10 ms·

>Their pay in the Bay Area is double tsmc in taiwan for equivalent roles in raw dollar terms but the ppp differences means your better off working for tsmc in T

• amluto 2y ago
  Some of the issues are way downstream of those NIMBYs: Non-housing costs are quite low in Taiwan. Food and childcare, in particular, are so much cheaper than California that it’s hard to believe. But the NIMBYs aren’t totally in the clear. Rental housing with 3+ bedrooms (for families) is severely lacking in much of the US. Maybe fire codes are to blame. Taiwan is full of very nice new high-rise development that contains units with lots of bedrooms. Wandering around those developments and the new 3-story developments in California, the ones in Taiwan are much, much, much nicer, even from the outside. The NIMBYs should take note.
  • closeparen 2y ago
    While there are a number of technical issues with respect to the limited trickle of multifamily permits that are given, the fundamental dynamic is that engaged voters don't want to see significantly more people living in the region, and therefore it doesn't happen.
    • cogman10 2y ago
      Yeah, it has a lot to do with selfishness. More housing means more people means you have a lower property value for you home in the area. Further, it means your vote becomes less powerful as the poors that live in the high rise have the same voting power as you do in your single family home.
      • amluto 2y ago
        I think it has a lot to do with people believing what you just said. Which is, of course, utter nonsense! If a neighborhood suddenly gets rezoned for 20-story mixed-use development, an existing house will be devalued, but an existing lot will likely gain more then enough value to compensate.
        • cogman10 2y ago
          > Which is, of course, utter nonsense! That doesn't change the loss of voting power. Further, value to who? I agree a 20 story high-rise has more value than a single-family home, but how does that help the single-family homeowner or the homeowners that live around the lot that gets rezoned? That's the problem. The existing homes and their owners seem mostly downsides to rezoning even though the city as a whole would benefit greatly from them.
          • ProfessorLayton 2y ago
            >That's the problem. The existing homes and their owners seem mostly downsides to rezoning even though the city as a whole would benefit greatly from them. That's only part of the problem, though. Homeowners are voting in their interest, and selfish or not, that's democracy. The other side of the coin is that the people who stand to benefit the most don't vote for policies or politicians that have their interests in mind. SF shows up in HN all the time for its NIMBYsm, but the city is mostly renters, whom could vote as a block like homeowners, and easily get more housing built. But they don't.
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
      • _DeadFred_ 2y ago
        Is it selfish to have national parks when there are people that are homeless and the government could give them literally free land? Long ago the people that lived in the area realized that they liked where they lived and how it was, and voted to put in place rules to keep it that way. It sucks now, I and all my friends the grew up there were forced to move somewhere affordable, but it's not pure selfishness. They didn't take something away from someone else, no one else ever had it. And to expand it does inherently change the nature of what 'it' is and opens a genie that can NEVER be put back.
  • lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Part of the equation must be the simple fact that the US is big and has the option to give many people the 0.1+ acre detached single family home with a yard and 2+ car driveway/garage lifestyle (and schools with more exclusive student populations). In smaller places, that simply isn’t an option, so there exists greater demand for family living in high rises.
    • ghaff 2y ago
      Yeah, very few people who want and can afford 3-bedroom homes want to be renting apartments. I assume that even in New York City, the number of 3-bedroom condos is pretty minimal as a percentage because most people who want that kind of space just move to West Chester or Connecticut.
      • structural 2y ago
        This is not universally true, and it's pretty common to hear people who moved out to the suburbs hate it, but they needed the third or even second bedroom! Slightly larger condos simply didn't exist on the market, or were priced at astronomic rates (double the $/sqft compared to a 1bd unit). Looked at a dozen midrise buildings this year across DC/Phila/NYC markets, some new/recent construction, some office conversions. Most buildings had zero 3bd units except for maybe a single penthouse, a 2bd unit every other floor, and the entire rest of the building evenly divided between studios and 1bd units in the 400-600sqft range. The competition for the 2bd units was unreal, in several cases people were offering the entire year's lease upfront, in cash, to secure an apartment. It really is that competitive and the demand is there, the supply is not.
