5 ms·

IIRC, North America has ~3x the amount of retail per capita compared to the EU. Prior to e-commerce, prior to the pandemic. This reckoning was a long time comi

IIRC, North America has ~3x the amount of retail per capita compared to the EU. Prior to e-commerce, prior to the pandemic. This reckoning was a long time coming, accelerated by recent changes. The intent of mixed use was noble. But like all land use, left hand meet right hand. Today, we should be repurposing retail. Get creative. Every zip code needs more child care. Any city wanting to be more "family friendly" should do whatever it takes to seed day cares. I'm sure there's dozens of similar ideas. I know the prevailing context led to "efficiency" and big box retail. But ffs why do I have to drive to the pharmacy? To get some bananas? Etc.

the-dude 5y ago
> Every zip code needs more child care. Why is this? Are there many more children?
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  On the contrary. But over the last several decades there have been two relevant culture shifts: - a strong move to professional child care over care by relatives - a dramatic increase in the age at which children are considered able to be unsupervised
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Yeah also it’s very difficult to make a comfortable life on one income.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      During the years when childcare is needed the numbers often work out better with one income than two. Market labor is taxed and then post tax dollars have to be used to pay for professional childcare (which is then taxed again). However, the issue comes after the need is over. The employment market heavily penalizes a decade plus gap in work history. On a lifetime basis it can make sense to work and pay for childcare even if it comes out net negative on a year by year basis. Even more important than these financial considerations are cultural and social expectations.
      - rtkwe 5y ago
        Seems like that should only be the case if the cost of childcare is greater than the post tax wage of the lowest earning parent.
        bradleyjg 5y ago
        That’s the basic idea but you also need to include the net costs of working (clothes, commute, lunch, etc.) It’s more likely to work out that way with disparate earners and in high tax states.
        owenversteeg 5y ago
        That's true. It's pretty rare to see people mention cost of working, but it is a very real cost. For many on HN working from home in a job without a dress code, clothes/commute/lunch aren't more than being unemployed, but there are other significant costs around flexibility. Not working gives you flexibility and time, which can save huge amounts of money. Travel, flights and hotels can get easily 3x cheaper in the off season. By going midday, midweek when everyone else is working, you can go to tons of things half price, from ski lifts to movie theaters. Americans spend $680B/yr on travel, so between the 122M households that's an average of $5600/year spent on travel - by having flexibility you can easily save quite a bit right there. Then keep in mind that a penny saved isn't just a penny earned - for most people it's around 1.6-2 pennies earned after taxes and benefits: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25382210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25382210 That said, there are also costs to being unemployed. The big one of course is what to do with your time - whatever you do with those extra 40 hours a week will probably not be 100% free. Then there are potential risks: if you're unemployed and not on unemployment, and a pandemic strikes, then you might be stuck without any income for far longer than you expected, all while everyone else that got laid off gets unemployment. There are also career costs: a years-long gap may seriously hurt your career prospects when you return to the workforce and dent your lifetime earnings. Then there are the commonly forgotten benefits to working, such as building up Social Security (both for retirement, and disability.) The max SSDI, which you will get if you're making around $100k for some years, is around $3000/month. If you become disabled and haven't been working, you get far less. Obviously being unemployed makes lending money far harder (credit cards, personal loans, car loans) so you better have some cash set aside. Naturally you won't be able to buy a house, and renting a new place will be very difficult with no job. But there are other options: maybe you already own a place, maybe you can live with your parents, maybe you do van life. ---------- If you add everything up, you may be surprised to see unemployment win out. This is, of course, the exact discussion taking place for millions of Americans in poorly paid service jobs, and the reason for the current labor shortage. It's not that young people are being lazy: they're being smart. If you're working a poorly paid job, the cost of working is disproportionately high to your income. $7.25/hr x 40hr/wk is $1160/mo, minus taxes somewhere around $1000/mo, and then you have to pay for a car to drive to work, gas, etc etc. On an income like that, you're basically just surviving, barely keeping your head above water if that. Sure, if you quit your McDonalds job you can't afford rent, but rent's so high you probably had a pretty crappy place anyway, so why not move back in with your parents, like 52% of Americans aged 18-30 do? [0] On top of that, many of those costs to being unemployed don't really factor in if you're in one of these poorly paid jobs. Gap on a resume doesn't matter for fast food. Social security - how many young people believe it'll be around in 40 years? It's pretty much a no-brainer, if I was working a poorly paid job I'd also quit and opt out of "the system" like millions of my fellow Americans. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...
