HTLWD

Chill Uncategorized

Kevin Drum and this dipshit should give a class in how to lie with data. They are masters at it.

Ignoring for the moment all the issues with how no one can buy a square foot of housing a la carte, in 1973 the average home price was $33,000 and the average wage was $7,600 (round numbers for ease of comparison).

Looking at it in a more sane way than the Horpedahl putz, that means the average worker required 4.3 years of earnings to buy the average house in 1973,

How about now? I’ll use data from 2017 (2018 would be worse). Using the same census.gov data, the average selling price in 2017 was around $320,000 and and the average income in 2017 was $48,000.

This means that in 2017, the average worker would have to work 6.7 years to buy the average home — an increase of 2.4 years of labor required or 36% more. Remember, no one can buy a square foot of housing. This framing is absurd and only a fucking spreadsheet jockey could produce such specious donkey vomit. Also, his “analysis” ignores agglomeration effects, inequality, the Great Recession, and a dozen other important factors.

By the way, it gets even worse if you use median income instead of average. The median person income in the US in 2016 was only around $32,000, for a “years of income to buy” of 6.9 years.

I know he said later that he meant to say that he was using 1978 data, but 1973 or 1978 makes little difference to the analysis. He’s clearly wrong in every possible way and like a lot of classroom-intelligent people, he’s masterful at lying with data. This is how his type get ahead, with their Slate-esque contrarian hot takes and hoodlumish hoodwinking of the (as they see it) lower orders.

I will not stand for that shit. Health care and education are even more expensive than housing when compared to the 1970s, by the way. What an unpardonably shoddy thinker.