[max_hoffmann]

Freezing rents is not meant to be a solution for a lack of housing. It’s a solution to the explosive increase of rents of existing ones.

There are lots of people where the rents of their current apartment have increased so much, that they had to move out. This solution is trying to fix that.

Also freezing rents doesn’t mean Berlin will stop building new houses. If there is big demand for housing in a city one needs both:

1. make sure people currently living in the city are able to do so in the future

2. make sure new people coming to the city have available space

Freezing rents is aimed at problem one. These solutions are not exclusive.

[zanny]

Pretty much every western nation has systemically failed to recognize or support the insanely high demand for high density living in the 21st century. That is where the future of economics is, where the future of humanity in general pretty much is, and every democracy is consistently demonstrating the total inability for legislatures to sacrifice the advantage of those lucky enough to inhabit cities as they exist now for the benefit of all those who would grow the economy and future in the cities tomorrow. Largely because those in the cities have the money and influence to buy the politicians.

[tarsinge]

Because the root cause is not always high demand, it’s also speculation. Real Estate is now cool again (just look at investing forums or subreddits), and foreign investor money is flowing.

Look for example at Portland (OR) how the rent increase correlates with the population increase. The current urban hype alone can not explain these numbers.

Also another example since a few years a lot of high earning people in Paris are actively moving to cities with a better quality of life and climate (like Nantes, Bordeaux), in fact as high than 80% would do it if they could [1]. Yet bizarrely this has absolutely no impact on the market.

[1] https://www.lepoint.fr/dossiers/economie/bac8-saut-secteur-p...

[candybar]

This doesn't make any sense - real estate speculation would increase the purchase price of real estate but cannot directly impact rental rates. Speculation means people are bidding up prices for real estate beyond what's supportable by current demand, based on expected future demand. This generally doesn't make sense in the rental market - as a tenant, you're not entitled to benefit from any future increase in demand and it doesn't make sense to pay more that what the rental is worth to you now. This means rents, in aggregate, are a relatively accurate measure of the current supply and demand, free of speculative intents.

Ironically, certain types of rent control laws could lead to the rental market being influenced by speculation. Rent control laws effectively turn tenants into partial owners - this means, depending on the law, it may make sense to rent at an above-market rate, if that allows you to keep renting the same unit at what would later be a below-market rate. Likewise, from the landlord's perspective, it may not make sense to rent even at a market rate, because to do so may lock you out of getting what would be a higher market rate in the future.

[xg15]

> This doesn't make any sense - real estate speculation would increase the purchase price of real estate but cannot directly impact rental rates.

Not an expert, but seems to me they could indirectly, by reducing supply of rentable apartments:

Consider district X with n rentable apartments located in m buildings.

Now some buildings get vacated and are kept empty by speculators.

The apartments from those houses are not anymore available for rent, however, the demand for rentable apartments stays the same - therefore landlords of the remaining apartments now have leeway to raise rent without being punished by the market.

[candybar]

This doesn't have much to do with speculation - the decision to rent or not is something that every owner can make and the economics of the decision don't depend on whether your investment was based on price speculation.

Generally speaking, wherever you have a strong rental market, vacancy is low - it doesn't make sense to keep units vacant in a strong rental market. Speculators aren't some magical creatures to whom normal rules don't apply - real estate speculators are merely investors who believe that prices will move in their favor in the future. That doesn't mean they are any more incentivized to forego rental income, which generally is a large component of the return on any real estate investment.

Edit: I'll add that if you go by classical economics, you'd predict rent to go down if price speculation is excessive, since builders respond to real estate price and if price is sufficiently above cost of construction, this leads to construction of more units, which increases supply and depresses rent.

My general understanding is that this doesn't necessarily work that way because the fundamental factors behind what makes a location attractive don't change - within reason, if you build more, in the long run, you just become a larger, denser version of what you were, which just attracts more people.

[camgunz]

I would give you 10 upvotes if I could. The main reason for rent (and housing prices in general) increases is speculation and investment. There is billions of dollars in rentals and mortgages, and it's in everyone's interest that real estate worth goes up... unless you're trying to rent an apartment or buy a house.

Someone pretty smart once said you can't have both real estate as an infinitely increasing source of wealth _and_ affordable housing at the same time. You only get to pick one.

