Cheap gasoline prices were key to the Trump-era "boom" for the bottom half of income earners destroyed by the Great Recession

Reported here in "Inflation-shocked low- and middle-income Americans may not spend normally for years":

“For a very large share of Americans, the bottom 60% are spending more on essentials than before the pandemic,” said Michael Pearce, Oxford Economics deputy chief U.S. economist. “The burden is hardest among the lowest income but also touches middle income. Spending patterns of low-income Americans will take years to recover.” ...

The last time low-income Americans’ discretionary spending fell this much, which was during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, it took five to 10 years for spending patterns to return to previous levels, he said.

“And the reason was gas prices fell,” Pearce said. Global oil prices fell by about 70% between 2014-16, which pushed pump prices sharply lower and helped low-income Americans catch up.

“It’s harder to see some revolutionary cost saving (like that) on the horizon,” he said. 

          

Harder to see only if we continue with the green energy nonsense.

The opportunities are YUGE for Trump/Vance because ALL energy costs much more now.

It's not just gasoline. Get the government boot off the neck of fossil fuel producers and gasoline will come down, natural gas will come down, and electricity will come down. 

Base energy from coal should be transitioned to nuclear, which works in cold weather and hot weather without fail just like coal, unlike natural gas, wind, and solar, which are fine where appropriate but not as base energy, the energy you must have when you need it when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, and the gas won't flow.

J. D. Vance knows:

 

 

Sometimes it's not the economy stupid: Headline employment under Obama didn't recover until May 2014, but he got re-elected in 2012 anyway

 Six years and four months went by: Jan 2008-May 2014.

And economic confidence actually declined from -11 in 2012 to -10 in 2014 when it did!

It's one of the craziest things in US political history, comparable to FDR getting re-elected throughout the Great Depression, which his economic experimentation only made worse.

By October 2012, 72% said the effects of the Great Recession were still the most important problem, compared to 43% today in October 2024, but it didn't matter that Obama wasn't solving it. He beat Romney anyway.

Is this one of those sometimes?

The same phenomenon may be happening today, but in reverse.

Harris stands to lose despite economic indicators which are chugging along in her favor, or at least not falling apart, to which those 43% seem oblivious.

Civilian employment in July and September 2024 remains near the November 2023 peak. Core inflation is still too high at 2.7%, but it isn't in the 5s anymore like it was for four straight quarters. Congress has thrown the book at the economy since 2Q2020, with nominal GDP growing at an astounding 9.84% compound annual rate because of pandemic spending. That's been a double-edged sword, however, exploding the national debt, inflation, and interest rates.

But economic confidence is Obama-like negative, and has been since it crashed during the pandemic in April 2020 to -32 from its highest level in 20 years under Trump just two months before, in February 2020 at +41.

Trump didn't shut down the economy in 2020, but governors sure did. It was a stark demonstration of just how quickly the wrong leadership can make everything go to hell in a hand basket overnight. The people today aren't wrong to lack confidence.

Ominously for incumbent VP Harris, Gallup thinks 2024 is most analogous to 1992, when Americans booted the incumbent Bush 41 even though the recession had ended more than a year before in 1991.

Majority of Americans Feel Worse Off Than Four Years Ago

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- More than half of Americans (52%) say they and their family are worse off today than they were four years ago, while 39% say they are better off and 8% volunteer that they are about the same. The 2024 response is most similar to 1992 among presidential election years in which Gallup has asked the question. ...

With a majority of Americans feeling they are not better off than four years ago, economic confidence remaining low, and less than half of Americans saying now is a good time to find a quality job, the economy will be an important consideration at the ballot box this year. As inflation persists and economic concerns dominate voters' minds, the upcoming election may hinge on which candidate can best address these pressing issues.

 

We still live in a world of very diminished economic growth since The Great Recession

Real GDP 2007-2023, 16 years, compound annual growth rate: 1.905%.

All the other years, 1929-2007: 3.448%.

We're behind that by almost 45%.

Compare the 16 years of The Great Depression and WWII, 1929-1945: 4.743%.

Or the 16 years prior to The Great Recession, 1991-2007: 3.253%.

This is bad, but you knew that.

