8 ms·

Japan has plenty of societal ills, but at least Tokyo has been doing amazing on this front.

by VHRanger 4y ago

beebmam 4y ago
China has an enormous amount of housing. Their prices are still sky high
- credit_guy 4y ago
  Housing in ghost cities doesn't count. Housing needs to be available where the jobs are.
  - pif 4y ago
    I think it's time to reverse the equation: jobs have to be available where housing is! In other words, we must learn how to improve the economy without turning the cities into antlers.
- svachalek 4y ago
  There's a huge cultural difference there though -- people don't trust stocks, bonds, or bank accounts. Housing is the only investment most people will consider.
  - ianlevesque 4y ago
    Nor should they, cultural or not. Look how the government destroyed the Ant group recently. When they can unilaterally do that, how can you find a safe stock?
    - majani 4y ago
      Land in China is all leased from the government, so there's no escaping government risk there without leaving the country
  - hinkley 4y ago
    There are old men who still remember their neighbors being dragged out of those houses, tried, and executed by Mao's kangaroo courts. Most martial arts schools with ties to China have stories of expatriation or of practicing in the dark in basements. All those houses bought in Vancouver aren't just about financial investments, they're also a potential bolt-hole if things get ugly again.
    - btilly 4y ago
      Also those houses are being bought with money being smuggled out of China. For all of the reasons that patio11 gives in https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-aml-compliance/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-..., real estate is an excellent investment for money whose provenance you wish to be hard to discover.
    - redmorphium 4y ago
      This is a negative way to look at China's history. As a Chinese-American, whose family and friends all profited greatly from China's rise, I do wonder, how much of that profit was just being lucky enough to support the "winning team," and how much blood was shed on the other side. I guess the only true mindset is a neutral one.
      - hinkley 4y ago
        We have a model for that in your birth country (American Civil War). But from my fractured knowledge of Chinese history, there's been a lot less backpedaling vis-a-vis the Civil War on ideological differences between the winning and losing side (and we mostly lament those as regression instead of progress). In China, things have come back. People who escaped were invited back with promises of better treatment, even given platforms (eg, martial arts) but who knows what we Earthlings have lost from people who didn't. Biomechanics, biology, art, technology, philosophy...
  - pzone 4y ago
    The Chinese situation is caused by government rather than by their culture. Chinese corporations are forced into inefficient state-mandated investments and provide meager rates of returns for shareholders. They get tons of shiny public infrastructure while savers are given nothing, and are not allowed to invest internationally. In other words, it is pure financial repression.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    Sounds a lot like the US to me.
- seunosewa 4y ago
  Why do you think that is?
  - sgt101 4y ago
    I have an answer: there is nothing else to invest in for the average person.
- samstave 4y ago
  When very few can purchase a luxury suit in a ghost city in china, the infra build costs were high, but the available buyer population is way fn low - its inverse to supply&demand when it comes to chinese real estate. The buyers would have to fund ALL the infra to power, water, feed such ghost city homes, and where will they work? I used to work with a guy in SF that had a consultancy that would bring chinese 'students' on tours of the US to various universities to have them pick where they wanted to go to school. These were the children of chinese oligarchs - and they would land in SFO with luggage full of cash - and, not knowing how things worked in the US, would jusr bribe their way through every transaction at ~$10,000 a time... The chinese oligarchs own more of america than you may know.
arcticbull 4y ago
Federalized zoning rules. Congress has the authority. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI
- parineum 4y ago
  One size fits all zoning regulations for rural Montana, Manhattan and the suburbs of Los Angeles.
  - carom 4y ago
    Yes. It is your property, build it out as dense as you wish. There is not the demand in rural Montana to build out a 160 acre ranch with apartments. Just remove density restrictions and let people build to meet demand.
    - parineum 4y ago
      You're proposing removing zoning, parent is proposing federalized zoning.
      - arcticbull 4y ago
        Basically the same thing in this case. You can't have no zoning, but having a baseline bare minimum set at the federal level without carveouts for specific neighborhoods or districts is mostly just about superseding the authority of councils to mess around. We need to use a state or federal authority to take the power of municipalities in the same way the builders remedy works.
  - thequadehunter 4y ago
    What is substantively different about any of these places that require different zoning laws? Do you think someone is just going to build a mega skyscraper in rural Montana because they can?
    - 4y ago
kurthr 4y ago
Every time I see this I have to laugh. If you live in Tokyo, I'd love to hear your anecdotal experience. I have stayed and visited japan for the last 35 years, and find all of the "Tokyo is so affordable and buildable" is hilarious. The breathless articles I read about it leave out fundamental aspects (the incredible density, the absolute destruction 70 years ago, the corruption [especially in Shinjuku], the size of the "livable apartments", the need to rebuild anything from before 1980 for earthquake safety, that youth population falling by half, the stagnation of wages), and the fact that most people who can leave Tokyo to raise children do (even if it means commuting 2hrs each way every day on a train). This just doesn't match anywhere in the US or frankly almost anywhere else in the world. I know 2 people who actually still live in Tokyo. One is a 28 year old single foreigner, and the other is stuck in a 100 year mortgage with their extended family. All the rest moved.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  > and the fact that most people who can leave Tokyo to raise children do (even if it means commuting 2hrs each way every day on a train). Is that why the population is 14M - 34M in the metro? Bigger than every American city and about the size of all of Canada combined? They just can't get out to where it should by all accounts be cheaper? Is there a fence or something?
  - kurthr 4y ago
    It takes too long to get there by train. Shinkansen is too expensive for daily commuting (for normal people). Two hours each way sleeping on a commuter train is about the limit of what people can tolerate. I love Tokyo and the rest of Japan. It's amazing, but if you put any other culture in Tokyo, it would be unlivable.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  So why is the population of Tokyo steadily increasing while the population of Japan overall is decreasing? Is it all just foreigners explaining 2+% growth rate in recent years despite them making up less than 3% of the cities total population? Or are the people stuck in 100 year mortgages just having lots more kids than everybody else?

