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One answer is that the market forces tend to funnel all increases in income to landowners as rent. This is partially a result of Americans choosing to consume
by patio11 11y ago
One answer is that the market forces tend to funnel all increases in income to landowners as rent.
This is partially a result of Americans choosing to consume more housing than citizens of peer nations or, indeed, Americans historically. The size of the average owned American home doubled since 1950. You can save a substantial amount of money if you're willing to live like a 2015 Japanese salaryman or a 1950 American middle class family, but the modal American considers that standard of living "poverty" and is unwilling to accept it.
Another layer is that big houses gate access to good school districts, which is a very, very deep can of worms.
- ScottBurson 11y agoYes, but the effects George describes would operate even in the absence of those forces. They are inherent to urbanization itself.
- marchenko 11y agoThe house/ school district connection is not a small matter: it transforms housing into a positional good, and (under present conditions) a zero-sum game. In many places, it is not possible to exercise a preference for a cheaper, more modest home without also accepting a tradeoff in school quality.
- mhuffman 11y ago> The house/ school district connection is not a small matter If you are a parent, it is a BIG deal. Over the past 10 or so years my location movements have had available education in the top three criteria (along with price and crime rate).
- jacobolus 11y agoZoning has a lot to do with home sizes. In general American cities are zoned to not allow smaller units, even for those who might prefer the cheaper rent if given a choice. Japan has much simpler and more flexible zoning laws. ...But Japan doesn’t have the history of racially motivated urban design in general, so the story is a bit complicated. That, and America has been heavily subsidizing an automobile-based lifestyle for 60–70 years, encouraging people to trade more living space for longer commutes, without facing the full infrastructure costs of the choice.
- mhuffman 11y agoJapan does have a quite different problem with real estate, however[1]. [1] http://freakonomics.com/2014/02/27/why-are-japanese-homes-disposable-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast-3/ http://freakonomics.com/2014/02/27/why-are-japanese-homes-di...
- lmm 11y agoJapan has extreme ghettoization of immigrants; most landlords will simply refuse to rent to foreigners.
- jacobolus 11y agoSure. I don’t mean that Americans are as a rule more racist than Japanese, or anything like that. What I mean is, Japan didn’t design its whole large-scale metropolitan plan around racial segregation, the way many places in America did.
- adrianN 11y agoThis is a nice comparison between Japanese and US zoning laws: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.de/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.de/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
- mhuffman 11y agoI think in a lot cases you might have this backwards. Many new schools, especially in the South, are built in the county or in a more rural part of the town, because property is cheap or donated there. If the school is a "good" (you can decide on what that means for you) school, then all of a sudden, the property near that school become much more valuable to build home on for parents. If the value of the property goes up, taxes go up in those new divisions. Now, you have a situation where THE SCHOOL has driven off poor families and increased its own budget ... just because it was "good" to start off with! So it isn't always that people are building the "good" schools on already expensive property to cater to the wealthy.