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What can be done about the cost of living?

High housing prices can be explained by simple supply and demand. You see, price is directly correlated with demand and inversely correlated with supply. When demand is high and supply is low, prices are high but when supply is high and demand is low, prices are low.

People want to live in certain areas, often because of job opportunities. For example, the Bay Area has a booming tech industry which is ever growing. New York City has lots of economic activity and is a very well globally integrated city. So that explains the demand side of why people want to live in certain places but what about supply side?

In an ideal market, developers will build more houses when demand rises so what's keeping them from doing so? Zoning laws in many cities keep development from being built. Height limits, minimum space requirements, and urban growth boundaries are all responsible for holding back development. San Francisco is particularly bad about height limits. Since so much land near SanFran is developed and with such a high demand, many people have to live very far away from their jobs just to afford to live there, so building out is losing its plausibility. Building up is difficult with all the regulations from local governments which cater to nimbys. In Manhattan, there are two clusters where buildings tend to be very tall: Lower Manhattan (WTC and wall street) and Midtown Manhattan (Empire State Building, Times Square, and Chrysler Building). The rest of Manhattan is mostly midrise buildings. It's almost as if there are restricting the height of buildings in all but certain parts of Manhattan (I don't mind height limits near central park but what about the area between lower and midtown?). The other four boroughs have hardly any skyscrapers at all.

In short, the best way to solve the housing crisis is to relax regulations on where and how to build houses.
 
Masterhawk said:
High housing prices can be explained by simple supply and demand. You see, price is directly correlated with demand and inversely correlated with supply. When demand is high and supply is low, prices are high but when supply is high and demand is low, prices are low.

People want to live in certain areas, often because of job opportunities. For example, the Bay Area has a booming tech industry which is ever growing. New York City has lots of economic activity and is a very well globally integrated city. So that explains the demand side of why people want to live in certain places but what about supply side?

In an ideal market, developers will build more houses when demand rises so what's keeping them from doing so? Zoning laws in many cities keep development from being built. Height limits, minimum space requirements, and urban growth boundaries are all responsible for holding back development. San Francisco is particularly bad about height limits. Since so much land near SanFran is developed and with such a high demand, many people have to live very far away from their jobs just to afford to live there, so building out is losing its plausibility. Building up is difficult with all the regulations from local governments which cater to nimbys. In Manhattan, there are two clusters where buildings tend to be very tall: Lower Manhattan (WTC and wall street) and Midtown Manhattan (Empire State Building, Times Square, and Chrysler Building). The rest of Manhattan is mostly midrise buildings. It's almost as if there are restricting the height of buildings in all but certain parts of Manhattan (I don't mind height limits near central park but what about the area between lower and midtown?). The other four boroughs have hardly any skyscrapers at all.

In short, the best way to solve the housing crisis is to relax regulations on where and how to build houses.
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New cities in new locations that help with resource management!
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Also "Just move" is disingenuous, because there are the matters of career and connection to place, to include family.

Moving is a lot of disruption.
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One needs to factor in the cost of living to get a weighted pay rate. 200K per year in Dallas, Denver or Salt Lake City is a good standard of living. In NYC or San Fran, 200K is struggling.
 
A fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage and unemployment compensation for simply being unemployment, helps in all cases and helps stabilize local markets.
 
danielpalos said:
A fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage and unemployment compensation for simply being unemployment, helps in all cases and helps stabilize local markets.
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It also makes people complacent, and many choose not to work.

That's a mentality for increasing the number losers.
 
Lord of Planar said:
It also makes people complacent, and many choose not to work.

That's a mentality for increasing the number losers.
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lol. it takes morals to ask for morality from others.

employment is at the will of either party, not just the employer.

compensation is for that natural right.
 
danielpalos said:
lol. it takes morals to ask for morality from others.

employment is at the will of either party, not just the employer.

compensation is for that natural right.
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Should people who do not work be compensated?
 
danielpalos said:
Can employers in alleged Right to Work States, employ everyone who asks?

If not,

then,

yes, they should be compensated for that Employer's natural right to not have to hire everyone, especially in a Right to Work State.
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LOL...

Indoctrination is your friend I see.

Why don't liberals understand that titles are meaningless? That the results are what matters?

