State of the Union 2024

[MrSquished]

So again, how do they measure real wages when housing has far outpaced wage gains in the last four years, even as wages rose? Let's just try to understand what is actually going on before trying to tell people how this is the best economy. Let's try to keep things in context when we bring up good things, because last time I checked, housing costs were kind of important to people you know, trying not to be homeless. Otherwise we will lose this election. Don't message like an elitist folks. Let's also keep in mind there are a shit ton of households nowhere near 81K, so totally just fuck the lower class. And rents have risen dramatically as well in many markets.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/12/why-homebuyers-need-to-earn-more-to-afford-a-home-in-2024.html?__source=threads%7Cmain

Factors beyond high mortgage rates are affecting housing affordability for many Americans, according to experts.

Almost four years ago, a household earning $59,000 annually could afford a new mortgage without spending more than 30% of their monthly income and with a 10% down payment, according to a recent report by Zillow Group.


That is no longer the case today.

While the typical household in 2024 makes about $81,000 a year, up from $66,000 in 2020, wages have not kept up with housing costs.

“Since January of 2020, the typical mortgage payment on the typical home in the U.S. has nearly doubled,” said Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow.

Nowadays, potential homebuyers need to make about $106,500 a year in order to afford the typical home today, an 80% increase from January 2020, according to Zillow.

 

[Jaskalas]

Let's just try to understand what is actually going on before trying to tell people how this is the best economy.

It is not, and the "incumbent party" will usually suffer for it. Hopefully it is not enough to sway the election though.
For if the United States flips for Russia over the next 4 years. The world is going to need a lot more nuclear weapons.

@fskimospy
There is so much data to chew on, I hardly know where to begin.
Perhaps you could explain how the following is better today than in the past:

It appears you missed my meaning. Inflation is not the totality of rising costs.
To measure only inflation, you miss much else that has changed.

All observable data, to me, points in the opposite direction of your primary argument. For example:

47% of parents still financially support adult children​

In addition to soaring food and housing costs, millennials and Generation Z face other financial challenges their parents did not at that age. Not only are their wages lower than their parents’ earnings when they were in their 20s and 30s, after adjusting for inflation, but they are also carrying larger student loan balances, recent reports show.​

I do not think this was the case in prior decades. By all the measures I see, people have been growing systematically worse off each decade since the Reagan Revolution brought forth trickle down economics, which have continued to reign uninterrupted since 1981. One of the Democrat Party's arguments explains this as rising inequality. Something that we strive to work against by voting Democrat. To elevate and elect people who see the problem, call it out for what it is, and promote solutions that are going to help our people in desperate need.

To this end, Democrat incumbency allows laymen to presume ownership of the cause of their suffering. Allows Republican lies to pretend Biden single handedly controls the economy and people's misfortunes. Their lies on why people suffer is their MAGA rallying cry. Any proper Democrat campaign cannot ignore this plight, and must speak of solid solutions that our people can believe in.

"Your economic pain is not real" is a problem for our election.

 

[Moonbeam]

Why is what I think "beliefs" and what you think "knowing"? Why do you think you get to make that judgement call? You know nothing and I know nothing. Start from there.

You say fear is our own creation yet you live in constant fear that you won't have the gun you need when the bogeyman comes. Physician, heal thyself. You died a death but you have many more deaths to die. Have a good night, we can derail another thread another time.

How do you manage to say let's start with knowing nothing and then tell me: "You say fear is our own creation yet you live in constant fear that you won't have the gun you need when the bogeyman comes. Physician, heal thyself. You died a death but you have many more deaths to die. Have a good night, we can derail another thread another time."? Why ask me why I think I get to make that judgement call when you fill your post with judgment? Your desire to discuss didn't last long.

 

[Moonbeam]

We need a revolution to stop the transfer of wealth to the super rich and instead the super rich have used their wealth to redirect public wrath at the one institution that had the power to fix it.

 

[fskimospy]

It is not, and the "incumbent party" will usually suffer for it. Hopefully it is not enough to sway the election though.
For if the United States flips for Russia over the next 4 years. The world is going to need a lot more nuclear weapons.

@fskimospy
There is so much data to chew on, I hardly know where to begin.
Perhaps you could explain how the following is better today than in the past:

The easiest reason would be that the articles you’re looking at seem to be based on bullshit data from scammy websites.

The other thing that stood out to me immediately was their attempt to compare college graduates in 1960 to college graduates today. In 1960 less than 10% of adults had a college degree and having one was a mark of being an upper class elite, with lots of associated benefits. Today it’s less so, and that’s a good thing!

 

[brycejones]

. The world is going to need a lot more nuclear weapons.

good lord

 

[fskimospy]

I didn't invent it. I gave up thinking I knew anything and there it was. I know all about being intimidated by the fear of loss of ego.