[ng12]

Agreed. I'm still shocked about how pervasive it is. New York, San Francisco, Denver, Austin, Vancouver, Montreal, London, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw. It seems like a complete binary: cities are either dying or in the midst of a "housing crisis".

[Zacharias030]

>Pretty much every western nation has systemically failed to recognize or support the insanely high demand for high density living in the 21st century.

While I agree that we have an unsolved problem here, isn't a city's government mainly responsible to do good by the people who inhabit that city and make up its electorate? That's how western democracies work, so no surprises there.

I know of many people all over the world who would like to move to the US and still the 'insanely high demand' has not been supported.

[hnick]

It's so strange - the promise of the "information super-highway" in the 90s was that proximity wouldn't matter as much. But if anything it matters more, since every minute spent idle (e.g. travelling to meet someone) has a higher associated cost due to the opportunity cost of lost productivity. So we tend to clump and cluster.

[thirdsun]

> But if anything it matters more, since every minute spent idle (e.g. travelling to meet someone) has a higher associated cost due to the opportunity cost of lost productivity.

Which sounds like another vote for remote work instead of clumping and clustering. Why care about proximity and the time it takes to travel when everyone you'd want to meet, regardless of location, is a message, call or video conference away and reachable from your home, favorite coffee shop or local office?

And no, I'm not saying that this has to replace all face to face interaction, but I think it should become the default for work environments that are compatible with this approach.

[majewsky]

Speaking as a German, a big part of why this decentralization isn't happening is that Germany's internet infrastructure is a fucking joke. I'm sometimes even having trouble with getting consistent 3G coverage in large city centers. When driving around the countryside, it's frequently 2G or no service at all. And it's looking similarly bad for broadband internet access in homes. My parents don't have any broadband service whatsoever. They use a 4G hotspot to go online, and get an average connection speed of 170 KB/s. This is par for the course in rural Germany.

[thirdsun]

As a fellow german, I'm aware. In fact I'm living in a quiet, rural place about 45 minutes from a very large city. My only broadband option is LTE, which thankfully has very good coverage here (steady 50 Mbit) and features an unlimited plan (Telekom Magenta Hybrid), but up until a few years ago everyone around here was limited to 1 Mbit DSL.

Of course the problem goes deeper than raw infrastructure - the mindset for a digital life isn't there yet. This appleis to businesses and particularly to official government bodies. Think about your interactions with the government, simple errands like renewing your ID or registering your car - there are awfully complicated and outdated processes everywhere. I've said it before but I look with envy to competent, easy to navigate portals like https://www.gov.uk/.

[hnick]

I totally agree. I'm just trying to get my head around why it seems that our promised decentralisation never came to be. Maybe old habits just die hard.

[hwio]

It is decentralized, just family rather than work.

[jimmaswell]

I don't buy any of this. Growing up everyone around me saw the city as somewhere you begrudgingly went out of necessity and only lived there if you had no choice, and I'm inclined to agree. In virtually every aspect I find more countryside-ish living much more pleasant.

Consider virtual reality and remote work. I imagine much of the workforce will move to virtual offices in the near to medium-far future when corporations finally come around to realizing they don't have to waste so much money on rent. There's no need for programmers, graphic designers, reporters, and employees of lots of other professions to work in a physical office. So really, as cities become less of a necessity to certain jobs, I expect a moderate exodus to nicer areas, halting growth or even decreasing population in urban centers.

[pantalaimon]

That's odd because it it's pretty much the polar opposite of what I've experienced.

Everyone wants to move to the big cities, especially Berlin, as they provide culture and a sense of freedom. You are able to meet like-minded people and are able to experience culture and infrastructure that simply does not exist in rural areas.

This of course makes makes the situation for the villages worse as many young people move away. Who's left are old people and those who are not qualified to find work or education elsewhere.

The population decline in those regions also means a decline in infrastructure, economy and cultural events, which makes those regions even more unattractive, perpetuating the cycle.

There is a slight trend of dropouts creating alternative living communities in those areas as abandoned houses & property can be had for very cheap. But their isolated nature means that often they will not last as their inhabitants move back to the city were their original peer group is.

[tomohawk]

The problem with cities is that they have really bad failure modes. Consider Baltimore. The city has been run by a single political party for decades, and run right into the ground. Notice the trend in these population stats:

https://www.biggestuscities.com/city/baltimore-maryland

This is a city right next to DC, in an essentially recession proof area with lots of jobs.