Gallup poll not good for the incumbents Biden-Harris: Economy ranked most important as in 2008 when the voters dumped the incumbent Republicans represented by John McCain

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The economy ranks as the most important of 22 issues that U.S. registered voters say will influence their choice for president. It is the only issue on which a majority of voters, 52%, say the candidates’ positions on it are an “extremely important” influence on their vote. Another 38% of voters rate the economy as “very important,” which means the issue could be a significant factor to nine in 10 voters. ...

The current 52% of voters rating the economy as an “extremely important” influence on their vote for president is the highest since October 2008 during the Great Recession, when 55% of voters said the same.

More. 

It's not 2008, obviously, where everyone feared a catastrophe with banks failing left and right, homes going into foreclosure, and stocks tanking, but the perception of the economy as lousy today because of high inflation is remarkably high as it was in 2008 as indicated by this poll.

Everyone forgets that the vast majority of the job losses came after Obama was elected in 2008, not before, which took a record number of years to recover, setting the stage for Donald Trump. And pandemic fear drove the election cycle in 2020 and not the economy because of the gargantuan bailouts of the people.

Kicker:

Voters view Donald Trump as better able than Kamala Harris to handle the economy, 54% versus 45%.

Food deflation has been exceedingly rare since the 1950s and often comes with a world of other hurts when it does, like in 2009

 

CNBC fact-checks Joe Biden, now that it doesn't matter

 But the article name-checks Donald Trump five times because he's an opponent of Fed decisions.

There's a whole movement out there that wants to End the Fed, composed of Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians, which CNBC is loathe to mention.

Many of them argue that the US 2-year Treasury Note should be the benchmark for the Federal Funds Effective Rate, not the whim of the Fed Chair and the Federal Open Market Committee, who are un-elected, well-connected, and VERY WELL PAID elites who watch out primarily for the interests of the banksters.

For example, despite the disastrous Zero Interest Rate Policy post-Great Recession, DGS2 resisted it and outran DFF throughout the period under Obama and Trump, and anticipated the recent inflationary outburst by starting to rise in the spring of 2021, a full year before the Fed moved to "combat inflation" by raising the funds rate in the spring of 2022. 

Similarly DGS2 also started to fall in November of 2023 despite no change to Fed policy, anticipating the recent decline of inflation rates by almost a year.

The role of the US Treasury Secretary, AS MUCH A CREATURE of the Executive as the Fed Chair, is also huge for interest rates because the Secretary decides how to divvy up the debt securities for auction by duration.

Biden's Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been in the news for driving up the issuance in T-bills to 22% when 15% has been customary, which has contributed to longer rates falling and stocks rising, just in time for the election.

But the costs of this have been dramatic, financing deficit spending at the highest rates and driving interest payments on the debt to the third spot in the budget, behind only Social Security and Medicare.

Your reminder that Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi owns the two worst episodes of federal spending in excess of tax receipts in the history of the country

 Spending originates in the US House by law.

Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi owns the two worst episodes of federal spending in excess of tax receipts in the history of the country, by 310% in 2009 and by 309% in 2020, under Obama (Great Financial Crisis) and then under Trump (Pandemic).

 

Age discrimination is widespread and has been for years, everyone just shrugs

 Don't complain when it happens to you. No one cares.

 

More than half, 56%, of full-time workers in their early 50s get pushed out of their jobs (due to circumstances like a layoff) before they’re ready to retire, according to a 2018 paper published by the Urban Institute.

“Job loss at older ages is really consequential,” said Johnson, a report co-author. He attributes much of that workplace dynamic to ageism.

Just 10% who suffered an involuntary job separation in their early 50s ever earn as much per week after their separation as before it, the Urban Institute paper said. In other words, 90% earn less — “often substantially less,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s research shows that in the aftermath of the Great Recession (from 2008 through 2012), workers 50 to 61 years old who lost a job were 20% less likely to be reemployed than workers in their 20s and early 30s. Those age 62 and older were 50% less likely to have a new job.

 

More.

Vanguard's long term Treasury fund, started in 1986, set a new all time low price record yesterday: What a coincidence

 VUSTX fell to $7.37 yesterday, October 19, 2023.

Until the bond debacle of 2022, the lowest price ever was set way back in 1987, also on October 19, aka Black Monday, when the S&P 500 crashed 20.47% in its worst single day ever.

