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Is the answer that the US left the gold standard and switched to completely fiat currency? Or the US ended the trade embargo with China? Or Walt Disney World

Is the answer that the US left the gold standard and switched to completely fiat currency? Or the US ended the trade embargo with China? Or Walt Disney World opened in Florida?

p1mrx 5y ago
It was decimalisation all along!
Lammy 5y ago
We outlawed segregation so all those people who wanted it immediately realized they were wrong, racism disappeared, and we all lived Happily Ever After. Or that’s the way the Disney version goes anyway.
epistasis 5y ago
There are several other general policy changes and trends that are far more relevant to housing. With the passage of the Fair Housing Act, cities embarked upon thorough downzonings to prevent any new construction and "preserve neighborhood character" by not allowing more affordable forms of housing like townhomes and condos. Prior to the downzonings, zoning capacity was very free, there's a great graph of LA's zoned capacity versus population over time, and it starts decreasing from many many multiples of population, and as population rises it falls to barely more than population. This sort of extremely tight constraint on housing, allowing it only in very certain areas, and in particular only if there is no small subset of homeowners that oppose it, is a huge change from the past. You can also see similar evidence pretty much all over the Bay Area too. A six story apartment building in the Sunset may exist now, but could never be build now because of downzoning. You'll find lots of older duplexes in some parts of the Bay Area, similarly outlawed now. This sort of planning trend wasn't limited to California by any means, and the Levittowns of suburban development embraced a development style of having nearly all land "built out," a state of regulation so that nobody with slightly less money could move in because apartments or duplexes were allowed.

Is the answer that the US left the gold standard and switched to completely fiat currency? Or the US ended the trade embargo with China? Or Walt Disney World opened in Florida?

p1mrx 5y ago

It was decimalisation all along!

Lammy 5y ago

We outlawed segregation so all those people who wanted it immediately realized they were wrong, racism disappeared, and we all lived Happily Ever After. Or that’s the way the Disney version goes anyway.

epistasis 5y ago

There are several other general policy changes and trends that are far more relevant to housing. With the passage of the Fair Housing Act, cities embarked upon thorough downzonings to prevent any new construction and "preserve neighborhood character" by not allowing more affordable forms of housing like townhomes and condos. Prior to the downzonings, zoning capacity was very free, there's a great graph of LA's zoned capacity versus population over time, and it starts decreasing from many many multiples of population, and as population rises it falls to barely more than population. This sort of extremely tight constraint on housing, allowing it only in very certain areas, and in particular only if there is no small subset of homeowners that oppose it, is a huge change from the past. You can also see similar evidence pretty much all over the Bay Area too. A six story apartment building in the Sunset may exist now, but could never be build now because of downzoning. You'll find lots of older duplexes in some parts of the Bay Area, similarly outlawed now. This sort of planning trend wasn't limited to California by any means, and the Levittowns of suburban development embraced a development style of having nearly all land "built out," a state of regulation so that nobody with slightly less money could move in because apartments or duplexes were allowed.