Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#351

Post by user5994461 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #346

wonderwonder wrote: post #12

The top 1% of American's own more wealth than the bottom 90% and this concentration is only increasing. Soon no cities regardless of size will deliver for low skilled workers as there will simply not be enough of the proverbial pie to go around. As wealth is concentrated and rents and property values rise the vast majority of this country will (does?) live paycheck to paycheck. This is unsustainable and will either n…

> Add the very real prospect of social security collapsing There is absolutely no prospect whatsoever of Social Security collapsing. A 0% chance. There is no factual basis, only flat-earth anti-vaxxer type scare mongering, for any claim to the contrary. Social Security is funded by payroll taxes. The only way Social Security could "collapse" is if people stop getting paid.

Collapse is maybe a strong word, let's call it an adjustment.

There are less and less workers having a job and paying taxes, while there are more and more benefits to pay for. This is especially applicable to elderly and pensions, in countries with a socialized pension system.

Imagine the situation where both parents are getting retired and were promised 80% of their salaries, while both their children can't get a job. It's all too common nowadays. There is no tax to collect.

This may not be too much of a problem in the US where there is limited pension, healthcare or unemployment. Europe will hurt though.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#352

Post by osdiab » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

So long as getting a decent place to live is dependent on income, it's unsurprising to me that cities - which are established because of their ability to produce outsized economic value - become the domain of people who produce outsized economic value. Yes, cities are fun as a side product, but people don't typically invest this much just for fun.

The market only cares about your quality of life if that translates to significant profit. Nobody has any claim in such a system to live near a city, with any level of comfort. So insanely long commutes and inhumane cage homes should not be a surprising result.

As the value of being in a city rises, the equilibrium will be to make life maximally miserable for those who can't afford the luxuries present in a city. And for those who can, the equilibrium is to make things minimally comfortable for those people to decide to continue generating economic value.

The market has no reason to provide affordable housing to people who cannot afford the economic value of the land beneath it, so the alternatives the article suggests - building a lot of housing (artificially distorting the market) or providing strong social services (artificially distorting the market), unsurprisingly, needs to artificially distort the market.

There are clearly things we care about that the market does not reflect. Money does not capture all the things we value in society, including economic diversity within a city, so expecting purely market-driven incentives to solve this issue is naive.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#353

Post by colechristensen » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:16 AM UTC

osdiab wrote: post #352

So long as getting a decent place to live is dependent on income, it's unsurprising to me that cities - which are established because of their ability to produce outsized economic value - become the domain of people who produce outsized economic value. Yes, cities are fun as a side product, but people don't typically invest this much just for fun. The market only cares about your quality of life if that translates to…

How about using zoning laws to enforce the mixture of types of home AND the amount of housing ratio to the number of jobs (commercial and industrial zoning)?

If you have more jobs than you have homes, don't zone for more jobs.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#354

Post by fastball » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #324

fastball wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was responding to your complete lack of an argument ("FOOD BANKS EXIST!?!!") in turn. Seems like the best way to respond to people who interject completely useless comments into conversations. If you want to have an actual discussion we can, but I doubt it will be productive, as it is already very clear that you either lack the critical reasoning skills to recognise the difference between wealth disparity and pover…

Ad hominem attacks are an extremely poor choice for comments and have no place on this site.

Misusing the phrase "ad hominem" is not constructive and has no place on this site.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#355

Post by jayd16 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #19

netcan wrote: post #10

" middle-class life to those without a college degree " Anytime you start delving into what has changed for a subset of people, over decades, the most important piece of the puzzle is decided ding who qualifies for the subset. I mean concepts like "middle class" or "without a college degree." A lot more people get degrees, in 2018. Does the graduates/nongraduates segment still represent a comparable group of people?…

You make very good points above. I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes. That being said, with AWS Certs going for between $75-$300 how long do colleges think they can survive? If you were a 22 yr old who studied from zero-level computing knowledge for 12 months and got the AWS Solutions Architect Pro cert (somewhat possible assuming 2 hours / day) I can already guarantee you’d receive a written…

Are these certs actually worth anything? I usually see tech certs as a red flag. I couldn't imagine hiring a highschool grad with an aws cert and expect anything close to someone with a cs degree.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#356

Post by osdiab » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:22 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #353

osdiab wrote: post #352

So long as getting a decent place to live is dependent on income, it's unsurprising to me that cities - which are established because of their ability to produce outsized economic value - become the domain of people who produce outsized economic value. Yes, cities are fun as a side product, but people don't typically invest this much just for fun. The market only cares about your quality of life if that translates to…

How about using zoning laws to enforce the mixture of types of home AND the amount of housing ratio to the number of jobs (commercial and industrial zoning)? If you have more jobs than you have homes, don't zone for more jobs.

I'm all for policy like that, as well as generally reducing zoning restrictions in general as far as housing capacity goes. Japanese nuisance zoning is a pretty good system, for example.

But my main point is, it takes interventions that intentionally constrain the way the market works, to get a fair system going. To institute a sane proportion of housing to jobs nowadays that preserves a mix of affordable and luxury housing, you're going to need to do a hell of a lot of subsidizing to make that affordable housing worth it to construct in the first place. So who's up for subsidizing it?

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#357

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

Mikeb85 wrote: post #341

scarface74 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But once you pass the rising costs to customers, you’re in the bracket of the high end restaurants.

Yes, you are. And the business owner should know that to exist in a high-cost market, they need to be higher end.

Can a fast food chain restaurant exist in such a market?

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#358

Post by leetcrew » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #329

Mikeb85 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. failing restaurants, that's a result of bad business planning. If you can't find staff, pay more, pass those costs on to customers. If people can afford to live in high-rent areas, they can afford to pay more for food.

The reality doesn't agree with you. In SF, for example, fine dining is doing well, while the mid range is slowly failing and being replaced by fast casual, where they focus on fast turnover. The only way to pay the bills seems to be to either be super high end (fewer customers overall, but at a much higher service level and price point), or just above fast food, where you serve a reasonable-quality menu, but items th…

is this truly indicative of market failure though? maybe it's not unreasonable that traditional table service becomes a luxury in high CoL areas.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#359

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #348

fastball wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was responding to your complete lack of an argument ("FOOD BANKS EXIST!?!!") in turn. Seems like the best way to respond to people who interject completely useless comments into conversations. If you want to have an actual discussion we can, but I doubt it will be productive, as it is already very clear that you either lack the critical reasoning skills to recognise the difference between wealth disparity and pover…

Your first two paragraphs should get an award for most arrogant comment in quite a while.

[deleted]

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#360

Post by cma » Wed, Jan 23, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #216

cma wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was Bill Gates invention? Wasn't that PARC?

Microsoft.

I mean which invention that created a trillion dollars in economic growth. Microsoft's main thing was to retard the progress of web browsers for half a decade.