6 ms·

I'm struggling to follow your arguments. "Boomers don't like immigrants/workers, therefore life is getting really expensive" doesn't really sound like good rea

by zizee 4y ago

I'm struggling to follow your arguments. "Boomers don't like immigrants/workers, therefore life is getting really expensive" doesn't really sound like good reasoning. If the population is shrinking, demographics doesn't explain it by itself. Housing should be getting cheaper if there are less people competing for it. There must be another factor here.

bobthepanda 4y ago
You’re forgetting household size. As with all wealthy countries, household size has fallen in Portugal over the past few decades, so the same amount of people needs more house. This is especially true in the context of empty nest retirees.
- zizee 4y ago
  So that could be one of the extra factors that we're looking for. People want/expect more, which has caused people to have to pay more. But I'm doubtful that it is going to account for a lot of the cost of living issue in Portugal. I'd still like the GP to connect the dots for me on his "it's all demographics" argument. It sounds like are argument you hear on Reddit.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    I think you're missing the point. For example, when my siblings were kids we all lived in 1 house. I have 3 siblings so there were 6 of us including my parents. In 1 house. As we graduated from college we moved out. Now there were 6 of us in 5 houses. Beyond the raw house count, you're going to need more space. Multi-bedroom homes have shared common space. The house we grew up in had 1 dining room, 1 kitchen, 1 living room, 4 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms. If we each moved out on our own, we now needed a minimum of 5 dining rooms, 5 kitchens, 5 living rooms, 5 bedrooms, and 5 bathrooms. The number of people is the same. Still just 6. But we needed more housing and more space since we didn't share common space anymore. We didn't expect more than we had before (well, beyond the practicalities - it's difficult to share a bathroom with someone you don't live with), we expected the same as we had before we moved out.
    - mike50 4y ago
      You don't need a dinning room. That's a luxury feature. It is possible to share bathrooms if you build housing more like school dooms or single room occupancy.
      - jfim 4y ago
        Having a place to eat at home is not a luxury feature, unless the city has a population density that is high enough to support having a broad array of dining options that are open for most of the day. Tokyo is one example of such a city, but having restaurants that are open 24x7 is not common at all in Europe.
        sokoloff 4y ago
        Having a place to eat != having a dining room. Growing up (middle-class; both parents were teachers), we used our dining room to eat maybe 3 times a year. We ate around 1000 meals/year at the kitchen table and maybe 3 at the dining room table.
    - II2II 4y ago
      Most younger people share accommodations (e.g. have a roommate). Most older people share accommodations (e.g. have a family). There is also some, for the lack of a more sensitive word, attrition as time goes on. Yes, your family has grown and the amount of space your family needs in order to maintain their quality of life has increased. Yet it has only increased by a relatively small amount. I am also going to echo what was said earlier: dining rooms are not a necessity. They are mainly intended for people who entertain guests. Many apartments and smaller family homes don't even include a dining room, since the expectation is that people will eat in the kitchen.
      - bobthepanda 4y ago
        Housing supply doesn’t grow by all that much though, so a “relatively small amount” is enough to tighten a market. In any case, censuses define a household as people living together in a unit, which would account for roommates. Portugal has gone from 3.7 in 1960 to 2.6 in 2011. Housing 10.3M people at 3.7 requires 2.8m units; 2.6 requires 4m units. And that may be just what Portuguese people have to put up with, but not their desired end state; if they were at the EU average of 2.2, then it would require 4.6m units.
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    Besides what bcrosby says, old people hold on to real estate "as an investment". In many cases they actively prefer that it be unoccupied, because occupants complain and want repairs done, and so on. Or, in the case of "world cities" like London, wealthy (nearly all old) people from shaky and shady regimes around the world buy them as places to escape to if need be. As well as falling household size in occupied dwellings, the proportion of unoccupied dwellings in these cities increases far above the percentage normal for the delays inherent in ordinary buying and selling. IIRC Paris is attempting to combat this with a surtax on dwellings unoccupied for long periods.
tuatoru 4y ago
"Boomers don't like immigrants/workers, therefore life is getting really expensive" mischaracterises my argument. In hindsight I should have left out superfluous phrases. The fully elaborated argument is long and somewhat nuanced. If you want a soundbite, how's this: "Boomers own all the stuff (to a first approximation). Two other things: first, due to their wealth they can outbid Zoomers for real estate as it comes onto the market. (Having someone live in the proprty is entirely optional.) Second, boomers are adept at protecting their wealth by keeping real estate scarce and taxes on real estate negligible, as they have always been." Or: people are not competing for houses, piles of money are. The bigger piles are winning. Edit to add: Demographics comes into it because the Boomers are the first generation in history to be so economically significant in their old age. Before the boomers, life expectancy was about the same as retirement age, or younger. Houses passed on to the next generation much sooner in their life cycle, often as they were just starting to have children of their own. Now, children can themselves be retired before parents die and leave them the house. Often, perhaps usually, are, these days. The market weakness of new-household-forming adults (the 18-49 age group) is one consequence. We are in uncharted territory, demographically, this century.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Isn't it weird that we allow home/land ownership to a family/individual in perpetuity and then complain about high prices and scarcity for newcomers? Just think about it for a second, we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least). How is this nothing else but blatant feudalism? And how is it still allowed? Royal families and landlords were beheaded in the past by angry mobs over abusing this system for their personal gain. Why don't we have taxes or a system in place to prevent this accumulation of land by those who got in the game early? Why can't we just lease land instead of allowing land ownership in perpetuity? Like, "this land is leased to you/your family for the next 100 years, after that it goes on to the market again where your offspring will have the chance to lease it again if they wish at the future market rate". Something like that, as our current system is basically a zero sum game which just encourages land hoarding through inheritance. Those who's families go cheap land for peanuts ~100 years ago, are now leveraged to acquire even more of it while those born now without family wealth have no leverage to buy anything. Insane! Imagine you have to start paying Monopoly from square one, while others get to continue where their parents left off. How is this fair? Why don't we have a system that resets this real-estate monopoly board every generation or so? With our current ways, instead of creating a system that rewards individuals through hard work and innovation that contribute to society and human-kind, we're creating a system that encourages asset hoarding and rent-seeking that contribute nothing to humanity, rapidly going back to feudalism, where a few landlords, both corporate and private, will own all of the available land, and most of the people will be serfs for life, without the chance of ever owning anything, no matter how hard they work. So, again, why do we allow people to own pieces of Planet Earth in perpetuity, virtually tax free?

