[thorwasdfasdf]

There's been a pretty huge drop in living standards over the last 40 to 50 years. One interview with a person who lived through the 60s said, back then a painter could own a home, support a non working wife and six kids. These days, that same painter would have a hard time supporting himself, let alone a wife and six kids and house.

one of the biggest drivers of wealth reduction is all the regulation that prevents more housing from being built, and how it's built. this leads to higher land costs, higher costs of labor, higher regulatory costs. Not to mention, we've kept adding more and more people to this country but haven't added more land or more material inputs. so of course living standards have to come down as everything gets split up per capita. to be sure, there's a ton of empty land out there, but no one's allowed to use it. and companies have moved jobs to areas where people can't live. meanwhile gov regulates the s** out of the housing dev market and yet let's job creators go nuts in an area that can't grow due to local NIMBYism.

[johnnyletrois]

Similarly, there’s a sad argument that the “Life in ‘The Simpsons’ is no longer attainable”.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/life-simps...

[mint2]

Yeah we should be able to have cheap lead paint and asbestos and get rid of fire codes. Kids these days have too many IQ points.

No regulation is not a viable solution unless we want a return to pea soup smog in LA and other areas, rivers that go on fire, and more lead poisoned children.

Getting the balance of regulations is hard but it would be a lot easier if companies didn’t have to be forced to do it. But it’s unrealistic to think it’s viable for them to behave responsibly due to adverse selection.

But in any serious discussion, one has to fully embrace the fact that regulations are good and necessary. If the debating parties don’t admit that then it’s not sincere. Equally it must be admitted that regulations and a burden and should be the minimal necessary to stop unacceptable abuse.

[ixacto]

Houston does not have zoning, and the sky has not fallen there. What we have in the rest of the country is an incentive structure that is firmly on the side of rent-seeking and NIMBYism.

It is literally built into our tax code, with the mortgage interest deduction and California’s subsidy of the boomer Generation with the drastic reduction of real estate taxes.

It is ridiculously easy to solve the housing problem in SF, just tear down the single family homes and replace with high rise apartments at HK-level density. But the entrenched interests don’t want to do that.

[halsom]

Your explanation doesn’t check out. First of all, construction hasn’t necessarily slowed down. Second, jobs were always in cities. That hasn’t changed. Third, new construction trends follow economic trends[0] and that has always been the case, since the dawn of the industrial era. It would be one thing if you were arguing that rising wealth inequality is a result of no new homes being built, but you’d still have to account for all the people who live in homes but don’t own them.

[0]:https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?width=880&he...

[sudosysgen]

This simply doesn't check out. Land prices even in countries with low barriers to construction are skyrocketing.

The simple fact is that private ownership of land leads to the value of the land capturing the value of its inhabitants. It's an inevitable trend, housing prices will increase until people start moving out in a free market. There is no purely free market solution that doesn't simply delay this.