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If you want to talk about the root of problems, it comes down to preferences. Income inequality in musicians? People prefer some musicians and songs over others

If you want to talk about the root of problems, it comes down to preferences. Income inequality in musicians? People prefer some musicians and songs over others. UBI and taxation isn't going to meaningfully change the income inequality between the median and top earners in entertainment fields due to social dynamics. Guess what the primary driver of the housing shortage is? Preference for larger homes and "better" locations. There are enough housing units nationally, but their distribution and charateristics don't match the preferences. You might be thinking about NIMBY, but guess what that is? The preferences of the people already there. Solutions like UBI or just building more skip a logical step of evaluating the true underlying causes and presume them instead. To solve a problem we must first understand it.

fraggleysun 1y ago
Any reference that you can point to on the housing shortage being due to preference? It seems like job location, compensation, average cost of living, and commute would play a fairly large role.
- giantg2 1y ago
  "It seems like job location, compensation, average cost of living, and commute would play a fairly large role." Are you saying these don't involve preferences? And a web search will bring up tons of housing preference sources coming various aspects. https://learn.upright.us/real-estate-investing-blog/a-housing-shortage-of-preference-why-categories-show-disparate-severity https://learn.upright.us/real-estate-investing-blog/a-housin...
  - soulofmischief 1y ago
    Sure, you could argue that some people prefer to not live a destitute life, and that influences the high price of housing. But that is reductive, ignoring a host of other factors, which again, you might be able to boil down to preference (wealthy capitalists prefer to make more money) but again, it's reductive and offers a somewhat shallow perspective and not much to act on.
    - giantg2 1y ago
      You would at least be able to act on the true cause rather than chase short term changes that may not even work or won't scale. If it's indicative of a distribution problem, then we should be investigating distribution solutions. If you can't see this connection, then I posit that you might have the shallow perspective.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - soulofmischief 1y ago
        Enlighten me.
- bradley13 1y ago
  Exactly. Those are preferences. You can get a decent, 3 bed, 2 bath house for 100k. Just move to some place like Tucumcari, NM. Why not? Oh...right...the same reasons no one else moves to places like that...
  - Retric 1y ago
    Preferences don’t explain why we aren’t building housing where people want to live. Mid rise buildings don’t need to be particularly expensive per square foot. ~11 million for a 50 unit building is 220k / apartment not 100k cheap but way better than what you see near most cites people want to live in. 2 to 3x housing density requires extra transportation infrastructure but it also means being able to support such infrastructure. Instead walk around most expensive city’s and you see single family dwellings /row houses in sight of high rises / skyscrapers. That’s not economic efficiency that’s people who can afford high housing prices likening the system the way it is.
    - koliber 1y ago
      You need to find a way to convince the owners of that inefficient housing to sell it to a developer so that they can demolish it to build the efficient housing. That will add significantly to the unit economics of the efficient housing.
      - orangecat 1y ago
        In most cases it's illegal to build that efficient housing.
      - Retric 1y ago
        Legal issues are more of a hindrance. At the start you might be adding a few million in land costs and building taller, but that quickly deflates the housing market. Pushing people to sell before their homes become ever less valuable. Further cities outlive people, reluctant homeowners eventually die. City infrastructure similarly has real costs, but an infrastructure tax on every net new unit isn’t going to see anywhere close to current prices.
simonask 1y ago
The inequality of musicians is not about what they earn once they make a living making music. Professional instrumentalists, for example, tend to be paid fairly equally (though not necessarily well). It's about who gets to become a musician, because practicing the skill takes a lot of resources, and it seems the middle class can no longer afford that.
- osigurdson 1y ago
  The idea that the middle class musician ever existed at all is a false premise. Lamenting the loss of something that never existed is pretty ridiculous. "Ahh, remember the good old days when one could make a middle class living as an amateur ski jumper". How can we get back to that? Of course, UBI / communism.
  - throaway955 1y ago
    Not false in any way. The life of the middle-income touring performer used to exist and is gone now..
    - osigurdson 1y ago
      Can you name any?
      - scarecrowbob 1y ago
        I've known quite a few people who made quite good livings playing 5-nights a week at hotel lounges in BFE. You're not going to recognize any, because they aren't famous, they just made their living going around playing music and weren't super famous. Even the relatively "famous" ones I have worked with (say, marc benno or paul pearcy or jay boy adams) aren't known by folks outside of very small circles. IME, the consolidation of radio, changes in taste around live music, and the dissolution of paying for recorded music all worked to get rid of that group of folks. But that doesn't mean that I haven't played with a lot of folks who are now in their 70s and 80s who made a good living playing music for folks.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
wyre 1y ago
It seems very disingenuous to suggest needing to live somewhere one can make a living is only a “preference.”
- giantg2 1y ago
  The definition of "make a living" is highly subject to preferences. The vacant houses are in areas where other people live. If those other people can't make a living, then shouldn't we improve the economy in that area rather than ship those people off to more congested areas or leave the homes vacant?
- yesfitz 1y ago
  I believe that poster is using "preference" in the economic sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics) "In economics, and in other social sciences, preference refers to an order by which an agent, while in search of an 'optimal choice', ranks alternatives based on their respective utility." "Individual preferences are determined by taste, need, ..., as opposed to price, availability or personal income."
tomgp 1y ago
In Britain it’s noticeable that as unemployment benefit and social housing has been stripped back the proportion of people from working class backgrounds with careers in the arts has declined. The most visible example of this is probably actors; pretty much all the current generation of British actors went to public school and were able to support themselves via family wealth as they became established. This wasn’t the case for the generation coming through in the 70s and 80s. The underlying cause is that if you can’t subsist as you learn your craft you can’t learn your craft, I don’t think this is mysterious. This doesn’t just apply to the arts, if all junior dev roles are stripped away by llm’s where do the talented developers of tomorrow come from? Those who can learn the craft on their own time, those with independent wealth. At a societal level there is a huge amount of potential talent being left on the table, and imo redistributive policies are the obvious fix. In think this is really important both from a mortal point of view and an economically pragmatic one.
- giantg2 1y ago
  This has nothing to do with subsisting while learning your craft. This is about a supply and demand difference and the inequality in entertainment roles. If you have too many actors, then the nobodies get paid next to nothing while the famous people get the lion's share. And many of those nobodies never make even close to earning a living because the supply side is saturated and the demand side doesn't want to pay for that art. You have to have buyers.
  - MrJohz 1y ago
    Class in this context is referring to the actors' backgrounds, i.e. parental incomes, rather than their own income. There is an issue if you have to be born to a rich family in order to take on a career like acting, and right now, at least based on the evidence, that appears to be true: you need a sufficient safety net to be able to survive for a long time on basically no income while you practice and work low-paying gigs until you finally break through. For some people that just isn't possible. A social safety net means that more people have the ability to try out risky careers - not necessarily that more of them will succeed, but that the pool of applicants will be larger and include a wider proportion of the population.