I've known a number of people who were big proponents of living in cities until either (a) they were robbed, or (b) they had kids and realized there was no decent school there, and (c) they had no chance of impacting the government in any way to affect change. They all ended up moving to the burbs.

[jakecopp]

Are robberies less common in the suburbs?

Are schools in the suburbs better than those in the city?

Why is it easier to affect government in suburbs?

I'm not sure if you're discussing Baltimore in particular or if you are making these points generally. I'm not sure on robberies, but I live in Sydney and I don't think there is a big gap between school quality and government participation in suburbs vs cities.

[matt-attack]

My experience has been yes to all three of those. I’ve lived for decades in both Orange County (suburbs) and Los Angeles (city).

[toper-centage]

Young people want to go to Berlin but people with money want to settle away from it.

[brightball]

And IMO that's also a product of rent freezing.

Without rent freezing, rents continue to increase substantially enough that investors either build more housing in/near the urban centers to meet demand OR the price shifts high enough to make the decisions to live in rural areas much more appealing.

[EliRivers]

Depends on what you want, I suppose. High density humanity simply makes practical and economically viable gatherings, grouping and other activities that just don't work in low-density populations. Classes, meetups, specialist stores, hobbies, clubs, shows, lectures, institutions and just plain bubbling, embryonic interactions; all of it an order of magnitude more intense in a big city. Travel even fifty miles away from a big city and suddenly so much opportunity vanishes, or necessitates a two hour round trip into the city to take advantage of. For the people who want these things, the city is the only option. I don't work in a city because that's where my job is; I work in (the outskirts of) a city because that's where everything else I want is.

I work with people who live in the inner city and commute outwards daily for their job, because their job is just a way to pay for what they actually want, and what they actually want is to be in that city.

[skgoa]

Yeah, living in the suburbs of or reasonably close to a large metropolis is where it's at. As soon as you want/need a good or service that goes even slightly outside of the local mainstream, it will almost always be available only in a big city. The bigger the more likely that it will be available.

[jimmaswell]

Almost all that stuff exists just fine outside major cities in my experience. I went over some of the great stuff around where I'm from in NY here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20218742

[jotm]

15 miles, 2 hours? Hmmm, maybe invest in New roads.

But city living is sad, yeah you can have all the social fun, but none of the quiet, peace, living and hobby space.

I like living 10 miles from the city, lots of space, quiet and green, can drive 20 minutes to the shity anytime.

[EliRivers]

15 miles, 2 hours? Hmmm, maybe invest in New roads.

Maybe invest in new glasses. I didn't say 15.

A city that has a boundary defined enough that you can reasonably say you live ten miles from it, and that you can drive into in 20 minutes? You're thinking of a town.

[0xffff2]

>Consider virtual reality and remote work. I imagine much of the workforce will move to virtual offices in the near to medium-far future when corporations finally come around to realizing they don't have to waste so much money on rent. There's no need for programmers, graphic designers, reporters, and employees of lots of other professions to work in a physical office. So really, as cities become less of a necessity to certain jobs, I expect a moderate exodus to nicer areas, halting growth or even decreasing population in urban centers.

People have been saying this for decades. Personally, I'd like nothing more than for it to be true so that I can ditch my expensive Silicon Valley apartment. But it's not. Lately I've even been seeing a lot of pushback from people who feel more productive in an office setting and don't want to work remotely.

[v7p1Qbt1im]

I was living in Berlin in 2015/2016 and believe me in no way at all are people coming here begrudgingly. Pretty much everyone between 20 and 35 wants to live here. And I can't blame them. I wanted to go and I still love the city to bits. There is nothing you can't to there. Tons of very interesting people to collaborate on projects with. Extremely good food and cultural attractions. Pretty much the most progressive place I've ever come across. Easily the best nightlife in the world.

This sounds like a love letter I suppose and I realize you were talking about cities in general. But anyway, I can understand why everyone wants go there.

[majewsky]

> Pretty much everyone between 20 and 35 wants to live here.

Well, since you were in Berlin, that's probably survivorship bias. I live in Dresden, a city of 500k inhabitants about 200km south of Berlin. To me, Dresden is just the right size. Not as vast as Berlin, where it can easily take over one hour to get to the other side for a meetup, but still large enough to have enough interesting stuff going on in it.

