quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

I mean that stuff doesn't 'not matter' but I really just think this is above all an information thing when it comes to the small nd resource boom. outside of that there aren't really many places today you can just travel to w/ a hs education and the clothes on your back and expect a job. parts unknown are economically as bad as home or at least 'still not great', there are relocation costs, and you'll know nobody.

I wasn't just talking about hs only people, though.

well I don't think nd has a drastic shortage of marketing execs or bloggers or w/e

non-coast america isn't experiencing a drastic shortage of college grads cause they all moved to brooklyn.

tbf I'm just reflecting on the remarks of people on this message board who complain about not having (enough) work in places that are evidently nice to live in; & irl I know people moving out of NYC back to ATL. most of my acquaintances irl these days are academics who just go wherever they get hired, whether it's a postdoc or a real job. & my community, Latinos, have been moving to all kinds of places that elites consider shitty, western Kansas e.g. The work is shitty but it's work. so this is where I come from on this.

welllll ilx is actually not particularly representative of the american economy at large. a large % of people here have careers that don't exist in western kansas, let alone jobs that would *pay better* in western kansas. that said, I believe you can find some ilxors who have left nyc for opportunities elsewhere.

in any case, there are far more people with not enough work in places that aren't ilx-nice-to-live-in than people with not enough work in places that are nice to live in, so you're inventing a problem that doesn't exist. most people in my gf's grad program wouldn't be happy living in alabama, and yet, somebody from a good grad program is still going to take that job in alabama. some people put more weight into location than others when it comes to decision making, just as some people aren't willing to work 80 hour weeks for more money. but the general economic malaise makes people risk averse, and moving somewhere new is a decision with risks.

one of things about the north dakota 'example' (and really the dude is just throwing fairly arbitrary and unexamined 'facts' onto a thing he just has decided to believe) is that its sorta interesting to think about why (more) people arent moving there, and whether the unemployment rate is really that telling or descriptive a statistic when discussing economic migration but i dont think you can just jump to 'young people are lazy' or 'there arent enough lofts' w/o seeming like an asshole/stupid

yeah I'm thinking about this less as a macro strategy for "how to solve America's economic problem" b/c who knows, & more as a micro strategy of "what would I do if I were fucked jobwise?" which was exactly the situation of my family for the last few generations, & of my community more generally. we move. & again. & again. Location's not key; work is.

again you don't have to act like your family is particularly different or virtuous.

tens of thousands of college grads now teach english abroad cause they were fucked jobwise. when people learn about sure-ish-opportunities for a steady income somewhere else in the world, many of them take it. I know plenty who have. and that's a far more alienating and difficult decision than moving to a boring part of the country. w/ nothing but 'work' in mind, moving to korea is a better decision than moving to kansas, which is why...it happens.

totally in favor of Americans leaving the USA for work

yeah i guess my 'point' is that five minutes of google research and i can look at IRS data that shows plenty of people were moving states in 2010 although i couldnt find it broken down by age. so if we accept that people are still willing to move from high unemployment states like nevada and michigan why arent more of them moving to north dakota? and like we could theorize that the type of jobs on offer in north dakota dont match those jobs that people able to easily move for work can fill or that because of the lack of infrastructure moving to north dakota is simply much more costly than moving to say, texas. or maybe as iatee suggest theres simply an information gap and job seekers are unaware of potential employment in nd. again theres also the fact that 'unemployment rate' isnt really the best proxy for what drives ecnomic migration. i mean there are larger arguments too about economic potential and you can argue that people moving to non-coastal cities to chase temporary and uncertain contract employment are the ones making irrational decisions...

You can argue that people expecting anything but temporary and uncertain contract employment are irrational.

right, which is probably a good reason to aim for a part of the country w/ diversified and flexible economy and not in an oil boom town

a "diversified and flexible economy" only matters if you get a job in it!

