You assume the goal is to move out, but it might not be. Extended families have lived together in many parts of the world throughout history. Expectations of living alone are relatively new.
That's true, but there were also no stories of adult children getting married and living with their spouse/children with their elderly parents. There weren't even any mentions of adult children (or their parents) who sought such an arrangement.
Interesting anecdotes, but what does this have to do with the fact that the journo apparently couldn't find a single person/family who was seeking this sort of setup, or who let alone taking it to the next level? They were all just single people living at home, with no spouse or kids.
We should aspire to increase our quality of life, but keep perspective on what are new problems and crises, what are old problems and may still be unsolved. Cheap and abundant housing supply for everyone to live alone is and old problem and unsolved.
Yes, I absolutely know some. At the same time, many weren’t out of financial necessity but maybe financial convenience. I know a few who had a remote job or worked in their hometown even though they had savings and weren’t spending a lot.
They then would move out to a bigger more expensive city and feel more financially comfortable than they would have. This was in first generation immigrant families, which as the article notes, is where this practice is more common.
> Have any of these adult children successfully moved out after saving up money while living with their parents?
Even if they do, it still means they failed to save up that money without having to live with their parents.
This is just the WSJ-reading "haves" justifying the increasing stratification of society by reframing a clear regression[0] as a "responsible individual choice" which that crowd LOVES.
(EDIT: it's also cope for the parents of those kids for the not-quite-THAT-elite WSJ reader crowd who doesn't want to believe either their kids are failing or their economy is faltering.)
[0] Even if you see the everyone-moves-out vs multigenerational-housing trend as a negative overall, the broadening loss of the ability to make that choice is a clear symptom of overall economic weakening.
> So? This practice of moving out for no particular reason is very US-centric.
No particular reason? It happens when these people go off to college, for the most part. Moving back in is seen as a regression, for understandable reasons.
If someone is going to a university far away, that would be a good reason to move.
No particular reason means when there is no particular reason, such as when going to university in the same city.
It's often much better to live at home and save $1K+ (sometimes quite a bit +) in rent every month in your 20s. That can build a lot of savings for a mortgage downpayment later.
Yes. Or they stayed put. I had a friend who lived at home and drove a Jaguar. He helped his mom occasionally, but it was a financially great deal that allowed him to live large.
Sometimes you just hit impossible life scenarios like a pretax clawback in a hostile workplace which drains your liquid savings and leaves you broke, or breakup with a partner which forces you out the home, or learning that the landlord you split your duplex with is a charged criminal of some pretty awful crimes.
You can’t fail sometimes, even if you thought it were failure
Sure but the point is that these scenarios must be far more common now than in past decades, if they are to account with the big increase in adult children living with parents.
Moving back home wasn’t an option for me or my wife (she spent some time living in her car) but if my kids, in high school now, wanted to move back home after college I’d be ok with it as long as they had a plan to get on their own two feet. If they just wanted three hots and a cot all bills paid then not so much.
our wages are frankly astronomical compared to my parents’, and we’re DINKs and only one of my parents even worked. Guess which one of us owns a house.
As the economy regresses even more, everything the middle or even working class took for granted in the last decades will be labeled a luxury by the elites and their media.
Morning coffee? Who do you think you are, a business magnate? Don't want to live with roomates into your 40s? You're spoiled. Still want real groceries and not industrial slop? Get back in your lane, poor person.
archive.is is caching error messages for this page. Is WSJ now immune to paywall bypasses? As fun as it is to have discussions entirely based on headlines, it threatens to turn HN into yet another low information high emotion discussion forum.
If this is being published in the Wall Street Journal, you can rewrite the headline in your head this way:
“To extract increasing returns from real estate, property prices and rent must be priced out of reach for people whose parents read the Wall Street Journal. Here’s an article you can quote to your friends at cocktail parties to feel good about yourself when your kid moves home.”
> Landlords do not create value. They merely charge others to use natural resources (like land) that were already there
and
> Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed
Plot twist: these are actually Adam Smith quotes. Karl Marx quoted the second in particular.
There is a contemporary economist and former wealth manager by the name of Henry Fudge who describes the housing markets in Western countries as a "rentier asset black hole" [1] and has written a paper called "The Housing Theory of Everything" [2]. The idea is fairly straightforward: capital moves to housing instead of and at the expense of productive output (eg factories) because of tax advantages, inelastic demand, artificial constraints on supply and it being a political goal to make sure that housing prices always go up.
China had made this same mistake as well. Real estate was one of the few ways people could build wealth prior to Xi Jinping who came in and quietly popped a trillion dollar real estate bubble, famously saying in 2016 [3] "Houses are for living, not for speculation".
My personal view is that ever-increasing house prices are simply stealing from the next generation, a massive wealth transfer to the old and wealthy. It has so many negative effects on society too because it makes everything more expensive. It's an input to every cost (through commercial real estate, which either has to hafve a similar return to residential real estate or it gets replaced with such).
