I wonder how restarting student loan payments will affect this. One could imagine that their being paused contributed to this, especially among those at the bottom.
I wonder how restarting student loan payments will affect this. One could imagine that their being paused contributed to this, especially among those at the bottom.
The distribution of student loans is strongly correlated to higher income brackets. It’s one of the major criticisms over the student debt forgiveness plans.
The distribution of student loans is strongly correlated to higher income brackets. It’s one of the major criticisms over the student debt forgiveness plans.
Yup, forgiving student loans is forgiving (on average) the highest earners in the country and letting everyone else fall even further behind. The best way to fight the student loan craziness is to...
Yup, forgiving student loans is forgiving (on average) the highest earners in the country and letting everyone else fall even further behind.
The best way to fight the student loan craziness is to fix the cost of universities in the first place and then get rid of the predatory interest rates that are causing people to fall so far behind on their loan payments.
Then start giving more tax credits to those in the working class paid for by the taxing corporations and the rich more effectively.
That doesn't fix the huge growth depression that's already been set in motion by preexisting loans. I agree that costs need to come down but the past loans shouldn't be a "sorry you got fucked"...
That doesn't fix the huge growth depression that's already been set in motion by preexisting loans. I agree that costs need to come down but the past loans shouldn't be a "sorry you got fucked" either. Ideally they could try to normalize older student debt to be more in line with what current students would take on, assuming they'd addressed the high prices.
I mean Biden's new repayment plan capped loan payments at 5% of discretionary income, and the loans are then forgiven after 10 years. This means that borrowers who can't afford student loan...
I mean Biden's new repayment plan capped loan payments at 5% of discretionary income, and the loans are then forgiven after 10 years. This means that borrowers who can't afford student loan repayments and only make $15 per hour after college will pay absolutely nothing and then have their loans written off after 10 years. Many policy wonks cheered the new repayment plan because it will have a significantly larger effect on living with college debt than one-time forgiveness!
You forgot to mention that forgiveness after 10 years is only for those who had $12,000 or less on their original loan. As a teacher in a state which requires me to have a Master's, student loans...
You forgot to mention that forgiveness after 10 years is only for those who had $12,000 or less on their original loan.
As a teacher in a state which requires me to have a Master's, student loans are pretty brutal for me and my family.
I don't mean to be insensitive, but is a loan payment of 5% of your discretionary income really that brutal? If you have private student loans, I know those are their own beast.
I don't mean to be insensitive, but is a loan payment of 5% of your discretionary income really that brutal? If you have private student loans, I know those are their own beast.
Well, graduate loans are, I believe 10% of your discretionary income and 20 years for forgiveness. I'll get PSLF before then so I really can't even complain. I just know that previous payments...
Well, graduate loans are, I believe 10% of your discretionary income and 20 years for forgiveness. I'll get PSLF before then so I really can't even complain. I just know that previous payments have been hard for me and I know there are people in far worse positions.
Luckily, I only have federal loans. But with a newborn at home, car insurance, mortgage (on an affordable little condo), and all the other living expenses, every little bit of money counts for us right now.
I actually haven't made a save payment yet so I don't know what it will be.
Assuming that stimulus doesn’t free those people up to build homes or start businesses that employ others. This is the exact group that is most likely to engage in entrepreneurial activity that...
Yup, forgiving student loans is forgiving (on average) the highest earners in the country and letting everyone else fall even further behind.
Assuming that stimulus doesn’t free those people up to build homes or start businesses that employ others. This is the exact group that is most likely to engage in entrepreneurial activity that creates jobs, not billionaires or corporate giveaways.
I'm not entirely convinced either, but it's hardly fair to conflate wage-earning professionals starting small businesses with incumbent corporations and their owners. Giving tax cuts to Coca-Cola...
I'm not entirely convinced either, but it's hardly fair to conflate wage-earning professionals starting small businesses with incumbent corporations and their owners. Giving tax cuts to Coca-Cola won't ever lead to anything but a local increase in economic productivity at most, but a small town might could need someone beside Walmart selling hammers.
The distribution of student loans themselves may be, but that doesn't necessarily entail that the effects of the pause primarily affect those brackets. Those with lower income may be more...
The distribution of student loans themselves may be, but that doesn't necessarily entail that the effects of the pause primarily affect those brackets. Those with lower income may be more positively affected by student loan repayments being paused than higher earners, for whom the pause may not matter as much. Or it might be something completely different. You can't really determine anything from the correlation of student loans with income on its own.
I suppose we'll have to see how things are affected once they've been unpaused again for longer to get a picture of how the pause affected things.
Theoretically, there should be no direct effect. Net worth is assets minus debt. Earning money increases net worth and spending money decreases it. Paying off a debt has no effect on this number,...
Theoretically, there should be no direct effect. Net worth is assets minus debt. Earning money increases net worth and spending money decreases it. Paying off a debt has no effect on this number, compared to leaving the money in a bank account.
In practice, there are secondary effects, like you could invest the money.
Does the "assets minus debt" number here include the interest accrued on that debt? Because that could certainly have an effect across the board in that case, given that interest didn't accrue...
Does the "assets minus debt" number here include the interest accrued on that debt? Because that could certainly have an effect across the board in that case, given that interest didn't accrue during the pause.
Yes, interest is an expense, so that lowers your net worth. I guess that would show up as a higher expense when you start paying off a loan? Interest rates were low at the start of the pandemic,...
Yes, interest is an expense, so that lowers your net worth. I guess that would show up as a higher expense when you start paying off a loan?
Interest rates were low at the start of the pandemic, though, and I don't know what people were paying on student loans.
Do interest rates in 2020 matter for most people's student loans though? my understanding is that you're locked into them when you take out the loans. At least that's the impression I got from...
Do interest rates in 2020 matter for most people's student loans though? my understanding is that you're locked into them when you take out the loans. At least that's the impression I got from people telling me I was lucky I got Obama-era interest rates on mine.
I wouldn't have expected this, as in consumer debt land: Americans ran up $105 billion in credit card interest last year alone One in three cardholders with the lowest credit scores were in...
I wouldn't have expected this, as in consumer debt land:
Americans ran up $105 billion in credit card interest last year alone
One in three cardholders with the lowest credit scores were in persistent debt last year, up 25% in 2021.