You really need to familiarize yourself with what "right to work" is defined as, in law.
 
Lord of Planar said:
LOL...

Indoctrination is your friend I see.

Why don't liberals understand that titles are meaningless? That the results are what matters?

You really need to familiarize yourself with what "right to work" is defined as, in law.
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lol. some on the left are advocating for, "Truth in Legislative Advertising" laws.

Employment is at the will of either party.

Stop whining about the cost of social services, right wingers.
 
The overwhelming majority of people in developed countries have a better standard of living than kings and queens 100 years ago. That didnt happen by government decree. We have a long ways to go until we come even close to that again.
 
phattonez said:
People just suddenly become lazy in the past 20 years? This theory doesn't even begin to explain how this current set of conditions came to be, and it certainly doesn't offer a plausible solution.
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Yes. People just got lazy. In my field we cant find people qualified. ~$35/hr. To turn a wrench. Its such a well known problem there is this pretty cool guy who made some shows about these kind of jobs. Now hes got an effort to get kids interested in the trades.
 
Aberration said:
Yes. People just got lazy. In my field we cant find people qualified. ~$35/hr. To turn a wrench. Its such a well known problem there is this pretty cool guy who made some shows about these kind of jobs. Now hes got an effort to get kids interested in the trades.
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yet, people are, "dying to work in coal mines" and need to be given corporate welfare. how is that, right wingers?
 
danielpalos said:
yet, people are, "dying to work in coal mines" and need to be given corporate welfare. how is that, right wingers?
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Are the statistics still like they once were?

What are the new atmospheric standards in coal mines anyway?
 
What are your ideas on how to solve this problem?
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Well that depends on what the problem is. What do you see, OP-er, as the problem for which you desire to learn folks' solution ideas?

To the extent you see the problem as the cost of living, well, the cost of living itself isn't something I see as a problem. I see the cost of living as nothing more nor less than exactly than what it is: a price. Prices don't need fixing; they are what they are.
 
Aberration said:
Yes. People just got lazy. In my field we cant find people qualified. ~$35/hr. To turn a wrench. Its such a well known problem there is this pretty cool guy who made some shows about these kind of jobs. Now hes got an effort to get kids interested in the trades.
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There's no way that you're offering a job paying $35 an hour to turn a wrench.
 
phattonez said:
There's no way that you're offering a job paying $35 an hour to turn a wrench.
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Why not? If you have to have skills behind the wrench twisting, $35 sounds about right. It was more than $30, 20 years ago, before president Clinton started shipping off manufacturing to other countries.
 
phattonez said:
There's no way that you're offering a job paying $35 an hour to turn a wrench.
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For a qualified person. Probably closer to ~25ish is you happen to have previous experience turning a wrench and aren’t an idiot. Raises and promotion usually come very quick if, again, you aren’t an idiot.
 
phattonez said:
There's no way that you're offering a job paying $35 an hour to turn a wrench.
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Here. Let me ask you a couple questions. Worked with ultra low vacuum? Worked with linear motors? Worked with optical encoders? How about a Michelson heterodyne interferometer? Microscopes? Any type of CNC? In the end it’s all just words. Either it’s a motor or a sensor. If it’s a motor, does it move when it’s supposed to move? If it’s a sensor, does it sense what’s it’s supposed to. After that you might need basic math, a set of Allen’s, a Phillips, maybe a DVM.

Honestly. I could teach any idiot to do this.
 
danielpalos said:
yet, people are, "dying to work in coal mines" and need to be given corporate welfare. how is that, right wingers?
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People will take what they can get. If you tell them they ‘need’ welfare, and you give them welfare, they will take the welfare. I don’t care what they make or are worth.
 
Aberration said:
Here. Let me ask you a couple questions. Worked with ultra low vacuum? Worked with linear motors? Worked with optical encoders? How about a Michelson heterodyne interferometer? Microscopes? Any type of CNC? In the end it’s all just words. Either it’s a motor or a sensor. If it’s a motor, does it move when it’s supposed to move? If it’s a sensor, does it sense what’s it’s supposed to. After that you might need basic math, a set of Allen’s, a Phillips, maybe a DVM.

Honestly. I could teach any idiot to do this.
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If it really is as simple as you say, I hope you're hiring a lot of people and paying them well.
 
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