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Telling people to move away might be good individual advice, but it isn't a "solution" to managing a city, and it's bad for the national economy as a whole if p
by scythe 5y ago
Telling people to move away might be good individual advice, but it isn't a "solution" to managing a city, and it's bad for the national economy as a whole if people can't live in productive metropolitan areas.
Statistically, there are always going to be some growing cities and some shrinking cities, because a stochastically generated distribution like population movement should have a nonzero standard deviation. If growing cities are consistently unaffordable, that's a national problem.
- 999900000999 5y agoI have no faith in the people who run cities like LA. They have no ability, nor will to fix such a massive problem. With LA this has been in motion for decades. You let everyone say construction offends them, and make it so only luxury housing is profitable to build. This is the result. LA is uniquely horrible since you both need a car and an extremely expensive apartment. Even on the low end you're talking about $600 to $1,000 for the privilege of driving.
- carnitas 5y agoJust piling on to say dear lord La is trash. I am counting down the months until my lease is up so I can leave. I make well over 100k but nearly all of it is siphoned off for housing and I would prefer living in a third world Country because my Standard of living would be higher and the streets would be less trashed
- lotsofpulp 5y ago>If growing cities are consistently unaffordable, that's a national problem. Affordable and unaffordable is a subjective measure. Clearly there are a lot of people willing to live on the razor's edge for the benefits they perceive coastal California cities provide (and other areas with higher than average demand relative to supply).
- scythe 5y ago>Affordable and unaffordable is a subjective measure. No it isn't. Affordable and unaffordable can be defined objectively for a specific population (e.g. "Americans") by observing that population's behavior. If people avoid living somewhere due to the cost of living, it's unaffordable. There's nothing terribly ambiguous about that. The consequences can also be expressed with numbers, e.g.: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2016/12/07/zoning-reducing-american-productivity-and-making-the-poor-poorer/?sh=5f69ded249bd https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2016/12/07/zoning-r...
- lotsofpulp 5y ago>If people avoid living somewhere due to the cost of living, it's unaffordable. For the people living somewhere despite its cost of living, it is affordable. For their definition of affordable, because it is subjective. It is like the joke "I would rather be dead in <insert place> than alive in <insert another place>".
- scythe 5y ago>For the people living somewhere despite its cost of living, it is affordable. You substituted a useless definition for a useful one. Nobody cares about the affordability to a particular individual. There's probably somebody living in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco paying $500/month, but it's plainly nonsense to argue on that basis that rent in San Francisco is $500/month. Aggregate affordability is operationalized via its effect on population movements, and San Francisco is not affordable, period. Debasing the metrics won't save you, it's just frustrating to deal with people who find it convenient to deny reality.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoSo what's the solution, tax people in Iowa to cover rents in Los Angeles?