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"you have to pick up your life and say goodbye to everyone you know because the market says so" is hardly an outcome we should be promoting. Disagree. If your

"you have to pick up your life and say goodbye to everyone you know because the market says so" is hardly an outcome we should be promoting. Disagree. If your town's way of life is based on for example, coal mining, then good riddance. Another example, perhaps the town is based on agriculture but drones cut the need for labor in half, some people will have to either learn some skill that can be applied remotely or move elsewhere to efficiently allocate their labor. The government (imo) shouldn't be "promoting" any lifestyle. Let the markets operate.

coldtea 10y ago
>The government (imo) shouldn't be "promoting" any lifestyle. Let the markets operate. If the markets could make do by 10% of the population, they'd screw the rest.
surfmike 10y ago
It's one thing if your community is dying economically. It's a different story if your area is doing great economically, but housing is so restricted that only a narrow subset of people can live there. Especially since government (via zoning) is creating the artificial scarcity in the first place.
- maherbeg 10y ago
  This is so true. The flip side of "let small towns die" is "let big cities thrive".
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    Only if the big cities have enough untapped jobs that let new residents thrive.
    - adventured 10y ago
      Cities usually significantly outperform when it comes to unemployment: http://i.imgur.com/lPB3R7m.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lPB3R7m.jpg
      - ZenoArrow 10y ago
        That's fine, but it doesn't really address my point. To put it in different terms... imagine a city has 1 million jobs that pay a livable wage, and you increase the city's working age population by 2 million. Even if cities are more efficient at creating new opportunities than rural areas, that does nothing to address the shortfall in the job market in the short to medium term. Also, rapidly increasing the population size of a city tends to push up the price of accommodation faster than an increase in wages, which reduces the pool of available livable wage jobs. In short, rapidly increasing the population size of a city without the job market already set to support it isn't likely to lead to economic stability.
        surfmike 10y ago
        Those jobs get created incredibly quickly, and often the only factor in preventing them from being living wage jobs is accommodation costs. So cities should be prepared for allowing accommodation to be built quickly too instead of adding too much delay and restrictions.
- therpe1 10y ago
  This idea that government is responsible for the scarcity of housing is dishonest. It's called democracy. The government is made up of the people who live there. The citizens of San Francisco (and to some extent, New York and Boston) have made it pretty clear they don't want a lot of new housing and they're quite happy with the way things are now. Given this, blaming the housing prices on "the government" is pretty silly, isn't it?
pm90 10y ago
I mean, this is probably laissez faire capitalism at its best (worst?). But we, as a community, as a culture and as a Nation, have to decide on what kind of things to prioritize. Do we really want markets to have a free hand in everything? Historically this has not turned out well. Let me say that I don't necessarily disagree...many people here seem to forget the tremendous migration of people that took place in the US when the economy moved from agrarian to industrial, so its not unprecedented, neither is it undesirable. But we do need to think the consequences through rather than simply "Let the markets operate".
- zzzzzzzza 10y ago
  Do we really want markets to have a free hand in everything? Historically this has not turned out well. I can't really think of a historical example of a truly free market outside of black markets or maybe for a short period of time, failed states. Historically, "freer" markets have dramatically outperformed planned economies. It is better in most cases (outside of obvious e.g. environmental externalities) for individuals to decide what is best for themselves than for the subset of the population that is politically active to come to some plurality decision about what everyone else should value. Essentially I disagree somewhat on the deciding things as a community (we should avoid doing that whenever possible), although that's fairly vague. Having said all of that I would vouch for common sense stuff e.g. progressive taxation. America would look a lot different if capital gains were taxed at same rate as income; I would say that's more of a re allocation of market intervention than an increase in market intervention.
ng12 10y ago
> The government (imo) shouldn't be "promoting" any lifestyle That can't be helped. The government influences the economy, the economy influences lifestyle. When they enacted NAFTA they knew jobs would be leaving rust belt and they knew that would affect people's livelihood. It's only reasonable to expect the government to have some response to the towns it destroyed.

coldtea 10y ago

>The government (imo) shouldn't be "promoting" any lifestyle. Let the markets operate. If the markets could make do by 10% of the population, they'd screw the rest.

surfmike 10y ago

It's one thing if your community is dying economically. It's a different story if your area is doing great economically, but housing is so restricted that only a narrow subset of people can live there. Especially since government (via zoning) is creating the artificial scarcity in the first place.

maherbeg 10y ago
This is so true. The flip side of "let small towns die" is "let big cities thrive".
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Only if the big cities have enough untapped jobs that let new residents thrive.
  - adventured 10y ago
    Cities usually significantly outperform when it comes to unemployment: http://i.imgur.com/lPB3R7m.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lPB3R7m.jpg
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      That's fine, but it doesn't really address my point. To put it in different terms... imagine a city has 1 million jobs that pay a livable wage, and you increase the city's working age population by 2 million. Even if cities are more efficient at creating new opportunities than rural areas, that does nothing to address the shortfall in the job market in the short to medium term. Also, rapidly increasing the population size of a city tends to push up the price of accommodation faster than an increase in wages, which reduces the pool of available livable wage jobs. In short, rapidly increasing the population size of a city without the job market already set to support it isn't likely to lead to economic stability.
      - surfmike 10y ago
        Those jobs get created incredibly quickly, and often the only factor in preventing them from being living wage jobs is accommodation costs. So cities should be prepared for allowing accommodation to be built quickly too instead of adding too much delay and restrictions.
therpe1 10y ago
This idea that government is responsible for the scarcity of housing is dishonest. It's called democracy. The government is made up of the people who live there. The citizens of San Francisco (and to some extent, New York and Boston) have made it pretty clear they don't want a lot of new housing and they're quite happy with the way things are now. Given this, blaming the housing prices on "the government" is pretty silly, isn't it?

pm90 10y ago

I mean, this is probably laissez faire capitalism at its best (worst?). But we, as a community, as a culture and as a Nation, have to decide on what kind of things to prioritize. Do we really want markets to have a free hand in everything? Historically this has not turned out well. Let me say that I don't necessarily disagree...many people here seem to forget the tremendous migration of people that took place in the US when the economy moved from agrarian to industrial, so its not unprecedented, neither is it undesirable. But we do need to think the consequences through rather than simply "Let the markets operate".

zzzzzzzza 10y ago
Do we really want markets to have a free hand in everything? Historically this has not turned out well. I can't really think of a historical example of a truly free market outside of black markets or maybe for a short period of time, failed states. Historically, "freer" markets have dramatically outperformed planned economies. It is better in most cases (outside of obvious e.g. environmental externalities) for individuals to decide what is best for themselves than for the subset of the population that is politically active to come to some plurality decision about what everyone else should value. Essentially I disagree somewhat on the deciding things as a community (we should avoid doing that whenever possible), although that's fairly vague. Having said all of that I would vouch for common sense stuff e.g. progressive taxation. America would look a lot different if capital gains were taxed at same rate as income; I would say that's more of a re allocation of market intervention than an increase in market intervention.

ng12 10y ago

> The government (imo) shouldn't be "promoting" any lifestyle That can't be helped. The government influences the economy, the economy influences lifestyle. When they enacted NAFTA they knew jobs would be leaving rust belt and they knew that would affect people's livelihood. It's only reasonable to expect the government to have some response to the towns it destroyed.