4 ms·

Every city relies on a bunch of cheap labor. Dishwashers, janitors, cashiers, cleaners, landscapers, baristas, gig workers, and on and on. Is it healthy for a c

Every city relies on a bunch of cheap labor. Dishwashers, janitors, cashiers, cleaners, landscapers, baristas, gig workers, and on and on. Is it healthy for a city to need all of these people while denying them a place in it? We have this gross dynamic of essentially telling large swaths of people that they're around only to be the help and that they don't belong.

R0b0t1 5y ago
This is still something you need to let the market sort out. Otherwise how do you decide who gets to live in CA by the beach, job lotteries?
supernova87a 5y ago
There is a surplus of cheap labor in the United States (at least up until recently), for the amount of goods and services produced. You may not believe it, but it is true. We have people willing to take jobs at low wages (again, up until recently) because of the growth of automation, outsourcing of low wage jobs to countries with even more labor surplus, and immigration. All these things, I will say off the bat, being good things that are producing good for people. (aside from the question, how many people can our planet sustain) "How can you tell people they are not welcome to live in the cities where they work" is a nice feel good thing to say, but those are feelings. Liberal city people seem to care a lot about feelings. But what matters, and how people actually behave, is what options and choices and reality people have to decide based on. And I might just point out, you probably don't care equally as much about the young families who are in the tech industry who "get told they can't afford to buy a house where they work". Anyway. No public policy can escape the fundamental demographic truth that we have a surplus of labor, and as cruel as it may sound, as long as people are willing to take the job for less, people will be coming to work in the Bay Area and yet not be able to live there. Liberal city policymakers believe that forcing cities to pay living wages or mandating housing will "make people feel welcome and that they belong" but there is no escaping these fundamental forces of wage depression due to labor surplus. Then trying to "fix it" by guaranteeing people housing or forcing affordable housing to be true through rent control etc. just creates more unintended side effects elsewhere. It creates housing shortages, sky high rents where not rent controlled, and protects the very NIMBYism that this article is about (where liberal people, believing their responsibility to be fulfilled through tampering with the market, now refuse to give on actual meaningful changes). And most of all, it makes those who had the good luck to get in, better off than those who weren't chosen to receive those benefits. As much as good intentions are nice, they rarely lead to good outcomes when applied at that level of thinking.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  I can't understand how this diatribe is related to housing. The NY times article mentioned by GP shows clearly "liberal cities" don't give a shit about mandating housing anymore than "conservatives cities" do; it's a false choice, Americans as whole want to preserve housing as an investment asset class. Every decision flows downward from there, and any other division is simply a distraction from the actual issue.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    And that's the problem. People's basic needs should not be an investment asset class.
    - paisawalla 5y ago
      Housing may be a basic need, but ample housing with a convenient commute is not. Proponents of change need to do a better job of filtering out their obvious sympathies towards wealth redistribution, and stating the problem more acutely. I'm not here to give every dishwasher and barista a 10-minute walking commute and a living room with a view of the city center.
    - EricDeb 5y ago
      totally agree. the problem is people's morals on it change when their house is up 200k
- hypersoar 5y ago
  GP posed a question about why affordable housing in any particular place should be a goal. I offered an answer. The market price of labor, or of anything else, does not come to us as if handed down by God. It is the result of a social calculation reflecting the things our society values and how much it values them. The fact that MANGA engineers are paid more than teachers is informed by how much we've decided teachers are worth. If everybody woke up tomorrow and decided teachers were more important than we thought today, then teachers would probably get paid more. Our societal values feed into our prices. In this way, we are morally culpable for the consequences of this calculation, and it is incumbent upon us to change things of the results are unjust. For example, by taking a bunch of money from rich people and giving it to poor people. Or by creating conditions for widely-available affordable housing. And I'm not just saying we "guarantee" the housing. We have the state go in and build it. By the way, I live in Seattle, which raised it's minimum wage to $15 a few years ago to much doomsaying. Research after the fact found no effect on unemployment. It begins to seem to me like the style of laissez-faire economics that have dominated politics for decades (which I recognize may not have much to do with academic economics) is full of shit. And, yeah, you better believe I care about feelings. Feelings are the filter through which all human experience flows. The economy exists for us, not us for it What good is strong growth if the system that brings it about makes us all miserable?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
The free market adjusts to its demand you know. So its not that companies need the cheap labor. The cheap labor demands to live there. And thusly the companies exploit that.

