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by seanmcdirmid 1176 days ago
Our buying power isn’t much more than our parents, it is noticeably less when it comes to housing. My dad got a mortgage on a $100k home in the late 80s when he was making above that per year contracting. There is simply no way a FAANG job at below director level would allow for that.

From that perspective, yes a lot of people make less, but that just means life is becoming impossible for most people making normal salaries.
1 comments
satvikpendem 1176 days ago
That's due to NIMBYism and people not wanting to construct more housing, not due to wages per se.
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seanmcdirmid 1176 days ago
> That's due to NIMBYism and people not wanting to construct more housing, not due to wages per se.

Not really. Housing is simply becoming more expensive to construct, even in places where land is cheap and building regulations are open. But let's say even if NIMBYism was significant factor: why are all the good jobs where people want to live correlated with higher factors of NIMBYism? Why doesn't everyone just want to move to Houston (which is losing population these days, even if the metro is gaining)?

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satvikpendem 1176 days ago
> why are all the good jobs where people want to live correlated with higher factors of NIMBYism?

What a strange question, as if it reverses the correlation. People who buy a property before new people come in, such as SF during the 60s, will inevitably see their home prices rise and want to capture that value without wanting to build more housing. The places where people don't want to live simply...don't see this phenomenon, because people don't want to live there. Of course supply and demand still matters, you can't just build houses in some random part of the country and expect people to move there. You need to build where people want to move. This doesn't really have to do anything with not building more housing, and indeed NIMBYism explicitly denies housing construction approvals.

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seanmcdirmid 1175 days ago
People have been property in SF after the 1960s. In fact, much of its housing stock was built since 1980.

> You need to build where people want to move. This doesn't really have to do anything with not building more housing, and indeed NIMBYism explicitly denies housing construction approvals.

Just because everyone wants to live in SF, which has a density much higher than Houston, doesn’t mean everyone can live in SF. If SF was a dense as Manhattan, it wouldn’t be any cheaper than it is now, it might even be as expensive as Manhattan.

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