (1536 sq. ft.) for $95,000.

The market value of that house today is $450,000.
I should have held on to it.