5 ms·

The US has an enormous land area and the cost of living varies dramatically across it. Intense pockets develop where the high paying jobs are, and everyone want

by cvoss 6mo ago

The US has an enormous land area and the cost of living varies dramatically across it. Intense pockets develop where the high paying jobs are, and everyone wants to cram in there to compete for those jobs, and then they're competing for the housing there, so the prices skyrocket, so the jobs have to pay higher still. Wealthy as the average person may be, the poverty slope is very steep in such places. The SF / Bay Area is the paradigmatic example of this. But when COVID hit, the main attractor of the Bay Area vanished overnight: you didn't have to live there to work those jobs. There was a mass exodus to cheaper places. Texas was at the top of the list of destinations. Austin, though decidedly not the rest of Texas, has a similar culture to SF and so was a natural and comfortable landing spot. So the pressure relief valve on SF is a source of pressure on Austin. But Austin was already suffering growing pains before COVID. But, all that said, its probably not wise to generalize an experience about Austin to an idea about the US as a whole. At best, you might generalize it to ideas about large US cities.

oooyay 6mo ago
I'm not sure this is really true anymore and it ignores the reality on the ground of "cheap areas". Often times cheap areas are underserved in a way that once you require or depend on a service that is baked into other higher cost of living areas your life becomes much more expensive than if you'd simply lived in a high cost of living area. There are many examples of this but hospitals in rural areas are one of my favorite examples. There used to be many of these but many people didn't realize they were all (or mostly) subsidized capital ventures. Many of them are closing now that the subsidy has ended. So, is that county land cheap? Yes, but when you have an incident where time matters your likelihood of being cooked goes up precipitously.
- littlexsparkee 6mo ago
  Ditto water infrastructure - failures and lack of ability to maintain/upgrade.
- jofla_net 6mo ago
  Food deserts too, i was surprised to learn.
picsao 6mo ago
[dead]
fakedang 6mo ago
You still don't expect people to go hungry in a first world developed country. Nor did people go hungry or homeless at this scale before in recent American, British or even broadly Western history. Yet here we are, and the UK is no exception either. At least you can be guaranteed for certain you won't be going hungry in Istanbul, Warsaw or Amman.
- pgalvin 6mo ago
  I disagree with the claim that a greater proportion of people go hungry, and more are homeless, today than at any point in recent western history. These have broadly been on a downwards trend over the last century. Of course many do struggle, and that should not be dismissed by pointing to the past. But it nonetheless strikes me as naive to believe that people today are hungrier than at any point in recent history - the obesity crisis, and its lack of discrimination between social classes, should at least in part demonstrate this. In my opinion, such exaggerations mostly serve to discredit and distract from legitimate complaints about the cost of living today.
  - fakedang 6mo ago
    Recent Western history, 70s to early 00s. I doubt many people were going hungry in the US and UK back then, as much as they are now. The obesity crisis is in part because of the unavailability of nutritious food and the proliferation of cheap junk masquerading as food. But even that is getting expensive these days. Actual food prices have been going on an uptick since the 00s. I will make my stand on the fact that more people lived better during the 90s in the West than now.
t-3 6mo ago
> But, all that said, its probably not wise to generalize an experience about Austin to an idea about the US as a whole. At best, you might generalize it to ideas about large US cities. I'm sceptical that not generalizing will be the smart move. The world is more and more connected these days. A person in Rural Town A and a person in Urban Area B and a person in Whole Other Side of Planet C all have access to many of the same goods and services, and almost all the same information as each other. Price and supply information and news from areas are all available instantly in contexts far removed from where they originated, and are having ripple-effects in areas beyond where they'd be logically applicable because communication is so cheap and low-friction. I think we need to generalize more, because those who set prices are definitely going to be generalizing and trying to pull prices towards the highest possible profit margin. Only commodities get supply-and-demand price cuts. Everything else gets inflation for any valid reason and deflation for no valid reasons.
davesque 6mo ago
Then why did houses used to be affordable even in those dense regions with high paying jobs? People act as though housing has always been prohibitively expensive in city centers but it hasn't. My dad bought a house in Boulder, CO of all places easily in the 90s. And of course he made a killing off of it because the housing market went completely insane over the next two decades. I now make more money than he ever did and can't even dream of buying the same house.
- thereisnospork 6mo ago
  Because the regulations, set by those with vested interest in real estate, make it difficult to build more housing. Otherwise anyone with any sense would undercut the existing housing stock and turn a 100k investment in concrete and timber into a million dollar home in Boulder, CO. Not exactly rocket science - if there's money to be made and people aren't making it then something is stopping them.
- yason 6mo ago
  It's a generational narrative here as well: while it gets applied to X, Y, or Z generations in turn and depending on the context - I think it started with X's - but the gist of it is that young generations couldn't afford the house they themselves grow up in. Even if their parents were basic blue collar families and the new generation are well educated. There's too much truth in that as people look back in the preceding decades.
  - davesque 6mo ago
    This wasn't some kind of mansion. It was a 1300 square foot house. I guess I'm aiming too high then while making 4x his salary? And people have been whining about this same problem for decades so nothing to be done about it?
    - inquirerGeneral 6mo ago
      [dead]
    - 6mo ago
websap 6mo ago
Yup, you are correct to not generalize, because Austin is one of the cheapest "cities" in America.
- pixl97 6mo ago
  Not for a while, prices have gone way up here.
jimbokun 6mo ago
In general it’s bad to generalize, but the article says that housing prices across the US increased 50% over the past 5 years.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

by cvoss 6mo ago

oooyay 6mo ago

I'm not sure this is really true anymore and it ignores the reality on the ground of "cheap areas". Often times cheap areas are underserved in a way that once you require or depend on a service that is baked into other higher cost of living areas your life becomes much more expensive than if you'd simply lived in a high cost of living area. There are many examples of this but hospitals in rural areas are one of my favorite examples. There used to be many of these but many people didn't realize they were all (or mostly) subsidized capital ventures. Many of them are closing now that the subsidy has ended. So, is that county land cheap? Yes, but when you have an incident where time matters your likelihood of being cooked goes up precipitously.

littlexsparkee 6mo ago
Ditto water infrastructure - failures and lack of ability to maintain/upgrade.
jofla_net 6mo ago
Food deserts too, i was surprised to learn.

picsao 6mo ago

[dead]

fakedang 6mo ago

You still don't expect people to go hungry in a first world developed country. Nor did people go hungry or homeless at this scale before in recent American, British or even broadly Western history. Yet here we are, and the UK is no exception either. At least you can be guaranteed for certain you won't be going hungry in Istanbul, Warsaw or Amman.

pgalvin 6mo ago
I disagree with the claim that a greater proportion of people go hungry, and more are homeless, today than at any point in recent western history. These have broadly been on a downwards trend over the last century. Of course many do struggle, and that should not be dismissed by pointing to the past. But it nonetheless strikes me as naive to believe that people today are hungrier than at any point in recent history - the obesity crisis, and its lack of discrimination between social classes, should at least in part demonstrate this. In my opinion, such exaggerations mostly serve to discredit and distract from legitimate complaints about the cost of living today.
- fakedang 6mo ago
  Recent Western history, 70s to early 00s. I doubt many people were going hungry in the US and UK back then, as much as they are now. The obesity crisis is in part because of the unavailability of nutritious food and the proliferation of cheap junk masquerading as food. But even that is getting expensive these days. Actual food prices have been going on an uptick since the 00s. I will make my stand on the fact that more people lived better during the 90s in the West than now.

t-3 6mo ago

> But, all that said, its probably not wise to generalize an experience about Austin to an idea about the US as a whole. At best, you might generalize it to ideas about large US cities. I'm sceptical that not generalizing will be the smart move. The world is more and more connected these days. A person in Rural Town A and a person in Urban Area B and a person in Whole Other Side of Planet C all have access to many of the same goods and services, and almost all the same information as each other. Price and supply information and news from areas are all available instantly in contexts far removed from where they originated, and are having ripple-effects in areas beyond where they'd be logically applicable because communication is so cheap and low-friction. I think we need to generalize more, because those who set prices are definitely going to be generalizing and trying to pull prices towards the highest possible profit margin. Only commodities get supply-and-demand price cuts. Everything else gets inflation for any valid reason and deflation for no valid reasons.

davesque 6mo ago

Then why did houses used to be affordable even in those dense regions with high paying jobs? People act as though housing has always been prohibitively expensive in city centers but it hasn't. My dad bought a house in Boulder, CO of all places easily in the 90s. And of course he made a killing off of it because the housing market went completely insane over the next two decades. I now make more money than he ever did and can't even dream of buying the same house.

thereisnospork 6mo ago
Because the regulations, set by those with vested interest in real estate, make it difficult to build more housing. Otherwise anyone with any sense would undercut the existing housing stock and turn a 100k investment in concrete and timber into a million dollar home in Boulder, CO. Not exactly rocket science - if there's money to be made and people aren't making it then something is stopping them.
yason 6mo ago
It's a generational narrative here as well: while it gets applied to X, Y, or Z generations in turn and depending on the context - I think it started with X's - but the gist of it is that young generations couldn't afford the house they themselves grow up in. Even if their parents were basic blue collar families and the new generation are well educated. There's too much truth in that as people look back in the preceding decades.
- davesque 6mo ago
  This wasn't some kind of mansion. It was a 1300 square foot house. I guess I'm aiming too high then while making 4x his salary? And people have been whining about this same problem for decades so nothing to be done about it?
  - inquirerGeneral 6mo ago
    [dead]
  - 6mo ago

websap 6mo ago

Yup, you are correct to not generalize, because Austin is one of the cheapest "cities" in America.

pixl97 6mo ago
Not for a while, prices have gone way up here.

jimbokun 6mo ago

In general it’s bad to generalize, but the article says that housing prices across the US increased 50% over the past 5 years.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]