    - stevekemp 5y ago
      Hopefully if there were more choices for childcare the costs would fall. I know that childcare in many parts of America, and the UK, can eat up a whole parent's salary. Here in Finland we pay €250/month for Monday-Friday daycare 7:30-4:30. That's affordable, and means two parents can easily continue to work. If you pay $1500/month for child-care it becomes a tougher choice to send your child/children there. I know people in the UK where lesser-earning parent has been persuaded to quit their job, because it was "cheaper" than paying for childcare.
      - bradleyjg 5y ago
        There must be some kind of subsidization involved at that price, right? I don’t see how a business owner could possibly make the numbers work charging that little.
        stevekemp 5y ago
        The city council runs them, and there are income based subsidies.
        the_lonely_road 5y ago
        Very high taxes. Works out great if you have children. Does not work out so great if you don't have children. The state should use taxes to subsidize the behavior it wants its citizens to engage in. Population growth is generally considered 'very important' (and historically it unquestionably was #1, but today its questionable). The U.S. attempts to do the same thing through its tax code with lots of additional subsidies for parents. Keep in mind that a large portion of childcare expenses are directly reimbursed on those parents tax returns so the $1500 in America weighed against the $250 in Europe needs to be adjusted for the very high tax in Europe (as high as 59% I think, but am no expert in the EU) and the large reimbursement in America in order to get a truly comparable price point. Of course reality is much more complicated than that and there will cohorts of 'winners' and 'losers' under both systems. You need to take into account the various cohorts if you want to know which system is better for an individual scenario (ie the lived experience we all see the world through): Poor/Rich No children, 1 child, 5 children etc. Grandparents living next door, Grandparents living across the country. And many other factors.
- delecti 5y ago
  There are fewer households with one parent working and one parent staying home to raise the kids.
- pueblito 5y ago
  No, rather there is practically no child care
refurb 5y ago
Someone mentioned that 3x before and it’s mostly due to megastores, not small storefronts. When you can build a bunch of multiacre big box stores in each town I’m not surprised the US has way more square footage.
- starky 5y ago
  This really annoys me about North American cities. In Asia, even if a city has incredibly expensive real estate (e.g. Hong Kong or Singapore), you still have oodles of independent stores and restaurants who can afford to be in business because they pay for tiny square footages. Half those stores now sit empty because rents were constantly raised, and many of the ones that had hung on couldn't make it through the pandemic.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Having lived in those cities I preferred shopping in the megastores and there was a definite shift at least in Singapore towards larger stores - cheaper prices, bigger selection, more convenient.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I do not understand why you are downvoted. The fundamental issue for smaller merchants is economies of scale. 90% of people only need access to 3 different versions of the same product 90% of the time: high, mid, and low quality. Hence why retail is a “solved” market that has had sub 5% profit margins for a very long time. This is what efficiency looks like and what 90% of people want.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
Agree with you about the repurposing of retail. I'm actually happy to see shopping malls all over being switched to other uses. I just don't understand how ANY business can afford rents that extreme.
- specialist 5y ago
  Supply and demand, right? Rents should be plummeting, right? Where are those Freedom Markets™ we were promised? The OC says high rents are being maintained by speculators removing inventory from the market. (I'm sure there's multiple factors at play.) One proposed remedy is a vacancy tax. I don't know anything about that kind of thing. I do know I support whatever it takes to repurpose these spaces.
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    There's also that building values are partially determined by the price of renting it so for loans and selling owners are encouraged to keep rent prices as high as possible.
opportune 5y ago
Mixed use is still not a bad idea at all IMO, the problem is that there is just too much dedicated land zoned commercial already, and most mixed use development has too high a commercial:residential ratio for it to make the problem less-bad. The solution could be to convert the zoning for large big box stores that go out of business to residential.
- specialist 5y ago
  That's a pretty good idea.