2022's new all time low for VUSTX at 8.16 had occurred on October 24, missing the anniversary of the old all time low by just three days. Also a very odd coincidence.

The debacle has only continued in 2023, and VUSTX prices haven't seen $8 since September 22nd.

ZIRP since the Great Recession is ultimately to blame for the current mess in long term Treasury securities. The clamor it created for yield drove bond investors long, culminating in the highest nominal prices ever paid for long term UST in March 2020, and the lowest yields. 30Y UST yield crashed to 0.99% on March 9, 2020, 20Y to 0.87%. Yields across the board in 2023 for 2Y to 30Y have set records for this cycle in October. Yesterday 20Y demanded 5.30%, 30Y 5.11%.

No one wants that 2020 and prior junk now, so wherever it sits it's causing collateral problems, at banks, insurance companies, pension funds, et cetera. And on the Fed's balance sheet: As of October 18th the Fed has $1.503922 trillion of UST maturing in more than 10 years on its balance sheet. It basically has to keep it until it matures, and it pays it very little to return to the Treasury as it does.

Are prices done falling?

Confident pretenders said so a year ago this month, and now here we are with $TLT investors down another 12.22% since then.

Given the obscene overvaluation of stocks, and the demand for higher yields by bond investors, cash still seems the safest place to be. VMRXX, Vanguard Cash Reserves Federal Money Market Fund Admiral Shares, has returned 4.00% ytd. You continue to lose to inflation, however.

Nothing is ever perfect.

 

1987 high and low

2022 high and low to the left, all time high and low to the right

Owner-occupied housing levels are still a long way off from those reached pre-Great Recession

 

Besides their bad character, what do Trump and Obama have in common in 2009 and 2020?

 Trump and Obama signed off on the two most fiscally irresponsible periods in post-war history, and Biden two years in looks set to join them.

The Executive is supposed to be a check on irresponsible spending. But both Trump and Obama went right along with it instead of vetoing the outrageous spending of the periods.

What else do they have in common?

Two crises, both of which plunged the country into hysteria.

The Great Financial Crisis did not begin to end until March 2009 when the FASB signaled its intent to suspend mark-to-market rules. The stock market bottomed almost immediately, but as with all cases of mass hysteria it took time for the panic to pass as other sectors recovered "one by one". 

The Pandemic Crisis gripped the country in March 2020, sending millions home from work, stocks plunging, toilet paper into shortage, businesses into bankruptcy, and on and on. With just about everyone vaccinated who was going to be by the end of 2021, the country gradually started to come out of it in 2022, eschewing jabs, masks, and social distancing as it became clear that the Omicron variant was infecting tens of millions despite all those measures.

2020 was the single most fiscally irresponsible year in the post-war since 1953. Federal expenditures, bloated by panicked bailouts, outpaced tax revenues by a whopping 216%.

Only 2009 comes close, at 210%, the second worst year on record.

Third, not shown, was 2010 at 196%, and fourth, not shown, was 2021 at 176%, each a part of the respective crisis periods.

Do you know what else those two years share in common?

Spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives.

In 2009 and 2020 its Speaker just happened to be the same person, as she was in 2010 and 2021.

Nancy Pelosi owns the four most fiscally irresponsible years in the entire history of the post-war. Her two speakerships literally busted out all over. 

US homes were at least 84% overvalued in 2021

 Rounding out the Unholy Trinity of Big Ticket Asset Inflation, Housing joins Stocks and Bonds in similar overvaluation territory in 2021 at about 84%.

In Feb 2012 when housing bottomed after The Great Financial Crisis, a previous inflation-adjusted Case-Shiller home price index chart no longer updated for present years showed that prices had fallen into the top range of US house prices which had prevailed throughout the post-war from the 1950s to the late 1990s. Mind you, the top range of those inflation-adjusted prices.

Thanks to Democrats and Republicans, including Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, the American Dream, the nest of the American future, was turned into a mere commodity in the late 1990s, to be churned in the markets for profit.

Long-suppressed long term interest rates have conspired with commoditization to produce valuations which have exploded, making houses unaffordable as nests, which is why your kid is still living in your basement.

The chart below shows the nominal price figures, on an average annual basis through 2021. The blow-off tops in 2022 are even worse (the index topped 308 in June), and are not shown because the year ain't over, and prices are falling.