Japan has plenty of societal ills, but at least Tokyo has been doing amazing on this front.

beebmam 4y ago

China has an enormous amount of housing. Their prices are still sky high

credit_guy 4y ago
Housing in ghost cities doesn't count. Housing needs to be available where the jobs are.
- pif 4y ago
  I think it's time to reverse the equation: jobs have to be available where housing is! In other words, we must learn how to improve the economy without turning the cities into antlers.
svachalek 4y ago
There's a huge cultural difference there though -- people don't trust stocks, bonds, or bank accounts. Housing is the only investment most people will consider.
- ianlevesque 4y ago
  Nor should they, cultural or not. Look how the government destroyed the Ant group recently. When they can unilaterally do that, how can you find a safe stock?
  - majani 4y ago
    Land in China is all leased from the government, so there's no escaping government risk there without leaving the country
- hinkley 4y ago
  There are old men who still remember their neighbors being dragged out of those houses, tried, and executed by Mao's kangaroo courts. Most martial arts schools with ties to China have stories of expatriation or of practicing in the dark in basements. All those houses bought in Vancouver aren't just about financial investments, they're also a potential bolt-hole if things get ugly again.
  - btilly 4y ago
    Also those houses are being bought with money being smuggled out of China. For all of the reasons that patio11 gives in https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-aml-compliance/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-..., real estate is an excellent investment for money whose provenance you wish to be hard to discover.
  - redmorphium 4y ago
    This is a negative way to look at China's history. As a Chinese-American, whose family and friends all profited greatly from China's rise, I do wonder, how much of that profit was just being lucky enough to support the "winning team," and how much blood was shed on the other side. I guess the only true mindset is a neutral one.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      We have a model for that in your birth country (American Civil War). But from my fractured knowledge of Chinese history, there's been a lot less backpedaling vis-a-vis the Civil War on ideological differences between the winning and losing side (and we mostly lament those as regression instead of progress). In China, things have come back. People who escaped were invited back with promises of better treatment, even given platforms (eg, martial arts) but who knows what we Earthlings have lost from people who didn't. Biomechanics, biology, art, technology, philosophy...
- pzone 4y ago
  The Chinese situation is caused by government rather than by their culture. Chinese corporations are forced into inefficient state-mandated investments and provide meager rates of returns for shareholders. They get tons of shiny public infrastructure while savers are given nothing, and are not allowed to invest internationally. In other words, it is pure financial repression.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  Sounds a lot like the US to me.
seunosewa 4y ago
Why do you think that is?
- sgt101 4y ago
  I have an answer: there is nothing else to invest in for the average person.
samstave 4y ago
When very few can purchase a luxury suit in a ghost city in china, the infra build costs were high, but the available buyer population is way fn low - its inverse to supply&demand when it comes to chinese real estate. The buyers would have to fund ALL the infra to power, water, feed such ghost city homes, and where will they work? I used to work with a guy in SF that had a consultancy that would bring chinese 'students' on tours of the US to various universities to have them pick where they wanted to go to school. These were the children of chinese oligarchs - and they would land in SFO with luggage full of cash - and, not knowing how things worked in the US, would jusr bribe their way through every transaction at ~$10,000 a time... The chinese oligarchs own more of america than you may know.