Ninety-day delinquency on credit cards has increased to 5.1 percent, up from 3.4 percent in the second quarter of last year, Federal Reserve data shows.
the average cardholder carried $5,288 in total credit card debt at the end of 2022, up 24% from 2021 lows and marking a return to late 2019 levels.
average APR for a credit card in 2023 is 28.93 percent, up quite a few percentages since 2022, which was higher than 2021, etc.
average credit card debt in 2022 is $7,951, up about 1000 dollars since 2021
but, somehow...
Mortgage delinquency rates are down in 2022 compared to 2021
So it's nice that consumer debt isn't the full story.
I'm curious, what would your predictions have been before reading this report? I haven't thought too hard about the results but the credit card numbers don't seem overly surprising. I imagine the...
I'm curious, what would your predictions have been before reading this report?
I haven't thought too hard about the results but the credit card numbers don't seem overly surprising. I imagine the higher federal funding rate led to some increase in credit card APRs, and that APR increase would be more than the federal rate increase because of a materially higher chance of default (as we also see in the stats).
But also this is what I'm saying after seeing the numbers, so I could just be rationalising them. What do you think?
Also, I can't fathom why mortgage delinquency would move in the opposite direction, so there are clearly things I'm missing here.
That's a good point, but these things are iterative through periods of generations. It's been 15 years since 2008, and how many people who lost their homes have been able to reestablish their...
That's a good point, but these things are iterative through periods of generations. It's been 15 years since 2008, and how many people who lost their homes have been able to reestablish their previous level of financial or housing security? If a large number of buyers leave the market at that point, and from there the rate of mortgage uptake is reduced, you'll see a long term reduction in total mortgages, but a lower average risk among them.
Honestly I am very far from being any kind of economist. Prior to this report, I thought maybe we were spiraling to another crisis circa 2008. I guess I still do think that's possible - I don't...
Honestly I am very far from being any kind of economist. Prior to this report, I thought maybe we were spiraling to another crisis circa 2008. I guess I still do think that's possible - I don't have enough expertise to really analyze what all this information means for the economy.
I've long posited that internet discourse is centered around teenager and college students. There is no wealth at phase of life. So they all tell each other that everyone is poor. That it's going...
I've long posited that internet discourse is centered around teenager and college students. There is no wealth at phase of life. So they all tell each other that everyone is poor. That it's going to be doom and gloom forever. Society is on the brink. Cats and dogs living together. Mass hysteria. etc. The anecdotes from the older individuals are most popular as it provides confirmation to the doomsday echo chambers. Those who go against the narrative are always unpopular posts among the general social media rabble.
From a high level view this is just another time in history. The economy goes up and down. Social strife comes and goes. Wars are fought and ended. Yet internet discourse would have you believe this is a special time in history. The very end of history in particular. When it all everything comes undone.
Better to look at the data than try to read tea leaves that is social media.
Gen Z has 86% less purchasing power than boomers did in their 20s. Adjusted for inflation, education costs are 3x what they were for boomers. Adjusted for inflation, Gen Z is paying double what...
I've long posited that internet discourse is centered around teenager and college students. There is no wealth at phase of life. So they all tell each other that everyone is poor
Gen Z has 86% less purchasing power than boomers did in their 20s. Adjusted for inflation, education costs are 3x what they were for boomers. Adjusted for inflation, Gen Z is paying double what boomers paid for housing [1]
There is no shortage of those sharing the sentiment that these are just spoiled kids convincing themselves that things are worse than they are. They are worse off in materially meaningful ways.
I'm not arguing for or against that. Nor did I put forth to begin with that the baby boomers did or didn't have a materially better life in their 20s. I certainly didn't say they were "spoiled...
I'm not arguing for or against that. Nor did I put forth to begin with that the baby boomers did or didn't have a materially better life in their 20s.
I apologize if I misrepresented your position. Upon a re-read, I feel that I accurately captured the overall thrust of the most straightforward reading of the comment. For the sake of charity, I...
I apologize if I misrepresented your position.
Upon a re-read, I feel that I accurately captured the overall thrust of the most straightforward reading of the comment.
For the sake of charity, I want to correct my previous statement to be a response to the broader sentiment that I described rather than specifically your comment.
I’d argue a lot of those types that hyper focus on how the US is crumbling etc etc come from the Upper Middle Class.
I've long posited that internet discourse is centered around teenager and college students. There is no wealth at phase of life. So they all tell each other that everyone is poor. That it's going to be doom and gloom forever. Society is on the brink.
I’d argue a lot of those types that hyper focus on how the US is crumbling etc etc come from the Upper Middle Class.
Exactly right and that group is also by far the one that has the most time to spend online as well. I know my posting has dropped off significantly since graduating to a full time job and I used...
Exactly right and that group is also by far the one that has the most time to spend online as well. I know my posting has dropped off significantly since graduating to a full time job and I used to be posting the same doom and gloom stuff.
Now I have a family and make plenty of money but “life is pretty good for me” doesn’t really drive social media engagement but is the actual reality for most Americans. Turns out life is fairly nice for a lot of people in the richest nation in human history.
The actual paper here is enlightening. Income inequality actually increased. Income gains were mostly made by the richest 10-20%. Wealth inequality decreased. But mostly only for home owners, who...
Income inequality actually increased. Income gains were mostly made by the richest 10-20%.
Wealth inequality decreased. But mostly only for home owners, who comprise 66% of households. Median renter wealth increased from 7k to 10k. Median homeowner wealth increased from 295k to 396k.
Which makes this article a little crazy. If you are lucky enough to own a house, and your house price goes up, you won't feel richer. But if you are in the top 10-20% of income earners, and your real income increases 9-15%, you should feel significantly better off than everyone else who only saw 5% real increase in income.
Not sure I entirely buy this but it seems worth looking at. From the article: Caveats: numbers never speak for themselves; they are meaningless without understanding how they were gathered and...
Not sure I entirely buy this but it seems worth looking at. From the article:
A week ago, the Fed and Treasury released its 2022 data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which is a big survey they do every three years in which they ask households about their finances. Household surveys are important because they allow us to calculate things like medians — if you want to know how a household in the middle of the national income or wealth distribution is doing, you need to talk to a ton of households to find out what that distribution looks like. A downside of household surveys is that they take a long time to do (which is why the SCF only comes out every three years), so they don’t give you up-to-the-minute information. Another downside is that you have to be very careful about which households you survey, in order to get a representative sample. But even with those limitations, survey data is hugely informative.
Basically, the 2022 numbers — which you can see summarized in the Fed’s report — tell a really encouraging story. In a nutshell:
Americans’ wealth is way up since before the pandemic.
The increase is very even across the board, with people at the bottom of the distribution gaining proportionally more than people at the top.
