Chris Kausner

@JeremiahDJohns It’s not really Seder though. This is just what leftism is.

The sad thing, beyond how thoroughly Seder beclowns himself, is that Ezra is desperately trying to help him. The whole point of Ezra's abundance arc is that progressivism harms its own objectives, and Ezra wants to stop doing that. And fools like Seder can't even see it.

@geniusliberator @matthewstoller @NewsLambert I am an independent home builder in the northeast. This just isn’t true. I can get the same financing as larger builders.

@matthewstoller @NewsLambert @CKausner check this out

So @ezraklein and @DKThomp like to put the question of why it's so much cheaper to build housing in Texas than California. The key RAND study upon which they rely, however, explicitly chose a pre-pandemic timeframe because Covid "triggered a complex pattern of cost increases."

@CoolhandClint7 @ProudSocialist It’s irrelevant. Other people getting rich doesn’t make you poor. Every single quintile of earners is making more than at any time in history. Our parents and grandparents were poorer than us. They managed to raise children. It’s all cope.

@CKausner @ProudSocialist This is .ore the graph I am concerned with. Two thirds of the wealth in this country is concentrated in the hands of 10 percent of the country. The bottom 50 percent have 2.5% of the wealth.

There is not a male loneliness epidemic. There is a capitalism epidemic and because there are not enough good jobs going around for anyone men are taking it harder because our society has falsely conditioned us to believe our entire self-worth is based on how much we provide.

@CoolhandClint7 @ProudSocialist Dude, those are all numbers that are literally true. Inflation adjusted median incomes are at all time highs. Travel and eating out are at all time highs.

@CKausner @ProudSocialist Yeah. Sorry about that. Numbers trump your anecdotal evidence. Hollywood is struggling. Go on TikTok and see how many recent grads are struggling. I don't walk around my parent's house in Scottsdale and assume that's the rest of the country. That would be rather silly.

@CoolhandClint7 @ProudSocialist Have you been outside? There is zero percent chance this is true. We live in bigger more luxurious houses than ever, travel more than ever, eat out more than ever, drive more expensive cars than ever, spend more on entertainment than ever. Real median income: all time high!

@CKausner @ProudSocialist

@SLCPaladin @LeftwardBound @geniusliberator

@LeftwardBound There is no way #1 is true. Median rent for NYC across all buroughs is $3,421 Median rent for Houston is $1,239 Gas, annual driving cost, and public transportation are also cheaper in Houston.

One of the most telling parts of @SamSeder’s abundance debate is when he asks Ezra Klein who are the enemies of his political movement & Ezra responds that there are no enemies At its core, politics is about the control & distribution of resources. How can there be no enemies?

@geniusliberator @LeftwardBound I don’t know much about Houston’s housing market, but it seems pretty unlikely that it’s more expensive than NYC. Not sure what his source for that would be.

@LeftwardBound @CKausner is this statistic true about houston housing?

@CoolhandClint7 @ProudSocialist

@CKausner @ProudSocialist What?

@ninaturner Their net profit margin is like 2.5%. What are you talking about??

A big part of the narrative around this that’s missing? Walmart doesn’t have to do this. They don’t. They can choose to not raise prices and cut into their profits a bit, because as the pandemic showed us, these corporations don’t lower prices when overhead goes back down.

@jbarro They cannot possibly accept that greedy corporations can building housing cheaper and faster than government, because it would literally unwind their entire worldview, and their egos won’t allow that.

Leftists keep criticizing Ezra for not having a "theory of power," but it's actually their theory of power that has nothing to say about the problems he's identified. They can't conceive of -- or address -- a problem not caused by big corporations, monopoly, or "oligarchs."

@GreyGrey13700 @ProudSocialist Yeah man. It’s just not true.

@CKausner @ProudSocialist Unemployment might be at a lower point currently but saying that current wages have more buying power is ABSURD. Making 100k a year = 70k take home = still can’t afford a house. US is SHIT

@GreyGrey13700 @ProudSocialist 🤷‍♂️

@CKausner @ProudSocialist Liar.

@freedomrideblog Yeah but…this is just observably ridiculous. Homeownership rate is 65% ish. Inflation adjusted median incomes and net worths at all time highs. Travel and eating out at all time highs. We drive pricier cars and live in bigger homes than ever. This is just obviously not true.

Bottom 60%? In other words, a majority of Americans don't earn enough to afford a minimal quality of life. Why use linguistic trickery instead of saying in plain English that most people are struggling?

@nickgerli1 If you adjust for purchasing power - what % of income do people spend on housing monthly, it’s what it’s always been.

@nickgerli1 You’re not accounting for interest rates. If you adjust this graph for monthly mortgage payment instead of home price, it’s about average. The 2010s were an anomaly.

The housing market has never been this unaffordable in U.S. history. With inflation-adjusted home prices setting a record over the last three years. We're now in the biggest housing bubble of all-time, and the only period that came close was 2006, before the big crash. Many people like to tell you "home values will never drop". But those people conveniently don't show you this graph. There is no historical precedent for how expensive today's housing market it is. And homebuyers know it.

@HorrorGorl “I don’t know how anything works.”

Credit scores should be abolished

The housing affordability crisis is mostly fake. Don’t be mad 😬

@Qxnznghggktygf @quantian1 @adam_messinger Your comprehension of this topic is terrible my friend. As a percentage, people spend about what they always have on housing. Prices are up BECAUSE incomes are up. We have more purchasing power than ever, and we are using to buy more sq footage and more luxury.

Fundamentally there’s only so many times you can post “real median wages are up 30%” and have the first two replies be “well after you adjust for inflation that’s down” followed by “if you take out the richest 1000 billionaires it’s flat” before you tire of it