I see my aim as doing what I can to help you see more than you do. But that's all. I have no need for you to see it.

I believe the answer to systemic problems is to change the system, not to tweak it. I have never voted as a NIMBY and always against my own personal selfish financial interest. I believe that the best way for a person to know him or her self is to be in close contact with the natural world we evolved in. I see your solutions as short sighted and shallow. You want to house people but I think what you offer is an empty shell. I don't oppose that. I would like to do better. I believe that free of financial constraints and psychological fears people would love seeing the milky Way at night. I remember taking family far into the desert to see it and them being terrified of leaving the car. God knows what's out there in the dark, I guess.

How do you square the idea of having no ego with the desire to ban people from living in housing you dislike?

 

[dank69]

How do you manage to say let's start with knowing nothing and then tell me: "You say fear is our own creation yet you live in constant fear that you won't have the gun you need when the bogeyman comes. Physician, heal thyself. You died a death but you have many more deaths to die. Have a good night, we can derail another thread another time."?

When I say we know nothing, I mean philosophically. However, when it comes to what you say, we can read the tape. So I can know what you say and you can know what I say, but neither of us can know if what we think is right in any given circumstance is actually right. Not sure why I have to explain this to you as you have often said there is no right or wrong, no good or evil. Seems to me you are once again just trying to avoid answering questions asked of you.

However, we can use data to figure out what makes sense in this physical realm, to make predictions and measure results, to figure out what works best to achieve desired results. It's the best we can do. If your solution to something you think is a problem requires a majority of people to just do the right thing then you haven't found an actual solution, and that ignores the fact that what you think is right might not actually be right in any given circumstance.

So when people ask you why you are opposed to your neighbors increasing housing density if they want, and you reply with the equivalent of "it's wrong but you can't understand why it is wrong until you die like I did" well, that is just you lying to yourself, and wasting our time.

Why ask me why I think I get to make that judgement call when you fill your post with judgment? Your desire to discuss didn't last long.

Because you are not discussing the topic you are being asked to discuss. You are obfuscating so you don't have to die another death or two or three. You survived the first one. I promise you will survive more. Be not afraid.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Today it’s less so, and that’s a good thing!

I mean, it also wasn't really a requirement for employment outside maybe a couple specific sectors. Now it's virtually a requirement for many/most sectors.

 

[fskimospy]

I mean, it also wasn't really a requirement for employment outside maybe a couple specific sectors. Now it's virtually a requirement for many/most sectors.

That’s true, but again those other sectors were generally considerably more poorly paid.

When you think about it this really just further proves my point. Today regular people make salaries that are equivalent to what the elite made in the past.

 

[hal2kilo]

That’s true, but again those other sectors were generally considerably more poorly paid.

When you think about it this really just further proves my point. Today regular people make salaries that are equivalent to what the elite made in the past.

Thats cool and everything, but in the meanwhile the billionaires of the world fight tooth and nail to move the goalposts, so they always get the cut they want.

 

[thilanliyan]

That’s true, but again those other sectors were generally considerably more poorly paid.

When you think about it this really just further proves my point. Today regular people make salaries that are equivalent to what the elite made in the past.

But everything costs more now so can those people afford (now) what the elites were able to afford before?

 

[fskimospy]

But everything costs more now so can those people afford (now) what the elites were able to afford before?

Yep! That's what real income adjusts for.

I think people really under appreciate just how poor a lot of Americans were in the not so distant past.

 

[Moonbeam]

How do you square the idea of having no ego with the desire to ban people from living in housing you dislike?

Let's take the bite out of your question. The question, absent the malicious intention I see in it, I think is this: How can the truth be transmitted when there is an unconscious process, I call ego in play that may elsewhere be called the commanding self, that amounts to a motivation not to know what the truth is. Truth for the ego is offensive.

The ego is a life saving protective mechanism we were forced to adopt as children to survive feeling unloved and abandoned to help us deny that that was our real condition. It was made clear to us that love and support were conditional, that we had to play by the rules that our parents or guardians in their own childhoods had been similarly convinced are sacred.

The ego in short is a form of conceit, a fictional entity or role we play by which we flatter ourselves in compensation for the loss of our original selves as being unworthy of existence.

So the question you are asking me is not really a question you seek answer to but want to get even with me for posing. How dare this Moonbeam bastard threaten my sacred beliefs and how do I make him feel humiliation. And this is easy to do because when I want something better for people than cracker box housing that's easy to turn into but but but cracker box housing is better that homelessness. Ant then you throw in how I only want to protect my little island of paradise and that I am making people homeless thereby as if I had personal agency to rectify things.

