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

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...

i don't speak for Millenials (or whatever the fuck they call you young 'uns these days). but one reason that i don't move (among many) is that i don't feel like going through the licensing/examination requirements that other states would require if i wanted to continue in my chosen profession (not to mention having to get up to speed with my new state's laws and shit). that may not be a big problem for a freshly-minted lawyer, doctor, CPA, or other profession that requires some sort of certification. but for those who have been working in those professions for a number of years it is yet another hassle and expense involved in moving.

friends of a friend moved up here from brooklyn - they had decent/cool nyc jobs - and are starting fresh and have no jobs and they are near my age and all i can think is ahhhhhhhh pressure/anxiety/etc. but i wish them a ton of luck. they are really nice. its a gutsy move. i mean, we did it too 3 years ago when we left the island and i opened up a store when stores of any kind were closing left and right, but, you know, we have the power of the lord on our side. don't know how others do it.

i mean it IS a ton cheaper here than brooklyn/nyc, so there is that. but still...hard to find decent jobs around here. really hard.

Telling people trying to find jobs to move to ND or whatever sounds so "What do you mean you have a fever? There's ice in the freezer! Problem solved! Quit yr whining."

I'm sure part of the reason behind any reduction in mobility is a pretty big decrease in average job tenure over the past couple generations - a major relocation looks much less appealing when most jobs are held for under five years.

Also it's obviously harder for a two income household to relocate than a single income household.

nd is over, real deal's going on in utah

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/12/148252561/on-utahs-silicon-slopes-tech-jobs-get-a-lift

Maybe this is getting too far off on a tangent, but I remember maybe five years ago or so there was a popular sociology book about how the new upper middle class (or at least the pre-crash upper middle class) was very geographically mobile -- one of the tradeoffs for high paying jobs in engineering, computers, the pharma industry etc. was that you were likely to have to move often, either to move to where the next job was or to wherever your employer relocated you to. The result, according to the book, was a kind of quiddity/agony situation that I actually do find a bit sad -- these people wound up with few long term friendships, no community relationships, their kids had to change schools, etc.

that's a pretty good summary of 'the organization man' (1956)

army brats. they all become famous actors! so there is that upside.

While these two might sound like ski bums, don't be fooled: They are both chief executive officers.

Layfield runs Backcountry.com, an online retailer in Park City, Utah, that did nearly $300 million in sales last year, according to industry analysts.

who woulda guessed a company called backcountry.com would be in utah. also, black diamond. plz.

otoh one of my friends is national head of sales for a beverage company and can live wherever he wants-- he lives at the bottom of little cottonwood and skied 74 days at snowbird last year.

Is the author more irritating, or is it his subject?:

Mr. Lipton’s music is sort of a sliced-and-diced Great American Songbook. “The thing we lean back into is a kind of jazz-folk-Americana idiom,” Mr. Lipton said of his band, known as Ethan Lipton and His Orchestra, “but we also try to push forward into something that sounds contemporary lyrically and also isn’t too dinosaury sound-wise.”

And so “No Place to Go” features a jaunty tribute to the New Deal-era’s job-creation effort, the W.P.A., but also pokes fun at the working man’s propensity to, when facing financial ruin, “make another macho move in Scrabble” and “see if there’s anything about it on The Huffington Post.”

Attn Generation Why Bother: Forget Fargo, just come to Knoxville.

that's a pretty good summary of 'the organization man' (1956)

― iatee, Tuesday, 13 March 2012 02:29 (13 hours ago) Permalink

Is it though? I thought the idea of the Organization Man was more about guys who stay in the same neighborhood and same company, keep their heads down, advance slowly through the ranks by being likeable and inoffensive and conformist, socialize via elks clubs and shit like that.

army brats. they all become famous actors! so there is that upside.

― scott seward, Monday, March 12, 2012 11:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Man, I got rooked. ;_;

nah a lot of the book is about the organization man's willingness to be transferred from one IBM branch to another, and how the uniformity of the new suburbs / corporate culture created a uniform culture that they could easily fit into

too lazy to type this up:

http://i.imgur.com/xCql9.jpg

It's true, you can move to a new suburb and go to another mall owned by General Growth/Westfield/etc. and eat at Applebees and live on a street with very beige homes.

If the expectation is that you'll spend your whole career at one company and that they'll take care of you with a pension and so forth, then it's probably a lot harder to say no if they ask to transfer you to a new city.

guys I have worked at one place forever and I'm vested in a pension plan

where is my job transfer?

Do low-level corporate managers eat at Applebees? I would think there's some more upscale casual chain that caters to them, but I don't know what that would be these days.

arugulabees