There was also tremendous social cohesion. As a member of the Oklahoma Medical Reserve Corps, I worked as a full-time volunteer in the Tulsa Covid-19 POD, vaccinating 2,000 patients/day.
Half of the POD were Tulsa County Health Department workers, the other half retired nurses and physicians. Many, like myself, weren’t yet fully vaccinated, but masked and gloved-up.
Retired nurses, at their own time and expense, drove across the state to single-handedly operate Covid-19 PODs in remote, underserved counties. It was an amazing experience working with dedicated, talented professional who had a sense of mission.
Yet, the mainstream media gave very little coverage to extraordinary people -- of all types of religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender-identity -- who came together as strangers to provide care for anybody who came through the POD.
The light in the Dark Age of Covid-19, the best of the U.S., went underreported.
Noah Smith said: “ Those years . . .cemented a negative mood in the minds of the American people that will take a while to heal. But the healing is underway,"
Noah, I think you have finally hit the right note in evaluating the last few years. We are not passionless Homo economicus—we are people who have been through the mill.
Also, don't you think the 9% income gain by the bottom quartile means infinitely more to that group than the 2% income loss for the top quartile?
It's *supposed to*, at least according to most people's stated values, but the to quintile has a bigger megaphone.
At an anedoctical level, the only times I hear about labor markets is tech workers complaining about layoffs. If I hear about "the other half" (more like the other 80%), it's indirectly, with those same tech workers and similar complaining about doordash costing too much and hairdressers being impossible to find.
I fear the decline of mass active politics has made the poor too easy to care about in theory but ignore in practice. Props to this admin and all those who care anyway.
Great news. I knew or suspected some ( crime) but the last- that younger generations were doing good was very surprising. Maybe no Civil War after all.
Well said. The reason millennials/Gen Z feel less prosperous is primarily due to housing costs outpacing income gains, which has both material and psychological effects.
Even if real incomes are higher now, the fact that homes were much more affordable to past generations and that many young people today can’t afford to buy at the same age their parents did makes any income gains feel inconsequential.
I continue to believe there is something fishy about the "Gen Z is wealthier than previous generations" math. I'd like to see somebody try to actually control for differential inflation issues here, particularly around housing. To the extent that Gen Z is "wealthier" on paper because the house they scrimped to buy is worth a bigger amount of money, but then they have less capacity to either to spend money on anything that isn't the house, or to save up in other forms that can be spent for food and medicine in retirement -- that doesn't really seem like being wealthier. Sure, you could sell the house and live on that. But _where_ are you going to live on that, if every other house is just as expensive?
As Felix Salmon likes to say, you're born short one house. Inflated housing prices don't mean that owning a house makes you wealthier; it means it costs you more to cover your short.
If the price of fruit and vegetables started rising by double digits per year, offset by falling prices for sugar, wheat, and other staple commodities, that would have serious implications for people’s diet and health.
To just shrug and say “well the price of food is stable” would be pretty unresponsive to the actual situation, which is that a normal person is either going to see the quality of their diet erode or else the share of their income going to food rise.
Critically, this is not inflation.
I am a stickler here just like I’m a stickler about immigration and wages, because it’s really important for policymakers not to lose the plot on the need for aggressive monetary policy to generate full employment.
That being said, these relative price shifts are also bad.
And in this case it’s a fake example. But here are some real facts about how relative prices have changed:
[chart, which you can view if you follow the link]
This chart is telling you the plain truth, which is that if you took a healthy, childless person from 2000 and teleported them to 2020 and showed them Spotify and Netflix on an iPad Pro their mind would be totally blown. And an iPad Pro plus a magic keyboard costs less in nominal terms than an iBook did in 1999. Your guy would be extremely impressed with the IT revolution and the information superhighway.
But then if you bring forward another guy who’s got three kids — ages 4, 2, and six months — and tell him what his new child care costs are going to be, he’s gonna be really sad.
</blockquote>
Basically, I find it very hard to believe that the guy with kids here is wrong to feel sad. If you claim that the average 40-something married couple with three kids is "wealthier" today than they were in my parents' generation, I have questions about what you mean by "wealthier".
