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How cheaper housing can boost productivity

economist.com

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Re: How cheaper housing can boost productivity

#11

Post by Gys »

jon-wood wrote: post #3
ajuc wrote: post #2

> One paper published in 2010 found that absenteeism among German workers would be 15-20% lower if they did not commute. If it were somehow possible to scrap commuting altogether, the British economy would see a productivity boost worth £12 billion a year, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a think-tank. Allowing occasional working from home has the same effects, and require no investment in…

> If it were somehow possible to scrap commuting altogether. Indeed. If only there were a way that people could do work without travelling to a specific desk in a specific building during specific hours.

The problem is actually in the time and boredom while traveling. So maybe autonomous cars, workplaces in trains or (far fetched ;-) teleportation could improve the 'commuting-problem'.

I think most people still like to work physically with other people. That is why I go to a co-worker space. Because I am actually more productive at home.

Re: How cheaper housing can boost productivity

#12

Post by TeMPOraL »

ajuc wrote: post #2

> One paper published in 2010 found that absenteeism among German workers would be 15-20% lower if they did not commute. If it were somehow possible to scrap commuting altogether, the British economy would see a productivity boost worth £12 billion a year, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a think-tank. Allowing occasional working from home has the same effects, and require no investment in…

> in Poland people constantly complain about overregulation of construction

In Poland people constantly complain about overregulation of pretty much everything (I'd say complaining itself is our national sport, but that's another topic) - but that's probably typical of humans. It's easy to complain about overregulation when the government tells you you can't do whatever you want and dump externalities on everyone around you.

But I agree with your conclusion. We have quite lax construction laws and people still commute. I don't really see how the two are actually related in practice. Majority of people doesn't get to pick and choose jobs. You can spend months looking for a good opening, and if you don't like one because it's on the other side of the city, then no worries, there are thousands of people who will happily take your place.

Re: How cheaper housing can boost productivity

#15

Post by TeMPOraL »

Gys wrote: post #11
jon-wood wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it were somehow possible to scrap commuting altogether. Indeed. If only there were a way that people could do work without travelling to a specific desk in a specific building during specific hours.

The problem is actually in the time and boredom while traveling. So maybe autonomous cars, workplaces in trains or (far fetched ;-) teleportation could improve the 'commuting-problem'. I think most people still like to work physically with other people. That is why I go to a co-worker space. Because I am actually more productive at home.

Boredom while traveling is something that could be solved for most, but it goes against the will of people and various cost-cutting solutions. You could get rid of cars in the big cities and replace them with more public transportation. But people won't willingly give up their cars because of various - often not very rational - reasons, and the public transportation is being developed in the wrong way too. Someone figured out the cheapest way to increase the capacity is to replace sitting places with standing places, and so each new generation of buses and trams has less space to sit down. To get rid of boredom in commute, you need the opposite - have much more sitting spaces, so that commuters can read books comfortably or work on their computers.

Re: How cheaper housing can boost productivity

#16

Post by justincormack »

vbezhenar wrote: post #6
x5n1 wrote: post #4

Housing is the #1 money sink in developed economy it consumes by far more money out of people's pockets than anything else. And the banks and the owners of capital are totally okay with this. And as the housing crisis showed, it's in no way a sure bet. It's a gamble just like anything else.

What makes houses in developed countries so expensive? I live in Kazakhstan. I can buy some land near city, it would cost me $5-10k for 100 sq. meters of land. I can build my own house for $40-80k (including materials and workers). It might not be the huge house, but it will be fine to live in. Is land more expensive in developed countries? Are materials more expensive? Are workers more expensive? (probably all compo…

All those are more expensive, but its mostly land prices. We are talking about cities too, you can hardly buy a plot of land in London, as it is largely built on. Prime central London property costs £20k/square meter and rents are £50/square meter per month, so if you move your 100 square meters of land to London you can do well out of it!

Re: How cheaper housing can boost productivity

#17

Post by TeMPOraL »

ralphgsn wrote: post #13

It's funny how HN people are all like "capitalism is awesome!" and then they complain when housing prices are high.

Not sure if those are always the same people :). There's only a subset of HN participating in each discussion, and those subsets often don't overlap between the topics.

Re: How cheaper housing can boost productivity

#18

Post by presty »

vbezhenar wrote: post #6
x5n1 wrote: post #4

Housing is the #1 money sink in developed economy it consumes by far more money out of people's pockets than anything else. And the banks and the owners of capital are totally okay with this. And as the housing crisis showed, it's in no way a sure bet. It's a gamble just like anything else.

What makes houses in developed countries so expensive? I live in Kazakhstan. I can buy some land near city, it would cost me $5-10k for 100 sq. meters of land. I can build my own house for $40-80k (including materials and workers). It might not be the huge house, but it will be fine to live in. Is land more expensive in developed countries? Are materials more expensive? Are workers more expensive? (probably all compo…

> What makes houses in developed countries so expensive?

Demand and lack of (enough) supply. Buying a piece of land that you can build on in a city like SF costs a lot more than $5-10k for 100 m^2.

According to http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/San_Francisco-California/m...

Average price per square _foot_ for San Francisco CA was $962

Re: How cheaper housing can boost productivity

#19

Post by massysett »

Naively assumes that the building restrictions cause permanent productivity losses. Instead, building restrictions likely push some jobs elsewhere. Since housing is too expensive in SF, some tech jobs go to other places. Since housing and office space is too expensive in NYC, some finance jobs go elsewhere.

Some amount of municipal planning is a good thing. It provides needed services for residents and increases the quality of what is built. But there is probably a limit to how much growth a government can handle in a responsible way. That suggests that building restrictions might even be a good thing. If the government is overloaded, the restrictions push the growth to other areas where the governments are more eager to plan for the growth.

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