3 ms·

This is obvious to anyone who lives in the real world. Add 10k $1MM apartments to San Francisco and it won’t do anything appreciable for people making $55,000/

This is obvious to anyone who lives in the real world. Add 10k $1MM apartments to San Francisco and it won’t do anything appreciable for people making $55,000/yr. it will just attract more millionaires and investors. Trickle down anything is paper theory for your intro micro course. By the time you learn about externalities and non-linear equations you quickly realize it doesn’t play out in reality the way you want it to. Maybe the term isn’t really that misleading though. The concept of trickle down is kind of like a clogged rain gutter. Sure, a few drops trickle down, but most of the water just piles up.

Gibbon1 8y ago
I think the solution is the heresy that the central bank should put strings on the money they lend out. So the central bank has to apportion a certain amount of funds for high density housing in particular geographic areas. Directly loan money to states to build mass transit. And specifically not to purchase paper, stocks, bonds, etc. All that stuff should be hard money loans.
- cik2e 8y ago
  And who decides where the money should be appropriated? There are plenty of other existing avenues for political action in setting economic policy. The money supply should never become one of those, for what I would think are entirely obvious reasons.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Why involve the central bank for those loans? I think the federal budget could handle it well enough and there is even some justification for it being a loan as a slight anti-graft measure to give encouragement to make it something productive instead of squandering it.
skybrian 8y ago
I don't know why you think that? Tech workers will buy them if they're close to work. That means they're not competing for other housing. Everybody has to live somewhere. There are a bunch of tech IPO's about to happen. What do you think they'll buy instead?

Gibbon1 8y ago

I think the solution is the heresy that the central bank should put strings on the money they lend out. So the central bank has to apportion a certain amount of funds for high density housing in particular geographic areas. Directly loan money to states to build mass transit. And specifically not to purchase paper, stocks, bonds, etc. All that stuff should be hard money loans.

cik2e 8y ago
And who decides where the money should be appropriated? There are plenty of other existing avenues for political action in setting economic policy. The money supply should never become one of those, for what I would think are entirely obvious reasons.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Why involve the central bank for those loans? I think the federal budget could handle it well enough and there is even some justification for it being a loan as a slight anti-graft measure to give encouragement to make it something productive instead of squandering it.

skybrian 8y ago

I don't know why you think that? Tech workers will buy them if they're close to work. That means they're not competing for other housing. Everybody has to live somewhere. There are a bunch of tech IPO's about to happen. What do you think they'll buy instead?