5 ms·

Particularly egregious given that they ignore the Terner Center Study's main finding, which is that the #1 predictor of the cost efficiency of housing is densit

Particularly egregious given that they ignore the Terner Center Study's main finding, which is that the #1 predictor of the cost efficiency of housing is density. If you want cheaper housing, build it more densely. Whether it's union construction or not is a rounding error. This reads to me to be either deliberately anti-labor or someone who didn't want to make the obvious but hard to fix point in favor or making a divisive and clickbaity one.

klipt 4y ago
> If you want cheaper housing, build it more densely. NIMBYs hate this one weird trick for cheaper housing!
- atoav 4y ago
  I think globally it is quite known how to build cheaply while keeping the quality up. The issue is that there are not many incentives to build 20 cheap housing units where you could build 5 high prized ones. Especially if you already have high prized ones nearby and you don't want to "stain" them with the existence of "these people". Something that works well in Vienna/Austria (and elsewhere) is state/municipiality-owned housing and laws that dedicate a certain percentage of the municipial area to cheap housing. This way (if I recall correctly), whenever a high prized thing is built, they have to negotiate with the city where the cheap housing goes. Into the same spot? A different, less valuable, but bigger lot? The unexpected benefit of this is that you mix different social classes of people which is ultimately good for society. Many issues between the social classes today stem from a lack of visibility and shared living spaces.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    This is what the progressive areas in the US are trying to do as well and are being attacked with an incoherent right wing response about how that obvious and simple solution is actually an elitist, counterproductive, authoritarian blah blah blah, because they represent the people who dont want to live near poor people.
    - namlem 4y ago
      It's not just the right levying those attacks. Wealthy progressives making the exact same arguments.
      - jefurii 4y ago
        Wealthy liberals is more like it. Liberals != the left.
        cheriot 4y ago
        At least in my part of Califonia, the "progressive" label is owned by NIMBYs. It drives me nuts; just conservatism with different language.
ETH_start 4y ago
Anti-union is not anti-labor. Unionization makes it harder for those not employed in an industry to get their foot in the door, by reducing turnover, and by reducing the growth of jobs produced by the industry.
- mjmahone17 4y ago
  Why would unions reduce the growth of jobs? By default unions want more workers, by ensuring things like 40 hour weeks and overtime pay (to encourage companies to hire more people). I could see if some unions want to limit membership in case pre-existing union membership is required to be hired, but at that point it’s the trade association aspect of the trade union that’s the problem. But you can probably solve this by allowing other unions in the same trade, so that unions that are too closed end up having to compete with unions that train enough people to do more work. Maybe there’s a reason this doesn’t work that I’m not seeing though?
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    >>Why would unions reduce the growth of jobs Because they reduce the profitability of firms, and thereby reduce investment in expanding production. This is a long-observed effect: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-232X.1992.tb00299.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-232X....
    - wahern 4y ago
      I'm sure it's a long-observed correlation, but corporate anti-union sentiment could easily explain much if not all of that effect. Try translating it to a situation like Germany, where AFAIU industrial labor (union and non-union) has thrived across the board, at least relative to the U.S. (U.S. has still has a strong industrial base in GDP terms, but even where unions are non existent its share of the labor market has been in a long decline much steeper than in places where unions are stronger generally.) I'm looking for a legal source for reading the paper but not finding any. (e.g. not in JSTOR.) Can you say how they came to their conclusion--does it specifically show causality or is it simply an observational correlation that neatly matches predictions from a classical economic perspective? I guess in some ways I'm splitting hairs, because if U.S. corporate sentiment is inherently anti-union, then the logic behind investment strategies is simply their logic, whether it's a necessary in some universal sense or not. And if we're not going to peek behind the curtains, there's nothing else to say. But it does matter when discussing what's possible for U.S. labor markets given sufficiently comprehensive cultural change. Racism is endemic and systemic, there are no simple solutions, yet we don't simply stand back and say, "it is what it is, there's nothing we can do about it". (Well, some people say that, but it's not generally considered an honest assessment.) Neither do we say that inducing change would lead to a more inefficient economy, even when there's some evidence showing policy-induced disruptions and dislocations with negative effects. The nearly universal assumption is that improved social equity (as a general matter; obviously we have trouble agreeing on the meaning of that nebulous concept, but few honestly reduce it to merely meaning "whatever the market produces") would result in a more efficient economy and more productivity, we just need to do a better job of it and work harder at threading the needle. It turns out that there are many "naturally" arising power disparities between employee and employer that result in rather inefficient labor system equilibriums, slavery and serfdom being the most obvious, if extreme, cases.