I say all this because the WSJ is defending this generational theft by arguing that people are being "financially savvy" when people seek independence ultimately and this is simply a product of the affordability crisis and declining real wages. It's asinine.
> I say all this because the WSJ is defending this generational theft by arguing that people are being "financially savvy" when people seek independence ultimately and this is simply a product of the affordability crisis and declining real wages. It's asinine.
Indeed. There's this common trope in modern journalim of pretending that these financial moves are pure results of personal choices and nothing else. So, tweens going back to their parents is them "being financially savvy". Americans spending more on groceries and rent rather than other goods and services is them "adopting new consumer preferences".
It's always chosen, never suffered. Once you start seeing it, you notice it everywhere.
Landlords of Adam Smith's England and what "landlord" means in contemporary America are two different things. None of my landlords have charged to use pre-existing natural resources, they charged to use a decidedly non-natural housing structure.
Landlords absolutely create value. One value they create is liquid short-term (yearly, usually) housing. Another value they create is dense housing in desirable areas (such as downtown housing complexes), although landlords are not the only way to do this. They also create smaller housing than single-family homes, and maintenance-free living (again, not the only way to do this).
Now, whether what they charge is commensurate with the value they provide is a different question. My experience with private landlords has been positive and with commercial landlords has been grossly overpriced, lousy construction, and noisy. In my area commercial landlords are priced close to a mortgage, so they are a terrible value unless you are definitely short-term.
(Also, I don't think Xi Jinping popped the real-estate bubble quietly... He was pretty public with your statement, but it was a debt crisis that popped the bubble. It was not quiet at the time, and secondary effects lead to several locally-large protests.)
I agree with some of the commenters who note that the author tries hard to portray this as "financial savvy" but without a whole lot of evidence.
Have any of these adult children successfully moved out after saving up money while living with their parents?
You assume the goal is to move out, but it might not be. Extended families have lived together in many parts of the world throughout history. Expectations of living alone are relatively new.
That's true, but there were also no stories of adult children getting married and living with their spouse/children with their elderly parents. There weren't even any mentions of adult children (or their parents) who sought such an arrangement.
> there were also no stories of adult children getting married and living with their spouse/children with their elderly parents
That used to be common arrangement.
Like, fun fact, Rosa Parks has such arrangement. On darker side, John Brown sons with families lived with him, were totally ruled by him.
Interesting anecdotes, but what does this have to do with the fact that the journo apparently couldn't find a single person/family who was seeking this sort of setup, or who let alone taking it to the next level? They were all just single people living at home, with no spouse or kids.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife
We also didn't have today's medicine throughout history, nor today's food security. "Return to monke" is not an argument.
We should aspire to increase our quality of life, but keep perspective on what are new problems and crises, what are old problems and may still be unsolved. Cheap and abundant housing supply for everyone to live alone is and old problem and unsolved.
Yes, I absolutely know some. At the same time, many weren’t out of financial necessity but maybe financial convenience. I know a few who had a remote job or worked in their hometown even though they had savings and weren’t spending a lot.
They then would move out to a bigger more expensive city and feel more financially comfortable than they would have. This was in first generation immigrant families, which as the article notes, is where this practice is more common.
> Have any of these adult children successfully moved out after saving up money while living with their parents?
Even if they do, it still means they failed to save up that money without having to live with their parents.
This is just the WSJ-reading "haves" justifying the increasing stratification of society by reframing a clear regression[0] as a "responsible individual choice" which that crowd LOVES.
(EDIT: it's also cope for the parents of those kids for the not-quite-THAT-elite WSJ reader crowd who doesn't want to believe either their kids are failing or their economy is faltering.)
[0] Even if you see the everyone-moves-out vs multigenerational-housing trend as a negative overall, the broadening loss of the ability to make that choice is a clear symptom of overall economic weakening.
> This is just the WSJ-reading "haves" justifying
The WSJ has had a string of such apologetics lately. I know because family members keep sending them to me.
Another example:
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/european-soccer-fans-marvel-at-t...
> Even if they do, it still means they failed to save up that money without having to live with their parents.
So? This practice of moving out for no particular reason is very US-centric.
To me the "normal" obverved in most peer households of my youth is that people live with their parents until they get married, often late 20s.
You are correct.
The US is coming to resemble economically stagnant Europe more and more.
No particular reason? Says who?
> So? This practice of moving out for no particular reason is very US-centric.
No particular reason? It happens when these people go off to college, for the most part. Moving back in is seen as a regression, for understandable reasons.
If someone is going to a university far away, that would be a good reason to move.
No particular reason means when there is no particular reason, such as when going to university in the same city.
It's often much better to live at home and save $1K+ (sometimes quite a bit +) in rent every month in your 20s. That can build a lot of savings for a mortgage downpayment later.
> > Have any of these adult children successfully moved out after saving up money while living with their parents?
Most people in my circle who bought a home in California before the age of 30 did exactly this.
Weird that the journo wasn't able to find anyone for the article who fits the narrative better. Instead, it just comes across as failure to launch.