      • sgu999 2y ago
        Part of the problem is what is available. If you're a Japanese or a Taiwanese, that detached single family home with a massive garden around it is simply not an option, so you don't feel worst off than anyone else by living in a small house or in a high rise. Other advantage is that keeping cities very dense and preventing urban sprawl means everyone has access to nature quickly, through public transports.
  • colechristensen 2y ago
    >Rental housing with 3+ bedrooms (for families) is severely lacking in much of the US. Maybe fire codes are to blame. Taiwan is full of very nice new high-rise development that contains units with lots of bedrooms. Wandering around those developments and the new 3-story developments in California, the ones in Taiwan are much, much, much nicer, even from the outside. The NIMBYs should take note. And it's because of zoning. Cities allow density construction but then it's almost exclusively 0 and 1 bedroom apartments because you can charge more per sq ft. Zoning laws should force apartment construction to include multiple bedroom units but that would lower the cost of 1br units. So NIMBYs don't want density construction, and the people who build density don't want big units. So cities are unlivable if you're not young and single or happy living in relative squalor. So people either don't have children or have to move to have children and you get cities that push out a big chunk of the demographic and then force people to commute.
    • foobarian 2y ago
      How could we get a council of a half-dozen visionaries to own a city-sized chunk of land and design a utopia, communist party-style but done right? I really think this is not possible without it being a private parcel where there aren't thousands of individual property owners in the loop for decision making.
      • colechristensen 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_utopian_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_utopian_commu... People try this thing on a fairly regular basis. You're thinking "wouldn't it be great if there was a community led by an absolute authority which agrees with me" and, uh, that kind of thing doesn't scale, last, or continue agreeing with you for a particularly long amount of time. >I really think this is not possible without it being a private parcel where there aren't thousands of individual property owners in the loop for decision making. This is just saying democracy is bad. Ok, but go find me an example of something else that has actually worked. It's troubling how people think dictatorship is the solution to their problems these days. It's not even one particular viewpoint that falls into this, people of all positions are increasingly advocating for authoritarian solutions.
  • geodel 2y ago
    All true. The question still remains how many US folks can /want to go live in Taiwan vs How many Taiwanese can / want to live in US suburban dystopia. And I say this as immigrant to US increasingly disenchanted by suburbia. From what I read housing price to income ratio has increased ~2.5 times from 6.5 to 15.8 in last two decades in Taiwan. And it seems to be worse in new developments in city like Taipei. At a top echelon of Taiwan society or as a tourist it must be nice live, roam around in pleasant urban environments compare to US suburbia but I am not sure average Taiwanese are finding life great with stagnating wages and unaffordable housing.
    • jay_kyburz 2y ago
      As a non US citizen, I think there are a lot of high level cultural issues that would prevent me considering a job in the US, well before I pulled out a calculator and starting comparing salary to cost of living. I won't enumerate them because it would be sure to offend somebody (everybody?).
      • nick3443 2y ago
        You yada yada'd over the best part!
      • geodel 2y ago
        That would make sense. There are really lot of reasons to not take job offer in US. And even after taking offer many may find job sucks in ways they have not initially thought of. The only thing that's unlikely to happen is all good things one like to become available at a place one likes to live.
    • re-thc 2y ago
      > with stagnating wages That's not true. The minimum wage has increased every year for the last 8 years at least for quite a decent amount. Wages have increased, maybe even more so than the US. > And it seems to be worse in new developments in city like Taipei If you're looking at Taipei then you have to compare it to NYC or some other expensive city and NYC isn't much better in terms of pricing.
  • kilotaras 2y ago
    > Non-housing costs are quite low in Taiwan. Food and childcare, in particular, are so much cheaper than California that it’s hard to believe. Those are downstream of housing restrictions to a large extent. From "Housing theory of everything" [0]: Consider a cleaner living in Alabama. In 1960 they could move to NYC and earn wages 84% higher, and still end up with 70% higher income after rent. In 2010, they could move to New York City and become 28% more productive, and earn a wage 28% higher – and reduce the surplus of workers back home, letting them demand higher pay. But since housing costs are so much higher, the net earnings and living standards of someone like this would fall if they moved today, and wouldn’t be worth it. The same would be true for plumbers, receptionists and other professions that allow other people to specialise at what they’re best at and minimise the time they spend on things like DIY and answering the phone. By contrast, top lawyers get wage boosts that are still sufficiently higher to justify a move in both 1960 and 2010, even after the higher rents they’ll have to pay. [0] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
    • efitz 2y ago
      Anyone looking to start a new manufacturing business would be insane to consider California for any number of reasons- cost-of-living, (urban) quality of life, regulatory environment, state taxes, etc. Right now manufacturers should be considering other states. Florida, Tennessee and Texas all are income-tax-free and have business friendly regulatory climates. Several states like Alabama and West Virginia offer extremely low cost-of-living and property costs and likely would negotiate tax abatements.