Inequality is down, including racial inequality, educational inequality, urban-rural inequality, overall wealth inequality.
Debt is much less of a problem.
There’s even some surprising good news about income as well as wealth.
In other words, a rising tide is lifting all boats. I know it can be tough to believe that, with all the doom and gloom you see in the media, but the numbers speak for themselves. And just so you know, all the numbers I give in this post are adjusted for inflation, so don’t worry about that.
Caveats: numbers never speak for themselves; they are meaningless without understanding how they were gathered and other context. Also, having medians is in some ways an improvement, but they're still summary statistics about hundreds of millions of other people and that's probably pretty irrelevant to your situation.
This is good to see, and not surprising. If you think about it, minimum wage is kinda irrelevant now. You hardly see places hiring for less than $15/hour today, which is double what minimum wage...
The increase is very even across the board, with people at the bottom of the distribution gaining proportionally more than people at the top.
This is good to see, and not surprising. If you think about it, minimum wage is kinda irrelevant now. You hardly see places hiring for less than $15/hour today, which is double what minimum wage is. So anyone who were making those wages have had their income doubled, while people with higher wages haven't seen that level of increase (they still had some increase on average, but nowhere near double).
It’s honestly absurd that salary isn’t tied to inflation at the base level. I know why businesses don’t do it, because they wanna avoid paying any more than they can get away with. But the...
It’s honestly absurd that salary isn’t tied to inflation at the base level. I know why businesses don’t do it, because they wanna avoid paying any more than they can get away with.
But the implication is “we value your time more when you were new to the company and still had to learn a bunch of the ways our systems work and how to do your job, and value your time less now that you’re familiar with everything and have a few years of experience under your belt” and that just blows my mind
Its incredibly depressing. I like my job and I don't want to leave, but after 2 rounds of huge layoffs this year at my company, I'm definitely not getting any sort of meaningful raise for the 4th...
Its incredibly depressing. I like my job and I don't want to leave, but after 2 rounds of huge layoffs this year at my company, I'm definitely not getting any sort of meaningful raise for the 4th year running, it honestly feels like I'm going backwards even though I'm one of the best performing people on my team.
Any dreams of homeownership have been crushed by the prices doubling and the interest rates quadrupling, my grocery bill is up 40%, I never eat out or order food anymore, my utilities and rent are all up 20%+, insurance premiums are up too.
But I'm sure glad the average American is getting richer, it feels great as an average American
If it makes you feel any better, Noah Smith has a reputation as a know-nothing for a reason. This article is bullshit spin around the only actually interesting chart:...
If it makes you feel any better, Noah Smith has a reputation as a know-nothing for a reason. This article is bullshit spin around the only actually interesting chart:
Might as well sum the whole article up as "asset prices being inflated beyond reason means people's net worth also goes up" but this is only good if you actually have the asset. Like, this chart had to put fucking car prices on there as an asset as if the average American has the ability to sell their car and live without one.
I’m glad the numbers were adjusted for inflation. It was interesting that the author mentioned used car values may not represent an actual asset to most people as we are generally car dependent in...
I’m glad the numbers were adjusted for inflation. It was interesting that the author mentioned used car values may not represent an actual asset to most people as we are generally car dependent in this country. However I have an issue with the author glossing over the insane increase in housing costs. Speaking for myself, my home has significantly increased in value over the past 10 years. However, it’s largely irrelevant because all the other houses have also climbed to stratospheric prices. This doesn’t make me feel rich, it makes me feel stuck as I can’t afford to move to a larger place. I do feel lucky in the sense that I bought a house though, entering at the top of market with 8% mortgage rates to boot is a kick to the groin. Oh, and what is the author talking about with homes being better and hence commanding a higher price tag. These are the same shoddy houses built 50-100 years ago that skyrocketed in price, not new construction.
I'd say 50-100 years of bad technology is gonna trump any remodels. Heck most kitchens "need" a remodel every 5 years if you listen to the real estate agents. But what are the odds all the lead...
I'd say 50-100 years of bad technology is gonna trump any remodels. Heck most kitchens "need" a remodel every 5 years if you listen to the real estate agents. But what are the odds all the lead paint was removed from a 1940 something home? How about the asbestos in tiles and insulation....most people refuse to test for these because then it's a "yes" that must be disclosed and not a "might" that gets handwaived with a waiver.
Knob and tube wiring might still be live. Just takes one lazy person to think they can just wire into it to save a the hassle of running a wire. Blow some insulation in that and house burns down real quick. Even if you're past the worst of the electrical legacy, people do half-baked corner-cutting all the time, contractors being some of the worst at it. I'm gonna start doing my own electrical wiring and just pay for inspection...at least then it will be up to code the first time.
Lead and Steel (also below safe thresholds these days) pipes for your plumbing. Radon mitigations probably need installed if there's a basement.
Lots of nasty secrets hide in the walls. Unless you're gonna drop several grand to redo each room, there's gonna be nasty surprises.
This is not to say it's a dealbreaker by any means....personally after seeing quality of materials and workmanship I'll take a solid mid-90's home over anything built after 2005. But I'm also never buying a home older than 1980 again unless it was built before 1900 and I had an extra $200k to revamp it.
Edit: I’m a doofus and misread. Leaving factoid up for the curious. In December 2003 the EPA prohibited construction using wood treated with chromated copper arsenate. However, manufacturers were...
Edit: I’m a doofus and misread. Leaving factoid up for the curious.
In December 2003 the EPA prohibited construction using wood treated with chromated copper arsenate. However, manufacturers were still allowed to sell their remaining stocks. Given the pace of housing construction at the time, 2005 should eliminate the possibility of a given house containing CCA-treated wood.
In my case, that's when I worked as a temp cleaning up after construction crews for newly built homes for people to tour in-progress. $800,000 McMansions where the PVC water main into the house...
In my case, that's when I worked as a temp cleaning up after construction crews for newly built homes for people to tour in-progress.
$800,000 McMansions where the PVC water main into the house was breaking 2 months into the build and the answer was to caulk it back together and cover with some tape.
Yeah, I'm thinking more of the single-family homes that people own in the SF bay area. It might have been cheap worker housing originally, but it's expensive now, and new owners will often put a...
Yeah, I'm thinking more of the single-family homes that people own in the SF bay area. It might have been cheap worker housing originally, but it's expensive now, and new owners will often put a substantial amount of work in.
Or maybe they neglected it (common as people get older).
Co-op or condo owners also sometimes put a lot of work in. Units for sale in the same (older) building can be pretty different.
