>And what do you call it when a city becomes a place that only the wealthy can afford to live in? There are so many people that contribute and make a city funct

>And what do you call it when a city becomes a place that only the wealthy can afford to live in? There are so many people that contribute and make a city function who are not even remotely middle class. Where do they live? I'm not sure how this is a problem. Shouldn't it be self-limiting? You're absolutely right: you need lots of people in a city to make it function who aren't high earners: janitors, retail workers, cab/bus drivers, etc. So what happens when a city becomes so expensive these people can't live there? For a while, they live farther away and commute, but at some point even that won't be viable. What then? Well, that seems like it'll be a big problem for the wealthy inhabitants of the city to solve, right? Why is it our concern? Those wealthy people are the ones who created the problem, and also the ones with the most resources to devote to fixing it. The rest of us are struggling to make ends meet and pay the exorbitant rents that are the result of these wealthy people; we certainly don't have time or money to deal with the problems they've brought on themselves. So if I'm missing something critical here, someone please point it out to me because I'm not utterly convinced of the correctness of my argument. I can't think of any historical examples of places where rich people priced all the service workers out of an area completely; I think this is a modern phenomenon. But it does seem that this should be one area where "the free market!!" really should work, in a way, though it might result in a bunch of wealth people really losing their shirts in the real estate market (which is fine with me; lots of people, including non-wealthy people, in 2008 learned that lesson the hard way, that real estate does not always hold its value; I'm especially not concerned about a bunch of wealthy foreigners losing their investments).