I think it'd really be better if young people stopped getting student loans, and just didn't go to college, so they wouldn't have this problem. Eventually, the problem of overpriced housing will correct itself.
By the same logic, if they keep at it, eventually wages will rise to accommodate increased housing costs, and the problem corrects itself.
The problem is “eventually” has an unclear definition in both cases, and few are willing to sacrifice their potential of attaining certain careers or income in exchange for working low wage jobs waiting for a hypothetical future correction of this inequality.
It’s hard to level existing residences in many historic cities and so housing costs rise, yet people are still wanting the opportunities afforded by those cities enough to sacrifice having better housing conditions elsewhere.
>It’s hard to level existing residences in many historic cities and so housing costs rise, yet people are still wanting the opportunities afforded by those cities enough to sacrifice having better housing conditions elsewhere.
We don't have historic cities in America. At best, we have a few small historic districts, but everything else in the metro area is certainly not historic. But they don't build enough housing anyway, because too many Americans want McMansions instead of condos which are far more space-efficient.
The Bay area is particularly awful since existing homeowners have too much power (and local government has way too much power; local government should have NO power to restrict development, that should be the state's decision) and won't allow higher-density housing to be built as it affects their property values. This is a uniquely American problem.
>The problem is “eventually” has an unclear definition in both cases, and few are willing to sacrifice their potential of attaining certain careers or income in exchange for working low wage jobs waiting for a hypothetical future correction of this inequality.
My proposal is to just let the economy crash and take a couple of generations to recover, so just worry about your kids or grandkids having a better future. It's basically what's going to happen anyway, so you might as well not burden yourself with student debt. The situation we have now is totally unsustainable.
On the other hand, better education is (particularly on this board) usually recommended as the most important defense against unployment due to automation or outsourcing. How does this fit together?
This board, and other places, are wrong: better education isn't a fix. The problem is that many people just can't be productively educated to do higher-level jobs. For some reason, well-educated people frequently think that everyone is nearly as smart as them, and just lacks opportunity, but that's simply not the case. Lots of people just don't have the aptitude or interest, and nothing will change that. Even if they aren't stupid, you can't make someone interested in being educated; that's likely a product of their upbringing, and the only way to fix that is to wait a few generations while attitudes change.
The only fix for automation-based unemployment I see is a Universal Basic Income. We already have something like this with welfare and WIC/SNAP, basically paying people to sit at home and raise kids in poverty.
The problem is “eventually” has an unclear definition in both cases, and few are willing to sacrifice their potential of attaining certain careers or income in exchange for working low wage jobs waiting for a hypothetical future correction of this inequality.
It’s hard to level existing residences in many historic cities and so housing costs rise, yet people are still wanting the opportunities afforded by those cities enough to sacrifice having better housing conditions elsewhere.