5 ms·

I honestly don't see the problem here. It's simple: teachers, nurses, baristas, garbagement, plumbers, etc. won't be able to live there. Nor do they need to.

by magduf 7y ago

I honestly don't see the problem here. It's simple: teachers, nurses, baristas, garbagement, plumbers, etc. won't be able to live there. Nor do they need to. These people can live somewhere else, far away, and commute in. To entice them to make this ridiculous commute, their pay will have to be extremely high, and they'll probably want shorter hours too (so they can spend half their work-time commuting), so they'll have to hire twice as many people. So if some wealthy homeowner needs a plumber, it's no problem. Remember, plumbers are usually contractors. They can call up the plumbing company, who will send a plumber who will drive 2-4 hours to get there, and the same amount to go home. This will result in an enormous charge just for fixing a leaking pipe. But that's OK, because the homeowner is wealthy, remember? They can afford $3k for a service call. If they can't, well maybe they need to rethink where they're living, and sell and move someplace cheaper. Some jobs just don't even need to be done. Baristas, for instance, aren't really needed. They can be paid a fortune to drive 3 hours each way every day, and this can be reflected in the coffee prices, but will wealthy people pay $30 for a latte? If they do, fine: baristas can commute. If they don't, oh well, the coffee shop can go out of business (or maybe have self-serve lattes), and the wealthy homeowners can go without. The same goes for teachers. If the wealthy people aren't willing to pay enough taxes for teachers to have $250k salaries to live there, then they don't really need to have teachers, and their kids can go without an education. Maybe they can send their kids to boarding school somewhere cheaper. Seriously, I think that if people stop fretting about these lower-paid people, and just let the chips fall where they will, the problem will resolve itself one way or another. Either the wealthy people will cave in and get local government to approve more affordable housing construction, or the local real estate market will collapse because people don't really want to live in a place where there's no garbage collection.

