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Some real estate is a positional good, which has the price set by how much money the richest people have. There is no way around this. If everyone wants to liv
by danielweber 11y ago
Some real estate is a positional good, which has the price set by how much money the richest people have.
There is no way around this. If everyone wants to live as close to (say) Times Square as possible, that land will be expensive.
But you don't have to enter that zero-sum rat race. There are lots of places to live that aren't the only places the very rich want to live. They still enjoy decent schools and low crime.
Some college education is positional, too. If you want "Ivy League Education" for your kid, well, there are just about as many slots as there were 30 years, but a lot more rich people, so the price will get bid up to infinity. Here the real shame is that the non-gold-star educational system is still getting more and more expensive, for many many reasons.
- nostrademons 11y agoInterestingly, most of the Ivy League has incredibly generous financial aid packages, enough that most middle-income people pay zero. When I went to college, having had 2/3 of my tuition paid for by the college, I remarked that higher ed in elite universities was basically socialism subsidized by a very capitalist minority that was willing to pay any amount. Not a bad system, but it unfortunately only works at those institutions where rich people will enroll their kids at virtually any price.