At an average index level of 260 in 2021, prices were inflated from 141 in 2012 by about 84%, not far below the overvaluation of stocks and bonds at 90% and higher.

 

 

 

 

The percentage holding full-time jobs through September 2022 held above 50%, disappointing the ubiquitous advocates of a Fed interest rate pivot

 Full time as a percentage of civilian population in September was 50.3%, and for 2022 through September averaged 50.15%.

Not bad, considering.

The Fed will see little evidence in this figure that its interest rate increase policy is harming employment.

Stocks on Friday collapsed after a head fake to start the week to within 1.5% of the 52-week lows set a week ago.

Long term investment grade bonds and US Treasury securities also revisited lows from 9/27/22, coming within pennies of those benchmarks.

30-year yield for UST is back up to 3.86%. It was 3.87% on 9/27. At the beginning of 2022, yield was a paltry 2.01% by comparison.

UK gilts are experiencing the same action despite the Bank of England intervening to buy bonds. 

The bond crisis is not over.

With yields soaring across the board no one wants to own the lower paying outstanding issues, which are legion, destroying their value.

But everything in the global economy is based on those, piled up in earnest after The Great Financial Crisis of 2008, and in orgiastic frenzy afterwards during the late pandemic.

Bond yields in 2022 are telling you that they are overvalued by 92%.

Stock market valuation is telling you a similar thing.

From 1938 through 2019 the median ratio of the S&P 500 to GDP is 81. In 2020 we averaged 154, or 90% overvalued.

This is the major deflationary headwind facing the world, the other side of the COVID-19 inflationary shock coin.

Push here, it comes out over there.

Modern central banking cannot escape this conundrum any more than the gold standard could.

The only thing the individual can do in this situation is to owe nothing and save everything, preferably in your hands.

Good luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full time jobs as a percentage of population now average 48.3% through August 2021

 Full time as a percentage of population rose to 49.18 in August after peaking in July, as is typical, at 49.28.

The measure ebbs after summer and flows in the spring, mirrored by a peak oscillation in usually part-time employment in the winter, which is a much smaller part of the population, historically averaging 27+ million in the years before the latest catastrophe.

The 48.3% average to date in 2021 is one full point ahead of the average for 2020 at 47.3%, but remains far off the 2019 average at 50.4%, which itself hardly represented a return to what was normal before the Great Financial Crisis.

Full time work never recovered after GFC I, which exposed the hollowed out character of the US economy after decades of out-sourcing, off-shoring, and mass low-wage immigration.

 

The on-going housing bubble

I checked the value of my home on Zillow today.

It's nuts.

After 13 years the estimated price is up 6.5% per annum.

On the other hand, the house I previously owned and sold is up only 0.8% per annum over the same period.

Two entirely different houses, two entirely different locations, two completely different histories. What seems like a bubble living in my current house wouldn't seem like one living in my old one.

The best way I've found to think about this is to ask, How much of a house will my income buy? For bubble purposes nationally, even though housing is a regional and local matter, use median household income and median sales price.

Here's the chart of that data as currently available.

In 2020 the Median Sales Price of Houses Sold for the United States (MSPUS) averaged a new high of almost $337k. We don't yet have the median household income figure for 2020, but it's likely to be bad news, skewing the graph lower again as less income buys a smaller share of increasingly expensive housing.

As you can plainly see, the trend for the percentage of a house purchased by an income has been all downhill since the end of Reagan Bull in 2000. The percentage really fell a lot during the housing bubble which peaked in 2005-06, helping precipitate GFC1. Incomes fell a lot after the Great Financial Crisis because people lost their jobs by the millions and never got them back and so less income purchased less house. Housing prices bottomed in 2012 and then rebounded slowly. Incomes did not, however, and what you made just kept buying less in the low range of 19%. 

That all sucked. Obama really sucked. Sucked historically bad. Record-setting bad. 

You'll notice things really improved in 2019, however. That's because median household income shot up $5k to over $68k (Trump tax cuts), and the median sales price of a house actually fell $5k to $320k. Your higher income bought more of a slightly cheaper house, not as much as the good old days, but more.