[dorgo]

> that's probably survivorship bias.

What? Is every other Berliner dead and can't tell their story?

[majewsky]

Survivorship bias can apply to things other than literal survivors.

What I mean is that, since they're in Berlin, they're mostly interacting with other people who live in Berlin. They're not going to hear from people who don't want to live in Berlin, even if those exist.

[fzeroracer]

Where I grew up it was the exact opposite. I lived in a small suburbanish town which was 50% college students and 50% retirees. Almost all of my friends and fellow graduates left for the larger cities where job opportunities were far more abundant and where there was generally a lot more to do and see.

Which also seems to be supported by the general population trends. Rural cities are dying, with the younger generations moving closer to urban centers. Remote work and virtual offices will give you a better choice of city, but people are not likely to move out to places where there's nothing to do, terrible infrastructure and less opportunity in the scenario where you choose to find a new job.

And people have been saying that remote work will cause the trends to reverse any day now. So far that hasn't stopped companies even in SV; instead they just build new offices in other cities.

[jimmaswell]

What do you mean by "nothing to do"? What is there to do only in the city that's supposed to be so attractive, clubs, modern art galleries? I'm genuinely curious because this never resonated with me.

Things to do in the Hudson Valley, the example I have in mind of a non-city area: expansive hiking trails for walking/biking, a river for rafting/skiing/boating/fishing, great family-owned restaurants all over, lots of nice historic sites such as the FDR estate and Vanderbelt mansion, a drive-in (unfortunately a rare institution these days, and obviously there are tons of normal movie theaters around), lots of good thrift/antique stores, hunting, tasting the fresh cider/whatever from local orchards (and getting great meat/produce from farmer's markets along with that), some concert halls around that play orchestras, horseback riding. If you want some stuff like classic theater/art galleries/etc you can find those around too, and a lot of stuff done by colleges. I'm sure I've missed a lot but this should be enough to make my point.

The city has some good stuff like the Museum of Natural History but not enough for me to want to live there.

[alisonatwork]

I think you are missing the kinds of things that city people consider important. For instance, can you walk from your house to the market, and to the theater, and to the hiking trails? I live in an dense city in Asia and I can do this.

Many city dwellers do not drive a car and a significant proportion of those never even learned how. Does your rural area support a dockless shared bike scheme? Can teenagers travel independently or do they need to rely on their parents to drive them around? How much carbon does it cost the average family to get groceries?

On entertainment, and specifically in relation to Berlin: do you have a clubbing scene? Where can people go to dance to electronic music? Can they go out Saturday night after 9pm? Is there still public transport to take them home in the wee hours?

I live alone and everything I own fits in a backpack. Are there single room apartments available for people who choose to live minimal lifestyles? Is it even possible for people to rent? If not, how far away is the trailer park from the cultural center? And how close is that to the nearest Greyhound stop?

Things like walkability, access to rental accommodation, 24 hour entertainment and services... These kinds of things are taken for granted by people who live in cities. Of course this kind of lifestyle is not for everyone, but for those that value it, rural and suburban areas do not even come close.

[jimmaswell]

Most people including me don't mind having to drive places, but there actually are a lot of places where you can walk to businesses if you live there. I'd rather have a more private house surrounded by forest on all sides.

You don't need a bikeshare if you have space to store your own bike. Teenagers can get a license at 16, ride bikes around, walk around, use skateboards, lots of options, but I don't see the big deal about getting rides from their parents sometimes. I don't think carbon use of individuals is much of a concern, with mpg getting better all the time and electric vehicles getting more popular.

I don't know anything about clubbing scenes but there probably are some. There are small cities like Poughkeepsie interspersed with the more suburban and rural areas around there. Quick google search shows some nightclubs exist. I could ask you about the availability of a bunch of things the city might lack too like places like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnewaska_State_Park_Preserve

Maybe there are single room apartments around, I haven't checked, but there are definitely some small ones with a few rooms that probably cost a lot less than a single-room in a city anyway. Yes it's possible to rent, do you really think people don't rent outside the city? Honestly I think it's a problem, too much real estate is snatched up by people who then rent it out, making homeownership less available.

What do you mean by cultural center? There are bus stops around of various degrees of private or subsidized, with routes either within the city areas of Poughkeepsie etc or farther-reaching.