fraggleysun 1y ago

Any reference that you can point to on the housing shortage being due to preference? It seems like job location, compensation, average cost of living, and commute would play a fairly large role.

giantg2 1y ago
"It seems like job location, compensation, average cost of living, and commute would play a fairly large role." Are you saying these don't involve preferences? And a web search will bring up tons of housing preference sources coming various aspects. https://learn.upright.us/real-estate-investing-blog/a-housing-shortage-of-preference-why-categories-show-disparate-severity https://learn.upright.us/real-estate-investing-blog/a-housin...
- soulofmischief 1y ago
  Sure, you could argue that some people prefer to not live a destitute life, and that influences the high price of housing. But that is reductive, ignoring a host of other factors, which again, you might be able to boil down to preference (wealthy capitalists prefer to make more money) but again, it's reductive and offers a somewhat shallow perspective and not much to act on.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    You would at least be able to act on the true cause rather than chase short term changes that may not even work or won't scale. If it's indicative of a distribution problem, then we should be investigating distribution solutions. If you can't see this connection, then I posit that you might have the shallow perspective.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - soulofmischief 1y ago
      Enlighten me.
bradley13 1y ago
Exactly. Those are preferences. You can get a decent, 3 bed, 2 bath house for 100k. Just move to some place like Tucumcari, NM. Why not? Oh...right...the same reasons no one else moves to places like that...
- Retric 1y ago
  Preferences don’t explain why we aren’t building housing where people want to live. Mid rise buildings don’t need to be particularly expensive per square foot. ~11 million for a 50 unit building is 220k / apartment not 100k cheap but way better than what you see near most cites people want to live in. 2 to 3x housing density requires extra transportation infrastructure but it also means being able to support such infrastructure. Instead walk around most expensive city’s and you see single family dwellings /row houses in sight of high rises / skyscrapers. That’s not economic efficiency that’s people who can afford high housing prices likening the system the way it is.
  - koliber 1y ago
    You need to find a way to convince the owners of that inefficient housing to sell it to a developer so that they can demolish it to build the efficient housing. That will add significantly to the unit economics of the efficient housing.
    - orangecat 1y ago
      In most cases it's illegal to build that efficient housing.
    - Retric 1y ago
      Legal issues are more of a hindrance. At the start you might be adding a few million in land costs and building taller, but that quickly deflates the housing market. Pushing people to sell before their homes become ever less valuable. Further cities outlive people, reluctant homeowners eventually die. City infrastructure similarly has real costs, but an infrastructure tax on every net new unit isn’t going to see anywhere close to current prices.