So, In the first place I don't have to square anything. It is a desire to offer you the truth as I see it not a need. And the first order of business is to inform you that the truth is something you do not really want to know. Make no comparisons to me. The same problem of getting to the truth is the same for me as it is for you. It is ego that turns everything into comparison and contest. It may be that I am more aware of who the real enemy is than you are. Since the age of 18 or so the question of what suffering is burned within in me so fiercely that I knew instinctively when I had crossed paths who someone why had freed himself of it.

The experience of enlightenment: Humanity is asleep living in a wrong world, a world of imagined fears made possible by the language of memories and thought. Thought is fear and fear is insanity. These are only words that mean nothing. The ego self is vanity. The ego commands the nature of our reality. It is a box we live in that we can't see. The truth is 180 degrees from where we look. The ego is the eye that looks and can't see itself. Anybody who is desperate for the truth, any who sincerely seek with reach the point of hopelessness of that search. There is no exit, no way out via thought. That is the point at which awakening can occur, when thought can give up, when a new realization, a transformation in conscious awareness can occur. Thought ends and the awareness of self presences begins, self beyond time, pure being and the realization of the kingdom within. Love reappears, the love of ones own original being that was buried deep to survive. The Alpha and the Omega, the Buddha under the Bo tree.

And nothing is quite the same ever again even if as I do, falling back to sleep time and again.

So the answer to your question, or the answer I will give as what at the moment comes to mind, is that homeless is the result of the fact that humanity is asleep and that the fixing the homelessness problem requires awakening.

My view is that solutions to the problem of homelessness can arise out of the context of sleep or awake and that few realize the possibility that the latter exists.

 

[fskimospy]

Let's take the bite out of your question. The question, absent the malicious intention I see in it, I think is this: How can the truth be transmitted when there is an unconscious process, I call ego in play that may elsewhere be called the commanding self, that amounts to a motivation not to know what the truth is. Truth for the ego is offensive.

The ego is a life saving protective mechanism we were forced to adopt as children to survive feeling unloved and abandoned to help us deny that that was our real condition. It was made clear to us that love and support were conditional, that we had to play by the rules that our parents or guardians in their own childhoods had been similarly convinced are sacred.

The ego in short is a form of conceit, a fictional entity or role we play by which we flatter ourselves in compensation for the loss of our original selves as being unworthy of existence.

So the question you are asking me is not really a question you seek answer to but want to get even with me for posing. How dare this Moonbeam bastard threaten my sacred beliefs and how do I make him feel humiliation. And this is easy to do because when I want something better for people than cracker box housing that's easy to turn into but but but cracker box housing is better that homelessness. Ant then you throw in how I only want to protect my little island of paradise and that I am making people homeless thereby as if I had personal agency to rectify things.

So, In the first place I don't have to square anything. It is a desire to offer you the truth as I see it not a need. And the first order of business is to inform you that the truth is something you do not really want to know. Make no comparisons to me. The same problem of getting to the truth is the same for me as it is for you. It is ego that turns everything into comparison and contest. It may be that I am more aware of who the real enemy is than you are. Since the age of 18 or so the question of what suffering is burned within in me so fiercely that I knew instinctively when I had crossed paths who someone why had freed himself of it.

The experience of enlightenment: Humanity is asleep living in a wrong world, a world of imagined fears made possible by the language of memories and thought. Thought is fear and fear is insanity. These are only words that mean nothing. The ego self is vanity. The ego commands the nature of our reality. It is a box we live in that we can't see. The truth is 180 degrees from where we look. The ego is the eye that looks and can't see itself. Anybody who is desperate for the truth, any who sincerely seek with reach the point of hopelessness of that search. There is no exit, no way out via thought. That is the point at which awakening can occur, when thought can give up, when a new realization, a transformation in conscious awareness can occur. Thought ends and the awareness of self presences begins, self beyond time, pure being and the realization of the kingdom within. Love reappears, the love of ones own original being that was buried deep to survive. The Alpha and the Omega, the Buddha under the Bo tree.

And nothing is quite the same ever again even if as I do, falling back to sleep time and again.

So the answer to your question, or the answer I will give as what at the moment comes to mind, is that homeless is the result of the fact that humanity is asleep and that the fixing the homelessness problem requires awakening.

My view is that solutions to the problem of homelessness can arise out of the context of sleep or awake and that few realize the possibility that the latter exists.

No, there seems to be a fairly obvious conflict between the idea of having no ego and the desire to force people to live in ways you approve of.

How do you square that contradiction?

 

[Moonbeam]

No, there seems to be a fairly obvious conflict between the idea of having no ego and the desire to force people to live in ways you approve of.

How do you square that contradiction?

The contradiction exists in your mind and is a fiction you invented. I have an ego and I do not want to force people to live in ways I approve of. I understand the nature of ego and I want the best for people just like you. I believe you have a poor understanding of ego and a desire to improve the lives of people that is severely limited in vision, not evil mind you, but constrained by systemic defects you won't free yourself from thinking within.

