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There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…
Looking at the statistics that are used to measure growth and performance at a population level are such a great window into how they themselves are opinionated stances. The two measures are both great measures of house ownership that measure different things. The article frames the second one as better, and if you are looking to see the ownership proportion of people (for example as they note to look at the numbers…
> If however you care about the housing development decisions that will incentivise owner occupancy Genuine question: who, precisely, cares about "incentivising owner occupancy" as a policy goal? What interest does that serve and why should the government prioritize maximizing that metric? Basically right now we measure "what fraction of homes are occupied by an owner" and not "what fraction of people live in their o…
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> If however you care about the housing development decisions that will incentivise owner occupancy Genuine question: who, precisely, cares about "incentivising owner occupancy" as a policy goal? What interest does that serve and why should the government prioritize maximizing that metric? Basically right now we measure "what fraction of homes are occupied by an owner" and not "what fraction of people live in their o…
If you live in a place which is used only for vacation homes, or worse, only as investment objects, you know the value of owner occupancy. Non-occupants contribute very little to the actual value of a place - they don't work here, they don't buy here. But they capture much of the value of other people trying to make the place a pleasant place to live, though rising real estate values.
Stipulate that owning a home is good.
As the number of homes goes up, owner-occupancy necessarily goes down (you can only occupy one home at a time). Homeownership might rise or fall while this is going on. But that doesn't matter; the number of homes going up is good, so the fact that the metric falls when it rises tells you that either (1) the metric is "evil", rising when bad things happen and falling when good things happen; or (2) the metric is incoherent and doesn't carry information about whether things are going well.
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The theory behind it is that 1) economic growth generally accrues to land values so distributing land ownership is one way to distribute wealth and 2) people generally treat the things they own better than the things they rent or consume. Incentivizing ownership is more closely aligned with objective (1) while owner-occupancy is more closely aligned with objective (2). These don't work in the presence of capital's ou…
> distributing land ownership is one way to distribute wealth Right, so you want to know how many people own homes, not how many homes are "occupied" by an owner[1], which is at best a proxy, right? Sounds like you're agreeing with me but just getting the sides of the argument mixed up? [1] As the article points out, a single person can in fact "occupy" more than one home!
There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A key difference is illustrated in TFA. To maximize fraction of people owning a home, you dislike people renting or living with a homeowner. A spouse that marries a homeowner, for example. It would be "better" if they broke up and owned their own separate homes. Or perhaps they could buy two homes, one for each. Or they could by two homes and rent a third to actually live in - same metric value. To maximize fraction…
> A key difference is illustrated in TFA. To maximize fraction of people owning a home, you dislike people renting or living with a homeowner. A spouse that marries a homeowner, for example. It would be "better" if they broke up and owned their own separate homes. Or perhaps they could buy two homes, one for each. Or they could by two homes and rent a third to actually live in - same metric value. Or they could... bo…
"% people owning homes" is maximized by joint ownership, as well, but the corner cases are interesting: It is lower with big families living together or when anyone rents.
On the other hand, the "% homes lived in by owner" metric falls down in a much more realistic way: When there are fewer homes and they are lived in by owners, you can still have 90% of your people renting apartments while this metric hits 100%
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If both parents work they're also easily spending roughly 30+ grand a year on daycare alone. The DCFSA can help, but its tapped out at 7500 atm, which is cute, but unrealistic. A real daycare following all the best standards is not cheap, its like a second mortgage. I can see a major difference in my daughter coming back from daycare, I mean she knows things I don't think I knew when I was her age...
> If both parents work they're also easily spending roughly 30+ grand a year on daycare alone. Depends on how old the kids are, because at least in most cases, daycare costs are for a very short period of time compared to the the overall life of the child. And the average in most states is wildly all over the place. We absolutely should be focused on free childcare, or ideally ways that parents don't need childcare t…
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Both also make the assumption that owning a house is good. Renting should be just as good.
Renting isn't 'good' though in many metrics. Ownership is, and that's what the push should be for, rather than promoting basically a monthly subscription to have a roof over your head.
There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…
Income has only raised ~15% (on average), while inflation has been at 30%... meanwhile in the past century, money has lost 96% of its value...
Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable...
There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…