On a different note from the debating of crime statistics, are the cross sectional GDP growth data adjusted for foreign born workers for the countries other than the US? Italy instituted a very attractive tax regime for high income immigrants post pandemic. While the number of immigrants may be small as a percentage of population relative to the US, it is likely they are 1-2 orders of magnitude on average higher income than the typical US immigrant. Would really appreciate your perspective on this.
I had to squint pretty hard to understand the immigration and crime charts. For example, Violent crime is not structurally falling and is still outrageously high relative to peer countries.
How about if you don't want to open yourself to mischaracterizing, if you use official murder rate in a discussion, you call that 'murder rate' and not misuse a term also officially reported 'violent crime' which did not rise in same period. Your claim that this official reported violent crime stat does not track upward changes in rate is almost certainly BS. But even if somebody some day shows this (you and they have not) , your cavalier use of 'violent crime' as stand-in for 'murder rate' is disingenuous, even with this parathetical sidenote disclaimer. Also, nothing 'skyrocketed.' Murder rate rose some during a pandemic, well below historic trend variation and is now going back down.
While our kids continue to rail against Boomers ruining their future, I see them doing better than we did at that stage of our lives. They will NOT be inheriting our home, by the way.
My sixth thing is that YIMBYs are gaining momentum and achieving victories.
“. . . there was massive social unrest. . .”
There was also tremendous social cohesion. As a member of the Oklahoma Medical Reserve Corps, I worked as a full-time volunteer in the Tulsa Covid-19 POD, vaccinating 2,000 patients/day.
Half of the POD were Tulsa County Health Department workers, the other half retired nurses and physicians. Many, like myself, weren’t yet fully vaccinated, but masked and gloved-up.
Retired nurses, at their own time and expense, drove across the state to single-handedly operate Covid-19 PODs in remote, underserved counties. It was an amazing experience working with dedicated, talented professional who had a sense of mission.
Yet, the mainstream media gave very little coverage to extraordinary people -- of all types of religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender-identity -- who came together as strangers to provide care for anybody who came through the POD.
The light in the Dark Age of Covid-19, the best of the U.S., went underreported.
True
And a sixth, the Noahpinion blog. It brings some measure of joy :)
Awwww thank you ♥️
Please make this a monthly or at least a quarterly piece. and expand it to include items outside of the U.S.
Noah Smith said: “ Those years . . .cemented a negative mood in the minds of the American people that will take a while to heal. But the healing is underway,"
Noah, I think you have finally hit the right note in evaluating the last few years. We are not passionless Homo economicus—we are people who have been through the mill.
Also, don't you think the 9% income gain by the bottom quartile means infinitely more to that group than the 2% income loss for the top quartile?
Yes.
It's *supposed to*, at least according to most people's stated values, but the to quintile has a bigger megaphone.
At an anedoctical level, the only times I hear about labor markets is tech workers complaining about layoffs. If I hear about "the other half" (more like the other 80%), it's indirectly, with those same tech workers and similar complaining about doordash costing too much and hairdressers being impossible to find.
I fear the decline of mass active politics has made the poor too easy to care about in theory but ignore in practice. Props to this admin and all those who care anyway.
This narrative needs much much more play
Great news. I knew or suspected some ( crime) but the last- that younger generations were doing good was very surprising. Maybe no Civil War after all.
Pretty sure this is why younger generations feel a certain apathy towards their economic prospects. Regardless of their actual wealth increasing (and the additional things they can buy with it), it won’t buy them a house if this continues: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Median-house-price-to-median-household-income-annually-1984-to-2016-Source-Data_fig5_343914927
Well said. The reason millennials/Gen Z feel less prosperous is primarily due to housing costs outpacing income gains, which has both material and psychological effects.
Even if real incomes are higher now, the fact that homes were much more affordable to past generations and that many young people today can’t afford to buy at the same age their parents did makes any income gains feel inconsequential.
Regarding “Younger generations are doing better than their parents”:
Does the graph look a bit funny to you?