I can guarantee they didn't adjust for actual cost of living inflation, just the "inflation" numbers the government provides. No one's expenses only went up by 17% in the last 4 years unless...
I can guarantee they didn't adjust for actual cost of living inflation, just the "inflation" numbers the government provides. No one's expenses only went up by 17% in the last 4 years unless you're very lucky.
Looong ways to go to catch up to median incomes from 1950. This article only goes back a couple years. It's out of context in the long view of history.
Looong ways to go to catch up to median incomes from 1950. This article only goes back a couple years. It's out of context in the long view of history.
The family median income in 1950 was $3000, which adjusted for inflation is ~$38k. According to the document linked in the article, the median family income is now $70k.
The family median income in 1950 was $3000, which adjusted for inflation is ~$38k. According to the document linked in the article, the median family income is now $70k.
I just went down this rabbit hole...in 1970 average rent for a year was about $1,500. Nowadays average rent for a year is about $35k. So that family median income isn't actually that far off, all...
I just went down this rabbit hole...in 1970 average rent for a year was about $1,500.
Nowadays average rent for a year is about $35k.
So that family median income isn't actually that far off, all things considered. We just all have a lot more misc garbage to buy now too.
This is the point some economists make about housing standards increasing over time. Regardless of many cities making microapartments and dorm-style housing illegal, the average home has massively...
This is the point some economists make about housing standards increasing over time. Regardless of many cities making microapartments and dorm-style housing illegal, the average home has massively increased in size over time!
A few generations ago, houses were significantly smaller, so they were naturally cheaper than they are now. Comparing price per area over time is an interesting metric but still misleading. Housing is expected to have more utilities like internet and appliances like dishwashers and clothes dryers nowadays.
Median incomes from 1950 and median incomes from today aren't easily comparable though because the labour force has changed so dramatically since then.
Median incomes from 1950 and median incomes from today aren't easily comparable though because the labour force has changed so dramatically since then.
An important bit of context for those unfamiliar with the author: Noah Smith is deeply ideologically neoliberal. I think in America today, one can be considered center-left and neoliberal...
An important bit of context for those unfamiliar with the author: Noah Smith is deeply ideologically neoliberal. I think in America today, one can be considered center-left and neoliberal considering the sharp shift of the Overton window to the right on economic policy since the 80s. I think the material impact of neoliberalism remains the same, even if how we categorize it politically hasn't, and even if neolibs like Smith can otherwise hold progressive views on social issues.
This isn't to say that the article is wrong, and I generally agree with the YIMBY sentiment as a means for mitigating the worst effects of the housing crisis, but it's important context when the subtext of the post is that neoliberal policy is currently benefiting regular Americans. Also I don't believe the SCF's report substantiates Smith's claim that inequality is down.
In other words, a rising tide is lifting all boats. I know it can be tough to believe that, with all the doom and gloom you see in the media, but the numbers speak for themselves.
I'm not an economist, but anecdotally, shits an awful lot harder now than even a few years ago for millenials. And that's not only true for me, but basically everyone else my age. The changes in wealth distribution due to decades of neoliberal consensus has ensured basically no one my age that I know owns their own home. Every single boomer I know owned a home by my age.
I know Smith tries to address this and pin the blame entirely in NIMBYs, but to ignore and flat out deny the primary role neoliberalism is playing in causing ever increasing wealth inequality is motivated reasoning.
I not only think that's not important context, it's context that's actively harmful and the only purpose is to lead people to fallacious thinking. Personal reputation can matter as a heuristic for...
An important bit of context for those unfamiliar with the author: Noah Smith is deeply ideologically neoliberal.
I not only think that's not important context, it's context that's actively harmful and the only purpose is to lead people to fallacious thinking.
Personal reputation can matter as a heuristic for whether or not you choose to engage with certain content, because there is only so much time you have in the day, after all. If you're looking for a serious policy discussion, someone who's a known MAGA republican probably isn't the best source.
Noah Smith is a serious writer, and he writes in good faith and with research. Once you've decided to, and have read the piece, you should judge it on its own merits. If you thought the article was good before knowing what political "team" the author is on, no matter what that team is, it shouldn't change what you think of the article, or vice versa.
I'm not giving a value judgement on the article or your opinion on the article, just that I think that emphasizing what political box X and Y are can only lead to bad things. It is negatively important context that people on Twitter consider Noah Smith a neoliberal. I think for good faith discussion, everyone's political "team" should be deliberately hidden and consciously not considered.
Some context for me, I follow Noah Smith on substack as he is someone who I both ideologically disagree with and generally like the writing of, a good combo. It's important to me that I challenge...
Some context for me, I follow Noah Smith on substack as he is someone who I both ideologically disagree with and generally like the writing of, a good combo. It's important to me that I challenge my beliefs and read opinions that don't match my own.
I not only think that's not important context, it's context that's actively harmful and the only purpose is to lead people to fallacious thinking.
It's pretty standard practice for journalists to declare conflicts of interest (though of course, not ideological conflicts). This doesn't discredit what the journalists are doing, but I think most view the context as nonetheless important. I appreciate Noah's writing, and I think it should be understood in context.
I think that emphasizing what political box X and Y are can only lead to bad things.
If someone writes a piece stating that inequality is getting better and they are ideologically aligned with an economic view that has caused massive inequality over the past few decades, then I'd consider that an important piece of context.
There's quite a large difference between this and a conflict of interest, that being that you wouldn't know that such conflict of interest existed if it weren't disclosed. On political ideology,...
There's quite a large difference between this and a conflict of interest, that being that you wouldn't know that such conflict of interest existed if it weren't disclosed.
On political ideology, on the other hand, if Smith were so obviously biased as a neoliberal, you should be able to tell that in the writing. It would be self evident - his thoughts are the entire piece, after all. If you couldn't tell that he was a "neoliberal" after all that, then that should really be an opportunity of reflection for the reader and no more -- mayhaps said reader weren't that opposed to some "neoliberal" ideas after all.
The writing stands for itself. A financial conflict of interest doesn't. A sports writer who is a massive homer as part of their personality does not "disclose" that - it's just an element of the writing.
There is no reason to make it explicit other than to encourage people who consider themselves to be on the "other team" to have a conscious bias against the material regardless of how receptive they would actually be of the arguments made, which just increases pointless partisanship and makes good faith discussion impossible.
So I think I principally disagree with the assertion that ideology is always self-evident. For example, rightist intellectuals have made painstaking efforts to have the veneer of objectivity while...
