site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25227 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Core inflation, a better measurement of long-term inflation that excludes volatile commodities like gas prices, is even lower at around 2.5%, essentially hitting the Fed’s 2% target.

This is the perfect example of why many people just flatly disbelieve the economists in favor of their lying eyes. For most Americans, housing is a huge percentage of their outlays. In the time from February 2020 to now, the increase in housing prices coupled with the increase in interest rates has approximately doubled the monthly outlay to finance the same houses. People see this, they feel trapped and frustrated by it, and no amount of telling them that if they just ignore the cost of food and energy, inflation is actually low will convince them that their actual cost of living isn't an enormous issue.

If a typical American believes their eyes over the economists and focuses on housing, they will view inflation as being close to zero.

Typical situation: not moving this year.

If you aren't moving, rent increases for lease renewals are generally much smaller than rent increases for new tenants. (See Zillow Rent index = asking rent for stuff on the market, vs CPI Rent which is what people who take a survey actually pay.) If you are a homeowner and have a mortgage the only thing that is going up is either home insurance or property tax (which often gets rolled in, i.e. my mortgage bill is actually principal + interest + escrow to cover property tax/home insurance), which is at most 1/3 of the total.

People see this, they feel trapped and frustrated by it

The illiquidity of the market is unfortunate. People made an interest rate bet and won a lot of money. Consider a mortgage with 25 years of $2000/month payments (principal+interest) - this was worth $446k to the bank at a 2.5% discount rate (i.e. 0% interest + 2.5% to cover default probability) but if the bank sold it today they'll get $284k (assuming 4.5% interest + 2.5% to cover default = 7%). The homeowner is richer by $162k in NPV!

But it is unfortunate that this $162k comes with a lot of hassle - namely they can only realize it slowly over time by holding onto a specific piece of real estate. A regulatory fix I'd propose: if a mortgage holder sells the loan the debtor gets a 30 day call option at the sale price + $1k.

If you aren't moving, rent increases for lease renewals are generally much smaller than rent increases for new tenants. (See Zillow Rent index = asking rent for stuff on the market, vs CPI Rent which is what people who take a survey actually pay.)

CPI Rent looks pretty high. The Zillow Rent index is actually lower at 3.2% YoY.

If a typical American believes their eyes over the economists and focuses on housing, they will view inflation as being close to zero.

Nope.

Pretty much any measure of inflation is coming down at the moment, and is approaching normal levels. And most importantly, wages are rising even faster.

Cole_Phelps_Doubt.png

This is a weird thing to say because most people already own houses and they're financed through long-term fixed rate mortgages so when house prices go up they're happy and when interest rates increase it doesn't affect them. There is the so called mortgage lock-in effect but this is quantitatively small when compared to the former things (most people don't move that much anyway).

Anyway people who think house prices are too high should be complaining about local zoning laws that restrict supply, not Joe Biden.

One of the real problems with the US' inflation calculation is the largest factor is housing costs and the main input on them is a survey of homeowners asked to estimate what their home would cost if rented. As you may imagine homeowners are generally very poorly informed about the pricing of rentals because they are very far removed from the market.

The last time I rented was was more than a decade ago, and I rented a small apartment, I have no idea what it would cost to rent my home.

If you asked me that, I'd look for comps. As it happens, I looked up rental houses in my town recently. There are two for rent, and neither is similar to mine. So yeah, how the heck should I know?

How much of the market is first-time homebuyers? I figured demand might be up given

  1. the last couple years being (perceived as) a bad time to buy
  2. Cost of living pushing people to downsize
  3. COVID factors like remote work pushing people to move

But when I check total sales it looks like we’re at 2010 lows, so maybe you’re onto something.

It certainly doesn’t feel like a tight market here in Texas. My coworkers are reporting chaos, a dozen offers on the first day, racing to outbid each other with starting offers. It sounds like hell.

The housing market is currently irrational with median home prices outpacing median income for the first time since, well, ever. Certain markets are more insane than others. The median home price in Idaho is now $469,000 while median income in a dual-income family is just under $70,000 before taxes. Assuming a 20% down-payment of ~$100,000, the monthly mortgage payment would be $3,538, roughly 60% of the take-home for the median household. Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado are all fairly similar in terms of median home price outstripping the ability of the locals to purchase. Meanwhile, the southeastern US is pretty stable with low prices and reasonable overturn in inventory.

Texas is somewhere in the middle from what I've seen. Houston and DFW area both have lower home prices compared to some of the really inflated markets in the west, but not as low as the rest of the southeast. It wouldn't surprise me to know that many of the Cali/NE corridor transplants are currently driving up the market in Texas like they did in the mountain west during COVID.

Thing is even if you're locked in on your mortgage, if the cost of repairs and maintenance, insurance, utilities, and possibly taxes get bumped up you're still on the hook.

So yes, happy you can keep paying a relatively low payment on an asset that appreciates, but keeping that asset in good repair is still becoming more burdensome.

Yes, I understand that the claim is that the cost of financing a house doubling actually doesn't matter much. My claim is that people actually do notice such things and it causes them to downgrade their opinion of the state of the economy, even if the experts tell them otherwise.

Though real, it's hard to credit this effect for the entire partisan gap. 95% of Republicans aren't young urbanites being drained by high rental costs.

I see. I 100% agree with you then. This is a good example where experts are right and there's a big disconnect for people. Interesting why it breaks down so strongly on partisan lines though.

To be clear, we do not agree on the object level, we only agree that the experts think one thing and the consensus is the other. I think the experts are lying through their teeth and it's very obvious, but I acknowledge that I understand what they're saying.

Well, experts think people’s situations are good, the consensus people have is that their own situation is good, and there’s a partisan split on whether they think others’ situations are good. There’s a little logic 101 game we can play here in identifying who is wrong about what.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats