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Is the wood lobby so much stronger that somehow ordinary American families are punished in some obscure way for daring to have a house made out of steel or conc
by MichaelZuo 3y ago
Is the wood lobby so much stronger that somehow ordinary American families are punished in some obscure way for daring to have a house made out of steel or concrete?
- loeg 3y agoNo. American houses are built of wood for straightforward economic reasons.
- astrange 3y agoThere's some endogeneity though (sorry for the big word). Wood houses are cheaper because the lobbying got the other cheap ways to build housing made illegal. For instance, if you can't build anything more than one story, can't make an apartment, or can't run a corner store out of your house, then it's not productive enough to pay for the construction costs of anything else. Fire codes are also a lot of it. That's the kind of thing that seems reasonable, then you go back and look at old speeches and they're just saying stuff like "we must make up expensive safety laws for apartments or else black people will move in".