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The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

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Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#41

Post by dsfyu404ed »

zucchini_head wrote: post #30
ionwake wrote: post #4

Please do correct me if I am wrong. But isn't the whole reason lower class job salaries increased in the USA was simply because they had just won a world war? I do not know enough about the reasons for affluence in the 50s, but surely it was in large part to success in the war? If so, how could one suggest the minimum wage is just raised without it causing mass unemployment in the present? I must be misunderstanding…

Well, a lot of historians say that the USA's economy flourished post-war not necessarily because they "won" it (hard to define concept these days), but because everybody else's manufacturing infrastructure was completely flattened. Why do you think the USA automobile market exploded post-war? It's because the two biggest automobile manufactures - Germany and Japan - were flattened to smouldering ashes and took around…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271608/global-vehicle-sa...

http://www.jato.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/JATO-Global-C...

GM VAG and Toyota all have similar shares of the global market. Depending on how you want to nitpick you can make The Americans, Germans or Japanese look like the dominant player in global vehicle sales but it's really too global of an industry to draw the lines based on the country the CEO's office happens to be in.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#42

Post by raldi »

muninn_ wrote: post #19
akanet wrote: post #2

The author's recommendations are certainly apt, though I wonder if he realizes how much of a political nightmare trying to get cities like Berkeley to build more housing is. Berkeley is probably the staunchest NIMBY city of the major Bay Area cities. The mayor and city council recently outright denied a simple rebuild of a house on Haskell St (heh) that would have added a couple extra units of housing. We believe thi…

Or you can move if you can't afford the area. There are plenty of places with lower costs of living. You can't live in what is perhaps the most desirable area in the world and then be upset that people want to protect/increase their property value or not change how their community is. Not everybody wants to live in a sea of imposing skyscrapers. -edit So I see a few comments discussing things like commuting, urban sp…

It wouldn't take a sea of imposing skyscrapers; just a small amount of land close to transit would need to be upzoned from single-family houses to six-story apartment buildings like they have all over Europe's most beautiful cities.

http://tinyurl.com/6storySF

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#43

Post by kasey_junk »

sevensor wrote: post #14

This piece is by Richard Florida, who helped create the very problem he laments. Ten-fifteen years ago, he was talking up the same cities as magnets for the "creative class." Now all of a sudden he's concerned about the janitors and street sweepers? I'm not taking Florida seriously if he can't acknowledge his past myopia.

Isn't this him doing just that? The creative class came back to the cities, changing what the problems are?

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#44

Post by JoeAltmaier »

zucchini_head wrote: post #30
ionwake wrote: post #4

Please do correct me if I am wrong. But isn't the whole reason lower class job salaries increased in the USA was simply because they had just won a world war? I do not know enough about the reasons for affluence in the 50s, but surely it was in large part to success in the war? If so, how could one suggest the minimum wage is just raised without it causing mass unemployment in the present? I must be misunderstanding…

Well, a lot of historians say that the USA's economy flourished post-war not necessarily because they "won" it (hard to define concept these days), but because everybody else's manufacturing infrastructure was completely flattened. Why do you think the USA automobile market exploded post-war? It's because the two biggest automobile manufactures - Germany and Japan - were flattened to smouldering ashes and took around…

Hm, doesn't seem to add up. Flattened countries were not buying cars - so the foreign market for US cars would actually go down post-war? As for reduced competition - how many foreign cars did America import before the war? We're talking the excess capacity of pre-WWII Germany - a depressed economy (the indirect cause of WWII) which couldn't have been much.

I'd credit an increased US appetite for goods, a huge influx of trained workers (trained by the military for war purposes) and a excess war-related manufacturing capacity turned to domestic goods with the prices reduced by volume manufacturing.

All of which could be called "because the US won".

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#45

Post by francisofascii »

sevensor wrote: post #14

This piece is by Richard Florida, who helped create the very problem he laments. Ten-fifteen years ago, he was talking up the same cities as magnets for the "creative class." Now all of a sudden he's concerned about the janitors and street sweepers? I'm not taking Florida seriously if he can't acknowledge his past myopia.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. He created this perception that to be part of the "creative class", you must live in SF, DC, Austin, Seattle, etc. We should get away from that idea. I am all for denser housing, public transit, walkable communities, etc. But I think other cities should also get a share of the prosperity. Good talented people can't afford SF, so they go another, less hip city. I think that is a good thing.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#46

Post by ptero »

Be careful what you wish for -- setting the minimum wage to half the prevailing wage at a municipality is likely to create very weird setups, especially where a richer cluster is next to a residential or poorer one, e.g. Manhattan and Jersey City.

