Rob Henderson on polarization and communication; John Cochrane and Noah Smith on climate industrial policy; Michael Lind on elites; Lauren Hall and me on Generations
"Young people may be projecting their personal psychological problems onto the society at large"
I've thought this for awhile too. For some people, even if we could magically address all of their complaints about society without collateral damage, they would still find a hundred other things to complain about. We shouldn't take them all at face value. Also, it seems that people who are well-connected to a community with healthy social norms are much more likely to avoid psychological problems and less likely to join cancel mobs and that sort of thing. Maybe that's a bit circular, but there does seem to be a strong link between decline of long-lasting, in-person connections and the general pessimism we are seeing. Plus our online communication channels tend to amplify messages from the most neurotic and aggrieved people.
I don't really get what Lind is saying. By and large, kids that grow up in two parent households do better than their parent and kids who grow up in a one parent household do worse. The reasons for this aren't necessarily just the parents but to say people starting with less don't or can't succeed just isn't true, unless you are talking about less parents.
I once saw data on two parent household kids who grew up poor. Of those with parents in the bottom 20% of income, way less than 20% of the kids ended up the same. Now maybe this finding was contrived by manipulating the data but the result rings true to me and suggests a path to upward mobility.
"you know they can't buy a house for example and we actually look at the data and housing prices and housing access is actually about the same as it was before"
I am just not buying this at all.
The mortgage payment on my house doubled between when I bought it in 2020 and what it would theoretically cost today. That follows a very long run up in prices before it.
For the combined mortgage payment + property tax to be 30% of take home pay you would need to earn over half a million dollars a year! And nearly all of your payment would be interest, whereas nearly my entire payment is principal.
Oh and I live an hour away from the big city (without traffic, which there is a lot of) so if I actually went into big city for work it would be a slog. Oh and in addition to my time it would cost about $20k a year in transport costs (post tax buddy). If I lived closer all those housing calculation get a lot worse.
There is a reason so many of the houses near me are purchased by retired boomers for cash.
I don't think people have processed the magnitude of the change in housing these last three years. Anyone that didn't lock in a mortgage rate when they were low is completely locked out. I know friends whose only sin is being slightly younger then me that are going to have a dramatically different life trajectory due to housing.
Every time someone tries to prove to me that housing isn't more expensive they whip out some garbage like:
"Well, if you take the median price of a 70 year old house in the ghetto in Cleveland its actually not so bad."
No, what is the price of housing in a decent safe neighborhood with good schools within reasonable committing distance of good jobs and a growing economy. And if your going to shove my in some 70 year old house through in all the costs of maintenance and repairs.
I agree I also think an analysis comparing house prices and availability across time neglects to take into account the purchasing power of these homebuyers. Including existing debt levels, especially from student loans, across the different generations I think would make it even more stark that buying a house is more difficult for millennials and gen Z. Not to mention what you said that you have to buy a house in a safe neighborhood with good schools within commuting distance of work.
Ultimately, the housing crisis is a social crisis. In an era of high social standards and the rule of law a much wider array of neighborhoods and socioeconomic neighbors are "good".
The fundamental issue is that if X% of society is "unsuitable neighbors" and X% get very high you will have a housing crisis. There is plenty of housing available in East DC near the good jobs, just don't have good neighbors.
The last three years have seen an exodus from cities to the suburbs. This has changed property values accordingly, with rental prices dropping in many cities as home prices in the burbs have risen.
But the pessimism on housing started much earlier than 2020 and at that time, there was no question – housing was as affordable as any time in the past. Prices rose as interest rates dropped, with the total payment staying roughly constant or even dropping relative to incomes. And yet young people at that time perceived the opposite, ie that housing was uniquely unaffordable for them.
This pessimism contra the data is a long-term problem for young people today. Don’t let the exceptionalism of the last three years confuse that.
Henderson's notes on Peterson's personality lectures touches on at least one of the factors (IMHO) influencing the pessimism of youth. To wit, "...that people do not just think about the same set of facts differently; it’s that the world literally presents itself to them differently. They’re not even considering the same set of facts." Coupled with higher rates of psych disorders and a steady stream of "look at the oppression in the world", it's little wonder that pessimism dominates mindset of the youth. There is a ripe opportunity for someone with a message, a pathway that is compelling, charismatic and hopeful.
