3 ms·

A lot of young people are saddled with student loans that eat into their budgets for things like housing. Obviously a lot of factors at play.

magduf 8y ago
I think it'd really be better if young people stopped getting student loans, and just didn't go to college, so they wouldn't have this problem. Eventually, the problem of overpriced housing will correct itself.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  By the same logic, if they keep at it, eventually wages will rise to accommodate increased housing costs, and the problem corrects itself. The problem is “eventually” has an unclear definition in both cases, and few are willing to sacrifice their potential of attaining certain careers or income in exchange for working low wage jobs waiting for a hypothetical future correction of this inequality. It’s hard to level existing residences in many historic cities and so housing costs rise, yet people are still wanting the opportunities afforded by those cities enough to sacrifice having better housing conditions elsewhere.
  - magduf 8y ago
    >It’s hard to level existing residences in many historic cities and so housing costs rise, yet people are still wanting the opportunities afforded by those cities enough to sacrifice having better housing conditions elsewhere. We don't have historic cities in America. At best, we have a few small historic districts, but everything else in the metro area is certainly not historic. But they don't build enough housing anyway, because too many Americans want McMansions instead of condos which are far more space-efficient. The Bay area is particularly awful since existing homeowners have too much power (and local government has way too much power; local government should have NO power to restrict development, that should be the state's decision) and won't allow higher-density housing to be built as it affects their property values. This is a uniquely American problem. >The problem is “eventually” has an unclear definition in both cases, and few are willing to sacrifice their potential of attaining certain careers or income in exchange for working low wage jobs waiting for a hypothetical future correction of this inequality. My proposal is to just let the economy crash and take a couple of generations to recover, so just worry about your kids or grandkids having a better future. It's basically what's going to happen anyway, so you might as well not burden yourself with student debt. The situation we have now is totally unsustainable.
- adrianN 8y ago
  As soon as there are a sufficient number of well paying jobs that don't require a degree, people will stop going to college.
  - xg15 8y ago
    And what well-paying jobs would that be?
    - thfuran 8y ago
      Electrician, welder, plumber
- xg15 8y ago
  On the other hand, better education is (particularly on this board) usually recommended as the most important defense against unployment due to automation or outsourcing. How does this fit together?
  - magduf 8y ago
    This board, and other places, are wrong: better education isn't a fix. The problem is that many people just can't be productively educated to do higher-level jobs. For some reason, well-educated people frequently think that everyone is nearly as smart as them, and just lacks opportunity, but that's simply not the case. Lots of people just don't have the aptitude or interest, and nothing will change that. Even if they aren't stupid, you can't make someone interested in being educated; that's likely a product of their upbringing, and the only way to fix that is to wait a few generations while attitudes change. The only fix for automation-based unemployment I see is a Universal Basic Income. We already have something like this with welfare and WIC/SNAP, basically paying people to sit at home and raise kids in poverty.
murph-almighty 8y ago
Anecdata, so please take with a grain of salt- in the past 5 years of my life I've spent significant time in Pittsburgh, DC, central NJ, and NYC. In each of these areas I've seen large luxury apartment projects, but not one project for affordable housing. If you create high priced housing that no one (including students paying off massive ampunts of debt, where the min payment + rent = a mortgage payment) can afford, your high-priced housing will stay empty. Developers beware.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  > If you create high priced housing that no one (including students paying off massive ampunts of debt, where the min payment + rent = a mortgage payment) can afford, your high-priced housing will stay empty. if too many developers do this, that high-priced housing will have to become low-priced housing if they actually want to clear the market.
- lovich 8y ago
  No one is ever going to make affordable housing on a scarce resources like land in a city. Developers will always build luxury housing. When building was allowed, you got richer people moving into new luxury housing and as buildings aged, instead of fixing the luxury features, landlords would lower the rent and target a different market. Now that many cities do not allow enough building you get richer people staying on those aging buildings or even moving into the city and competing for fairly run down housing. If we don't allow building then two options are allocating housing by price or by lottery(like rent control), but either way people lose out because you can't put 110 families in 100 apartments. Unless more housing is allowed to be built there will be this frustration
  - kingkawn 8y ago
    They will build affordable housing if the government requires it as part of doing business. In NYC there are affordable housing tax incentives for developers that have resulted in small but meaningful additions to affordable housing. These programs are not at scale to impact the broad populace, but a stronger regulatory and incentive structure is possible.
nunez 8y ago
definitely this. i can already afford a house, but getting the down payment saved up without crippling my social life (which is more important to me) is difficult (not impossible, though) b/c of student loans.