24 hour services are less than a city but they're still there. Wal Mart, Dunkin Donuts, various liquor stores, lots of stuff is 24 hours out there.

[souprock]

That all sounds like college, with dorms and a campus shuttle and so on.

IMHO, one is expected to grow out of that. The next phase of life awaits.

Much later, when you are widowed and you move into an assisted living facility, you can once again have high-density living with few belongings and a shared means of transportation.

[TremendousJudge]

>Growing up everyone around me saw the city as somewhere you begrudgingly went out of necessity and only lived there if you had no choice

I assume you grew up in the United States?

[jimmaswell]

Yes, upstate NY.

[eli_gottlieb]

Where? I ran screaming from the Albany area first thing I could when I turned 18.

[jimmaswell]

Hudson Valley, somewhere around Hyde Park. I went over some of the features of the area here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20218742

What's so bad about the Albany area? I haven't been there since I went as a kid for some medical facility.

[jotm]

Cause European cities are so much better? They're not. Overcrowded, overpriced, just for jobs and getting out asap.

[2tab]

Unfortunately everything points to the effect being the opposite. Remote means you don't have to be in Detroit, but can contract a factory in China from New York or run a data center anywhere from the Bay Area.

[jddj]

I've heard this change (the definite shift in desirability from suburbs and small towns to cities, which admittedly you seem to have somewhat blinkered out) attributed to the vast improvements in air quality / waste management / crime / public transport in cities, and that explanation seems reasonable to me.

Country living can be great, but your experience some number of years ago doesn't speak to the current data.

[eli_gottlieb]

> I don't buy any of this. Growing up everyone around me saw the city as somewhere you begrudgingly went out of necessity and only lived there if you had no choice, and I'm inclined to agree. In virtually every aspect I find more countryside-ish living much more pleasant.

I don't buy any of this. Growing up, everyone around me saw the suburbs as somewhere you begrudgingly went out of necessity and only lived there if you had no choice, and I'm inclined to agree. In virtually every aspect I find more urban living much more pleasant.

Funny how that works.

[imtringued]

I'm always wondering... Where do those city dwellers put their heavy machinery? What? You don't have heavy machinery? Well, no hardware projects for you then. Do people seriously lift a half a ton lathe to the 10th floor of their apartment building and then just go at it?

[nemetroid]

My (small by international standards) city has several locations where you pay a monthly fee to use a shared workshop.

[nec4b]

He wasn't talking about suburbs which technically are a part of a city and not of the countryside.

[jimmaswell]

Suburban and rural can be blurry. I'm not sure what I'd call some of the areas I grew up around where there are both farms/orchards and a lot of cul-de-sacs/other houses. When it comes to that odd pattern of development where there are a bunch of cookie cutter houses really close together with little yards, I'm not a fan of that.

[dgabriel]

That's sort of the opposite of my experience, where everyone couldn't wait to get out of the stultifying small town, where there was no work and no future.

[pergadad]

Yes and no. Yes your want to make an offer to those arriving, but you also don't want to destroy a city by letting prices go so high that only a certain caste of people is able to afford it - think SF. Not everyone can be rich enough to afford decent living inside a city. And yet you still want cheap burgers and services, as well as public schools and trash collection and police. None of those can afford big city living if you allow the tech & big business crowd to simply price them out of the market.

[bko]

Freezing rents to fight increasing costs makes as much sense as limiting the maximum reading on thermometers to fight increasing temperatures.

Prices aren't just arbitrary numbers attributed to goods. They convey information. Information that cannot be captured by any one group alone. That's the point of prices.

Freezing rents will create a lot of unintended consequences, as price controls normally do. I imagine that apartments would be poorly maintained as landlords won't need to attract new tenants. Many people will illegally sublet their homes and capture market rents. Landlords will be suspicious and begin treating their tenants with contempt. Investment in building real estate will reduce considerably. The city would be less vibrant and it will be harder to attract young talent or new businesses.

[drugme]

Freezing rents to fight increasing costs makes as much sense as limiting the maximum reading on thermometers to fight increasing temperatures.

You realize that, logically speaking -- there's no analogy to be made here.

Right?

