(2) housing prices skyrocketed due to competition from the banker douches, meaning that standards of living declined substantially for the lawyers, doctors, etc.
I don't think it's fair to complain that "banker douches" raised house prices. There were plenty of non-bankers getting in on the housing price bubble. There were enough people that this TV show (http://www.aetv.com/flipthishouse/) was viable.
Incidentally, academia is solidly middle class and successful academics can easily buy a home. Tenured professors have almost no risk of default or prepayment and banks give them great loan terms as a result.
Another point of comparison: my Ph.D. adviser attracts plenty of golddiggers.
By the way, why all the hostility ("banker douches", "under-cultured jackasses") towards people who chose a different career path than you?
I don't think it's fair to complain that "banker douches" raised house prices. There were plenty of non-bankers getting in on the housing price bubble.
The housing price bubble was a national phenomenon that can't be pinned on bankers, but New York got hit especially bad, because of Wall Street, and has been slower to right itself than the rest of the country. One-bedroom apartments in Manhattan are still renting above $2000 per month.
Incidentally, academia is solidly middle class and successful academics can easily buy a home.
For outright stars, this is true, but the stars of other professions can easily buy several houses, so no point is made here. Hell; in finance, utter mediocrities can buy apartments overlooking Central Park. And if you know anything about academia, you'll know that you do have to be pretty much a star to achieve even a middle-class income trajectory relative to age. Getting into a top-10 PhD department is a hundred times more competitive than any MBA program, and the average student out of such a program (to say nothing of those who have to settle for upper-middle or middling grad programs) struggles to get even a mediocre post-doc in the middle of nowhere. I've heard that the average PhD from a selective department will write 70 applications to secure one or two offers. The mere fact of finishing a PhD program, for what it's worth, puts on in the top third or so of entering grad students, already the cream of the undergraduate crop.
By the way, why all the hostility ("banker douches", "under-cultured jackasses") towards people who chose a different career path than you?
Meh, I'm fine with quants and quantitative traders, but I don't consider them "bankers". I don't have much use for the 23-year-old douchebags who make a mess of Stone Street and expect to be treated as an elite caste because they're investment bankers. They're also not very smart; if they were, they would demand more interesting work than standard analyst fare, and get fired for their "sharp elbows". I know a few truly intelligent people who went into banking, but most of them found the environment hostile and either shot for quant/trading, or left finance altogether. The types of people who thrive in hierarchical corporate environments tend to be, on the whole, pretty useless; this isn't particular to bankers, but universal.
The housing price bubble was a national phenomenon that can't be pinned on bankers, but New York got hit especially bad, because of Wall Street, and has been slower to right itself than the rest of the country. One-bedroom apartments in Manhattan are still renting above $2000 per month.
Price to rent has little to do with the housing bubble. You can't rent an apartment in the hopes of selling it later for a higher price. High rental prices suggest that prices were high due to consumption demand, not speculative demand.
The best statistic for measuringthe housing bubble is (Price to own) / (price to rent). Typically this quantity remains flat, but goes up during bubbles.
Prices going up because everyone wants to live in manhattan == not a bubble.
And if you know anything about academia, you'll know that you do have to be pretty much a star to achieve even a middle-class income trajectory relative to age.
I know a little about academia, being a postdoc myself.
Academia is a tournament. The winners get a solidly middle class salary, excellent benefits and "never lose your job ever" security. Note: middle class, not rich. You won't get an apartment overlooking central park (and neither do most finance people), but you will get a house.
The losers of the tournament are not academics; they wind up becoming quants, actuaries, programmers, etc, and typically make more money than the winners.
So yes, academics do get a middle class salary. They probably could get an upper class salary elsewhere, but I never disputed that.
I don't think it's fair to complain that "banker douches" raised house prices. There were plenty of non-bankers getting in on the housing price bubble. There were enough people that this TV show (http://www.aetv.com/flipthishouse/) was viable.
Incidentally, academia is solidly middle class and successful academics can easily buy a home. Tenured professors have almost no risk of default or prepayment and banks give them great loan terms as a result.
Another point of comparison: my Ph.D. adviser attracts plenty of golddiggers.
By the way, why all the hostility ("banker douches", "under-cultured jackasses") towards people who chose a different career path than you?