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What the end of 0% interest rates means for people who are not software engineers: - less income inequality - less competition in the housing market - less h
by dventimihasura 3y ago
What the end of 0% interest rates means for people who are not software engineers:
- less income inequality
- less competition in the housing market
- less homelessness
- bugglebeetle 3y agoI see you have not visited the great state of California.
- dventimihasura 3y agoI have lived in San Francisco for 25 years. Try again.
- in3d 3y agoGo ahead and explain how it leads to these supposed outcomes.
- dventimihasura 3y agoSure. Personally, I believe San Francisco restaurants (for example) had less ability to bid up salaries in a highly-competitive labor market while using generous endowments from VCs flush with cash in a ZIRP climate in order to weather many unprofitable quarters the way that San Francisco tech unicorns like Uber and Twitter did. I believe that San Francisco restaurants, like restaurants anywhere else, cannot survive more than a few unprofitable quarters. Besides restaurant workers, I believe this applies to education workers, retail workers, and many healthcare workers who nevertheless have to compete in the same city as tech workers for: housing, food, services, etc. I believe that contributed to the income inequality which we already know grew in San Francisco over this period. Moreover, I believe when housing prices tilt upward dramatically in the way they did in San Francisco over this period, people at the bottom margin predictably will fall off of that margin. Some of them will become homeless, and homelessness tends to intersect with substance abuse. That's what I believe tends to happen when one group of people (let's say, "tech workers") have salaries wildly divergent from everyone else who lives in that place. But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everyone benefits equally when only a subset of people get very large salaries. I dunno. What do you think?
- jackthetab 3y agoNice Beliefs. Got any data?
- dventimihasura 3y agoYes. Homelessness in San Francisco tended to diverge from the national average over this period. So did San Francisco housing prices. This was the period of many unprofitable Bay Area and San Francisco unicorns. Now, I shared my beliefs. Let's hear yours. What do you think happens when one group of people like tech workers in a city is handed large salaries that are not constrained by market forces like profitability? How does that help someone in that city who is not a tech worker?
- taxyz 3y agoCorrelation doesn't equal causation. Having lived in SF during that period, there was a lot of governmental policy that contributed to that rise in homelessness. Saw the same thing in Oregon: homelessness increased when housing prices increased but there was also measure 110 which decriminalized all drugs. SF's similarly lax policies probably have more to do with their homeless issue than their housing prices. If it were purely housing prices, these people would just move to somewhere cheaper. And before you say, they can't move, they surely could move into Oregon when meth became de facto legal. For a lot of addicts, the criminal justice system is their only chance at substance abuse help (mostly because they won't seek it on their own on the outside as we've seen in Oregon).
- dventimihasura 3y ago> Correlation doesn't equal causation. I know, but I wasn't asked for causation or proof. I was asked for data, or evidence. Presumably, I was being asked for evidence consistent with my hypothesis and unlikely to have occurred by random chance. That's what I gave. Besides which: I never claimed that this was the only factor. I claimed it was a factor. Elsewhere, I acknowledged that there are other factors. I'm sure the the Oregon policies you list are among them.
- cesarvarela 3y agoCantillon effect
- dventimihasura 3y agobingo
- lamontcg 3y agoheh, ZIRP isn't over. when they manage to crash the economy, ZIRP is going to come right back.
- dventimihasura 3y agobingo
- jokethrowaway 3y agoHard disagree Real income inequality comes from wealthy 0.01% bribing politicians. Not 0.1% VC giving some money to 10% developers so that we can get some innovations every once and then. Getting rid of VC money will just slow down innovation, entrenching existing players in their current positions and allowing even more capital to flow into bribing politicians. Politicians in turn will need to steal even more, through inflation and taxes the really wealthy can avoid, from the middle class. We'll shrink the middle class even more. Almost nobody will be able to afford a house. Homeless will just die. One step closer to current South America, which I reckon is some 20 years away for the USA and maybe even for Europe.
- dventimihasura 3y agoBribing politicians to do what? Keeping interest rates low, that's what. At least, that's what some of the bribes are from some people.