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I cannot believe how high tech salaries are right now in my city (Seattle) versus even three years ago the last time I had a "real" job. What would have been a

• dcolkitt 6y ago
  It's incredible to me that most of the surplus wealth generated by all of humanity's innovation in the 21st century has basically accumulated to property owners in the Bay Area and Seattle. This is only a slight exaggeration.
  • savanaly 6y ago
    Also incredible that it could have been predicted over 200 years ago [0]. The law of rent, one of the most firmly established in economics, is that all the bounty of our efforts will accumulate to the holders of fixed assets, namely land and human talent. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent.
    • creddit 6y ago
      You've misinterpreted that greatly.
      • savanaly 6y ago
        It's certainly possible, could you elaborate? To clear, I haven't read that wikipedia article recently, or maybe ever. I'm going off of what my understanding is of Ricardian rent from wherever I learned it-- I don't remember maybe an economics class, maybe a blog.
        • creddit 6y ago
          Ricardo is never referring to land in the use of housing, he's referring to land in the use of production. EDIT to expand given downvotes on prior post: You claim: > ...all the bounty of our efforts will accumulate to the holders of fixed assets, namely land and human talent. Ricardo says nothing of the sort here. Especially so, nothing about human talent. Ricardo strictly makes claim that the rent of land will be equal to marginal value of that land in the use of production. So if a given unit of land would increase the production of an enterprise by $X/yr, then the owner of that land can charge the owner of that enterprise up to $X/yr. This has nothing to do with housing and certainly nothing to do with human talent. Housing is far more complicated given how one might think about demand. We also haven't even talked about how economic rent/economic value defers from just like dollars of revenue or whatever.
          • lupire 6y ago
            Quality of life is a form of production.
            • creddit 6y ago
              Even allowing that, it still doesn't come close to Ricardo's Law of Rent implying that > all the bounty of our efforts will accumulate to the holders of fixed assets, namely land and human talent.
          • xyzzy123 6y ago
            A house in a major tech hub is more valuable than one in the sticks because tech workers can command higher wages there than elsewhere. They are more "productive" on that land. They'll tend to outbid other potential users, at least if tech gentrification complaints are to be believed. This all falls in line with the theory imho. I don't think there's any real difference between that and good soybean land, or goat raising land or whatever that Ricardo wrote about. The general idea is that for non-remote office workers, housing is a factor of production.
  • sidlls 6y ago
    It’s misleading, too. Most of the surplus wealth has accrued to people who were already wealthy. They are property owners in these areas, perhaps, but that’s incidental.
  • higerordermap 6y ago
    Wall St?
  • refurb 6y ago
    “Most of the surplus wealth” seems like a massive exaggeration. I don’t see too many FAANG employees spending “most” of their wealth on real estate.
    • imtringued 6y ago
      FAANG employees don't spend most of their wealth on real estate but all the non tech employees do because rent is a significant portion of their income.
• walrus01 6y ago
  > I cannot believe how high tech salaries are right now in my city (Seattle) they had better be, to keep up with cost of living, have you priced real estate in seattle recently?
  • draw_down 6y ago
    The whole point is they’re two sides of the same coin
  • lupire 6y ago
    You've reversed cause and effect.
    • walrus01 6y ago
      well, yes, though at some point it begins to resemble a reinforcement feedback loop
      • lotsofpulp 6y ago
        One cause is that these companies earn lots of money and have great business models. Another cause is that specific land itself is highly desirable for those with lots of money, for variety of reasons (weather/geography/location/culture/etc). Everything else is an effect.