"Initial buildout of the EV fleet" -- how often are vehicles replaced? How often do the heaviest users of vehicles replace their vehicles? What is the lifetime durability of the most resource intensive component of an EV (the battery)? Thinking this stuff through is not something you are supposed to do. You are supposed to just nod along and smile while everyone commits suicide together.
That was my thought, too. It's not just the initial buildout. Every EV made requires extensive resources -- considerably more than an ICE vehicle. Plus, there's the question of where the electricity is going to come from to charge them.
"It just goes to show that when the U.S. government decides to act, we can do big things, both for consumers and for the environment."
We can attract rent seekers claiming to be innovators like moths to a flame of subsidies and end up with just a bird and bat killing energy supply using massive areas of land with solar heat adsorbing panels (black panels vs more reflective soils). We will achieve unreliable electric power and the knowledge we were not adding to the increasing CO2 but not changing the climate path at all.
I enjoyed the discussion with Lauren Hall. I doubt if the pessimism and the anti-capitalism of young people stem from their concern over crony capitalism. That would have to come from some understanding of economics which most young people don't have. Instead, it is environmental. They believe that capitalism is destroying the planet. Young people have bought into the hysteria over climate change. They have also been taught by too many teachers that have reinforced this idea.
They've been brainwashed into that view their whole lives. Unfortunately, not many people can step back and consider the actual merits. Especially when doing so can get you "cancelled" from polite society.
Haidt's six moral foundations present some difficulty much like Henderson points out. Some people have priorities that others just don't recognize. Kling's civilization, oppression, and freedom do not have the same difficulty. While each group has differing priorities, I'd hazard to guess there are few if any who don't attach some importance to all three. I think if people recognize they all have all three but in differing amounts, they can communicate.
... Ok, yes, within each priority each group has some sub-priorities that aren't shared but this doesn't have to be an unsolvable obstacle.
Part of the problem with housing is that the size of house demanded by today’s young families is about double what it was 50 years ago even as family sizes have fallen. But we actually have millions of houses that were built 50 years ago that a) take lots of land, but b) aren’t seen as acceptable by many families.
So a middle class family looking for a cheap house will find a ton of 1200 sq ft houses at reasonable prices that were acceptable to their parents and grandparents when they were raising children, but are now unacceptable to them. The durability of housing despite changing preferences is actually creating the perception of a bigger problem.
I grew up in was 875 SQFT 2 bed 1 bath and it would be completely unaffordable to someone with my Dad's job today, and indeed the people working from my Dad's company endure long commutes because they can't afford to live there.
When I got the statement on my house a minority of the cost was the cost of construction. And the cost of construction itself would have only gone down marginally if it had been a much small house.
Land, town hookup fees, taxes and transfer fees, sales cost, etc. These make up the majority of the cost. Builders built big because once you get past fixed cost it's cheap to add more space. The fixed cost relate to the value of the neighborhood (commute, schools, crime, etc).
The thing about fifty year ago tiny houses is they tend to be in bad neighborhoods with poor schools. To the extent even terrible houses like my parents are in good school districts they are worth a fortune.
I grew up in a middle class suburb in NJ. A commute into NYC would be about an hour each way. The household income today is high as a national average but a little below the average for the county. Most of my peers growing up were normal middle class kids.
Today Zillow says the house is worth about $500k. Let's say someone could save 50k for a down payment and didn't have to do PMI. Mortgage + property tax would be $4k/month.
Getting to $12k take home pay (30%) would require a household income of $250k (assuming you have to pay $400 a month for health insurance and put 10% gross into a 401k).
Do you know a lot of truck drivers that make $250k a year?
Yeah NY metro is expensive but I'm not exactly near the city and I keep hearing this criticism that the working class needs to "move where the jobs are" instead of staying in their cheap but dying areas.
I am working on a longer piece that includes the populist Right and disaffected libertarians. I want to steel man your take, so it would not be fair to say you are disaffected if you are not. I think your remarks on the topic can be characterized as such. https://carlklinn.substack.com/p/new-thai-cannabis-policy-opens-possibility
Writing about EVs comes in two flavors; careful engineering and analytics v. identity blather. Identity blather gets more clicks. See Paul Graham, Keep Your Identity Small
“Stop judging that you may not be judged; for with the judgment you are judging, you will be judged, and with the measure that you are measuring out, they will measure out to you..’’