So many people have already moved to North Dakota that there’s no place to put them. Browsing Craigslist recently, I saw an ad offering a 27-square-foot trailer for $1,800 a month. An actual two-bedroom, 1,400-square-foot house in Minot can be yours for $3,900 per month. The Wal-Mart in Williston recently announced that it will no longer be letting people squat in its parking lot.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-09/what-new-york-city-can-learn-from-north-dakota-matthew-yglesias.html

but why look at facts when u can feel good abt yourself thru john steinbeck fantasies

yeah i think we have effectively dismantled that dude. good work, folks. onward and upward!

..I know people moving out of NYC back to ATL. most of my acquaintances irl these days are academics who just go wherever they get hired, whether it's a postdoc or a real job. & my community, Latinos, have been moving to all kinds of places that elites consider shitty, western Kansas e.g. The work is shitty but it's work. so this is where I come from on this.

So, your examples are:
1. out of one urban center to another urban center where they presumably came from
2. Academics who are going to another academic institution or a real job, both of which are expert work that pay well, most positions of which are going to come with a community, especially if it's a college town
3. "Latinos," although I'm sure this could be generalized to most immigrant populations, who often either bring families, move to where family have already settled, or are likely to send money home to their families.

i pity the poor immigrant who wishes he would've stayed home

I was just explaining where I'm coming from! it wasn't an argument.

but re. 3: I don't get your scare quotes. but more to the point: I admit it's a good thing to have a family when you're mobile. is that an objection?

Not really scare quotes, just saying that generalizing to immigrants as a whole is probably possible, no reason to limit to one group. I was trying to make the point that there's a specific model and family expectations for immigrant families where there really might not be for other unemployed people.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/generation-stuck-why-dont-young-people-move-anymore/254349/

Alright, you might say, so that's an argument for these kids to move somewhere they can get a job. But where is that exactly? All the old affordable places were blighted by the downturn. Riverside, Phoenix, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta, and Las Vegas were among the ten most popular cities for interstate migrants each year in the mid-2000s. But by 2009, these were the worst-hit metros in the recession. By 2010, Florida's net migration had stopped entirely. The Buccholz's say: "Move to North Dakota!" Let's be sensible. North Dakota is tiny. It's the population of Washington, D.C. It can't support millions of migrants, and it's straining to support the migration it's already got. Rents are rising -- even doubling and tripling! -- in parts of the Dakotas, as an oil and mining boom meets limited housing stock to create a run on rents.

I see. well rah rah family values & all that, then.

xp

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2016769083_dakotarents15.html

on another note, Yglesias' overarching argument in that article also seems pretty nutty to me. I think there's an important argument to be made about the history of zoning restrictions & the growth of the suburbs w/r/t white flight and certain other things. And in the 90s there was very much an issue of the long-term negative effects of low-density zoning with sprawl turning into decay in lots of areas. But an argument that in the midst of what's going on with housing *now*, zoning is in any way an obstacle to construction is pretty weird.

euler you have this scenario in your head where
a. a substantial amount of people in america who are un/underemployed live somewhere nice
b. their preference for nice-place-living is the #1 constraint to their mobility
c. there are lots of easy to get jobs in the not nice places

and you are basing this on...ilx?? idk? but all three of those things are not true.

re. that Atlantic link, he writes:

Let's start with cost. Getting around is cheap. But moving is expensive. It's not just a $20 bus to Billings. There are emotional and psychological costs to uprooting your life and starting fresh in a city without social or professional connections. You need some degree of bravery of certainty that things will work out. Today, young people have less economic insurance to bet on a big move these days. Wages for the young are falling, student debt is rising, and twentysomethings are twice as likely to be unemployed as the rest of the country. This kind of economic uncertainty acts as an anchor on national migration.

I don't follow the argument. The premise is that moving is expensive in an emotional & psychological way. He then seems to suggest that generation limbo isn't brave enough to hack it. But his grounds for that claim is that they lack "economic insurance". Does "economic insurance" assuage or pay the emotional or psychological costs? I don't get it.

you mean in north dakota or ny, sc?