by zizee 4y ago

bobthepanda 4y ago

You’re forgetting household size. As with all wealthy countries, household size has fallen in Portugal over the past few decades, so the same amount of people needs more house. This is especially true in the context of empty nest retirees.

zizee 4y ago
So that could be one of the extra factors that we're looking for. People want/expect more, which has caused people to have to pay more. But I'm doubtful that it is going to account for a lot of the cost of living issue in Portugal. I'd still like the GP to connect the dots for me on his "it's all demographics" argument. It sounds like are argument you hear on Reddit.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  I think you're missing the point. For example, when my siblings were kids we all lived in 1 house. I have 3 siblings so there were 6 of us including my parents. In 1 house. As we graduated from college we moved out. Now there were 6 of us in 5 houses. Beyond the raw house count, you're going to need more space. Multi-bedroom homes have shared common space. The house we grew up in had 1 dining room, 1 kitchen, 1 living room, 4 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms. If we each moved out on our own, we now needed a minimum of 5 dining rooms, 5 kitchens, 5 living rooms, 5 bedrooms, and 5 bathrooms. The number of people is the same. Still just 6. But we needed more housing and more space since we didn't share common space anymore. We didn't expect more than we had before (well, beyond the practicalities - it's difficult to share a bathroom with someone you don't live with), we expected the same as we had before we moved out.
  - mike50 4y ago
    You don't need a dinning room. That's a luxury feature. It is possible to share bathrooms if you build housing more like school dooms or single room occupancy.
    - jfim 4y ago
      Having a place to eat at home is not a luxury feature, unless the city has a population density that is high enough to support having a broad array of dining options that are open for most of the day. Tokyo is one example of such a city, but having restaurants that are open 24x7 is not common at all in Europe.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        Having a place to eat != having a dining room. Growing up (middle-class; both parents were teachers), we used our dining room to eat maybe 3 times a year. We ate around 1000 meals/year at the kitchen table and maybe 3 at the dining room table.
  - II2II 4y ago
    Most younger people share accommodations (e.g. have a roommate). Most older people share accommodations (e.g. have a family). There is also some, for the lack of a more sensitive word, attrition as time goes on. Yes, your family has grown and the amount of space your family needs in order to maintain their quality of life has increased. Yet it has only increased by a relatively small amount. I am also going to echo what was said earlier: dining rooms are not a necessity. They are mainly intended for people who entertain guests. Many apartments and smaller family homes don't even include a dining room, since the expectation is that people will eat in the kitchen.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      Housing supply doesn’t grow by all that much though, so a “relatively small amount” is enough to tighten a market. In any case, censuses define a household as people living together in a unit, which would account for roommates. Portugal has gone from 3.7 in 1960 to 2.6 in 2011. Housing 10.3M people at 3.7 requires 2.8m units; 2.6 requires 4m units. And that may be just what Portuguese people have to put up with, but not their desired end state; if they were at the EU average of 2.2, then it would require 4.6m units.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  Besides what bcrosby says, old people hold on to real estate "as an investment". In many cases they actively prefer that it be unoccupied, because occupants complain and want repairs done, and so on. Or, in the case of "world cities" like London, wealthy (nearly all old) people from shaky and shady regimes around the world buy them as places to escape to if need be. As well as falling household size in occupied dwellings, the proportion of unoccupied dwellings in these cities increases far above the percentage normal for the delays inherent in ordinary buying and selling. IIRC Paris is attempting to combat this with a surtax on dwellings unoccupied for long periods.