the-dude 5y ago

> Every zip code needs more child care. Why is this? Are there many more children?

bradleyjg 5y ago
On the contrary. But over the last several decades there have been two relevant culture shifts: - a strong move to professional child care over care by relatives - a dramatic increase in the age at which children are considered able to be unsupervised
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Yeah also it’s very difficult to make a comfortable life on one income.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    During the years when childcare is needed the numbers often work out better with one income than two. Market labor is taxed and then post tax dollars have to be used to pay for professional childcare (which is then taxed again). However, the issue comes after the need is over. The employment market heavily penalizes a decade plus gap in work history. On a lifetime basis it can make sense to work and pay for childcare even if it comes out net negative on a year by year basis. Even more important than these financial considerations are cultural and social expectations.
    - rtkwe 5y ago
      Seems like that should only be the case if the cost of childcare is greater than the post tax wage of the lowest earning parent.
      - bradleyjg 5y ago
        That’s the basic idea but you also need to include the net costs of working (clothes, commute, lunch, etc.) It’s more likely to work out that way with disparate earners and in high tax states.
        owenversteeg 5y ago
        That's true. It's pretty rare to see people mention cost of working, but it is a very real cost. For many on HN working from home in a job without a dress code, clothes/commute/lunch aren't more than being unemployed, but there are other significant costs around flexibility. Not working gives you flexibility and time, which can save huge amounts of money. Travel, flights and hotels can get easily 3x cheaper in the off season. By going midday, midweek when everyone else is working, you can go to tons of things half price, from ski lifts to movie theaters. Americans spend $680B/yr on travel, so between the 122M households that's an average of $5600/year spent on travel - by having flexibility you can easily save quite a bit right there. Then keep in mind that a penny saved isn't just a penny earned - for most people it's around 1.6-2 pennies earned after taxes and benefits: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25382210 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25382210 That said, there are also costs to being unemployed. The big one of course is what to do with your time - whatever you do with those extra 40 hours a week will probably not be 100% free. Then there are potential risks: if you're unemployed and not on unemployment, and a pandemic strikes, then you might be stuck without any income for far longer than you expected, all while everyone else that got laid off gets unemployment. There are also career costs: a years-long gap may seriously hurt your career prospects when you return to the workforce and dent your lifetime earnings. Then there are the commonly forgotten benefits to working, such as building up Social Security (both for retirement, and disability.) The max SSDI, which you will get if you're making around $100k for some years, is around $3000/month. If you become disabled and haven't been working, you get far less. Obviously being unemployed makes lending money far harder (credit cards, personal loans, car loans) so you better have some cash set aside. Naturally you won't be able to buy a house, and renting a new place will be very difficult with no job. But there are other options: maybe you already own a place, maybe you can live with your parents, maybe you do van life. ---------- If you add everything up, you may be surprised to see unemployment win out. This is, of course, the exact discussion taking place for millions of Americans in poorly paid service jobs, and the reason for the current labor shortage. It's not that young people are being lazy: they're being smart. If you're working a poorly paid job, the cost of working is disproportionately high to your income. $7.25/hr x 40hr/wk is $1160/mo, minus taxes somewhere around $1000/mo, and then you have to pay for a car to drive to work, gas, etc etc. On an income like that, you're basically just surviving, barely keeping your head above water if that. Sure, if you quit your McDonalds job you can't afford rent, but rent's so high you probably had a pretty crappy place anyway, so why not move back in with your parents, like 52% of Americans aged 18-30 do? [0] On top of that, many of those costs to being unemployed don't really factor in if you're in one of these poorly paid jobs. Gap on a resume doesn't matter for fast food. Social security - how many young people believe it'll be around in 40 years? It's pretty much a no-brainer, if I was working a poorly paid job I'd also quit and opt out of "the system" like millions of my fellow Americans. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...
  - stevekemp 5y ago
    Hopefully if there were more choices for childcare the costs would fall. I know that childcare in many parts of America, and the UK, can eat up a whole parent's salary. Here in Finland we pay €250/month for Monday-Friday daycare 7:30-4:30. That's affordable, and means two parents can easily continue to work. If you pay $1500/month for child-care it becomes a tougher choice to send your child/children there. I know people in the UK where lesser-earning parent has been persuaded to quit their job, because it was "cheaper" than paying for childcare.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      There must be some kind of subsidization involved at that price, right? I don’t see how a business owner could possibly make the numbers work charging that little.
      - stevekemp 5y ago
        The city council runs them, and there are income based subsidies.
      - the_lonely_road 5y ago
        Very high taxes. Works out great if you have children. Does not work out so great if you don't have children. The state should use taxes to subsidize the behavior it wants its citizens to engage in. Population growth is generally considered 'very important' (and historically it unquestionably was #1, but today its questionable). The U.S. attempts to do the same thing through its tax code with lots of additional subsidies for parents. Keep in mind that a large portion of childcare expenses are directly reimbursed on those parents tax returns so the $1500 in America weighed against the $250 in Europe needs to be adjusted for the very high tax in Europe (as high as 59% I think, but am no expert in the EU) and the large reimbursement in America in order to get a truly comparable price point. Of course reality is much more complicated than that and there will cohorts of 'winners' and 'losers' under both systems. You need to take into account the various cohorts if you want to know which system is better for an individual scenario (ie the lived experience we all see the world through): Poor/Rich No children, 1 child, 5 children etc. Grandparents living next door, Grandparents living across the country. And many other factors.
delecti 5y ago
There are fewer households with one parent working and one parent staying home to raise the kids.
pueblito 5y ago
No, rather there is practically no child care