On political ideology, on the other hand, if Smith were so obviously biased as a neoliberal, you should be able to tell that in the writing. It would be self evident - his thoughts are the entire piece, after all.
So I think I principally disagree with the assertion that ideology is always self-evident. For example, rightist intellectuals have made painstaking efforts to have the veneer of objectivity while pushing an ideological agenda. Phrenology at one time seemed to be an objective intellectual discipline, while we now understand it as pseudoscience motivated to justify racism. There are modern analogs that come to mind; Charles Murray and the Bell Curve, and the practice of concern trolling.
Let's imagine someone wrote an article that presented data and made the claim that healthcare for trans youth leads to poorer outcomes than the control group. This would be an important article that I would legitimately want to read. If it turns out the author is a TERF and guest speaks on various TERF podcasts, that also would be important context for the article. If I didn't know that context about the author, I could read the article and be convinced without also wrestling with the underlying ideology that led to the creation of the article.
Why would you be convinced of that, though? For both examples, the evidence they provide has been disproven. That should be the reason you don't believe their claims - because they are logically...
Why would you be convinced of that, though? For both examples, the evidence they provide has been disproven. That should be the reason you don't believe their claims - because they are logically weak and have no backing evidence. Yes, that takes time, which is why you no matter the ideology, you shouldn't blindly believe anything an article says. If you have the time and expertise, do research, if not, wait to see if there's corroborating opinions.
The other side of that is honestly equally concerning - if a known racial equality advocate wrote about racist ideology, would you be inclined to believe that?
As for concern trolling, like I said, it can be a useful, and practically necessary, heuristic when seeing whether or not to engage with a particular piece of writing, but if you have already decided to engage, or otherwise have reason to believe the writer is doing so in good faith, then it should be discarded. Noah Smith is clearly not concern trolling - he is writing what he believes in good faith.
I would consider their ideology to be important context in this example as well. Respectfully I think we are at an irreconcilable disagreement of conflicting value judgements. It is simply my...
The other side of that is honestly equally concerning - if a known racial equality advocate wrote about racist ideology, would you be inclined to believe that?
I would consider their ideology to be important context in this example as well.
Respectfully I think we are at an irreconcilable disagreement of conflicting value judgements. It is simply my opinion that knowing an author's ideology is valuable epistemically. We probably could drill down further on why I believe that if you'd like, but I'd be comfortable leaving it here.
I think it's good to give context, but is this good context? "Neoliberal" is often used as a fairly meaningless, dismissive slur nowadays, so people might not even know what you mean by it....
I think it's good to give context, but is this good context? "Neoliberal" is often used as a fairly meaningless, dismissive slur nowadays, so people might not even know what you mean by it. Historically, it might have been someone who admired Reagan and Thatcher and promoted deregulation, but that's pretty old history at this point.
How to do it better? A lazy (efficient!) way would be to quote Wikipedia, but I think there's been some kind of edit war over there. You can see how some people like to use "neoliberal" as an insult in the middle there:
Noah Smith is broadly considered by others to be a liberal.[9][10] Contemporaries often group Smith in with other liberal economists such as Krugman,[11][12] who has also written in support of some of Smith's views.[13][14] He has written articles or columns that demonstrate a left leaning perspective, expressing support for affordable healthcare reform, mass expansion of public transit, green energy, immigration reform, industrial policy, labor unions, and YIMBY positions.[15][16][17][18][19][20] Smith has appeared on the Neoliberal Project's podcast multiple times[21] and was labeled the "Chief Neoliberal Shill" by the group in 2018.[22] Smith aligns himself with liberal commentators and has written in dissent about conservative slants in the economics industry and profession.[9] Smith has expressed disagreements with socialism and communism[23] as well as the degrowth movement, or a post growth world.[24] He has views on the education of economics, particularly microeconomics, stating that more of the focus of economics education should be data driven, and less of a theory emphasis.[25] In a similar vein, he has criticized macroeconomics for being too theory focused, despite it being the most popular field.[26][27][28] He has characterized Modern Monetary Theory as "a set of political memes to push for more deficit spending", rather than a useful economic theory.[29]
How does he describe himself? Let's look at the about page:
Noahpinion is explicitly a techno-optimist blog, meaning that I believe technological innovation is going to be more important and transformative — and usually, though not always, better for the human race — than most people realize. The recent advances in vaccines that helped us get through the Covid pandemic, and the advances in green energy that promise to help us avoid the worst of climate change, are cases in point.
In terms of politics, I’m a pretty standard center-left liberal; I don’t think America needs a revolution, I just want everyone to have enough food and housing and health care and a decent wage and basic dignity. I love America, and I want America to be an inclusive nation — meaning that I want every American to feel a sense of ownership and belonging in their own country. Economically, I think the U.S.’ biggest problem is a failure to build material abundance — we don’t build enough housing, our health care is way too expensive, and we aren’t building green energy fast enough.
Anyway, I'm against using "neoliberal" for name-calling. Maybe a good question to ask would be how pro-market Noah Smith is?
I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm solidly millennial(33) and the pandemic and post pandemic has been massively beneficial for me, and most of my peers. We're talking about people finally...
I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm solidly millennial(33) and the pandemic and post pandemic has been massively beneficial for me, and most of my peers. We're talking about people finally getting to the meat of their careers (with income) almost all of them finally buying property (since they saved enough) well, when interest rates were low, not so much 2023, with boomers finally retiring, millennials are actually getting some gains in the past decade. I think gen Z are gonna have it even tougher in the short term than we will.
I wonder how restarting student loan payments will affect this. One could imagine that their being paused contributed to this, especially among those at the bottom.
The distribution of student loans is strongly correlated to higher income brackets. It’s one of the major criticisms over the student debt forgiveness plans.
Yup, forgiving student loans is forgiving (on average) the highest earners in the country and letting everyone else fall even further behind.
The best way to fight the student loan craziness is to fix the cost of universities in the first place and then get rid of the predatory interest rates that are causing people to fall so far behind on their loan payments.
Then start giving more tax credits to those in the working class paid for by the taxing corporations and the rich more effectively.
That doesn't fix the huge growth depression that's already been set in motion by preexisting loans. I agree that costs need to come down but the past loans shouldn't be a "sorry you got fucked" either. Ideally they could try to normalize older student debt to be more in line with what current students would take on, assuming they'd addressed the high prices.