[briandear]

They are necessarily connected. Supply and demand is connected. If rents are frozen, that lowers housing liquidity (because people won’t move if their rent stays “affordable,”) which reduces supply and necessarily creates a shortage. It lowers mobility as well since there is a shortage of available housing which leads to inefficiency— if someone moves to another job in another part of the city, that person would be less likely to be able to move. Then, there’s added stress on transit since people must commute less optimally.

On the issue of new housing, who would risk capital to build new housing when their returns would be subject to the whims of rent caps? What’s the incentive to improve existing housing when the revenue for doing so is limited? Basically, what’s the point of making non-legally required improvements if you can’t raise rent to cover those expenses. That’s going to result in a decline of housing quality over time.

Unless the government is also going to reduce taxes and expenses and inflation for property owners to help offset the lack of revenue growth? Property owner expenses are going down are they? That lack of revenue growth also means less future capital to build more housing.

Rent control benefits a specific group, but ends up costing the whole far more than it saves the few. It’s popular to “protect” the visible because they are visible and typically sympathetic figures. But there is a greater harm being effected that is less noticed because the face of that effect is the “greedy” property owner, but the invisible victim is the overall public.

[fxleach]

I agree with some of your points but I think you're misguided on a couple.

>because people won’t move if their rent stays “affordable,”

This is the issue rent control is trying to solve. There will always be rich people that can afford to live in the city, and they basically raise the bar on what developers and landlords think people can afford. They stay comfy while the rest basically pour all their paycheck into rent, forgo savings, and feel stuck. What about the rest of the people that work in the city with median income (or lower) jobs? They get pushed out further and further from city centres. In turn, that creates enormous strain on public transit and traffic congestion becomes unbearable.

That being said I don't believe rent control is the proper solution, but it's the only one most people agree on right now. I'd like to hear about more solutions if there are any.

[fpig]

> This is the issue rent control is trying to solve.

I don't think you fully understand the issue. You focus on one specific case: richer renters displacing poorer renters because they're willing to pay more. But there is so much more to the housing market, and to people moving from one home to another than that.

Maybe I got children, and I want a bigger apartment. Maybe my children moved out, and I now want a smaller one. Maybe I changed jobs, and I want to move to a different part of the city closer to work. Maybe I want to move to a different city where I got offered a job. And so on.

In a "normal" housing market, you can do all of these things. I can get an apartment in any part of the city within a week, because people move around all the time and leave empty apartments. I don't have to be richer than them, I will pay the same price they used to pay. In a normal housing market, people move around, which means other people can also move around. In a housing market that gives special privileges to current renters, people get "entrenched" in their apartment and don't want to leave for any reason. So these apartments never appear on the market.

In my city, there are rent controls for certain apartments (fortunately very small percentage). I know a few people who live in such apartments, and most of them never intend to move for any reason (unless the rent controls are revoked, which might happen). It is not because they consider this apartment the best possible place for them to be. It's because they don't want to lose their privileges. A renter in a rent-controlled home has an extremely strong artificial incentive to stay exactly where they are. This is inefficient, because as a result, people can't move around.

Now you do have a point, in the sense that it might cause people with lower incomes to be "pushed out". I am not familiar with Berlin, I know my city is fully mixed usage and there is not some huge dropoff in rent as you move away from the center (in fact, some parts further away are more expensive than some nearer). Also jobs are not concentrated in the center, so it's not like most people are commuting into the city center every day. There is pretty much everything everywhere.

[jimmywanger]

Rent controls are just a fancy way to say "price caps".

If you artificially depress the price of a commodity, you induce a scarcity. Apartments are slightly less liquid than say apples, but the principle still stands. It should express itself in demand outstripping supply. If supply and demand were in equilibrium, there would be no point in rent control.

[Faark]

I get the argument of less investment into maintenance, but new buildings with higher capacity (instead of higher quality) could still make you more profit than current ones while boosting supply. Sadly new constructions will continue to target the high price market, since the new caps seem to specifically exclude them.

[seunosewa]

Why must people currently living in a city be able to do so in the future? I think it makes sense to allow people whose skills are more valuable to a city to take the place of those whose skills are ... more valuable elsewhere. Cities evolve. Do I deserve to continue living in a city in perpetuity just because I happened to get to the city before others?

[max_hoffmann]

Why should we exclude some people from living in attractive cities?