-The income plots seem to have a left shift. Income should start at 18 years (high school graduation), not 15 years.
-Surprising that there are not increasing income lags after 18 years for more recent generations, which would reflect increasing college attendance.
-For GenZ, the oldest are now 27 years old, which gives 9 years of income history, but the graph eyeballs at closer to 12 years income history.
Maybe minor issues, and the graph is basically correct.
I continue to believe there is something fishy about the "Gen Z is wealthier than previous generations" math. I'd like to see somebody try to actually control for differential inflation issues here, particularly around housing. To the extent that Gen Z is "wealthier" on paper because the house they scrimped to buy is worth a bigger amount of money, but then they have less capacity to either to spend money on anything that isn't the house, or to save up in other forms that can be spent for food and medicine in retirement -- that doesn't really seem like being wealthier. Sure, you could sell the house and live on that. But _where_ are you going to live on that, if every other house is just as expensive?
As Felix Salmon likes to say, you're born short one house. Inflated housing prices don't mean that owning a house makes you wealthier; it means it costs you more to cover your short.
More on differential inflation: https://www.slowboring.com/p/inflation-contrarians
<blockquote>
Relative price shifts are a big deal
If the price of fruit and vegetables started rising by double digits per year, offset by falling prices for sugar, wheat, and other staple commodities, that would have serious implications for people’s diet and health.
To just shrug and say “well the price of food is stable” would be pretty unresponsive to the actual situation, which is that a normal person is either going to see the quality of their diet erode or else the share of their income going to food rise.
Critically, this is not inflation.
I am a stickler here just like I’m a stickler about immigration and wages, because it’s really important for policymakers not to lose the plot on the need for aggressive monetary policy to generate full employment.
That being said, these relative price shifts are also bad.
And in this case it’s a fake example. But here are some real facts about how relative prices have changed:
[chart, which you can view if you follow the link]
This chart is telling you the plain truth, which is that if you took a healthy, childless person from 2000 and teleported them to 2020 and showed them Spotify and Netflix on an iPad Pro their mind would be totally blown. And an iPad Pro plus a magic keyboard costs less in nominal terms than an iBook did in 1999. Your guy would be extremely impressed with the IT revolution and the information superhighway.
But then if you bring forward another guy who’s got three kids — ages 4, 2, and six months — and tell him what his new child care costs are going to be, he’s gonna be really sad.
</blockquote>
Basically, I find it very hard to believe that the guy with kids here is wrong to feel sad. If you claim that the average 40-something married couple with three kids is "wealthier" today than they were in my parents' generation, I have questions about what you mean by "wealthier".
On a different note from the debating of crime statistics, are the cross sectional GDP growth data adjusted for foreign born workers for the countries other than the US? Italy instituted a very attractive tax regime for high income immigrants post pandemic. While the number of immigrants may be small as a percentage of population relative to the US, it is likely they are 1-2 orders of magnitude on average higher income than the typical US immigrant. Would really appreciate your perspective on this.
I think wealth is a better financial gauge than income. And there, we are at peak inequality.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/an-open-message-to-the-top-01
I had to squint pretty hard to understand the immigration and crime charts. For example, Violent crime is not structurally falling and is still outrageously high relative to peer countries.
"Just as a side note..."
How about if you don't want to open yourself to mischaracterizing, if you use official murder rate in a discussion, you call that 'murder rate' and not misuse a term also officially reported 'violent crime' which did not rise in same period. Your claim that this official reported violent crime stat does not track upward changes in rate is almost certainly BS. But even if somebody some day shows this (you and they have not) , your cavalier use of 'violent crime' as stand-in for 'murder rate' is disingenuous, even with this parathetical sidenote disclaimer. Also, nothing 'skyrocketed.' Murder rate rose some during a pandemic, well below historic trend variation and is now going back down.
I met aSubstacker who sang the blues. I asked him for some happy news. He just smiled and said that's all for today. Bye, bye miss American pie.
This is cause for optimism. Thanks.
While our kids continue to rail against Boomers ruining their future, I see them doing better than we did at that stage of our lives. They will NOT be inheriting our home, by the way.