klipt 4y ago

> If you want cheaper housing, build it more densely. NIMBYs hate this one weird trick for cheaper housing!

atoav 4y ago
I think globally it is quite known how to build cheaply while keeping the quality up. The issue is that there are not many incentives to build 20 cheap housing units where you could build 5 high prized ones. Especially if you already have high prized ones nearby and you don't want to "stain" them with the existence of "these people". Something that works well in Vienna/Austria (and elsewhere) is state/municipiality-owned housing and laws that dedicate a certain percentage of the municipial area to cheap housing. This way (if I recall correctly), whenever a high prized thing is built, they have to negotiate with the city where the cheap housing goes. Into the same spot? A different, less valuable, but bigger lot? The unexpected benefit of this is that you mix different social classes of people which is ultimately good for society. Many issues between the social classes today stem from a lack of visibility and shared living spaces.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This is what the progressive areas in the US are trying to do as well and are being attacked with an incoherent right wing response about how that obvious and simple solution is actually an elitist, counterproductive, authoritarian blah blah blah, because they represent the people who dont want to live near poor people.
  - namlem 4y ago
    It's not just the right levying those attacks. Wealthy progressives making the exact same arguments.
    - jefurii 4y ago
      Wealthy liberals is more like it. Liberals != the left.
      - cheriot 4y ago
        At least in my part of Califonia, the "progressive" label is owned by NIMBYs. It drives me nuts; just conservatism with different language.

ETH_start 4y ago

Anti-union is not anti-labor. Unionization makes it harder for those not employed in an industry to get their foot in the door, by reducing turnover, and by reducing the growth of jobs produced by the industry.

mjmahone17 4y ago
Why would unions reduce the growth of jobs? By default unions want more workers, by ensuring things like 40 hour weeks and overtime pay (to encourage companies to hire more people). I could see if some unions want to limit membership in case pre-existing union membership is required to be hired, but at that point it’s the trade association aspect of the trade union that’s the problem. But you can probably solve this by allowing other unions in the same trade, so that unions that are too closed end up having to compete with unions that train enough people to do more work. Maybe there’s a reason this doesn’t work that I’m not seeing though?
- ETH_start 4y ago
  >>Why would unions reduce the growth of jobs Because they reduce the profitability of firms, and thereby reduce investment in expanding production. This is a long-observed effect: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-232X.1992.tb00299.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-232X....
  - wahern 4y ago
    I'm sure it's a long-observed correlation, but corporate anti-union sentiment could easily explain much if not all of that effect. Try translating it to a situation like Germany, where AFAIU industrial labor (union and non-union) has thrived across the board, at least relative to the U.S. (U.S. has still has a strong industrial base in GDP terms, but even where unions are non existent its share of the labor market has been in a long decline much steeper than in places where unions are stronger generally.) I'm looking for a legal source for reading the paper but not finding any. (e.g. not in JSTOR.) Can you say how they came to their conclusion--does it specifically show causality or is it simply an observational correlation that neatly matches predictions from a classical economic perspective? I guess in some ways I'm splitting hairs, because if U.S. corporate sentiment is inherently anti-union, then the logic behind investment strategies is simply their logic, whether it's a necessary in some universal sense or not. And if we're not going to peek behind the curtains, there's nothing else to say. But it does matter when discussing what's possible for U.S. labor markets given sufficiently comprehensive cultural change. Racism is endemic and systemic, there are no simple solutions, yet we don't simply stand back and say, "it is what it is, there's nothing we can do about it". (Well, some people say that, but it's not generally considered an honest assessment.) Neither do we say that inducing change would lead to a more inefficient economy, even when there's some evidence showing policy-induced disruptions and dislocations with negative effects. The nearly universal assumption is that improved social equity (as a general matter; obviously we have trouble agreeing on the meaning of that nebulous concept, but few honestly reduce it to merely meaning "whatever the market produces") would result in a more efficient economy and more productivity, we just need to do a better job of it and work harder at threading the needle. It turns out that there are many "naturally" arising power disparities between employee and employer that result in rather inefficient labor system equilibriums, slavery and serfdom being the most obvious, if extreme, cases.