tuatoru 4y ago

"Boomers don't like immigrants/workers, therefore life is getting really expensive" mischaracterises my argument. In hindsight I should have left out superfluous phrases. The fully elaborated argument is long and somewhat nuanced. If you want a soundbite, how's this: "Boomers own all the stuff (to a first approximation). Two other things: first, due to their wealth they can outbid Zoomers for real estate as it comes onto the market. (Having someone live in the proprty is entirely optional.) Second, boomers are adept at protecting their wealth by keeping real estate scarce and taxes on real estate negligible, as they have always been." Or: people are not competing for houses, piles of money are. The bigger piles are winning. Edit to add: Demographics comes into it because the Boomers are the first generation in history to be so economically significant in their old age. Before the boomers, life expectancy was about the same as retirement age, or younger. Houses passed on to the next generation much sooner in their life cycle, often as they were just starting to have children of their own. Now, children can themselves be retired before parents die and leave them the house. Often, perhaps usually, are, these days. The market weakness of new-household-forming adults (the 18-49 age group) is one consequence. We are in uncharted territory, demographically, this century.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Isn't it weird that we allow home/land ownership to a family/individual in perpetuity and then complain about high prices and scarcity for newcomers? Just think about it for a second, we in the west allow people to buy a piece of the Planet Earth, and hold on to it forever, virtually tax free(in Western Europe at least). How is this nothing else but blatant feudalism? And how is it still allowed? Royal families and landlords were beheaded in the past by angry mobs over abusing this system for their personal gain. Why don't we have taxes or a system in place to prevent this accumulation of land by those who got in the game early? Why can't we just lease land instead of allowing land ownership in perpetuity? Like, "this land is leased to you/your family for the next 100 years, after that it goes on to the market again where your offspring will have the chance to lease it again if they wish at the future market rate". Something like that, as our current system is basically a zero sum game which just encourages land hoarding through inheritance. Those who's families go cheap land for peanuts ~100 years ago, are now leveraged to acquire even more of it while those born now without family wealth have no leverage to buy anything. Insane! Imagine you have to start paying Monopoly from square one, while others get to continue where their parents left off. How is this fair? Why don't we have a system that resets this real-estate monopoly board every generation or so? With our current ways, instead of creating a system that rewards individuals through hard work and innovation that contribute to society and human-kind, we're creating a system that encourages asset hoarding and rent-seeking that contribute nothing to humanity, rapidly going back to feudalism, where a few landlords, both corporate and private, will own all of the available land, and most of the people will be serfs for life, without the chance of ever owning anything, no matter how hard they work. So, again, why do we allow people to own pieces of Planet Earth in perpetuity, virtually tax free?