Being less wealthy doesn’t mean a job is less valuable. Police officers, firefighters, bakers, artists, nurses… currently struggle living in attractive cities because they cannot afford it. This makes these cities less liveable for everyone.

[Pyxl101]

This seems like a problem that is naturally solved by market forces, supply and demand. If some job is sufficiently valued in a city, then businesses and government will pay whatever wage is necessary to hire people to perform that job.

If people who are doing some job cannot afford to live in a city, then they will move away or find a different job. This will cause a shortage of people performing the job.

If there is a shortage of people doing the job, and the results of that job are sufficiently valued, then employers will be forced to raise wages until they can attract the number of employees required.

For example, if a city has a shortage of police offers, then they can solve that shortage by paying police officers a higher wage. If the city cannot recruit police without a higher wage, then the city will need to allocate more funds to police compensation so that they can pay a higher wage. If the city doesn't have the funds, then they may need to take the issue to the voters, who can approve some form of appropriation like a new tax to pay for it.

Alternatively, perhaps the voters will not approve a tax, and the city will not pay a higher wage for police, and there will be a police shortage. That's the voters' decision. The city will experience the consequence of the police shortage, whatever that may be. Later, the voters may change their mind and decide to approve the tax.

My point is that the fact of there being a labor shortage will cause a correction naturally via market forces.

[nzeribe]

What are you talking about? Nurses, teachers and public sector workers all critical for the functioning of cities are claiming welfare. Some nurses in the NHS are eating patients' left-over food. The logic of the market is to drive wages to the bottom and replace workers when they break. It leads to the destruction of service quality, social cohesion and increased deaths in our hospitals. Please stay off the Ayn Rand methamphetamine.

[imtringued]

The argument is that if the voters are not willing to fund those vulnerable workers then it clearly means that the voters have made the concious decision that these workers are not important to their community and therefore they think the workers should leave.

Well, there are two solutions, either make the voters less influential or change the behavior of the voters.

[Pyxl101]

> Nurses, teachers and public sector workers all critical for the functioning of cities

Sure. As a voter, if my region was experiencing a shortage of public sector workers, and that shortage was affecting my quality of life, or the life of people that I care about, then I would certainly be willing to vote in favor of a pay raise.

> The logic of the market is to drive wages to the bottom and replace workers when they break.

No, this is not true. Markets exhibit emergent behavior. They don't have any logic per se, although we can reason about how we expect them to behave. If markets have any "logic", then their logic is to reach an equilibrium price.

This does not necessarily mean that wages are driven to the bottom. What happens to wages is a function of supply and demand. If very few people are capable of performing a job in some area, and that job is in high demand, then the result of supply/demand dynamics will be a very high wage. On the other hand, if lots of people are capable of performing a job, and/or the job is in low demand, then the result might be a low wage.

It is certainly the case that everyone wants to pay the lowest price that they can for acceptable quality goods and services. Who wants to pay more at the grocery store, or the dentist, or the doctor's office? The cost of labor is a dominant cost in the price of all goods and services that we consume. The fact that automation is replacing labor in many industries has directly lead to the phenomenally low prices for many goods in the modern world.

For example, before the Industrial Revolution, clothing was exceptionally expensive. Clothing required a massive amount of human labor, and so a single shirt might have cost the equivalent of $3,500 modern dollars. As a result of this, poor people could afford very little clothing - resulting the trope of peasants wearing rags to tatters. Most of our fabrics and clothing are produced by machines now, and so the cost of clothing has come down by orders of magnitude. The result is now that even fairly poor people across the globe can afford adequate clothing.

https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-...

Automation in most cases results in an increase of quality, not a reduction in quality. For another perspective on this, examine how the cost of lighting has decreased over time: https://ourworldindata.org/light#price-of-light-over-the-lon...

It is a good thing for everyone that the costs of goods and services comes down over time (or equivalently: the quality of goods and services increases while the price remains steady). This directly leads to a better quality of life for everyone -- this is exactly the way in which economic growth leads to an improved standard of living: the same dollar can buy more than it could before, either a greater amount of goods, or goods of greater quality.

[seunosewa]

I see no reason why a productive city with a high-earning, tax-paying population won't be able to pay police officers, firefighters, nurses, etc. as much as they need to be paid in order to do their important jobs well. I don't see why artists who do important work e.g. for Apple won't be paid well too.