This seems key. Judging in advance. How much space in your brain allow other person? None? well that’s what you receive from them.
“Why, then, do you look at the straw in your brother’s eye but do not notice the rafter in your own eye?’’
Note, the focus on motive - Why?
“Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Allow me to remove the straw from your eye,’ when look! a rafter is in your own eye?’’
Change from analysis of motive, now, to focus on ability to ‘see’ the other viewpoint. Blind to other person’s vision.
“Hypocrite! First remove the rafter from your own eye, and then you will see clearly how to remove the straw from your brother’s eye.’’
‘Hypocrite’! This person not genuinely trying to ‘see’ the others ‘eye’, what he is seeing.
If Cochrane or the OP take issue with Ritchie's conclusions (basically that the battery resource cost issue is significant but does not, over a realistic full lifecycle, outweigh the reduction in operational CO2 emissions) I would like to know on what basis. In general Ritchie strikes me as the sort of person one ought to listen to on controversial empirical issues: careful, nuanced, open-minded, devoid of name-calling.
Ritchie's comparison of mining in terms of the amount of mass being mined makes no sense to me. A simple heuristic for the amount of resources it takes to manufacture something is to look at the price, and electric vehicles cost almost twice as much as gasoline vehicles (considering the lower end, not luxury vehicles). EVs are not affordable for most people.
My bad. Obviously, I didn't read Cochrane's piece before commenting. With all due respect, however, I can't fathom how someone can delude themselves into believing that we still have something called a democracy in this country, or that it will save us from the loons who are pushing these insane policies, especially if one lives in the vicinity of Stanford. I've lost all respect for the Hoover Institution in general.
"Young people may be projecting their personal psychological problems onto the society at large"
I've thought this for awhile too. For some people, even if we could magically address all of their complaints about society without collateral damage, they would still find a hundred other things to complain about. We shouldn't take them all at face value. Also, it seems that people who are well-connected to a community with healthy social norms are much more likely to avoid psychological problems and less likely to join cancel mobs and that sort of thing. Maybe that's a bit circular, but there does seem to be a strong link between decline of long-lasting, in-person connections and the general pessimism we are seeing. Plus our online communication channels tend to amplify messages from the most neurotic and aggrieved people.
I don't really get what Lind is saying. By and large, kids that grow up in two parent households do better than their parent and kids who grow up in a one parent household do worse. The reasons for this aren't necessarily just the parents but to say people starting with less don't or can't succeed just isn't true, unless you are talking about less parents.
I once saw data on two parent household kids who grew up poor. Of those with parents in the bottom 20% of income, way less than 20% of the kids ended up the same. Now maybe this finding was contrived by manipulating the data but the result rings true to me and suggests a path to upward mobility.
"you know they can't buy a house for example and we actually look at the data and housing prices and housing access is actually about the same as it was before"
I am just not buying this at all.
The mortgage payment on my house doubled between when I bought it in 2020 and what it would theoretically cost today. That follows a very long run up in prices before it.
For the combined mortgage payment + property tax to be 30% of take home pay you would need to earn over half a million dollars a year! And nearly all of your payment would be interest, whereas nearly my entire payment is principal.
Oh and I live an hour away from the big city (without traffic, which there is a lot of) so if I actually went into big city for work it would be a slog. Oh and in addition to my time it would cost about $20k a year in transport costs (post tax buddy). If I lived closer all those housing calculation get a lot worse.
There is a reason so many of the houses near me are purchased by retired boomers for cash.
I don't think people have processed the magnitude of the change in housing these last three years. Anyone that didn't lock in a mortgage rate when they were low is completely locked out. I know friends whose only sin is being slightly younger then me that are going to have a dramatically different life trajectory due to housing.
Every time someone tries to prove to me that housing isn't more expensive they whip out some garbage like:
"Well, if you take the median price of a 70 year old house in the ghetto in Cleveland its actually not so bad."
No, what is the price of housing in a decent safe neighborhood with good schools within reasonable committing distance of good jobs and a growing economy. And if your going to shove my in some 70 year old house through in all the costs of maintenance and repairs.
I agree I also think an analysis comparing house prices and availability across time neglects to take into account the purchasing power of these homebuyers. Including existing debt levels, especially from student loans, across the different generations I think would make it even more stark that buying a house is more difficult for millennials and gen Z. Not to mention what you said that you have to buy a house in a safe neighborhood with good schools within commuting distance of work.
