161–170 of 391 posts
> Rents in Megacities Can't Go Up Forever Yes it can, College Tuition is a great example. Instead of finding the cause and treating it, we just increase the amount of aid people have access to.
The fallacy of rent control, which only treats the symptom and fails to address the root problem of inadequate supply and restrictions to adding additional supply to the market.
This article crystalizes a point that was vague in my mind: "megacities have a problem making it affordable to raise large or even medium-size families. How many of us could live in San Francisco, London or New York City and bring up three children in a decent neighborhood with good schools? Only the already well-to-do can manage such a feat.". As a mid-30s person with a new baby, I don't see how the numbers work for…
>How many of us could live in San Francisco, London or New York City and bring up three children in a decent neighborhood with good schools? The simple solution is to not have any children. Leave that to extremely rich people and very poor people. Society obviously does not support child-rearing, given the cost of housing and the lack of support from employers, so why fight it?
It disturbs me deeply and I wonder why.
Maybe it was your matter of fact, emotionless delivery of it that caught my attention.
I can't really dispute what you have said other than it is not an inevitability. Societies can choose to change this, Sweden being a current example, Finland too. But people need to organise and want it enough, maybe they don't. Time will tell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in Chicago. I love it here because of everything else it has to offer. I have everything almost everything I need available to me within walking distance from home. That includes grocery store, dive bars, cheap restaurants, high end restaurants, clubs. For anything else I may want to do (concerts, sports games, plays, comedy), there are dozens of world class options within a ten minute cab drive / 30 minutes o…
> If you wanted culture, you'd have to get in your car and drive at least an hour. Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in. In tiny towns, the culture looks more like running around in the woods, country music, 4-H club, and church potlucks. That's a culture, even if you don't like it. And, besides, in the internet age there are plenty of farmers' daughters that get really into oil painting o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank goodness we are too smart to try that with Healthcare.
Compare the statements "not everyone needs to live in an expensive city" and "not everyone needs to go to a private out-of-state college" to "not everyone needs to be able to live " to see the silliness of that comparison.
I assume that everyone wants healthcare for everyone. I mean, who would want even a stranger to suffer from disease?
The question is what is the best mechanism to make it affordable for everyone.
One answer is: give everyone more money to spend on it. The problem with that is that it drives up the cost for everyone and you may be no better off. You might be worse off.
Another solution might be to spend money on the supply (build more hospitals and train more doctors). I pick this example because it doesn't imply things like lowering taxes or spending less, so it doesn't get caught up in the budget discussion.
The criticism here is just in regards to the first solution, not in regards to providing healthcare.
What does it look like if a rent bubble pops? Can such a thing even happen? Rents tend to be difficult to change without moving. I guess rents can fall if demand considerably outstrips supply and the landlords get desperate, but most landlords I've seen are pretty stubborn and will hold out until the last second before they lower the rent a single penny.
But this isn't a rental bubble. The rents aren't really too high, they just can't keep growing above inflation rates forever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing planes are assembled in Seattle; their HQ is in Chicago. Do people aspire to work in health, energy or finance, or even software aside from the money? If so, what difference does it make?
The 787 is assembled in (North) Charleston, SC.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are certainly a lot of factors. People want to live in trendy cities. There's a lot to consider besides rent - culture, nightlife, etc. San Francisco sure does have some of the best food in the country (and with tech consuming most of spare time the way it is, eating out is really a huge part of culture). Rent definitely ends up being the deal breaker for many, but for others isn't. It's a lot harder for a comp…
> People want to live in trendy cities. There's a lot to consider besides rent - culture, nightlife, etc. San Francisco sure does have some of the best food in the country We're talking about tech workers though. I don't know about you, but my whole life as a tech worker, I've gotten up at the crack of dawn, worked all day, come home late at night exhausted and passed out sleeping until the next day. I don't even kno…
Not all tech workers are 12-hour-a-day workaholics.
Why are you killing yourself at work?
The author of the article is a professor of economics but doesn't state the true cause of rising housing costs: Market inefficiencies (or market failures) caused by politically induced market scarcity restrictions called "rent-seeking" which benefits landowners such as President Trump over people who rent or are purchasing housing. Rent-seeking was first illustrated by David Ricardo in the mid-19th century (IIRC) and…
In Minato ward — a desirable 20 sq km slice of central
Tokyo — the population is up 66 per cent over the past 20
years, from 145,000 to 241,000, an increase of about
100,000 residents. In the 121 sq km of San Francisco, the
population grew by about the same number over 20 years,
from 746,000 to 865,000 — a rise of 16 per cent. Yet
whereas the price of a home in San Francisco and London
has increased 231 per cent and 441 per cent respectively,
Minato ward has absorbed its population boom with price
rises of just 45 per cent.
It also helps that Japan has a brilliant zoning system:
http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
If the finance industry keeps skimming a fraction of all the money flowing through it then financial hubs like New York city and London could keep becoming more expensive.