Unfortunately in 2020 median sales price shot up almost $17k while millions upon millions lost their jobs. The feds enacted foreclosure forbearance so that 2.3 million homes whose owners lost their jobs never came onto the market. But desperate people who wanted out of cities snarfed up inventory. Demand far exceeded supply, so prices went up. 

But even at 21.5% in 2019 housing was nowhere near affordable like it was from 1987-2001. It was a nice, hopeful moment, while it lasted.

I'm guessing it's going to be quite a while, though, before we ever see even that again. 

COVID-19 in the largest countries by population: Update for Sun 5/2/21

Countries with 200 million population or more: China, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria.

Data isn't available in all categories for all countries, and data quality varies dramatically.

One should assume figures in the Big Seven are more or less gross underestimations except in the USA. 

China in particular is a JOKE. Why anyone takes them seriously as a "global partner" is beyond me. Show me an honest communist and I will give you six free winning lotto numbers.

Hospital reporting is the worst. Very few countries report the data at all, which tells you they are neither motivated nor equipped to do so even though this is a pretty serious situation which is over one year old. Given how important that data is in judging the progress and severity of the pandemic, it is more than discouraging. The top five for hospitalizations are all US and Europe, the difference between true civilization and the rest being that we know the numbers at all.

The situations in Brazil and especially India are alarming given the high positivity rate in India and the high death rate in Brazil. Reports concentrating on India underreporting deaths (from Reuters and the like) in recent weeks are a sick joke compared with neighboring China which the charts say is a COVID utopia. India is a developing nation struggling to cope under an enormous strain while still remaining part of the free world, but journalists would rather criticize it than question China's glaring effrontery. The myopia is damning.

These Big Seven represent 4.065 billion of the world's population of 7.79 billion, 52.2%, and we don't have a clear picture of what's really going on with them.

What reason would there be to think positively?

Daily new cases, and deaths, per million in the US are still at last summer levels and have not made new lows. Same with hospitalizations. Case positivity is rising again and is actually at 5.8%, provisionally, in this data. Previous very recent levels in the 7s, however, have simply vanished from the record. Why? Johns Hopkins is currently showing 4%. What to believe?

Vaccinations still can't be pointed to for lowering the US numbers because the numbers remain too high. I'm sure they'll point to them once they decline as evidence for vaccine efficacy. Seasonality will be ignored. I will leave a vaccination horror story update for a separate, future post.

Why have cases and deaths and hospitalizations ebbed and flowed in the past in the absence of vaccines? I predict they'll never really say, same as we hear no good explanation for why H1N1 from 2009 simply dropped off the radar. Why did it go away despite the vaccine against it turning into a giant flop? 

They can't predict pandemics' comings and goings anymore than they can predict global cooling in the 1970s, global warming in the 2000s, the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 or the end of the Reagan Bull in 2000.

Man is a worm, according to the Bible, a poor player upon the stage, according to Shakespeare, an idiot whose tale is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Nothing!

 

daily new cases per million

daily new deaths per million

case positivity rate

share of population vaccinated usa v world

Top five countries for C19 hospitalizations

share vaccinated in the largest countries by population

 

daily new deaths/million

daily new cases/million

In January 2021 just 47.4% of the civilian population had full-time jobs, compared with 2020's average of 47.3%

Biden reportedly said in response to the employment situation summary today:

"At that rate it's going to take ten years to get back to full employment. That's not hyperbole that's a fact."

The fact is employment has never recovered to pre-Great Recession levels, and Biden is as little likely to fix that as were Obama and Trump.

The Reagan era tax reforms hollowed out the labor economy. 

Before Reagan, high marginal tax rates on ordinary income steered that income into capital investment, gains from which received preferential tax treatment if held long enough. The investment grew the economy, providing good jobs for Americans and tax revenues for government at all levels. The arrangement distrusted rich people to do the right thing with their money, but rewarded them if they did.

Reagan libertarianism changed all that.

We were sold the idea that lower taxes on high ordinary incomes would still result in capital investment because we could trust people to do the right thing with their own money.

Guess what? Libertarian trust of human nature turned out to be as false as liberal trust of human nature. 

Under the influence of libertarian free trade dogma and growing globalization, that investment went abroad where there was far cheaper labor, lower taxes and less regulation. Profits soared for the few, bringing the number of billionaires from less than fifty in the 1980s to nearly 800 today. Meanwhile the good jobs gradually disappeared and income inequality soared.