I mean Biden's new repayment plan capped loan payments at 5% of discretionary income, and the loans are then forgiven after 10 years. This means that borrowers who can't afford student loan repayments and only make $15 per hour after college will pay absolutely nothing and then have their loans written off after 10 years. Many policy wonks cheered the new repayment plan because it will have a significantly larger effect on living with college debt than one-time forgiveness!
You forgot to mention that forgiveness after 10 years is only for those who had $12,000 or less on their original loan.
As a teacher in a state which requires me to have a Master's, student loans are pretty brutal for me and my family.
I don't mean to be insensitive, but is a loan payment of 5% of your discretionary income really that brutal? If you have private student loans, I know those are their own beast.
Well, graduate loans are, I believe 10% of your discretionary income and 20 years for forgiveness. I'll get PSLF before then so I really can't even complain. I just know that previous payments have been hard for me and I know there are people in far worse positions.
Luckily, I only have federal loans. But with a newborn at home, car insurance, mortgage (on an affordable little condo), and all the other living expenses, every little bit of money counts for us right now.
I actually haven't made a save payment yet so I don't know what it will be.
Assuming that stimulus doesn’t free those people up to build homes or start businesses that employ others. This is the exact group that is most likely to engage in entrepreneurial activity that creates jobs, not billionaires or corporate giveaways.
Ahhh, the ol’ trickle down!
I'm not entirely convinced either, but it's hardly fair to conflate wage-earning professionals starting small businesses with incumbent corporations and their owners. Giving tax cuts to Coca-Cola won't ever lead to anything but a local increase in economic productivity at most, but a small town might could need someone beside Walmart selling hammers.
I'd much rather help out the working class, sorry.
The distribution of student loans themselves may be, but that doesn't necessarily entail that the effects of the pause primarily affect those brackets. Those with lower income may be more positively affected by student loan repayments being paused than higher earners, for whom the pause may not matter as much. Or it might be something completely different. You can't really determine anything from the correlation of student loans with income on its own.
I suppose we'll have to see how things are affected once they've been unpaused again for longer to get a picture of how the pause affected things.
Theoretically, there should be no direct effect. Net worth is assets minus debt. Earning money increases net worth and spending money decreases it. Paying off a debt has no effect on this number, compared to leaving the money in a bank account.
In practice, there are secondary effects, like you could invest the money.
Does the "assets minus debt" number here include the interest accrued on that debt? Because that could certainly have an effect across the board in that case, given that interest didn't accrue during the pause.
Yes, interest is an expense, so that lowers your net worth. I guess that would show up as a higher expense when you start paying off a loan?
Interest rates were low at the start of the pandemic, though, and I don't know what people were paying on student loans.
Do interest rates in 2020 matter for most people's student loans though? my understanding is that you're locked into them when you take out the loans. At least that's the impression I got from people telling me I was lucky I got Obama-era interest rates on mine.
Yeah.. you're locked in depending on the year of your loan. Most of my loans were 6.8%, thankfully paid those off now. My newer loans are around 5.2%
To clarify, interest rates have been low all along, from 2008 to 2022, so I expect a lot of people had low interest expense.
I wouldn't have expected this, as in consumer debt land:
but, somehow...
So it's nice that consumer debt isn't the full story.
I'm curious, what would your predictions have been before reading this report?
I haven't thought too hard about the results but the credit card numbers don't seem overly surprising. I imagine the higher federal funding rate led to some increase in credit card APRs, and that APR increase would be more than the federal rate increase because of a materially higher chance of default (as we also see in the stats).
But also this is what I'm saying after seeing the numbers, so I could just be rationalising them. What do you think?
Also, I can't fathom why mortgage delinquency would move in the opposite direction, so there are clearly things I'm missing here.
Mortgage delinquency is down because no one can afford to buy homes and therefore get a mortgage
What percent of people purchase a home and immediately don't pay their mortgages? I can't imagine it's very high.
That's a good point, but these things are iterative through periods of generations. It's been 15 years since 2008, and how many people who lost their homes have been able to reestablish their previous level of financial or housing security? If a large number of buyers leave the market at that point, and from there the rate of mortgage uptake is reduced, you'll see a long term reduction in total mortgages, but a lower average risk among them.
People who lost their jobs in the waves of layoffs we've had this year
We went from "nobody wants to work anymore" to massive layoffs awful quick.
The jobs that no one wants to work at are low paying retail/fast food jobs, not actual careers
Honestly I am very far from being any kind of economist. Prior to this report, I thought maybe we were spiraling to another crisis circa 2008. I guess I still do think that's possible - I don't have enough expertise to really analyze what all this information means for the economy.
I've long posited that internet discourse is centered around teenager and college students. There is no wealth at phase of life. So they all tell each other that everyone is poor. That it's going to be doom and gloom forever. Society is on the brink. Cats and dogs living together. Mass hysteria. etc. The anecdotes from the older individuals are most popular as it provides confirmation to the doomsday echo chambers. Those who go against the narrative are always unpopular posts among the general social media rabble.
From a high level view this is just another time in history. The economy goes up and down. Social strife comes and goes. Wars are fought and ended. Yet internet discourse would have you believe this is a special time in history. The very end of history in particular. When it all everything comes undone.
Better to look at the data than try to read tea leaves that is social media.
Gen Z has 86% less purchasing power than boomers did in their 20s. Adjusted for inflation, education costs are 3x what they were for boomers. Adjusted for inflation, Gen Z is paying double what boomers paid for housing [1]
There is no shortage of those sharing the sentiment that these are just spoiled kids convincing themselves that things are worse than they are. They are worse off in materially meaningful ways.
I'm not arguing for or against that. Nor did I put forth to begin with that the baby boomers did or didn't have a materially better life in their 20s.
I certainly didn't say they were "spoiled kids".
Your response is tantamount to flame bait.
I apologize if I misrepresented your position.
Upon a re-read, I feel that I accurately captured the overall thrust of the most straightforward reading of the comment.
For the sake of charity, I want to correct my previous statement to be a response to the broader sentiment that I described rather than specifically your comment.
I’d argue a lot of those types that hyper focus on how the US is crumbling etc etc come from the Upper Middle Class.
Exactly right and that group is also by far the one that has the most time to spend online as well. I know my posting has dropped off significantly since graduating to a full time job and I used to be posting the same doom and gloom stuff.
Now I have a family and make plenty of money but “life is pretty good for me” doesn’t really drive social media engagement but is the actual reality for most Americans. Turns out life is fairly nice for a lot of people in the richest nation in human history.
The actual paper here is enlightening.
Income inequality actually increased. Income gains were mostly made by the richest 10-20%.