 

[fskimospy]

The contradiction exists in your mind and is a fiction you invented. I have an ego and I do not want to force people to live in ways I approve of.

This contradicts your prior statements on the topic.

I understand the nature of ego and I want the best for people just like you. I believe you have a poor understanding of ego and a desire to improve the lives of people that is severely limited in vision, not evil mind you, but constrained by systemic defects you won't free yourself from thinking within.

I think this is a desperate search on your part to find a way to justify the enormous harms your preferred policies inflict.

 

[Moonbeam]

When I say we know nothing, I mean philosophically. However, when it comes to what you say, we can read the tape. So I can know what you say and you can know what I say, but neither of us can know if what we think is right in any given circumstance is actually right. Not sure why I have to explain this to you as you have often said there is no right or wrong, no good or evil. Seems to me you are once again just trying to avoid answering questions asked of you.

Knowing what is right is incompatible with a belief in right and wrong. it is the product of the resolution of opposites via a non-communicable transformation in conscious awareness. You know or you don't.

However, we can use data to figure out what makes sense in this physical realm, to make predictions and measure results, to figure out what works best to achieve desired results. It's the best we can do. If your solution to something you think is a problem requires a majority of people to just do the right thing then you haven't found an actual solution, and that ignores the fact that what you think is right might not actually be right in any given circumstance.

The conclusion that something is the best we can do is a statement of the fact of belief. It is the best we can do to the best of your understanding. That isn't how I understand the truth to be. The rest of your statement, based on the correctness you assume in the first part thus for me become moot. False premise false conclusions.

So when people ask you why you are opposed to your neighbors increasing housing density if they want, and you reply with the equivalent of "it's wrong but you can't understand why it is wrong until you die like I did" well, that is just you lying to yourself, and wasting our time.

That misstates my position.

Because you are not discussing the topic you are being asked to discuss. You are obfuscating so you don't have to die another death or two or three. You survived the first one. I promise you will survive more. Be not afraid.

I am not discussing the topic i9n the way you believe I should discuss it, words that would accord to the assumptions you make regarding my position. This is not obfuscation, it is confusion on your part. You do not hear what I am really saying because what you hear is words you put in my mouth. You are not looking for a discussion. You are looking to find a way to argue against what I say. All i can do for you is the best that I can.

 

[Moonbeam]

This contradicts your prior statements on the topic.

I think this is a desperate search on your part to find a way to justify the enormous harms your preferred policies inflict.

It contradicts what you have taken as the meaning of what I have said previously. No such contradictions appear to me. I am always honest in my attempts to transmit faithfully what I believe. I feel no desperation in any of this. I am fully aware and have been for years and years that truth can only be pointed at and never expressed as words. Truth is a state of awareness arrived at by a process that includes the collapse of thought. Words about that state are words to provoke thought about the hopelessness of thought as a way out.

I do not have policies as they are held by you. Policies are thought produced solutions to problems that do not exist. The way I view homelessness takes place in a dimension you seen unwilling to credit. It couldn't be otherwise. I long ago ceased to be desperate about convincing anybody of anything as the death I experienced that led to my freedom was the result of my utter failure and ego collapse at being unable to prove even to myself the validity of everything I held sacred. I been to the end of end of Desperation Alley and found a treasure there, a priceless jewel all covered in mud. What I am is a person who feels too little gratitude for this one life I was given.

 

[APU_Fusion]

Yep! That's what real income adjusts for.

I think people really under appreciate just how poor a lot of Americans were in the not so distant past.

Oh come on! America in the 50s had no poor. Only pearl necklaces and separate water fountains. It was a great time.

 

[hal2kilo]

Oh come on! America in the 50s had no poor. Only pearl necklaces and separate water fountains. It was a great time.

We finally got color TV in 1968.

 

[Meghan54]

Oh come on! America in the 50s had no poor. Only pearl necklaces and separate water fountains. It was a great time.

And remember, the top tax rate was >90%. Now it’s less than 40%….

 

[APU_Fusion]

And remember, the top tax rate was >90%. Now it’s less than 40%….

Take your facts and shove them up an alt-fact reality. Wait … that is this one! Noooooooopoop

 

[Jaskalas]

Yep! That's what real income adjusts for.

I think people really under appreciate just how poor a lot of Americans were in the not so distant past.

I appreciate your faith in that.

To try and reconcile it, I consider that my own family's past involved factory work in California. Rather wealthy area, by comparison to most the country. It is possible no one I know has that life experience for other places in the past, especially the South or what not. Which is why I rely on news showing data that confirms my bias. But you also argue that CNBC is full of shit. I'll consider that.

 

[feralkid]

We finally got color TV in 1968.

Just in time.