u10 7y ago
Viewing individual preferences in a utilitarian fashion... sure I guess you can argue there exists some wage-distance premium at a given price to make sure that a given job is filled. That being said non-pecuniary have strong effects, which is why individuals will pay out the nose to live in the city with amenities rather than commuting 2 hours a day. I think you will be hard pressed to find individuals who are willing to spend 25% of their adult life commuting too and from work. Certainly, not enough will be willing to satisfy labour requirements.
- nordsieck 7y ago
  >> It's simple: teachers, nurses, baristas, garbagement, plumbers, etc. won't be able to live there. Nor do they need to. > I think you will be hard pressed to find individuals who are willing to spend 25% of their adult life commuting too and from work. Certainly, not enough will be willing to satisfy labour requirements. To the extent that there are no people who will do the jobs (i.e. they won't pay $ + time to live close enough), those jobs will need to offer more money, or go unfilled.
- magduf 7y ago
  >I think you will be hard pressed to find individuals who are willing to spend 25% of their adult life commuting too and from work. Certainly, not enough will be willing to satisfy labour requirements. I don't think this is hard at all: I'm not suggesting that people spend 3 hours commuting each way, plus 8 hours working. I'm suggesting they spend 6 hours commuting (both ways), and 2 hours working, and get paid for 8 hours, and the business hire 4x as many people to get the job done because of this. I'm sure they can find plenty of people willing to spend much of their workday commuting, and only having to do 2-4 hours of actual work, provided they're paid for it all. This will, of course, result in much higher prices for local goods and services, but the locals can afford it; they're wealthy landowners, after all.
conanbatt 7y ago
I agree with you: the angle of "helping lower income people" is weak and moralistic. That said, the unfairness of single family house subsidies will have tremendous impact on the long term suitability of the state. CA does have a high homelessness and house poverty problem. San Francisco is already a dump: literal human poop on every street in front of million dollar condos built in the 70's. Once tech diversifies away from CA they are toast.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >That said, the unfairness of single family house subsidies will have tremendous impact on the long term suitability of the state So? Let them crash and burn and serve as an example to the other 49. There will always be some states poorer than others. What's the harm in CA going from the top to the bottom? The only thing that worries me about CA crashing and burning is that the upper and upper middle class who advocated for the public policy that caused the crash and burn may move to other states and enact the same policy before it becomes obvious that their policy is what caused CA's demise.
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    California residents are right to want to change that course! Renters and land-owners alike, even on antagonistic positions in this topic. I think the core policy issue is not housing though, its taxes. Single family homes pay less taxes than what they consume: building more housing will increase density, but if my model is right, it will expand public spending and keep rents high.
  - magduf 7y ago
    It won't be CA that goes to the bottom, just the Bay Area. LA and SD and Fresno and even Sacramento don't have the same problems.
    - mateo411 7y ago
      LA and SD also have affordable housing problems. They aren't as pronounced as the Bay Area, but it's still an issue.
mreome 7y ago
By that logic we should abandon all minimum wage and employee rights laws. People wouldn't do the jobs unless the pay and conditions were acceptable, so it would resolve itself one way or the other right? The unfortunate reality is that many people have little to no real choice in where they work or what they make. They live paycheck-to-paycheck and do jobs that do not come with any bargaining power. If they quit there will be 100 applicants to replace them the next day. And as the money continues to localize into major metro areas, the only available jobs are more and more often in those metro areas. If you work-to-live then you have to have a job, if the only jobs are in the city you have to commute in, and if all the jobs pay $X you have to try to live on $X.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  > By that logic we should abandon all minimum wage and employee rights laws. Yes.
- magduf 7y ago
  >By that logic we should abandon all minimum wage and employee rights laws. No, that's not the logic at all. Remember, this problem is entirely local, and can't really be solved because the local politics are locked up by the local wealthy homeowners. Minimum wage and employee rights laws are usually either state or federal (or both). But the state and federal governments here have little power to fix the Bay Area's problems, because of the way the governmental systems are structured. Personally, I think minimum wage should be raised, and employee rights laws should be strengthened. That's government's job, to fix problems like this which hurt the lower classes. But for the Bay Area, I think they should just provide grants to help lower-income people move out of the area and relocate to cheaper places, leaving the Bay Area without any lower-class people. Then let's see how they function without any janitors or teachers.
  - mreome 7y ago
    Fair enough. I was extending your argument to the National level, as this same issue is playing out with slight variations in many of the major metro areas in the US. I’m on the East Coast, so I’m not familiar with the particulars of the local government structures in California and how that effects who and how those decisions get made. So, I withdraw my specific criticisms here. On the national scale, my issue with “let the chips fall where they will” is because of how I’ve seen this issue play out in some of the places I’ve live here in the North-East. People in the position to demand that their wages match the cost of living do so, but those who work the kind of jobs that afford no barging power (office cleaning crews for example) can’t. This exacerbates the income divide, as the people who have/make more money are the ones in the positions to demand the largest increases to account for the local cost-of-living. If the job pool starts to dry up, local businesses start busing people in and/or push local governments to subsidize public transportation. People need jobs, the jobs are in the city, so you end up with an entire economic class taking hour long bus/car trips to and from work every day. Nobody with means ever ends up inconvenienced. You then end up with an entire economic class who doesn’t get compensated for the time spent commuting, incurs other associated expenses and complications (miss the bus and you don’t get paid), and ends up segregated to lower-cost-of-living areas outside the metro, which always see less funding for schools, parks, hospitals, public works, etc.

by magduf 7y ago

u10 7y ago

Viewing individual preferences in a utilitarian fashion... sure I guess you can argue there exists some wage-distance premium at a given price to make sure that a given job is filled. That being said non-pecuniary have strong effects, which is why individuals will pay out the nose to live in the city with amenities rather than commuting 2 hours a day. I think you will be hard pressed to find individuals who are willing to spend 25% of their adult life commuting too and from work. Certainly, not enough will be willing to satisfy labour requirements.

nordsieck 7y ago
>> It's simple: teachers, nurses, baristas, garbagement, plumbers, etc. won't be able to live there. Nor do they need to. > I think you will be hard pressed to find individuals who are willing to spend 25% of their adult life commuting too and from work. Certainly, not enough will be willing to satisfy labour requirements. To the extent that there are no people who will do the jobs (i.e. they won't pay $ + time to live close enough), those jobs will need to offer more money, or go unfilled.
magduf 7y ago
>I think you will be hard pressed to find individuals who are willing to spend 25% of their adult life commuting too and from work. Certainly, not enough will be willing to satisfy labour requirements. I don't think this is hard at all: I'm not suggesting that people spend 3 hours commuting each way, plus 8 hours working. I'm suggesting they spend 6 hours commuting (both ways), and 2 hours working, and get paid for 8 hours, and the business hire 4x as many people to get the job done because of this. I'm sure they can find plenty of people willing to spend much of their workday commuting, and only having to do 2-4 hours of actual work, provided they're paid for it all. This will, of course, result in much higher prices for local goods and services, but the locals can afford it; they're wealthy landowners, after all.