Wealth inequality decreased. But mostly only for home owners, who comprise 66% of households. Median renter wealth increased from 7k to 10k. Median homeowner wealth increased from 295k to 396k.
Which makes this article a little crazy. If you are lucky enough to own a house, and your house price goes up, you won't feel richer. But if you are in the top 10-20% of income earners, and your real income increases 9-15%, you should feel significantly better off than everyone else who only saw 5% real increase in income.
Not sure I entirely buy this but it seems worth looking at. From the article:
Caveats: numbers never speak for themselves; they are meaningless without understanding how they were gathered and other context. Also, having medians is in some ways an improvement, but they're still summary statistics about hundreds of millions of other people and that's probably pretty irrelevant to your situation.
This is good to see, and not surprising. If you think about it, minimum wage is kinda irrelevant now. You hardly see places hiring for less than $15/hour today, which is double what minimum wage is. So anyone who were making those wages have had their income doubled, while people with higher wages haven't seen that level of increase (they still had some increase on average, but nowhere near double).
Yup, I make $37~ an hour, 4 years ago I made $35 an hour. I've lost so much of my wages to inflation
It’s honestly absurd that salary isn’t tied to inflation at the base level. I know why businesses don’t do it, because they wanna avoid paying any more than they can get away with.
But the implication is “we value your time more when you were new to the company and still had to learn a bunch of the ways our systems work and how to do your job, and value your time less now that you’re familiar with everything and have a few years of experience under your belt” and that just blows my mind
Its incredibly depressing. I like my job and I don't want to leave, but after 2 rounds of huge layoffs this year at my company, I'm definitely not getting any sort of meaningful raise for the 4th year running, it honestly feels like I'm going backwards even though I'm one of the best performing people on my team.
Any dreams of homeownership have been crushed by the prices doubling and the interest rates quadrupling, my grocery bill is up 40%, I never eat out or order food anymore, my utilities and rent are all up 20%+, insurance premiums are up too.
But I'm sure glad the average American is getting richer, it feels great as an average American
If it makes you feel any better, Noah Smith has a reputation as a know-nothing for a reason. This article is bullshit spin around the only actually interesting chart:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb40afb3a-2ecb-438c-8e10-bac492a45852_904x832.jpeg
Might as well sum the whole article up as "asset prices being inflated beyond reason means people's net worth also goes up" but this is only good if you actually have the asset. Like, this chart had to put fucking car prices on there as an asset as if the average American has the ability to sell their car and live without one.
I think the reason is that some people really hate him. Never understood it, though.
I’m glad the numbers were adjusted for inflation. It was interesting that the author mentioned used car values may not represent an actual asset to most people as we are generally car dependent in this country. However I have an issue with the author glossing over the insane increase in housing costs. Speaking for myself, my home has significantly increased in value over the past 10 years. However, it’s largely irrelevant because all the other houses have also climbed to stratospheric prices. This doesn’t make me feel rich, it makes me feel stuck as I can’t afford to move to a larger place. I do feel lucky in the sense that I bought a house though, entering at the top of market with 8% mortgage rates to boot is a kick to the groin. Oh, and what is the author talking about with homes being better and hence commanding a higher price tag. These are the same shoddy houses built 50-100 years ago that skyrocketed in price, not new construction.
They got 50-100 years of remodeling and improvements. Some are maintained better than others, though.
Price increases don't seem much related?
I'd say 50-100 years of bad technology is gonna trump any remodels. Heck most kitchens "need" a remodel every 5 years if you listen to the real estate agents. But what are the odds all the lead paint was removed from a 1940 something home? How about the asbestos in tiles and insulation....most people refuse to test for these because then it's a "yes" that must be disclosed and not a "might" that gets handwaived with a waiver.
Knob and tube wiring might still be live. Just takes one lazy person to think they can just wire into it to save a the hassle of running a wire. Blow some insulation in that and house burns down real quick. Even if you're past the worst of the electrical legacy, people do half-baked corner-cutting all the time, contractors being some of the worst at it. I'm gonna start doing my own electrical wiring and just pay for inspection...at least then it will be up to code the first time.
Lead and Steel (also below safe thresholds these days) pipes for your plumbing. Radon mitigations probably need installed if there's a basement.
Lots of nasty secrets hide in the walls. Unless you're gonna drop several grand to redo each room, there's gonna be nasty surprises.
This is not to say it's a dealbreaker by any means....personally after seeing quality of materials and workmanship I'll take a solid mid-90's home over anything built after 2005. But I'm also never buying a home older than 1980 again unless it was built before 1900 and I had an extra $200k to revamp it.
Why 2005 specifically?
Edit: I’m a doofus and misread. Leaving factoid up for the curious.
In December 2003 the EPA prohibited construction using wood treated with chromated copper arsenate. However, manufacturers were still allowed to sell their remaining stocks. Given the pace of housing construction at the time, 2005 should eliminate the possibility of a given house containing CCA-treated wood.
In my case, that's when I worked as a temp cleaning up after construction crews for newly built homes for people to tour in-progress.
$800,000 McMansions where the PVC water main into the house was breaking 2 months into the build and the answer was to caulk it back together and cover with some tape.
This seems like a stretch based on the rentals I and my friends have lived in in the US.
Yeah, I'm thinking more of the single-family homes that people own in the SF bay area. It might have been cheap worker housing originally, but it's expensive now, and new owners will often put a substantial amount of work in.
Or maybe they neglected it (common as people get older).
Co-op or condo owners also sometimes put a lot of work in. Units for sale in the same (older) building can be pretty different.
I think the disconnect of rises in the value of homes from how much improvement or neglect went on is a symptom of a problem, though.
It's a symptom of location being an overriding concern. Well-maintained homes do sell for more.
I can guarantee they didn't adjust for actual cost of living inflation, just the "inflation" numbers the government provides. No one's expenses only went up by 17% in the last 4 years unless you're very lucky.
Looong ways to go to catch up to median incomes from 1950. This article only goes back a couple years. It's out of context in the long view of history.
The family median income in 1950 was $3000, which adjusted for inflation is ~$38k. According to the document linked in the article, the median family income is now $70k.
I just went down this rabbit hole...in 1970 average rent for a year was about $1,500.
Nowadays average rent for a year is about $35k.
So that family median income isn't actually that far off, all things considered. We just all have a lot more misc garbage to buy now too.
This is the point some economists make about housing standards increasing over time. Regardless of many cities making microapartments and dorm-style housing illegal, the average home has massively increased in size over time!