refurb 5y ago

Someone mentioned that 3x before and it’s mostly due to megastores, not small storefronts. When you can build a bunch of multiacre big box stores in each town I’m not surprised the US has way more square footage.

starky 5y ago
This really annoys me about North American cities. In Asia, even if a city has incredibly expensive real estate (e.g. Hong Kong or Singapore), you still have oodles of independent stores and restaurants who can afford to be in business because they pay for tiny square footages. Half those stores now sit empty because rents were constantly raised, and many of the ones that had hung on couldn't make it through the pandemic.
- refurb 5y ago
  Having lived in those cities I preferred shopping in the megastores and there was a definite shift at least in Singapore towards larger stores - cheaper prices, bigger selection, more convenient.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I do not understand why you are downvoted. The fundamental issue for smaller merchants is economies of scale. 90% of people only need access to 3 different versions of the same product 90% of the time: high, mid, and low quality. Hence why retail is a “solved” market that has had sub 5% profit margins for a very long time. This is what efficiency looks like and what 90% of people want.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

Agree with you about the repurposing of retail. I'm actually happy to see shopping malls all over being switched to other uses. I just don't understand how ANY business can afford rents that extreme.

specialist 5y ago
Supply and demand, right? Rents should be plummeting, right? Where are those Freedom Markets™ we were promised? The OC says high rents are being maintained by speculators removing inventory from the market. (I'm sure there's multiple factors at play.) One proposed remedy is a vacancy tax. I don't know anything about that kind of thing. I do know I support whatever it takes to repurpose these spaces.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  There's also that building values are partially determined by the price of renting it so for loans and selling owners are encouraged to keep rent prices as high as possible.

opportune 5y ago

Mixed use is still not a bad idea at all IMO, the problem is that there is just too much dedicated land zoned commercial already, and most mixed use development has too high a commercial:residential ratio for it to make the problem less-bad. The solution could be to convert the zoning for large big box stores that go out of business to residential.

specialist 5y ago
That's a pretty good idea.