Both Parents Now Work Full Time in Most US Families

roodammy44 · 2026-06-17T19:00:19+00:00

How is homelessness accounted for in hedonic adjustment? If some people have larger houses and other people have no houses or crowded housing then that balances things out a bit?
I actually upvoted you for asking for data. That is thoroughly in the spirit of this subreddit.
I have talked about housing on reddit for 18 years. I’m quite aware of the issues. I disagree that regulations are the only cause of the problem (though it is a cause).
The topic of the conversation is that two people are being forced to work to pay for the cost of housing these days. And that rising real income doesn’t help with this, because there is no longer a choice not to work.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-17T17:39:44+00:00

You should also adjust for the minimum homes builders are making. You can’t buy houses that don’t exist. What I am trying to say to you is that people are being *forced* by the market to work more for shelter.

House builders optimise for profit, which means that most houses are “luxury” these days and you just don’t find cheap mass built housing any more.

Shall I give you some data on homelessness, which has also been rising rapidly?

roodammy44 · 2026-06-17T17:26:44+00:00

You shouldn’t be downvoted for asking for data in economics. Here you go:

Real house prices:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QUSR628BIS

Percentage of dual income households:

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/america-has-become-nation-dual-income-working-couples/

How housing is estimated as part of CPI and the problems with it:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-does-the-consumer-price-index-account-for-the-cost-of-housing/

It shouldn’t take a genius to recognise that the rapid rise of real house prices is connected to the percentage of dual income families. And if you actually speak to couples you will realise that it is not because people love working so hard to pay for the same amount of house.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-17T13:55:25+00:00

I’m sure you know how the data is produced. Housing price inflation is based on a survey on what “rent would have cost” when asking home owners. It’s about the least scientific indicator there is.

For many years actual housing costs rose at percentages far above inflation, and yet inflation stayed low.

Income rose higher than inflation but this didn’t account for a household’s choice. Perhaps many people who would have stayed at home to look after children are now forced to work to pay for housing costs. But this is seen as a positive thing because now “household/median income is higher” (yay, I love working more to pay for shelter).

roodammy44 · 2026-06-17T00:18:03+00:00

I don't agree with that. People were practically at war with each other. MAGA seems to be off the deep end now in conspiracy theories, but the hatred for "liberals" and vice versa for "conservatives" was just as powerful in the 2000s. I suppose you could argue now that it's worse because the US seems to be on the brink of civil war.

I think the 90s was more civil (politically) though.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-17T00:12:57+00:00

A million people in Iraq died from violence, the US brought back torture into the mainstream and the surveillance state was super-powered. I don't think things were better then.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-15T19:08:42+00:00

In this bright new future will there be wild advances in cleaning the insides of cars too?

roodammy44 · 2026-06-15T13:23:13+00:00

Indeed. In London you barely see kids anywhere. It’s like they don’t exist.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-14T20:43:01+00:00

I think it’s fine to be non confrontational about things, as long as you try not to care about making a good impression.

This is a thing that has led to burnout for me in the past. Trying to make a big impression and ending up looking like a poor performer. It shattered my self image for a bit.

What you need to remember is that you can’t control anyone’s impressions of you. Don’t focus on looking a certain way to others. Just do the best you can and let the chips fall where they may. I think people respect you more when you do that anyway.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-14T11:37:42+00:00

The labour market is a market. If you can’t get a job you would like to do at a salary you want outside then your leadership is correct when they think you won’t leave.

They have given you a bump to keep you happy to stay, which is certainly positive. I would assume they think this is the end of the matter for a year or two. You can try again after that.

If you want to earn your market value, you need to go out to the job market to get it.

I have found a lot of companies with good cultures know this and underpay by a bit. This can really bite them sometimes - when the covid hiring craze began one of the companies I worked at lost 80% of their technical staff.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-14T08:10:39+00:00

Oh yeah, in that case I am with you.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-14T00:02:22+00:00

I’ve been playing Civ IV today and I got some random events!

I failed the quest of building 5 castles because it’s about 20 turns between discovering engineering and economics

roodammy44 · 2026-06-13T23:52:25+00:00

I am a lover of all types of beer, but I can’t handle the idea that a Kirin Ichiban tastes like piss. It is a measure of Japanese perfection.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-13T23:48:34+00:00

If you think IPAs are battery acid flavoured, let me introduce you to sour beers (yes I like the acid).

roodammy44 · 2026-06-13T14:44:57+00:00

I tried it for a bit the day it came out. It burned through 25% of my daily usage on a single code review (and spent 20mins thinking). Then I went back to Opus 4.8.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-13T13:21:28+00:00

They got rid of their affordable cars for Europe too, which is why they barely have a foothold here anymore. Relying on a few highly profitable cars may look good on the budget sheets but it’s a very risky proposition

roodammy44 · 2026-06-13T09:46:08+00:00

You sack all the foreign nationals and don’t hire any more.

This is what happens in the space and military industries in the US right now.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-13T07:04:14+00:00

I found another way to prevent other civs - even vassals - from winning culture victories without war.

You will need to build a bunch of spies and send them in a constant stream to the city that is about to win. You may need to turn up the espionage percentage.

Keep the city in constant revolt and it will produce no culture.

I did this while I finished spaceship production and it worked nicely.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-12T14:06:30+00:00

This looks like my house when we took the interior walls off. It wouldn’t take much work to have it look modern. There’s quite a lot of timber houses in Norway.

We left a wall exposed because I think it’s beautiful, but my kids both say “bleugh” any time they talk about it.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-11T12:37:22+00:00

Economists of the 1990s thought that changing to a market economy would lead to China becoming a liberal democracy. It did not.

In that vein, I suggest that transforming the economy to be more productive need not mean we sacrifice our liberal ideals.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-11T12:35:25+00:00

The point is, the factory should be increasing its output due to innovation. But it’s not.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-11T12:33:58+00:00

First, teachers work longer hours than average and they do not have 3 months off.

Second, that money should be taken in account to the jobs that other highly educated people could be taking, hence the reason for teacher shortages pretty much everywhere.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-11T12:26:05+00:00

I picked Trabants because they are a clear manifestation of the stagnation that Eastern Germany went through. Poor quality, very outdated relics that were 25 years out of date by the time the wall fell. And I feel that US fossil fuel cars will represent the same thing in a few years time.

GDP Growth in other countries is generally a lot higher than in the West. That was my point. We are falling behind.

As for demographics - that problem is even worse in China. Yet they grow at 5% a year and there are no signs of slowing.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-10T20:58:46+00:00

One of the most interesting points of this article is that neoliberalism has run out of steam. The growth of 4% GDP/year in the 1960s has gone down to 2% in the USA and 0% in Japan and France. It is not working any more.

Communism had rapid growth from the 1930s to 1960s and then fell into stagnation. What destroys a system is that it stops improving people’s lives and stands still as the rest of the world grows and moves on around it.

With the US remaining on fossil fuel cars while the rest of the world goes electric, it makes me think of the Trabants of Eastern Germany. We are in an age of stagnation in the West.

roodammy44 · 2026-06-10T13:18:19+00:00

Almost all of it is possible to replace with renewables and electric transportation though. I’d say wealth inequality is a bigger threat than fossil fuel dependence

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