Ultimately, the housing crisis is a social crisis. In an era of high social standards and the rule of law a much wider array of neighborhoods and socioeconomic neighbors are "good".
The fundamental issue is that if X% of society is "unsuitable neighbors" and X% get very high you will have a housing crisis. There is plenty of housing available in East DC near the good jobs, just don't have good neighbors.
The last three years have seen an exodus from cities to the suburbs. This has changed property values accordingly, with rental prices dropping in many cities as home prices in the burbs have risen.
But the pessimism on housing started much earlier than 2020 and at that time, there was no question – housing was as affordable as any time in the past. Prices rose as interest rates dropped, with the total payment staying roughly constant or even dropping relative to incomes. And yet young people at that time perceived the opposite, ie that housing was uniquely unaffordable for them.
This pessimism contra the data is a long-term problem for young people today. Don’t let the exceptionalism of the last three years confuse that.
Henderson's notes on Peterson's personality lectures touches on at least one of the factors (IMHO) influencing the pessimism of youth. To wit, "...that people do not just think about the same set of facts differently; it’s that the world literally presents itself to them differently. They’re not even considering the same set of facts." Coupled with higher rates of psych disorders and a steady stream of "look at the oppression in the world", it's little wonder that pessimism dominates mindset of the youth. There is a ripe opportunity for someone with a message, a pathway that is compelling, charismatic and hopeful.
"Initial buildout of the EV fleet" -- how often are vehicles replaced? How often do the heaviest users of vehicles replace their vehicles? What is the lifetime durability of the most resource intensive component of an EV (the battery)? Thinking this stuff through is not something you are supposed to do. You are supposed to just nod along and smile while everyone commits suicide together.
That was my thought, too. It's not just the initial buildout. Every EV made requires extensive resources -- considerably more than an ICE vehicle. Plus, there's the question of where the electricity is going to come from to charge them.
You're bad for thinking. Smile and clap and sway like a good person. I've already reported you to the authorities.
"It just goes to show that when the U.S. government decides to act, we can do big things, both for consumers and for the environment."
We can attract rent seekers claiming to be innovators like moths to a flame of subsidies and end up with just a bird and bat killing energy supply using massive areas of land with solar heat adsorbing panels (black panels vs more reflective soils). We will achieve unreliable electric power and the knowledge we were not adding to the increasing CO2 but not changing the climate path at all.
I enjoyed the discussion with Lauren Hall. I doubt if the pessimism and the anti-capitalism of young people stem from their concern over crony capitalism. That would have to come from some understanding of economics which most young people don't have. Instead, it is environmental. They believe that capitalism is destroying the planet. Young people have bought into the hysteria over climate change. They have also been taught by too many teachers that have reinforced this idea.
They've been brainwashed into that view their whole lives. Unfortunately, not many people can step back and consider the actual merits. Especially when doing so can get you "cancelled" from polite society.
Haidt's six moral foundations present some difficulty much like Henderson points out. Some people have priorities that others just don't recognize. Kling's civilization, oppression, and freedom do not have the same difficulty. While each group has differing priorities, I'd hazard to guess there are few if any who don't attach some importance to all three. I think if people recognize they all have all three but in differing amounts, they can communicate.
... Ok, yes, within each priority each group has some sub-priorities that aren't shared but this doesn't have to be an unsolvable obstacle.
Part of the problem with housing is that the size of house demanded by today’s young families is about double what it was 50 years ago even as family sizes have fallen. But we actually have millions of houses that were built 50 years ago that a) take lots of land, but b) aren’t seen as acceptable by many families.
So a middle class family looking for a cheap house will find a ton of 1200 sq ft houses at reasonable prices that were acceptable to their parents and grandparents when they were raising children, but are now unacceptable to them. The durability of housing despite changing preferences is actually creating the perception of a bigger problem.
Nonsense.
I grew up in was 875 SQFT 2 bed 1 bath and it would be completely unaffordable to someone with my Dad's job today, and indeed the people working from my Dad's company endure long commutes because they can't afford to live there.
When I got the statement on my house a minority of the cost was the cost of construction. And the cost of construction itself would have only gone down marginally if it had been a much small house.