Bank tellers and janitors in Manhattan would be getting a fortune compared to the same job being done (by the same company) less than a mile away. I suspect the "bonus" jobs will quickly have all sorts of semi-illegal strings attached to them; there will be a rush by employers to reclassify jobs as being done in a poorer area (we do not work there, we are just visiting / delivering), etc.

While the current state has problems, the proposed fix may be worse than the disease it is trying to cure. My 2c.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#47

Post by arethuza »

matt4077 wrote: post #18
ionwake wrote: post #4

Please do correct me if I am wrong. But isn't the whole reason lower class job salaries increased in the USA was simply because they had just won a world war? I do not know enough about the reasons for affluence in the 50s, but surely it was in large part to success in the war? If so, how could one suggest the minimum wage is just raised without it causing mass unemployment in the present? I must be misunderstanding…

Germany quite definitely lost WW2 and saw incomes rise even faster after the war: wid.world/solo.php#0/countriestimeseries/anninc_pall_992_i/US;DE/last/eu/k/p/yearly/a/false/1844.6039999999998/75000/curve/false "Winning a war" is surprisingly useless, economically. A higher minimum wage would certainly not create "mass unemployment". Most research points to unemployment remaining about the same. That's because there…

The Germans had their WW2 debts largely cancelled in 1953 to aid their industrial growth so that they could help oppose the Soviets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Agreement_on_German_Ext...

This is currently a bit of a sore point with some Greeks...

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#48

Post by maxerickson »

zucchini_head wrote: post #21
akanet wrote: post #2

The author's recommendations are certainly apt, though I wonder if he realizes how much of a political nightmare trying to get cities like Berkeley to build more housing is. Berkeley is probably the staunchest NIMBY city of the major Bay Area cities. The mayor and city council recently outright denied a simple rebuild of a house on Haskell St (heh) that would have added a couple extra units of housing. We believe thi…

Just skim-read through that story. Sounds pretty part-and-parcel for these kind of things, it's the same where I live too (UK). The first step is always to include irrelevant statistics, since this bulks-up the case with "we are good people" rabble, and makes it harder to understand. It's essentially used to drown-out the key details of the case and to slow things down by making it much longer to read. One of my olde…

Town councils are approximately the same level of government as cities/counties in the states.

(there are also often township governments that operate inside of counties, but modern travel makes them kind of stupid and there is a lot of at least de facto passing of authority up to the county level).

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#49

Post by zucchini_head »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #41
zucchini_head wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a lot of historians say that the USA's economy flourished post-war not necessarily because they "won" it (hard to define concept these days), but because everybody else's manufacturing infrastructure was completely flattened. Why do you think the USA automobile market exploded post-war? It's because the two biggest automobile manufactures - Germany and Japan - were flattened to smouldering ashes and took around…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271608/global-vehicle-sa... http://www.jato.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/JATO-Global-C... GM VAG and Toyota all have similar shares of the global market. Depending on how you want to nitpick you can make The Americans, Germans or Japanese look like the dominant player in global vehicle sales but it's really too global of an industry to draw the lines based on the country the CEO'…

Firstly the linked source is paywalled so that's ignored.

Secondly, we are talking about post-war USA, so very generally '45 -> circa '70, not 2016 and the modern globalised world that are not representative of the world back then where even the internet didn't exist.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#50

Post by muninn_ »

twobyfour wrote: post #34
muninn_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can move if you can't afford the area. There are plenty of places with lower costs of living. You can't live in what is perhaps the most desirable area in the world and then be upset that people want to protect/increase their property value or not change how their community is. Not everybody wants to live in a sea of imposing skyscrapers. -edit So I see a few comments discussing things like commuting, urban sp…

1) A city can't survive if the people needed to work the jobs to make it an appealing place to live can't afford to live within commute distance. 2) The more affordable places tend to have less economic opportunity (which is part of why they're in lower demand and more affordable in the first place), so moving there isn't necessarily a win.

To your second point. The large issue here has more to do with moving to the areas with more economic opportunity instead of creating economic opportunity where you currently reside. The culture of moving on a whim, not creating a stable network of family and friends in your neighborhoods, and other factors are contributing to our social problems.
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