R0b0t1 5y ago

This is still something you need to let the market sort out. Otherwise how do you decide who gets to live in CA by the beach, job lotteries?

supernova87a 5y ago

There is a surplus of cheap labor in the United States (at least up until recently), for the amount of goods and services produced. You may not believe it, but it is true. We have people willing to take jobs at low wages (again, up until recently) because of the growth of automation, outsourcing of low wage jobs to countries with even more labor surplus, and immigration. All these things, I will say off the bat, being good things that are producing good for people. (aside from the question, how many people can our planet sustain) "How can you tell people they are not welcome to live in the cities where they work" is a nice feel good thing to say, but those are feelings. Liberal city people seem to care a lot about feelings. But what matters, and how people actually behave, is what options and choices and reality people have to decide based on. And I might just point out, you probably don't care equally as much about the young families who are in the tech industry who "get told they can't afford to buy a house where they work". Anyway. No public policy can escape the fundamental demographic truth that we have a surplus of labor, and as cruel as it may sound, as long as people are willing to take the job for less, people will be coming to work in the Bay Area and yet not be able to live there. Liberal city policymakers believe that forcing cities to pay living wages or mandating housing will "make people feel welcome and that they belong" but there is no escaping these fundamental forces of wage depression due to labor surplus. Then trying to "fix it" by guaranteeing people housing or forcing affordable housing to be true through rent control etc. just creates more unintended side effects elsewhere. It creates housing shortages, sky high rents where not rent controlled, and protects the very NIMBYism that this article is about (where liberal people, believing their responsibility to be fulfilled through tampering with the market, now refuse to give on actual meaningful changes). And most of all, it makes those who had the good luck to get in, better off than those who weren't chosen to receive those benefits. As much as good intentions are nice, they rarely lead to good outcomes when applied at that level of thinking.

nemothekid 5y ago
I can't understand how this diatribe is related to housing. The NY times article mentioned by GP shows clearly "liberal cities" don't give a shit about mandating housing anymore than "conservatives cities" do; it's a false choice, Americans as whole want to preserve housing as an investment asset class. Every decision flows downward from there, and any other division is simply a distraction from the actual issue.
- kelnos 5y ago
  And that's the problem. People's basic needs should not be an investment asset class.
  - paisawalla 5y ago
    Housing may be a basic need, but ample housing with a convenient commute is not. Proponents of change need to do a better job of filtering out their obvious sympathies towards wealth redistribution, and stating the problem more acutely. I'm not here to give every dishwasher and barista a 10-minute walking commute and a living room with a view of the city center.
  - EricDeb 5y ago
    totally agree. the problem is people's morals on it change when their house is up 200k
hypersoar 5y ago
GP posed a question about why affordable housing in any particular place should be a goal. I offered an answer. The market price of labor, or of anything else, does not come to us as if handed down by God. It is the result of a social calculation reflecting the things our society values and how much it values them. The fact that MANGA engineers are paid more than teachers is informed by how much we've decided teachers are worth. If everybody woke up tomorrow and decided teachers were more important than we thought today, then teachers would probably get paid more. Our societal values feed into our prices. In this way, we are morally culpable for the consequences of this calculation, and it is incumbent upon us to change things of the results are unjust. For example, by taking a bunch of money from rich people and giving it to poor people. Or by creating conditions for widely-available affordable housing. And I'm not just saying we "guarantee" the housing. We have the state go in and build it. By the way, I live in Seattle, which raised it's minimum wage to $15 a few years ago to much doomsaying. Research after the fact found no effect on unemployment. It begins to seem to me like the style of laissez-faire economics that have dominated politics for decades (which I recognize may not have much to do with academic economics) is full of shit. And, yeah, you better believe I care about feelings. Feelings are the filter through which all human experience flows. The economy exists for us, not us for it What good is strong growth if the system that brings it about makes us all miserable?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

The free market adjusts to its demand you know. So its not that companies need the cheap labor. The cheap labor demands to live there. And thusly the companies exploit that.