      • apercu 2y ago
        Does anyone truly want to live in Florida, Texas, Alabama, WV? (I left Tennessee off the list because it seems a lot to people _do_ want to live in Nashville anyway). I grew up in Texas. I've lived in 5 states and a Canadian province. My sisters house in Fort Worth is assessed a little lower than my house in WI. But her property tax is more than my property tax plus WI state income tax so.....
  • qwytw 2y ago
    > Taiwan is full of very nice new high-rise development that contains units with lots of bedrooms But presumably you'll never be able to buy and will have to rent forever? Real estate is significantly more expensive in Taiwan relative to income than in SF/etc.
    • J_Shelby_J 2y ago
      Is a market where housing supply meets demand, housing is a depreciating asset. Why would you want to buy if renting is cheaper?
      • qwytw 2y ago
        > Is a market where housing supply meets demand, housing is a depreciating asset. How so? Supposedly house prices increased by 50% in 5 years there. So obviously it does not meet demand... > Why would you want to buy if renting is cheaper? Because it's usually considerably cheaper long-term? Rent prices go up all the time, so you'd lose a very significant amount of money over 10-20+ years.
        • roenxi 2y ago
          If it is cheaper to buy than to rent, then presumably they can buy a house. The difference in prices just has to be bigger than interest rates and it becomes cost-effective to get a loan. Say rents are >6% of the equivalent cost of ownership, then a mortgage at 6% will be cheaper than renting. So renting can't get that out of control relative to house prices in the long term, they have to go crazy together in a way that favours people who always lived in an area.
          • qwytw 2y ago
            I mean in normal markets you'd expect price-to-rent ratio to up to 20x. If it's higher buying probably doesn't make a lot of sense unless you expect prices to continue growing at a very fast rate (which of course makes it too risky if it's your primary home). In Taipei it seems to be about 50x. So if you live there and want to have children it's certainly not cheaper (you can't afford it anyway) and you end up paying already very high and continuously increasing rent payments all your life. By the time you retire you have no equity and very little savings. Situation is the the same in a lot of major cities. It's just that rents are naturally caped at some proportion of median income (that leaves you with very little disposable income) while real estate prices have become almost completely detached from it.
  • pchristensen 2y ago
    The primary problem for getting 3+ bedroom apartments built in America is school funding. School districts are mostly locally funded (sometimes with a portion funded by the state government) and almost entirely from property taxes. At a very high level, schools are funded by the acre and their expenses scale with the 2nd-5th bedrooms in their district. A 4 bedroom apartment or condo and a 4 bedroom house will usually pay very different tax rates, so local governments are highly incentivized to deny and obstruct large apartments. A 2 bedroom apartment with one child is one thing, but a 4 bedroom apartment with 3-5 children is a huge money loser. That's also an obstacle to a lot of cities densifying and intensifying. Built out cities have a model that lets them operate, but not capital or land to build and expand in areas of high growth and demand. That's just one of many factors that are freezing our cities in amber.
    • ak217 2y ago
      I don't think your analysis is valid in California. Public high schools in California receive most of their funding on a per-pupil, attendance-weighted basis from the state on a redistributive basis (all property taxes from across the state are pooled and redistributed).
      • ghshephard 2y ago
        Parcel Taxes allow wealthy areas like Palo Alto to have much higher qualities of education. School District quality is probably one of the number one factors for families looking for a home.
