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Increasing housing supply is like building more roads to reduce traffic: it doesn’t work. Humans reproduce to fill all available habitat. More humans, no tangib

Increasing housing supply is like building more roads to reduce traffic: it doesn’t work. Humans reproduce to fill all available habitat. More humans, no tangible benefit, worse Earth.

Plasmoid 5y ago
I'm pretty sure most people don't decide to have another kid because there's an apartment vacancy in San Francisco.
jelliclesfarm 5y ago
'increasing housing supply' is code for 'colluding with the state of california to increase their tax monies and property taxes because they havent been able to do their jobs and manage state pension liabilities'.
- sam_schneider 5y ago
  Well, voters capped their ability to make money on property tax, so is that the state's fault? (Also it has a budget surplus?)
  - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
    property tax is different from the rest of the budget. perhaps you should look into how the state of california manages its budget. there are paid professionals and researchers who will do the research the work for you.
    - ericd 5y ago
      I think a lot of changes in the state finances resulted from prop 13. There’s a great podcast interview series with Jerry Brown where he talks about the passage, and the chaos that ensued, worth a listen.
      - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
        Prop 13 happened in 1978 after thousands of senior Californians became homeless after retirement. It was meant to protect tax paying Californians from being evicted from homes.
        ericd 5y ago
        Sure, and it was terribly designed if the sole purpose was to save seniors on fixed incomes from losing their homes. And anyway, that’s beside the point of it messing up the state’s finances, isn’t it?
        jelliclesfarm 5y ago
        It was fairly designed. The alternative is to kick people out right after they finish paying their mortgages and have retired. Is that what you’d call a good design? That’s precisely the point about the state’s finances. You have to go back to Gov.Gray Davis disastrous handling of the state pension funds that has led to staggering unfunded pension liabilities. [..] The California Pension system is way under water and in dire need of reform. The state's unfunded pension and retirement liabilities approach $1 trillion, or roughly $80,000 for each taxpayer in the state.[..] From 2016: https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-unfunded/ https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-unfunded/ : Understanding California's public pension debt 2018: https://amp.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article199693069.html https://amp.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article199693069.h... : The pension nightmare for California’s cities is getting scarier There was a whole investigative piece done in 2015-16. Search for Gov.Gray Davis + ‘unfunded pension liabilities’ + California It’s been downhill for a while and mostly because the wealth creators are not even eligible to vote in California. Ask the right questions to get the right answers..that’s my guiding principle. Otherwise, everything is just noise.
        ericd 5y ago
        Nope, that wasn’t the only alternative. If it was really meant for seniors, they should’ve made it age-based, and they should’ve set reasonable limits - the yearly tax exemption should’ve been set at a 1 bedroom condo level, with them paying whatever the excess is. This would’ve encouraged the behavior many seniors in other places engage in - downsizing when their kids leave home, to allow family-sized housing stock to open up for people with growing families. And they certainly shouldn’t have made the tax exemption inheritable. And it shouldn’t apply to corporations. As it’s designed, the whole “don’t let seniors lose their homes” argument is pretty obviously just political cover for a pretty egregious wealth transfer scheme. No argument about the pension liability problem, CA’s governance issues are a big reason we decided not to put down roots long term. Prop 13 is one of the bigger examples of that, in our minds.
sam_schneider 5y ago
I think this is sort of a memory bandwith/memory capacity metaphor mix.
jjcon 5y ago
Have you seen Japan recently?

Increasing housing supply is like building more roads to reduce traffic: it doesn’t work. Humans reproduce to fill all available habitat. More humans, no tangible benefit, worse Earth.

Plasmoid 5y ago

I'm pretty sure most people don't decide to have another kid because there's an apartment vacancy in San Francisco.

jelliclesfarm 5y ago

'increasing housing supply' is code for 'colluding with the state of california to increase their tax monies and property taxes because they havent been able to do their jobs and manage state pension liabilities'.

sam_schneider 5y ago
Well, voters capped their ability to make money on property tax, so is that the state's fault? (Also it has a budget surplus?)
- jelliclesfarm 5y ago
  property tax is different from the rest of the budget. perhaps you should look into how the state of california manages its budget. there are paid professionals and researchers who will do the research the work for you.
  - ericd 5y ago
    I think a lot of changes in the state finances resulted from prop 13. There’s a great podcast interview series with Jerry Brown where he talks about the passage, and the chaos that ensued, worth a listen.
    - jelliclesfarm 5y ago
      Prop 13 happened in 1978 after thousands of senior Californians became homeless after retirement. It was meant to protect tax paying Californians from being evicted from homes.
      - ericd 5y ago
        Sure, and it was terribly designed if the sole purpose was to save seniors on fixed incomes from losing their homes. And anyway, that’s beside the point of it messing up the state’s finances, isn’t it?
        jelliclesfarm 5y ago
        It was fairly designed. The alternative is to kick people out right after they finish paying their mortgages and have retired. Is that what you’d call a good design? That’s precisely the point about the state’s finances. You have to go back to Gov.Gray Davis disastrous handling of the state pension funds that has led to staggering unfunded pension liabilities. [..] The California Pension system is way under water and in dire need of reform. The state's unfunded pension and retirement liabilities approach $1 trillion, or roughly $80,000 for each taxpayer in the state.[..] From 2016: https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-unfunded/ https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-pension-unfunded/ : Understanding California's public pension debt 2018: https://amp.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article199693069.html https://amp.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article199693069.h... : The pension nightmare for California’s cities is getting scarier There was a whole investigative piece done in 2015-16. Search for Gov.Gray Davis + ‘unfunded pension liabilities’ + California It’s been downhill for a while and mostly because the wealth creators are not even eligible to vote in California. Ask the right questions to get the right answers..that’s my guiding principle. Otherwise, everything is just noise.
        ericd 5y ago
        Nope, that wasn’t the only alternative. If it was really meant for seniors, they should’ve made it age-based, and they should’ve set reasonable limits - the yearly tax exemption should’ve been set at a 1 bedroom condo level, with them paying whatever the excess is. This would’ve encouraged the behavior many seniors in other places engage in - downsizing when their kids leave home, to allow family-sized housing stock to open up for people with growing families. And they certainly shouldn’t have made the tax exemption inheritable. And it shouldn’t apply to corporations. As it’s designed, the whole “don’t let seniors lose their homes” argument is pretty obviously just political cover for a pretty egregious wealth transfer scheme. No argument about the pension liability problem, CA’s governance issues are a big reason we decided not to put down roots long term. Prop 13 is one of the bigger examples of that, in our minds.

sam_schneider 5y ago

I think this is sort of a memory bandwith/memory capacity metaphor mix.

jjcon 5y ago

Have you seen Japan recently?