magduf 8y ago

I think it'd really be better if young people stopped getting student loans, and just didn't go to college, so they wouldn't have this problem. Eventually, the problem of overpriced housing will correct itself.

ilikehurdles 8y ago
By the same logic, if they keep at it, eventually wages will rise to accommodate increased housing costs, and the problem corrects itself. The problem is “eventually” has an unclear definition in both cases, and few are willing to sacrifice their potential of attaining certain careers or income in exchange for working low wage jobs waiting for a hypothetical future correction of this inequality. It’s hard to level existing residences in many historic cities and so housing costs rise, yet people are still wanting the opportunities afforded by those cities enough to sacrifice having better housing conditions elsewhere.
- magduf 8y ago
  >It’s hard to level existing residences in many historic cities and so housing costs rise, yet people are still wanting the opportunities afforded by those cities enough to sacrifice having better housing conditions elsewhere. We don't have historic cities in America. At best, we have a few small historic districts, but everything else in the metro area is certainly not historic. But they don't build enough housing anyway, because too many Americans want McMansions instead of condos which are far more space-efficient. The Bay area is particularly awful since existing homeowners have too much power (and local government has way too much power; local government should have NO power to restrict development, that should be the state's decision) and won't allow higher-density housing to be built as it affects their property values. This is a uniquely American problem. >The problem is “eventually” has an unclear definition in both cases, and few are willing to sacrifice their potential of attaining certain careers or income in exchange for working low wage jobs waiting for a hypothetical future correction of this inequality. My proposal is to just let the economy crash and take a couple of generations to recover, so just worry about your kids or grandkids having a better future. It's basically what's going to happen anyway, so you might as well not burden yourself with student debt. The situation we have now is totally unsustainable.
adrianN 8y ago
As soon as there are a sufficient number of well paying jobs that don't require a degree, people will stop going to college.
- xg15 8y ago
  And what well-paying jobs would that be?
  - thfuran 8y ago
    Electrician, welder, plumber
xg15 8y ago
On the other hand, better education is (particularly on this board) usually recommended as the most important defense against unployment due to automation or outsourcing. How does this fit together?
- magduf 8y ago
  This board, and other places, are wrong: better education isn't a fix. The problem is that many people just can't be productively educated to do higher-level jobs. For some reason, well-educated people frequently think that everyone is nearly as smart as them, and just lacks opportunity, but that's simply not the case. Lots of people just don't have the aptitude or interest, and nothing will change that. Even if they aren't stupid, you can't make someone interested in being educated; that's likely a product of their upbringing, and the only way to fix that is to wait a few generations while attitudes change. The only fix for automation-based unemployment I see is a Universal Basic Income. We already have something like this with welfare and WIC/SNAP, basically paying people to sit at home and raise kids in poverty.

murph-almighty 8y ago

Anecdata, so please take with a grain of salt- in the past 5 years of my life I've spent significant time in Pittsburgh, DC, central NJ, and NYC. In each of these areas I've seen large luxury apartment projects, but not one project for affordable housing. If you create high priced housing that no one (including students paying off massive ampunts of debt, where the min payment + rent = a mortgage payment) can afford, your high-priced housing will stay empty. Developers beware.

leetcrew 8y ago
> If you create high priced housing that no one (including students paying off massive ampunts of debt, where the min payment + rent = a mortgage payment) can afford, your high-priced housing will stay empty. if too many developers do this, that high-priced housing will have to become low-priced housing if they actually want to clear the market.
lovich 8y ago
No one is ever going to make affordable housing on a scarce resources like land in a city. Developers will always build luxury housing. When building was allowed, you got richer people moving into new luxury housing and as buildings aged, instead of fixing the luxury features, landlords would lower the rent and target a different market. Now that many cities do not allow enough building you get richer people staying on those aging buildings or even moving into the city and competing for fairly run down housing. If we don't allow building then two options are allocating housing by price or by lottery(like rent control), but either way people lose out because you can't put 110 families in 100 apartments. Unless more housing is allowed to be built there will be this frustration
- kingkawn 8y ago
  They will build affordable housing if the government requires it as part of doing business. In NYC there are affordable housing tax incentives for developers that have resulted in small but meaningful additions to affordable housing. These programs are not at scale to impact the broad populace, but a stronger regulatory and incentive structure is possible.

nunez 8y ago

definitely this. i can already afford a house, but getting the down payment saved up without crippling my social life (which is more important to me) is difficult (not impossible, though) b/c of student loans.