Ordinary people today cannot afford cars, educations, health care, and houses as a result.

Add in cheap labor competition from immigration at a clip of 1 million a year and you can understand how Trump was so popular, however incompetent and narcissistic he was.

Trump may be gone, but the people remain screwed by these problems and by the time serving politicians and 2.8 million federal bureaucrats working for pensions who stand in the way.

Returning to the status quo ante might fix it, but it would take a generation to start feeling it. And who among us has the vision and the cojones to pull it off?

Certainly not the women and snowflakes who cry crocodile tears of fear on the House floor. Certainly not the sailors on board the Chafee who are in a panic because the cooks are infected with COVID.

The country is rotting from the inside out. All it will take to bring it down is . . . a series of unfortunate events.

Just a reminder that the harrowing nature of full time employment in the United States hasn't changed much as of Nov 2020

 As a percentage of population, full time in Nov 2020 remains in the basement digging holes at 47.6%, reminiscent of the historic lows pre-Reagan and the double Reagan recessions of the early 1980s.

Full-time never recovered after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, if you mean a return to pre-GFC1 levels. Under Obama and continuing under Trump full time after eight long years finally clawed its way up to 50.4% in 2019 on an average annual basis, only to be felled again by a lousing, stinking virus.

But don't make the mistake of blaming the virus. Conditions were long too weak to support pre-GFC1 levels of full time employment. Contrast this with the vigor of the Reagan/Bush surge in which full time went from 47.3% to 52.2% in just six years.

That missing vigor is the irreducible fact of the present economic malaise now in its twelfth year which very few acknowledge let alone understand.

  

Fake News from Drudge vs. Trump reminds me of Fake News from Rush Limbaugh for Trump: "Economy in same place as Great Recession..."

 Anyone with any brains can see that the economy is about where it was at the beginning of 2019, not where it was in 2009, at least on paper.

Rush was telling us for months that businesses were being destroyed by the lockdowns and that they would not recover. Now he's telling us "we can survive a massive unknown hit like this thing by the coronavirus" and calling for "even more stimulus", i.e. what Democrats always call for, spending money we don't have, which is anything but conservatism from "The Big Voice on the Right".

The entire GOP signed off on the massive deficit spending to purchase this V-shaped recovery Drudge doesn't want to recognize, but 8.4 million still don't have the full time work they had just a year ago. That's a massive hit which will take years to recover. As in 2009, however, older workers who lost their full time jobs this time around won't recover them either. Full time will recover only as population grows. 

Neither Drudge nor Rush Limbaugh think too much of the intelligence of their patrons. Their understanding is thimble-deep.

But neither do Democrats nor Republicans. They go into panic mode to preserve as much of the status quo as possible with bailout gimmicks, same as ever. And when the bailouts end, the dispossessed will face what they always face: disillusionment. 

Sad!

Housing update: Case Shiller National Home Price Index hit 212 in October 2019, 51% above 140

The Case Shiller National Home Price Index hit 212 in October 2019, 51% above 140. The full data at the new iteration of the index since February 2018 is behind a registration wall. 

The 140 level was the level around which the index tracked for most of the post-war until the year 2000, in a range between 120 and 160.

Since then it's been as high as 235 in 2005 and 2006 during the housing bubble, and as low as 151 in February 2012 after the bubble sort-of popped. A real correction might have taken prices to 120 or even below.

Clearly the index never returned to the post-war experience, which was mostly slightly below 140. Keeping housing prices high became a Federal Reserve objective and bragging point after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, achieved by manipulating interest rates lower.

The median sales price of an existing home in the US is currently $271,300 through November 2019, a price which is traditionally considered affordable to any individual making $104,346 per year and up.

Seeing that's just 8.5% of individual wage earners in 2018, the median sales price of an existing home is currently UNAFFORDABLE to 91.5% of wage earners.

Most people have to put together two incomes to afford such a house. But in a country where the median wage is south of $33,000 per year in 2018, two incomes only gets you to $66,000, which affordably buys you a house worth about $171,600 or so, $100,000 less than the current median sales price.

In my immediate vicinity, there's exactly two such single family homes on the market right now which are affordable to a couple making $66,000. Everything else costs much, much more.

This is a picture of declining equal opportunity.