But an argument that in the midst of what's going on with housing *now*, zoning is in any way an obstacle to construction is pretty weird.

Maybe it wasn't clear in that article, but his argument is very specific to high-density urban centers, primarily on the coasts, which have strict zoning laws and high rents.

It's not really that, Euler, it's that two of your examples are of people who are making virtually no sacrifices/changes in their moving for jobs -- or in the case of academia, it is virtually expected -- and your third example is a migrant population, which by definition... migrates.

What any of those have to do with unemployed college students with a bachelor/associate degree, I have no idea.

yeah I guess I am basing a. & b. on ILX! & news articles. irl my friends & acquaintances mostly live off the coasts, or have high-status jobs on the coasts. so I don't have any non-ilx, non-news-article knowledge of the crisis.

but c. is different: I see it as a strategy for solving one's personal problem re. lack of work / opportunity. I don't know about "easy to get": it's work, is it ever "easy to get"? earlier you were using terms like"sure-ish-opportunities for a steady income" & that seems pretty presumptuous to me! like, when is work or financial security "sure-ish"? if we're gonna go full socialist then obv sign me up but in our Reagan paradise that's not how it works.

iatee: both. but the sprawl-to-decay pipeline was mainly a midwest thing, iirc.

so again, in the gen. stuck article: "restrictive regulations on multi-family home building" are "discouraging talented middle-income people from settling in San Francisco and New York". really? Is that the problem with the economy? That too many people are discouraged from settling in New York and San Francisco? I hadn't noticed the shortage of young people settling in costal culture centers, but now that he mentions it, where *is* the young population in NY and SF from elsewhere? It's like there's no gentrification at all! And I mean everyone in NY and SF is totally employed and everything. Like full employment. So god knows the only thing holding these cities back is more freaking people.

I will argue w/ you about this in another thread sterling, cuz u wrong

mh, my last few years as an academic involved living in a place that most of you here would rightfully sneer at. Hey, it was work. so I dunno about "no sacrifices".

re. what those have to do with unemployed college grads, I think migrants are a reasonable model to consider. hopefully w/o picking vegetables, though.

howabout this thread: People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

Basically I sympathize that the rent is very high in dense popular locations and this sucks, but I don't think this is a problem except to all the people who have to pay the high rent. And some of them (who have been living where they are for a long time, and grew up there even, as did maybe their parents) I have lots of sympathy for. And some of them I have less sympathy for. But I fail to see how the high rent in dense popular locations issue fits into any sort of coherent narrative about broader problems with the former u.s. economy.

ok taking it over there now.

I don't know if you want to structure a recovery from a recession around a migrant economy

dayo I'm not a central planner, I'm just thinking about what I would do if I were fucked.

i'm fucked enough that the last thing i can afford to do is move anywhere.

xpost

I would sell bodily fluids, fwiw. And then organs. And take that money and put it all in AAPL. And then sell the AAPL and buy a rocket car, and then win rocket car races.

that most of you here would rightfully sneer at

Scottsdale, Arizona?

What're you millennials on about now?

that boomers are competitively one of the worst generations in the history of the united states and they should stop trying to deflect that fact by complaining about their children and grandchildren

competitively? I missed the Generational Olympics?

GENERATION WHY BOTHER AMIRITE

i just reread the beginning of this thread and i forgot the part where Lamp called me out as an inauthentic champion of the working class

good times

lol

But his grounds for that claim is that they lack "economic insurance". Does "economic insurance" assuage or pay the emotional or psychological costs? I don't get it.

i just reread the beginning of this thread and i forgot the part where Lamp called me out as an inauthentic champion of the working class

well i thought this thread was going to be yet another place for you to complain about the people you run into at the primrose hill farmers market or w/e. guess i was only part right...