simonask 1y ago

The inequality of musicians is not about what they earn once they make a living making music. Professional instrumentalists, for example, tend to be paid fairly equally (though not necessarily well). It's about who gets to become a musician, because practicing the skill takes a lot of resources, and it seems the middle class can no longer afford that.

osigurdson 1y ago
The idea that the middle class musician ever existed at all is a false premise. Lamenting the loss of something that never existed is pretty ridiculous. "Ahh, remember the good old days when one could make a middle class living as an amateur ski jumper". How can we get back to that? Of course, UBI / communism.
- throaway955 1y ago
  Not false in any way. The life of the middle-income touring performer used to exist and is gone now..
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    Can you name any?
    - scarecrowbob 1y ago
      I've known quite a few people who made quite good livings playing 5-nights a week at hotel lounges in BFE. You're not going to recognize any, because they aren't famous, they just made their living going around playing music and weren't super famous. Even the relatively "famous" ones I have worked with (say, marc benno or paul pearcy or jay boy adams) aren't known by folks outside of very small circles. IME, the consolidation of radio, changes in taste around live music, and the dissolution of paying for recorded music all worked to get rid of that group of folks. But that doesn't mean that I haven't played with a lot of folks who are now in their 70s and 80s who made a good living playing music for folks.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

wyre 1y ago

It seems very disingenuous to suggest needing to live somewhere one can make a living is only a “preference.”

giantg2 1y ago
The definition of "make a living" is highly subject to preferences. The vacant houses are in areas where other people live. If those other people can't make a living, then shouldn't we improve the economy in that area rather than ship those people off to more congested areas or leave the homes vacant?
yesfitz 1y ago
I believe that poster is using "preference" in the economic sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_(economics) "In economics, and in other social sciences, preference refers to an order by which an agent, while in search of an 'optimal choice', ranks alternatives based on their respective utility." "Individual preferences are determined by taste, need, ..., as opposed to price, availability or personal income."

tomgp 1y ago

In Britain it’s noticeable that as unemployment benefit and social housing has been stripped back the proportion of people from working class backgrounds with careers in the arts has declined. The most visible example of this is probably actors; pretty much all the current generation of British actors went to public school and were able to support themselves via family wealth as they became established. This wasn’t the case for the generation coming through in the 70s and 80s. The underlying cause is that if you can’t subsist as you learn your craft you can’t learn your craft, I don’t think this is mysterious. This doesn’t just apply to the arts, if all junior dev roles are stripped away by llm’s where do the talented developers of tomorrow come from? Those who can learn the craft on their own time, those with independent wealth. At a societal level there is a huge amount of potential talent being left on the table, and imo redistributive policies are the obvious fix. In think this is really important both from a mortal point of view and an economically pragmatic one.

giantg2 1y ago
This has nothing to do with subsisting while learning your craft. This is about a supply and demand difference and the inequality in entertainment roles. If you have too many actors, then the nobodies get paid next to nothing while the famous people get the lion's share. And many of those nobodies never make even close to earning a living because the supply side is saturated and the demand side doesn't want to pay for that art. You have to have buyers.
- MrJohz 1y ago
  Class in this context is referring to the actors' backgrounds, i.e. parental incomes, rather than their own income. There is an issue if you have to be born to a rich family in order to take on a career like acting, and right now, at least based on the evidence, that appears to be true: you need a sufficient safety net to be able to survive for a long time on basically no income while you practice and work low-paying gigs until you finally break through. For some people that just isn't possible. A social safety net means that more people have the ability to try out risky careers - not necessarily that more of them will succeed, but that the pool of applicants will be larger and include a wider proportion of the population.