Land, town hookup fees, taxes and transfer fees, sales cost, etc. These make up the majority of the cost. Builders built big because once you get past fixed cost it's cheap to add more space. The fixed cost relate to the value of the neighborhood (commute, schools, crime, etc).
The thing about fifty year ago tiny houses is they tend to be in bad neighborhoods with poor schools. To the extent even terrible houses like my parents are in good school districts they are worth a fortune.
I grew up in a middle class suburb in NJ. A commute into NYC would be about an hour each way. The household income today is high as a national average but a little below the average for the county. Most of my peers growing up were normal middle class kids.
Today Zillow says the house is worth about $500k. Let's say someone could save 50k for a down payment and didn't have to do PMI. Mortgage + property tax would be $4k/month.
Getting to $12k take home pay (30%) would require a household income of $250k (assuming you have to pay $400 a month for health insurance and put 10% gross into a 401k).
Do you know a lot of truck drivers that make $250k a year?
Yeah NY metro is expensive but I'm not exactly near the city and I keep hearing this criticism that the working class needs to "move where the jobs are" instead of staying in their cheap but dying areas.
"I try to suggest that young people may be projecting their personal psychological problems onto the society at large"
There was something not long ago in a similar vein, that people hate others politically for views they don't actually hold...
The Ties that Blind: Misperceptions of the Opponent Fringe and the Miscalibration of Political Contempt
https://psyarxiv.com/cr23g/
I am working on a longer piece that includes the populist Right and disaffected libertarians. I want to steel man your take, so it would not be fair to say you are disaffected if you are not. I think your remarks on the topic can be characterized as such. https://carlklinn.substack.com/p/new-thai-cannabis-policy-opens-possibility
Writing about EVs comes in two flavors; careful engineering and analytics v. identity blather. Identity blather gets more clicks. See Paul Graham, Keep Your Identity Small
http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
Arnold/Rob
I’ve listened to lecture series on Dalton Kehoe.
Outstanding!
He explains communication very . . . difficult.
Also, one famous communicator taught . . .
“Stop judging that you may not be judged; for with the judgment you are judging, you will be judged, and with the measure that you are measuring out, they will measure out to you..’’
This seems key. Judging in advance. How much space in your brain allow other person? None? well that’s what you receive from them.
“Why, then, do you look at the straw in your brother’s eye but do not notice the rafter in your own eye?’’
Note, the focus on motive - Why?
“Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Allow me to remove the straw from your eye,’ when look! a rafter is in your own eye?’’
Change from analysis of motive, now, to focus on ability to ‘see’ the other viewpoint. Blind to other person’s vision.
“Hypocrite! First remove the rafter from your own eye, and then you will see clearly how to remove the straw from your brother’s eye.’’
‘Hypocrite’! This person not genuinely trying to ‘see’ the others ‘eye’, what he is seeing.
Just wants to condemn.
Outstanding analysis!
Most famous sermon ever given!
Hope this adds some insight.
Thanks
Clay
For a counterpoint on the full lifecycle resource costs of EVs, I recommend Hannah Ritchie's analysis:
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/ev-fossil-cars-climate
And on the mining issue specifically:
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/mining-low-carbon-vs-fossil
If Cochrane or the OP take issue with Ritchie's conclusions (basically that the battery resource cost issue is significant but does not, over a realistic full lifecycle, outweigh the reduction in operational CO2 emissions) I would like to know on what basis. In general Ritchie strikes me as the sort of person one ought to listen to on controversial empirical issues: careful, nuanced, open-minded, devoid of name-calling.
Ritchie's comparison of mining in terms of the amount of mass being mined makes no sense to me. A simple heuristic for the amount of resources it takes to manufacture something is to look at the price, and electric vehicles cost almost twice as much as gasoline vehicles (considering the lower end, not luxury vehicles). EVs are not affordable for most people.
Mark Mills is my go-to on this topic -- his analysis emphasizes the uncertainties inherent in Ritchie's calculations:
https://manhattan.institute/article/electric-vehicles-for-everyone-the-impossible-dream
Yes, that is the article that John Cochran was referring to in his piece.
My bad. Obviously, I didn't read Cochrane's piece before commenting. With all due respect, however, I can't fathom how someone can delude themselves into believing that we still have something called a democracy in this country, or that it will save us from the loons who are pushing these insane policies, especially if one lives in the vicinity of Stanford. I've lost all respect for the Hoover Institution in general.