conanbatt 7y ago

I agree with you: the angle of "helping lower income people" is weak and moralistic. That said, the unfairness of single family house subsidies will have tremendous impact on the long term suitability of the state. CA does have a high homelessness and house poverty problem. San Francisco is already a dump: literal human poop on every street in front of million dollar condos built in the 70's. Once tech diversifies away from CA they are toast.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>That said, the unfairness of single family house subsidies will have tremendous impact on the long term suitability of the state So? Let them crash and burn and serve as an example to the other 49. There will always be some states poorer than others. What's the harm in CA going from the top to the bottom? The only thing that worries me about CA crashing and burning is that the upper and upper middle class who advocated for the public policy that caused the crash and burn may move to other states and enact the same policy before it becomes obvious that their policy is what caused CA's demise.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  California residents are right to want to change that course! Renters and land-owners alike, even on antagonistic positions in this topic. I think the core policy issue is not housing though, its taxes. Single family homes pay less taxes than what they consume: building more housing will increase density, but if my model is right, it will expand public spending and keep rents high.
- magduf 7y ago
  It won't be CA that goes to the bottom, just the Bay Area. LA and SD and Fresno and even Sacramento don't have the same problems.
  - mateo411 7y ago
    LA and SD also have affordable housing problems. They aren't as pronounced as the Bay Area, but it's still an issue.

mreome 7y ago

By that logic we should abandon all minimum wage and employee rights laws. People wouldn't do the jobs unless the pay and conditions were acceptable, so it would resolve itself one way or the other right? The unfortunate reality is that many people have little to no real choice in where they work or what they make. They live paycheck-to-paycheck and do jobs that do not come with any bargaining power. If they quit there will be 100 applicants to replace them the next day. And as the money continues to localize into major metro areas, the only available jobs are more and more often in those metro areas. If you work-to-live then you have to have a job, if the only jobs are in the city you have to commute in, and if all the jobs pay $X you have to try to live on $X.

paulddraper 7y ago
> By that logic we should abandon all minimum wage and employee rights laws. Yes.
magduf 7y ago
>By that logic we should abandon all minimum wage and employee rights laws. No, that's not the logic at all. Remember, this problem is entirely local, and can't really be solved because the local politics are locked up by the local wealthy homeowners. Minimum wage and employee rights laws are usually either state or federal (or both). But the state and federal governments here have little power to fix the Bay Area's problems, because of the way the governmental systems are structured. Personally, I think minimum wage should be raised, and employee rights laws should be strengthened. That's government's job, to fix problems like this which hurt the lower classes. But for the Bay Area, I think they should just provide grants to help lower-income people move out of the area and relocate to cheaper places, leaving the Bay Area without any lower-class people. Then let's see how they function without any janitors or teachers.
- mreome 7y ago
  Fair enough. I was extending your argument to the National level, as this same issue is playing out with slight variations in many of the major metro areas in the US. I’m on the East Coast, so I’m not familiar with the particulars of the local government structures in California and how that effects who and how those decisions get made. So, I withdraw my specific criticisms here. On the national scale, my issue with “let the chips fall where they will” is because of how I’ve seen this issue play out in some of the places I’ve live here in the North-East. People in the position to demand that their wages match the cost of living do so, but those who work the kind of jobs that afford no barging power (office cleaning crews for example) can’t. This exacerbates the income divide, as the people who have/make more money are the ones in the positions to demand the largest increases to account for the local cost-of-living. If the job pool starts to dry up, local businesses start busing people in and/or push local governments to subsidize public transportation. People need jobs, the jobs are in the city, so you end up with an entire economic class taking hour long bus/car trips to and from work every day. Nobody with means ever ends up inconvenienced. You then end up with an entire economic class who doesn’t get compensated for the time spent commuting, incurs other associated expenses and complications (miss the bus and you don’t get paid), and ends up segregated to lower-cost-of-living areas outside the metro, which always see less funding for schools, parks, hospitals, public works, etc.