arcticbull 4y ago

Federalized zoning rules. Congress has the authority. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI

parineum 4y ago
One size fits all zoning regulations for rural Montana, Manhattan and the suburbs of Los Angeles.
- carom 4y ago
  Yes. It is your property, build it out as dense as you wish. There is not the demand in rural Montana to build out a 160 acre ranch with apartments. Just remove density restrictions and let people build to meet demand.
  - parineum 4y ago
    You're proposing removing zoning, parent is proposing federalized zoning.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      Basically the same thing in this case. You can't have no zoning, but having a baseline bare minimum set at the federal level without carveouts for specific neighborhoods or districts is mostly just about superseding the authority of councils to mess around. We need to use a state or federal authority to take the power of municipalities in the same way the builders remedy works.
- thequadehunter 4y ago
  What is substantively different about any of these places that require different zoning laws? Do you think someone is just going to build a mega skyscraper in rural Montana because they can?
  - 4y ago

kurthr 4y ago

Every time I see this I have to laugh. If you live in Tokyo, I'd love to hear your anecdotal experience. I have stayed and visited japan for the last 35 years, and find all of the "Tokyo is so affordable and buildable" is hilarious. The breathless articles I read about it leave out fundamental aspects (the incredible density, the absolute destruction 70 years ago, the corruption [especially in Shinjuku], the size of the "livable apartments", the need to rebuild anything from before 1980 for earthquake safety, that youth population falling by half, the stagnation of wages), and the fact that most people who can leave Tokyo to raise children do (even if it means commuting 2hrs each way every day on a train). This just doesn't match anywhere in the US or frankly almost anywhere else in the world. I know 2 people who actually still live in Tokyo. One is a 28 year old single foreigner, and the other is stuck in a 100 year mortgage with their extended family. All the rest moved.

arcticbull 4y ago
> and the fact that most people who can leave Tokyo to raise children do (even if it means commuting 2hrs each way every day on a train). Is that why the population is 14M - 34M in the metro? Bigger than every American city and about the size of all of Canada combined? They just can't get out to where it should by all accounts be cheaper? Is there a fence or something?
- kurthr 4y ago
  It takes too long to get there by train. Shinkansen is too expensive for daily commuting (for normal people). Two hours each way sleeping on a commuter train is about the limit of what people can tolerate. I love Tokyo and the rest of Japan. It's amazing, but if you put any other culture in Tokyo, it would be unlivable.
goosedragons 4y ago
So why is the population of Tokyo steadily increasing while the population of Japan overall is decreasing? Is it all just foreigners explaining 2+% growth rate in recent years despite them making up less than 3% of the cities total population? Or are the people stuck in 100 year mortgages just having lots more kids than everybody else?