        • ak217 2y ago
          Most school districts in California don't have any parcel taxes. There are definitely some like Palo Alto and other Bay Area and LA school districts that do, but they serve as a relatively small boost (0 to 20% of the district's budget). But yes, to the extent they constitute a significant portion of the revenue, the dynamics described by the parent post play a role. Parcel taxes are known to be a poor funding mechanism for this reason, but they were the only viable way for districts to raise extra money while working around the toxic side effects of Proposition 13 (https://ed100.org/lessons/parceltax https://ed100.org/lessons/parceltax), which illustrates its long shadow in California state law. Prop 13 is of course responsible for multiple other self-reinforcing anti-growth incentive loops.
  • zelon88 2y ago
    > Non-housing costs are quite low in Taiwan. Food and childcare, in particular, are so much cheaper than California that it’s hard to believe. That statement is the problem. Nobody wants to rent. There are too many rental properties, and not enough affordable housing. The reason you need rental properties is because you're already trying to make a living from families having a home. You're not supposed to do that. That's supposed to be the prize for the family for assimilating with capitalism. By buying it and renting it back to them you're disincentivizing the working class from working. But by all means, keep privatizing the shit out of 3 bedroom family homes and see what happens. Take every drop of value out of the housing market and bank it. That's what pitchforks are for.
    • schmidtleonard 2y ago
      The purpose of capitalism is to establish, reinforce, and perpetuate a class hierarchy where the people on the bottom must constantly pay to exist while the people on top constantly get paid to exist. This shit isn't a side effect, it's the entire point of the exercise.
      • madmask 2y ago
        Capitalism gives you opportunities to climb the ladder
        • angelaguilera 2y ago
          Capitalism also continuously adds steps to that ladder
        • hakfoo 2y ago
          Progress should be saying "we don't have to spend so much of our time and effort on the ladder". Our forefathers would be baffled to see that we've coerced crops into tenfold their natural yield, conquered lightning, the wind, and the sun itself, and yet, millions of people are still working 40+ hours a week to not starve or go homeless.
      • graymatters 2y ago
  • ak217 2y ago
    Absolutely true. Also I find it strange that the companies in question could easily resolve their workforce issues by forming a fund to build better/faster public transit to link up their offices with less NIMBY-dominated cities, but choose not to do so.
    • closeparen 2y ago
      Transportation rights-of-way invoke all the same NIMBY problems, only worse because an individual holdout parcel sinks the whole thing. What they can do is run buses on existing public roads. And they do that. It's still like 1.5+ hours from the Tri-Valley to SF.
      • ak217 2y ago
        I don't think the lack of usable rights-of-way explains public transit issues in the Silicon Valley. Tech companies had very modest participation in the Caltrain PCEP project, and still barely participate in the Dumbarton rail corridor planning, have made no direct moves to expedite or simplify the BART Silicon Valley expansion, have not attempted to improve the performance of VTA light rail, have not publicly tried to pressure the SF city government to expedite or simplify Caltrain DTC, and have made no proposals to make use of vacant or underutilized rail or ex-rail rights-of-way across the Silicon Valley where no NIMBY opposition exists. (Yes, Atherton is famous for its NIMBYs blocking the original HSR construction plan. It's not currently relevant and can be bypassed.)
• kbolino 2y ago
  The federalized nature of American government means both things can be true simultaneously, even though they seem paradoxical when placed together in juxtaposition. The Feds have supremacy in certain matters, but not all. Moreover, lobbying is more a question of connections and relationships which are lubricated with money than pure spending power, so it can be easier for a large corporation to nudge things its way at the national and state levels while still struggling to curry influence at the local level, and vice versa for small companies.
• insane_dreamer 2y ago
  > trillion-dollar industries at the forefront of the global economy constantly getting their shit rocked by a few dozen NIMBY retirees at city council meetings A lot of Intel R&D (and all their manufacturing) is outside the Bay Area, i.e., Oregon and elsewhere, so not sure this is a factor in their case.
• kmeisthax 2y ago
  The thing that makes America a corporate-dominated oligarchy is veto rights. The American middle class has enough political power to get issues on the table but not to overcome an anonymous rich person saying "no". NIMBYism is the same underlying power - vetocracy. So corporations would have to spend way more time fighting their own power to get things done.
  • closeparen 2y ago
    This is an insightful synthesis, thank you.
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• dang 2y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41448341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41448341.