Yes. Or they stayed put. I had a friend who lived at home and drove a Jaguar. He helped his mom occasionally, but it was a financially great deal that allowed him to live large.
Driving a Jaaaaag but not being able to bring women/men home seems like a special kind of hell.
Sometimes you just hit impossible life scenarios like a pretax clawback in a hostile workplace which drains your liquid savings and leaves you broke, or breakup with a partner which forces you out the home, or learning that the landlord you split your duplex with is a charged criminal of some pretty awful crimes.
You can’t fail sometimes, even if you thought it were failure
Sure but the point is that these scenarios must be far more common now than in past decades, if they are to account with the big increase in adult children living with parents.
So what changed?
Moving back home wasn’t an option for me or my wife (she spent some time living in her car) but if my kids, in high school now, wanted to move back home after college I’d be ok with it as long as they had a plan to get on their own two feet. If they just wanted three hots and a cot all bills paid then not so much.
well, it's a sign of societal failure to provide more + better wages / housing, etc.
Mainly housing.
our wages are frankly astronomical compared to my parents’, and we’re DINKs and only one of my parents even worked. Guess which one of us owns a house.
And this, is the damn harsh truth.
As the economy regresses even more, everything the middle or even working class took for granted in the last decades will be labeled a luxury by the elites and their media.
Morning coffee? Who do you think you are, a business magnate? Don't want to live with roomates into your 40s? You're spoiled. Still want real groceries and not industrial slop? Get back in your lane, poor person.
archive.is is caching error messages for this page. Is WSJ now immune to paywall bypasses? As fun as it is to have discussions entirely based on headlines, it threatens to turn HN into yet another low information high emotion discussion forum.
Yes I see people accusing the article of sanitizing the reality of capitalistic excesses, but can’t access the article text to evaluate for myself.
If this is being published in the Wall Street Journal, you can rewrite the headline in your head this way:
“To extract increasing returns from real estate, property prices and rent must be priced out of reach for people whose parents read the Wall Street Journal. Here’s an article you can quote to your friends at cocktail parties to feel good about yourself when your kid moves home.”
Here are two quotes by Karl Marx on landlords:
> Landlords do not create value. They merely charge others to use natural resources (like land) that were already there
and
> Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed
Plot twist: these are actually Adam Smith quotes. Karl Marx quoted the second in particular.
There is a contemporary economist and former wealth manager by the name of Henry Fudge who describes the housing markets in Western countries as a "rentier asset black hole" [1] and has written a paper called "The Housing Theory of Everything" [2]. The idea is fairly straightforward: capital moves to housing instead of and at the expense of productive output (eg factories) because of tax advantages, inelastic demand, artificial constraints on supply and it being a political goal to make sure that housing prices always go up.
China had made this same mistake as well. Real estate was one of the few ways people could build wealth prior to Xi Jinping who came in and quietly popped a trillion dollar real estate bubble, famously saying in 2016 [3] "Houses are for living, not for speculation".
My personal view is that ever-increasing house prices are simply stealing from the next generation, a massive wealth transfer to the old and wealthy. It has so many negative effects on society too because it makes everything more expensive. It's an input to every cost (through commercial real estate, which either has to hafve a similar return to residential real estate or it gets replaced with such).
I say all this because the WSJ is defending this generational theft by arguing that people are being "financially savvy" when people seek independence ultimately and this is simply a product of the affordability crisis and declining real wages. It's asinine.
[1]: https://henryfudgeofficial.substack.com/p/the-rentier-asset-...
[2]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6571818
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houses_are_for_living,_not_for...
> I say all this because the WSJ is defending this generational theft by arguing that people are being "financially savvy" when people seek independence ultimately and this is simply a product of the affordability crisis and declining real wages. It's asinine.
Indeed. There's this common trope in modern journalim of pretending that these financial moves are pure results of personal choices and nothing else. So, tweens going back to their parents is them "being financially savvy". Americans spending more on groceries and rent rather than other goods and services is them "adopting new consumer preferences".
It's always chosen, never suffered. Once you start seeing it, you notice it everywhere.
Landlords of Adam Smith's England and what "landlord" means in contemporary America are two different things. None of my landlords have charged to use pre-existing natural resources, they charged to use a decidedly non-natural housing structure.
Landlords absolutely create value. One value they create is liquid short-term (yearly, usually) housing. Another value they create is dense housing in desirable areas (such as downtown housing complexes), although landlords are not the only way to do this. They also create smaller housing than single-family homes, and maintenance-free living (again, not the only way to do this).
Now, whether what they charge is commensurate with the value they provide is a different question. My experience with private landlords has been positive and with commercial landlords has been grossly overpriced, lousy construction, and noisy. In my area commercial landlords are priced close to a mortgage, so they are a terrible value unless you are definitely short-term.
(Also, I don't think Xi Jinping popped the real-estate bubble quietly... He was pretty public with your statement, but it was a debt crisis that popped the bubble. It was not quiet at the time, and secondary effects lead to several locally-large protests.)
shame "home" for me is manhattan, and moving there would be financial ruin