[wpietri]

One of the big reasons cities are more expensive is that a lot of Americans use their house as a savings plan, causing society to prioritize things that keep property values stable or increasing.

We can't simultaneously have ever-rising property values and affordable housing. Without affordable housing, many people are choosing to defer having kids (including, as you say, by pursuing more education to get higher-paying jobs), which reduces the worker/retiree ratio. That in turn makes it more expensive to be old, requiring more yet more savings.

To me a lot of this problem like a pathological response to the US's lack of good long-term pension coverage. Our every-man-for-himself, devil-take-the-hindmost approach causes a lot of scarcity thinking, which makes it hard to adopt sensible systemic solutions.

[thayne]

Maybe one reason. But I think the biggest reason is that technology and globalization have caused more and more jobs to move to big cities, and in particular to cities on the east and west coast (in the US), which results in housing scarcity due to demand exceeding supply. This is the case in the city where I live. Due to a booming tech industry, the influx of people moving to the city exceeds the amount of housing that can be built (along with other infrastructure, like roads).

And it isn't a problem in all cities either. From what I hear costs are going down in many industrial cities as residents leave to seek more abundent jobs elsewhere.

[wpietri]

Sure, but the question is: why hasn't housing supply kept up? I'd say it's because there are strong political incentives to avoid doing anything that might cause prices to go down. So we end up with very restrictive zoning and a ton of inertia. This is very obvious in all the Silicon Valley suburbs, where everybody loves job growth but housing growth barely happens.

As to the latter point, I'd be interested to see your data. The Case-Shiller metro indexes are all up over the last 5 years. [1] The metro area with the least inflation is New York, which doesn't match.

[1] https://us.spindices.com/additional-reports/all-returns/inde...

[jdjdjjsjs]

Cities in the US are more expensive due to housing policy, as you mention, but also because cities as the engine of American business and growth are subsidizing the rest of the nation. A significant chunk of every city dweller's money ends up in taxes that are transferred to far less efficient and less wealthy non city areas.

Take away the wealth transfer from cities to non urban areas and the only people living in rural areas will be the wealthiest and end of the world preppers.