A few generations ago, houses were significantly smaller, so they were naturally cheaper than they are now. Comparing price per area over time is an interesting metric but still misleading. Housing is expected to have more utilities like internet and appliances like dishwashers and clothes dryers nowadays.
Median incomes from 1950 and median incomes from today aren't easily comparable though because the labour force has changed so dramatically since then.
An important bit of context for those unfamiliar with the author: Noah Smith is deeply ideologically neoliberal. I think in America today, one can be considered center-left and neoliberal considering the sharp shift of the Overton window to the right on economic policy since the 80s. I think the material impact of neoliberalism remains the same, even if how we categorize it politically hasn't, and even if neolibs like Smith can otherwise hold progressive views on social issues.
This isn't to say that the article is wrong, and I generally agree with the YIMBY sentiment as a means for mitigating the worst effects of the housing crisis, but it's important context when the subtext of the post is that neoliberal policy is currently benefiting regular Americans. Also I don't believe the SCF's report substantiates Smith's claim that inequality is down.
I'm not an economist, but anecdotally, shits an awful lot harder now than even a few years ago for millenials. And that's not only true for me, but basically everyone else my age. The changes in wealth distribution due to decades of neoliberal consensus has ensured basically no one my age that I know owns their own home. Every single boomer I know owned a home by my age.
I know Smith tries to address this and pin the blame entirely in NIMBYs, but to ignore and flat out deny the primary role neoliberalism is playing in causing ever increasing wealth inequality is motivated reasoning.
I not only think that's not important context, it's context that's actively harmful and the only purpose is to lead people to fallacious thinking.
Personal reputation can matter as a heuristic for whether or not you choose to engage with certain content, because there is only so much time you have in the day, after all. If you're looking for a serious policy discussion, someone who's a known MAGA republican probably isn't the best source.
Noah Smith is a serious writer, and he writes in good faith and with research. Once you've decided to, and have read the piece, you should judge it on its own merits. If you thought the article was good before knowing what political "team" the author is on, no matter what that team is, it shouldn't change what you think of the article, or vice versa.
I'm not giving a value judgement on the article or your opinion on the article, just that I think that emphasizing what political box X and Y are can only lead to bad things. It is negatively important context that people on Twitter consider Noah Smith a neoliberal. I think for good faith discussion, everyone's political "team" should be deliberately hidden and consciously not considered.
Some context for me, I follow Noah Smith on substack as he is someone who I both ideologically disagree with and generally like the writing of, a good combo. It's important to me that I challenge my beliefs and read opinions that don't match my own.
It's pretty standard practice for journalists to declare conflicts of interest (though of course, not ideological conflicts). This doesn't discredit what the journalists are doing, but I think most view the context as nonetheless important. I appreciate Noah's writing, and I think it should be understood in context.
If someone writes a piece stating that inequality is getting better and they are ideologically aligned with an economic view that has caused massive inequality over the past few decades, then I'd consider that an important piece of context.
There's quite a large difference between this and a conflict of interest, that being that you wouldn't know that such conflict of interest existed if it weren't disclosed.
On political ideology, on the other hand, if Smith were so obviously biased as a neoliberal, you should be able to tell that in the writing. It would be self evident - his thoughts are the entire piece, after all. If you couldn't tell that he was a "neoliberal" after all that, then that should really be an opportunity of reflection for the reader and no more -- mayhaps said reader weren't that opposed to some "neoliberal" ideas after all.
The writing stands for itself. A financial conflict of interest doesn't. A sports writer who is a massive homer as part of their personality does not "disclose" that - it's just an element of the writing.
There is no reason to make it explicit other than to encourage people who consider themselves to be on the "other team" to have a conscious bias against the material regardless of how receptive they would actually be of the arguments made, which just increases pointless partisanship and makes good faith discussion impossible.
So I think I principally disagree with the assertion that ideology is always self-evident. For example, rightist intellectuals have made painstaking efforts to have the veneer of objectivity while pushing an ideological agenda. Phrenology at one time seemed to be an objective intellectual discipline, while we now understand it as pseudoscience motivated to justify racism. There are modern analogs that come to mind; Charles Murray and the Bell Curve, and the practice of concern trolling.
Let's imagine someone wrote an article that presented data and made the claim that healthcare for trans youth leads to poorer outcomes than the control group. This would be an important article that I would legitimately want to read. If it turns out the author is a TERF and guest speaks on various TERF podcasts, that also would be important context for the article. If I didn't know that context about the author, I could read the article and be convinced without also wrestling with the underlying ideology that led to the creation of the article.
Why would you be convinced of that, though? For both examples, the evidence they provide has been disproven. That should be the reason you don't believe their claims - because they are logically weak and have no backing evidence. Yes, that takes time, which is why you no matter the ideology, you shouldn't blindly believe anything an article says. If you have the time and expertise, do research, if not, wait to see if there's corroborating opinions.
The other side of that is honestly equally concerning - if a known racial equality advocate wrote about racist ideology, would you be inclined to believe that?
As for concern trolling, like I said, it can be a useful, and practically necessary, heuristic when seeing whether or not to engage with a particular piece of writing, but if you have already decided to engage, or otherwise have reason to believe the writer is doing so in good faith, then it should be discarded. Noah Smith is clearly not concern trolling - he is writing what he believes in good faith.
I would consider their ideology to be important context in this example as well.
Respectfully I think we are at an irreconcilable disagreement of conflicting value judgements. It is simply my opinion that knowing an author's ideology is valuable epistemically. We probably could drill down further on why I believe that if you'd like, but I'd be comfortable leaving it here.
I think it's good to give context, but is this good context? "Neoliberal" is often used as a fairly meaningless, dismissive slur nowadays, so people might not even know what you mean by it. Historically, it might have been someone who admired Reagan and Thatcher and promoted deregulation, but that's pretty old history at this point.
How to do it better? A lazy (efficient!) way would be to quote Wikipedia, but I think there's been some kind of edit war over there. You can see how some people like to use "neoliberal" as an insult in the middle there:
How does he describe himself? Let's look at the about page:
Anyway, I'm against using "neoliberal" for name-calling. Maybe a good question to ask would be how pro-market Noah Smith is?
I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm solidly millennial(33) and the pandemic and post pandemic has been massively beneficial for me, and most of my peers. We're talking about people finally getting to the meat of their careers (with income) almost all of them finally buying property (since they saved enough) well, when interest rates were low, not so much 2023, with boomers finally retiring, millennials are actually getting some gains in the past decade. I think gen Z are gonna have it even tougher in the short term than we will.