971–980 of 1001 posts
Pretty interesting to see this move makes people so salty. There does seem to be a trend of people fleeing California, I dont know enough about the situation out there to comment on whether or not its valid. I suspect something must be going on for several high profile folks moving out. And before you bash Texas, its not perfect. But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worse than that: The entire concept of "luxury housing" is a lie. The words "luxury housing" are designed to make you think that it is taking up space that could be used by non luxury housing. Like the only reason a new apartment is so expensive is because it has a gold-plated toilet or something, and if only the developer had built an apartment without a gold plated toilet you could afford it. But in Minneapoli…
If you consistently get the choice between paying $2000 for that or $2000 for a dingy basement suite with no windows, then yes it is luxury and will stop the price of those less desirable homes from rising. The key is to ensure supply outpaces demand. Meaning: let developers build luxury developments. The more the merrier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only that, but there's often comments about how people moving from CA to TX are fleeing the results of a presumably left wing tax code to enjoy the benefits of a presumably right wing tax code, but it's not that simple. CA is as expensive as it is in large part because of NIMBYs and tax schemes that were absolutely the product of right-wing ballot initiatives for the most part. OTOH, a large part of the appeal of…
> IIRC TX takes in ~$150b from the Federal government, but only pays ~$100b into the system. CA (like NY) pays more into the system then it takes out, so about ~$50b of the annual budget of TX is literally bumming money from other states, albeit indirectly. This isn't true. According to the SUNY Rockefeller Institute of Government report dated Jan 8, 2019 (which used the data from the Budget of the U.S. Government, F…
Or is VA's proximity to DC and ownership of a lot of the Federal apparatus helping them to get a disproportionate cut?
The former -- lack of growth in the rest of the state -- may also be driving the state Blue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you consistently get the choice between paying $2000 for that or $2000 for a dingy basement suite with no windows, then yes it is luxury and will stop the price of those less desirable homes from rising. The key is to ensure supply outpaces demand. Meaning: let developers build luxury developments. The more the merrier.
This, a thousand times. Housing advocates often call for building “affordable housing” but the problem of high prices is solved by building any housing . As you suggested, if new luxury housing comes on the market, then some older apartments can’t charge luxury prices anymore. The same effect works all the way down to the lowest priced units. Also people don’t increase their consumption when prices go down (housing i…
In practice, "pushes down the prices" is an overstatement, and what actually happens is that once demand pressure reaches a certain point new luxury supply only opens up higher pricing tiers. It potentially stabilizes older construction, which is not bad, but doesn't seem to provide downward pressure. The only thing that seems to do that is non-marginal demand dropping out of the market.
And if you follow it through that's how the incentives seem to be aligned. Capital examining opportunity in construction will want to chase the highest return it can and if you have capital the marginal cost on luxury construction over non-luxury at the same unit scale is usually less than the return. On top of that, at certain scales of operation vacancy is apparently less of a drag on nominal property values involved in the accounting and financing, which means prices tend to float down when the fall rather than plummet. Though of course, any potential developer doing the math is going to look at vacancy rate and will make their decision about whether/what to build targeting points short of outright surplus.
There are some types markets where I think you can drive down pricing market-wide by coming in from the top (consumer tech sure seems to work that way) and that's my guess why so many seem think the same must apply to housing. Perhaps housing could indeed work the same way if the actual manufacturing techniques and costs were being iterated with the same speed and scale.
But that's why there are specific drives for affordable housing: building at the top slows/stops price increases but only lets people on the verge of being priced out tread water.
Personally I think there needs to be vacancy taxes proportional to the market segment being operated (probably also correlated to tightness of supply) so that prices clear on the falling side more easily, but who knows how that would change people's construction calculations.
What percentage of Tesla employees will prefer living in Texas over California?
Texas has a lot of people living there, with lots of different skill sets. I am sure that there are many people, already living in Texas, who would want to work for Tesla.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to think the answer to this is obvious, but it's sufficiently non-obvious to me that I don't even know which answer you're assuming.
Provo is full of overly polite Mormon families and BYU. They chose cartoonish examples of polite conservative locales to make their point. There are plenty of conservative places that would be upset to see Harris / Biden attire. Look no further than the classic Top Gear episode with the Gay Pride car and the Clinton car driving through the south.
I think a difference might be that these are super rural and uneducated communities as opposed to global capitals of business and technology
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For sure Elon Musk is a very smart guy and he works really hard and he knows how to deliver amazing products and his PR skills are amazing... And again, don't ignore the part where he used his entire PayPal fortune to build a company that he thought had a high probability of failure. That's key to this conversation about risk. The government chose to take on the risk of providing subsidies in order to get the benef…
>> The government chose to take on the risk Government officials didn't risk anything, they risked other people's money (tax payers). That's literally the meaning of "socializing the risk." It was certainly his choice to apply for government aid and to use his exposure in the media to give himself leverage over politicians. It's fine to think well of Musk but to suggest that it's all perfect and fair game is extremel…
Government has its own accounts, therefore it has its own money to spend. It doesn't matter that they get that money from taxpayers, it belongs to the government by law.
> leverage over politicians
What leverage over politicians was used and what objectives did it achieve? Please give specific examples. AFAIK, the EV credits were designed to get more EVs on the road to reduce pollution and were successful at doing that. They are also not limited to Tesla.
> hoarding attention
What does that mean? You're complaining that people write articles about Musk?
Pretty interesting to see this move makes people so salty. There does seem to be a trend of people fleeing California, I dont know enough about the situation out there to comment on whether or not its valid. I suspect something must be going on for several high profile folks moving out. And before you bash Texas, its not perfect. But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexi…
My birth certificate says "Texas" across the top and people have been "fleeing California" to Texas for as long as I've been alive. There's nothing special about Musk; he just happens to be high-profile about it and managed to extract more from California before decamping to a "cheap" state than several of those who came before him. I disagree with your assessment that Texas has wide acceptance for opposing viewpoint…
I think that people underestimate just how common this very same thing is here in California.
> but lots of people live in the 'burbs and around the smaller areas and do not get the benefit of this peaceful coexistence
Again, very similar to California.
I grew up in California and moved to Texas for 13 years, and have recently (begrudgingly too) moved back to California. Things have not changed a whole lot here. Once you get out of the cities and into more rural areas, it's about the same as you'd experience anywhere else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He can just stick a few livestock on a corner of his property and get an Agriculture exemption.
I thought you had to be "grandfathered" (poor word choice, I know) into that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It will obviously fail on the ballot due to NIMBYism but I’m not sure why would that even need to be on ballot. Translation: The people who live there won't vote for a thing they don't want.
So allll the people who sit hours and hours each day in traffic, pay a fortune for a shack don't outweigh those that just want to preserve the neighborhood's character?
Because of it's size and market influence, California laws can effect the rest of the country, should the rest of the country vote in California elections?
The people who _choose_ to sit in the traffic are getting what they signed up for. I could be that person and I choose not to be in no small part to that situation.