There\u2019s lots of talk about \u201caffordability\u201d these days, not least because of Zohran Mamdani\u2019s successful campaign to be elected Mayor of New York City.<\/p>\n
As we all know from personal experience, there is the \u201caffordability shock\u201d that can hit us linked to single consumer items. Last summer, for example, I stopped at a restaurant on the way back from a day trip, waiting for the train connection. The bottled beer I ordered (3.3 dl) eventually cost me more than 10 Swiss francs (where 6 francs would be a common price). I remember the sort of \u201cwhat if\u201d question coming up: \u201cwhat if everything would cost 50% more than the average or customary price?\u201d How could I afford a living in this place?
\nThis is the anxiety that lies beneath the success of Mamdani\u2019s campaign, among a population where many are struggling \u201cto achieve basic stability in the essentials of their lives\u201d. Affordable prices of groceries, of public transport, the possibility to have childcare for children of pre-school age were all tangible elements of such stability. The problem is universal, and by no means something only New Yorkers of average or low income social strata are concerned about. In this case, the electorate was voting for the candidate who promised to use some public money to make these things more affordable (or even free).<\/p>\n
However, a state or a city can only do so much with its resources to address the expense side of the equation. It is not in charge of incomes. This is affordability too, capturing the cost of living on the one hand, income on the other, and \u201cthe inconvenience, discomfort, and insecurity that come when the two are not in balance\u201d.
\nIsn\u2019t the fundamental issue facing us this: whether our economies still are or will be designed to provide enough for a living to the working and the middle classes \u2013 something that seemed to be granted during large parts of the 20th century in \u201cthe West\u201d. But no longer \u2013 the labor force has grown, and so has global competition. Add technological advances to it, and you get to the societal anxiety of the present. People are asking, and rightly so, what future they are being offered. There still seems to be a fair amount of faith in the economic system, yet but the issue of social and economic justice \u2013 decent work and a life that\u2019s affordable \u2013 is looming large in our societies.<\/p>\n
I have in my early research confronted the issue of \u201caffordability\u201d often, talking to farmers in Indonesia, and how they were trying to make ends meet. Many were engaged in subsistence farming and could cover their needs for food and other basic necessities. But when it came to school fees for children, medical expenses and so forth, they were struggling. I could observe them adopting strategies of occupational multiplicity, a jargon term for \u201cdiversifying\u201d, for example individual household members engaging in parallel jobs that would generate some cash. The difference to the economy where I had grown up, Switzerland, was stark. But affordability is, once again, a universal issue, very much present in Switzerland\u2019s part history of emigration.<\/p>\n
[1] The quotations are from Marilynne Robinson, \u201cAt What Cost?\u201d New York Review of Books, January 15, 2026, p.15. Worth reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As we all know from per\u00adso\u00adnal expe\u00adri\u00adence, the\u00adre is the \u201cafforda\u00adbili\u00adty shock\u201d that can hit us if the pri\u00adce of a con\u00adsu\u00admer item exce\u00adeds the cus\u00adto\u00adma\u00adry pri\u00adce by much. Some of the\u00adse items are more essen\u00adti\u00adal than others, of cour\u00adse.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2216,"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions\/2216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jurgschneider.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}