Yeah, I mean the economy is good by basically every measure. Inflation down, jobs up, interest rates coming down, wages up. It’s a shame we’re about to elect a poo flinging gorilla who will tear it all down.
There’s a stark difference imo between how the economy feels here in SoCal (quite good) and back in the PA suburbs (not great as of when we left). Still seems extremely hard to buy a house, but it feels like there’s hope - it seems easier to get ahead here even though you have to do a lot of getting ahead here to own a home.
I don’t know man. If you think buying a home is easier in the LA area is easier than buying one in suburban Philly, I think your feels have taken over your brain.
Incomes are like 30% higher here. Homes cost more than 30% more to buy, but that’s kind of irrelevant if it’s impossible to save up a down payment at the lower income level in Pennsylvania to buy the cheaper home. The gap in rents according to Google AI is about 10%, so it’s easier to outpace expenses here in Cali.
Maybe home affordability is the wrong metric, but look at the economic stats for PA or Pittsburgh and think about how it compares to the national headlines.
https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.pa_pittsburgh_msa.htm
Unemployment higher than national average and rising
https://www.bls.gov/charts/county-employment-and-wages/percent-change-aww-by-state.htm
PA also one of the states with weakest wage growth, certainly not outpacing inflation or keeping up as well as California.
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And particularly in nursing isn’t CA objectively best state in US to work?
Yeah, not just for pay but also work conditions - they are guaranteed their breaks and staffing ratios. In general, labor protections are way better here.
Most of the country
What’s that?
lots of this doesn’t apply to CW
-not in Pittsburgh
-plays poker so unemployment rate not really that relevant
-wife is nurse and there is demand for those everywhere, so unemployment rate not that relevant for her either
-wage growth probably less relevant for a poker pro; somewhat for a nurse
stuff like unemployment and wage growth probably affects how juicy the games are, but I think the effect is somewhat attenuated.
I suspect the games are better in SoCal, but I think that is mostly a function of a much larger, wealthier player pool more than anything else.
I purposely made it not about my specifics because they’re so unique, but yeah I’m making significantly more money here personally, which is going to make it easier for us to buy a home here than around Philly.
Well, I think it’s extremely difficult to not have your personal circumstance affect your perspective. From the outside, I’d say that maybe the problem was not the economy or Philly metro, but it’s that your profession happens to be very well suited to certain locations and Philly wasn’t one of the best of them.
Also the wife is making money now, which iirc is new
Actually small/mid stakes poker is a great way to get a sense of the local economy. People were buying in shorter than usual and complaining about the economy.
I mean it is a way, but saying it’s a great way is absurd. Its best at checking the divorced drunk economy
Comparing stuff like average buyin size over time is going to be very effective at identifying trends in the local economy.
No it’s not man. I did this shit too, through the Great Recession. It’s not a representative sample
This local economy stuff seems new. IIRC, you were saying that the national economy wasn’t as good as all the positive stats would have one believe.
It doesn’t have to be a representative sample to identify trends, it just has to be a sample that maintains a correlation to the local economy.
It wasn’t, still isn’t. The stats do not capture normal people’s reality.
This is absurd man. The first thing you do with a dataset to see if it can be used for analysis is to see if it’s representative.
Anyways, the facts are clear right now:
The US economy is great using any sort of historical comparison
The US economy is stronger than any other major country right now